Professor takes Latino stigmas to D.C. in new graphic novel

By Mary Carey
Staff Writer

Published on July 18, 2008

The hero of the new graphic novel "Mr. Spic Goes to Washington" looks a bit like local restaurateur Martin Carrera. The fictional governor is named Tony Marx, just like the president of Amherst College. And if the cartoon figure using the restroom looks like Amherst College professor Ilan Stavans, indeed it is.

"Ah. Don't mind him ...," a character says about the man in the restroom, "He is a college professor from Amherst."

"Mr. Spic" is the latest entry in a long list of fiction, nonfiction, anthologies, translations and other works by the prolific Stavans, "one of the most influential figures in Latino literature in the United States," as The New York Times refers to him.

It's a compact, 110-page tale about a fictional former gang member named Samuel Patricio Inocencio C￡rdenas - Spic, for short - who becomes mayor of Los Angeles then a U.S. senator and finally a folk hero. Stavans' first graphic novel, it's got plenty of references to important historical figures, dates and information, like the percentage of the United States population comprised by Latinos, which is 16 percent.

Roberto Weil, a syndicated cartoonist and painter living in Caracas, Venezuela, illustrated the story, employing a style described on the back cover as "Dilbert meets Aqua Teen Hunger Force." Mr. Montgomery Burns of "The Simpsons" appears to have been an inspiration as well.

"I'm hoping this will reach both Latinos and non-Latinos and I'm hoping more than anything to reach young people," Stavans said, adding that the way Latinos are portrayed in discussions about immigration by media commentators, like Lou Dobbs and Bill O'Reilly, distresses him.

"It's horrible. I can't believe those guys have carte blanche to say all those things they say. I hope ("Mr. Spic") will reach a wide range of people who are interested in the state of American politics."

As has become a kind of hallmark for Stavans, "Mr. Spic" includes many self-referencial allusions. Thus the name of the governor; Spic's resemblance to Carrera and the tiny photos of Stavans' wife, Alison Stavchansky, and their two sons, Josh and Isaiah, sprinkled throughout its pages. "Literature should be fun," Stavans said.

Stavans, who grew up in Mexico City, the son of a soap opera star, and Carrera, a former resident of the Pacific Northwest, have been friends for about 10 years.

"I admire his honesty and conviction, the way he is authentic to his roots through the food he prepares at La Veracruzana, the commitment he makes to the community and his relationship with students from the area," Stavans said. Besides looking like Carrera, Stavans said, Spic also has "a few scattered elements of Martin's biography."

An element of Spic's biography that he does not share with Carrera is Spic's past membership in a gang, a subculture that intrigues Stavans.

"I love to study the type of graffiti they paint, the armies that they build. It's a very dangerous but a fascinating world that has its own code of moral conduct. I think police and the media look at it in a black-and-white way, but it's a very nuanced world - with revenge, of course, at the heart of it," Stavans said.

The idealistic Spic's former gang affiliation is integral to the plot, as the corporate interests that aided his rise to the Senate turn on him when he proves to be a reformer and seek to use his background to undermine him.

The expression that Spic has tattooed on his back, "Con Safos," is a mysterious one mainly used in the Southwest by gang members, Stavans explained.

"Nobody knows exactly what it means, but when you put it in graffiti, a mural or tattoo, that surface will be protected by forces. I'm hoping the book, itself, will be protected from evil forces," he said, "half-jokingly."

The story doesn't end happily for Spic, but in the fictional public consciousness, he becomes as revered as some of his own heroes: Abraham Lincoln, Cesar Chavez and Che Guevara. Along the way, he rubs shoulders with Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Jessie Jackson.

Stavans was tempted to give a "rosy denouement" to the plot much as happens in the Frank Capra movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," one of its influences, but decided against it. "The roundness of it all felt artificial," he said. "Worse, it felt untruthful. Latino politics are far more radical and far more tragic, too."

As for the use of the term "spic," usually used pejoratively to mean Hispanic or Latino, Stavans said, "The term spic' is like nigger.' You can only use it if you're an insider, otherwise it becomes explosive. I wanted to turn that strategy upside down. In more than ways than one, the narrative is about making the ugly side of Latinos beautiful and vice versa."

"Mr. Spic Goes to Washington" will be on sale in major bookstores beginning Aug. 5, and Stavans will begin a book tour after that. It probably won't be his last book like it.

"I love the genre of the graphic novel. In fact it seems to me the most vital of all literary forms nowadays," he said. Inspirations include Art Spiegelman, Will Eisner and Joe Sacco.

Stavans also has a travel book called "Resurrecting Hebrew" coming out in September and recently submitted the 4,000-page manuscript of "The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature," a tome he has been working on for 10 years. What's next?

"Some daydreaming," he said.

Mary Carey can be reached at mary.carey@att.net.