Poet And journalist Javier Molina Dies At 78

San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chis. The poet and journalist Javier Molina, founder of La Jornada , died at dawn this Sunday at the age of 78, in San Cristóbal de las Casas.

According to close friends, Molina died at 4:30 a.m., at his home located in the La Merced neighborhood of this city, where he was born on November 8, 1942.

In recent weeks, he had had health problems, as his left foot had swollen and he was in pain, which made it difficult to walk, coupled with liver complications.

Javier Molina studied sociology at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, from where he lived the 1968 student movement. He was a representative before the National Strike Council.

Then he shared activism with José Vicente Anaya and Jaime Goded, in the Marilyn Monroe Brigade, which combined playfulness, poetry and joy with political awareness.

Javier Molina was recognized as an icon in San Cristóbal de las Casas by the new generations. It was common to hear in the streets of the town, when seeing him go by: “Look, the poet goes there” or “this cafe is where the poet Javier Molina comes to write every afternoon.”

The city’s chronicler, Luis Urbina Zepeda, said in an interview that his death “is a regrettable loss for San Cristóbal.”

He affirmed that Javier “was a great person endowed with exceptional qualities, not only for literature and the construction of poetry, but also that he had a great knowledge of Latin American and universal literature”.

He pointed out that from 1993 on when he returned to San Cristóbal “he came to teach us a lot. He was a social fighter with the pen and of exceptional caliber because the humility and simplicity he had was intrinsic to him ”.

He recalled that for more than 15 years he gave literature workshops as part of the programs of the State Council for Culture and the Arts (Coneculta ”.

As a cultural reporter for the Unomásuno and La Jornada newspapers , Javier Molina’s capacity for conciseness, his professionalism and the artisan way of writing his two-page notes were remarkable, according to his colleagues, “monumental”.

He argued that in journalism “with the passage of time, we all take care of the way and style in which we express ourselves. In poetry this happens too, only in a more refined way. Fortunately for poetry, this is not a genre that requires a schedule or a quota of daily pages ”( La Jornada , 01/13/2004).

In his poetic work, almost 50 years old, he expressed that he had reached a “clear rhythm. That is my gain in the trade: my own voice and personal images manifested in a rhythm that I have manufactured ”.

“Exercising poetry or music allows time to provide security. I am more certain of what I say and how I write it. To this must be added the growth of self-criticism, which is the capacity that makes us publish little or a lot. Now I am aware of the safety of a rhythm and that seems encouraging to me ”.

The cultural promoter and literary workshop, beloved by his peers and a good friend of those who explored his life spheres, was the author of the poems Under the rain, To make talk, Sample book, The light rebels .

His partner in the cultural section of this newspaper Merry MacMasters remembers that Javier Molina was a sign that the reporter complies despite everything. On one occasion, he was sent to cover a congress of the International Council of Monuments and Sites, in Zacatecas, but he arrived late at the airport and missed the flight.

“Neither slow nor lazy, he went to the truck terminal, bought a ticket, and set off on the journey. Fortunately for him, the inauguration was at night. Suddenly, Javier appeared in the right place, looking sad, but he hadn’t missed anything ”.

Molina received a tribute in San Cristóbal de las Casas in 2011. There he expressed that for the creator, poetry is what music could express, which could not be said with other words; it is to convey emotion, feeling and a personal voice that belongs only to one, is shared, but it is the proper way of saying what one is struck by, moves or is unworthy.

He also wrote for the magazines Cultura Sur and Punto de Partida .