The National Tribute to Cultural Journalism Fernando Benítez that the Guadalajara International Book Fair will accord to editor and journalist José Luis Martínez Salazar (Mexico City, 1955) in its upcoming edition not only recognizes his “outstanding professional career of nearly five decades in the field of culture,” as well as “his contributions to print journalism on culture, entertainment, society, and politics,” but also honors a way of conceiving this craft as a pursuit of excellence and a critical and unbiased view of the cultural phenomena of our time. And indeed José Luis has maintained throughout his journalistic career an almost marginal stance toward fashions and political shifts, driven only by immense curiosity and intelligence and a demeanor that have earned him the respect and unwavering support of all those who have worked by his side, whom he has known how to treat with exquisite simplicity, which has allowed him to make, of every project he has led, an indisputable reference point within Mexican journalism as a whole. His name is now linked to figures such as José Emilio Pacheco, Carlos Monsiváis, Vicente Leñero, Huberto Batis, Cristina Pacheco or Sergio González Rodríguez, who have been honored with this tribute, but it is only fair to say that, if any of them most resembles the mentor of the recognition, it is José Luis, a pure-bred editor who knows like few others the arduous task of publishing and doing journalism. In this sense, José Luis Martínez Salazar is a classic. I recall him sitting in his office at the newspaper El Nacional, where he headed the entertainment section in the late eighties, composing layouts that were previously unimaginable in Mexico, where talk ranged from cinema, music, and theatre to cabaret, nightclubs, and taverns, and where journalistic genres were transformed into an exercise of freedom and imagination. Close and rigorous, José Luis answered calls, spoke with his collaborators, joked and argued, asked and commanded, attentive and reflective, always with impeccable manners and without pedantry. Later, when he began to edit the weekly supplement Laberinto of the newspaper Milenio, which has been published for 23 years, he knew how to create the perfect space to address the vast universe of culture, inviting old and new collaborators, among whom are names that have gained special prominence in that universe, such as Xavier Velasco, Leonardo Padura, Irene Vallejo, David Toscana, Fernando Solana Olivares, Armando Gonzalez Torres or Tedi López Mills, to name just a handful of them. José Luis has recently recalled that the work of the cultural journalist “does not limit itself to the belles lettres, to the documentation of strictly artistic tasks, but goes beyond, since it also carries a social and political commitment,” and that that “commitment can be transformed into literature,” which is reflected on every page he has edited in his long career since he began in 1979 his journalistic journey in the magazine Su Otro Yo, as well as in the books he authored: The Old Guard. Protagonists of Mexican journalism, The Day the Night Changed. Memoirs of a Night Owl in Mexico City, and Heresies. Readings for Difficult Times. One of his maxims when editing, he has declared, is that reading demands effort and concentration, and that is what the texts he publishes in Laberinto propose: to challenge the reader, because José Luis is not interested in being complacent or in treating readers like minors. “I believe,” he has said, “in rigor, in the quality of writing, in the depth of the topics addressed, and, above all, in respect for the reader’s intelligence.”
For all of this and many other things that do not fit in this space, we celebrate the well-deserved tribute that the Guadalajara FIL will pay to José Luis Martínez, a tribute that recognizes one of the great editors in the modern history of Mexican journalism and that is at the same time a recognition of a way of conceiving and practicing journalism. Salud, dear Joe.