ΜΕΞΙΚΟ 1810 - 2010. ΚΑΡΛΟΣ ΜΟΝΣΙΒΑΪΣ

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Carlos Monsiváis was known as Mexico's finest chronicler, its "last public intellectual," its "conscience," and as the only literary figure around who was said to be recognized by regular folks on the street. With the death, Mexico lost a voice that for nearly 50 years was considered unrivaled in his ability to cut to the core of the issues and personalities of his day.
Mourners, from high-profile politicians to everyday workers, swarmed the writer's casket at two public wakes over the weekend. People waved, cheered and chanted for the man millions knew simply as "Monsi."
Monsivais was a journalist, a critic, a cinephile, a collector of historical and pop ephemera (which led eventually to the founding of a museum) and a tireless activist for minority rights and the political left. In hundreds of articles and columns, more than two dozen books, countless appearances on television and radio, at conferences and demonstrations, Monsivais represented for many Mexicans an enormously erudite man of letters who never lost touch with ordinary people, or with the tragicomic nature of life here.
His work is characterized by its acerbic intellect, humor and wit, as well as the toughened perspective he formed in the San Simon Ticumac neighborhood in the Portales area of Mexico City, a barrio with which he is famously identified.

As an activist, Monsivais was a central figure in the 1968 movement and in the many social causes that followed, in a period when the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, dominated all aspects of Mexican society as an authoritarian one-party regime. He supported the 1994 Zapatista uprising in the southern state of Chiapas. In 2006, he joined the chorus of voices who called the election of President Felipe Calderon a "fraud" that denied the presidency to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, an ardent leftist and populist.

Monsivais was also active in various gay rights issues and wrote on related topics such as homophobia. His own sexuality, however, was not something he commented on.
Monsivais, born on May 4, 1938, in Mexico City, died just before 2 p.m. Saturday of lung disease. He was 72.
His casket was covered with three flags: the Mexican national flag, the gay pride rainbow flag and the UNAM coat of arms. (latimesblogs.latimes.com)

Το φέρετρο του Κάρλος Μονσιβάις καλυμμένο με την σημαία του ουράνιου τόξου