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LatinosUSA -Clik para leer en español
LatinosUSA Editors: Barbara Leonhard, J. Ré Crivello, Nolcha Fox, Michelle Ayón Navajas, Francisco Bravo, Robbie Cheadle
Masticadores -en español
A Short Story
Fighting Silence to Play with Words Again: An Interview with Héctor Abad Faciolince on Ahora y en la hora

by Natalia Consuegra

The Colombian author—a victim of an attack in Dnipró (Ukraine) along with four other people while traveling through war zones in 2023—provides us with an emotional account of that experience of life and death: of questions and despair, of words that fall short, and of a literature compelled to tell the untellable.

In Ahora y en la hora (Alfaguara, 2025), Héctor Abad Faciolince writes of the beast that awakens when man dies; of “the strange beauty of sad things” in the midst of brutality; of the Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina, whose life became a long line of funerals; and of terror “as a weapon to break a people’s morale.”

After being invited to the Arsenal Book Fair in Kyiv in June 2023, the Colombian writer accompanied the “¡Aguanta Ucrania!” initiative as they traveled through parts of the war-torn country. There he met Amelina—then working as a war-crimes investigator—only to witness her death in the attack that Abad Faciolince and others managed to survive. For the author of Memories of My Father (El olvido que seremos), writing became the only way to process what had happened: “Only if I tell it will it stop being horrible.” For this reason, today Victoria lives on in him and drives his writing of a book that seeks to give her a second chance, to lend a voice to that forlorn-eyed woman whose own voice had been destroyed by war, for war “devours the coherence of the plot / devours coherence / devours.” 

Fighting Silence to Play with Words Again: An Interview with Héctor Abad Faciolince on Ahora y en la hora

Alfaguara, 2025

Natalia Consuegra: When I read Ahora y en la hora, I thought of Salman Rushdie, specifically of that moment he writes about in Knife when he realized he wanted, and needed, to write about the attack he had survived in New York in 2022. You once said, “Perhaps if I write about it, I can understand; only if I tell it will it stop being horrible. I write to learn how to die.”

Héctor Abad Faciolince: I didn’t take that trip to write a book. In fact, around that time I met with Javier Cercas, who told me that the Vatican had invited him to Mongolia to write El loco de Dios en el fin del mundo. I told him that I couldn’t write something like that—I hadn’t gone to Ukraine to write any book. I was very unwell; I wanted to stay quiet, I couldn’t take it, I wanted my mind to start the process of forgetting. Then Cercas said to me: “You have to write it. Start right now with some sort of article, send it to El País, to El Espectador, anywhere.” So, because I’m very obedient, I wrote one. In fact, it was that same obedience—and my inability to disobey—that drew me to eastern Ukraine in the first place. I wrote an article for El País and began reading Victoria’s work compulsively, everything of hers I could find, including a novel that had just come out and had been brought to my house practically at the very moment of the attack. My children, my wife… they were all very affected, and in part offended, though lovingly so, that I had exposed my life in that way.

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Reviews / Books recommended by Masticadores

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Editor: Nolcha Fox
Essay
Hotel: «Hotel of the Broken Hearts»

Editor: Michelle Ayón Navajas


«CONVERSATION»  by Ray Whitaker

It is difficult to understand your silence
placed value is in expression
what one says to another is part of the meaning of Life
the opportunities of hearing a loved one’s voice
sincerity is inherit in expression
silence connotates disapproval and perhaps even disdain

pterosauros fly silently
over the primordial earth below

As I ride one
The wind over my back
is quiet, whispering secrets  barely heard.

Sorrow at the loss becomes an influence.

Tears dry quickly in the winds aloft.
Aches fly as swift as the clouds

we yielded close to oblivion
like darkness in the dungeon
for days months and years,
I lost count, gosh!
I barely remember;
the tears I’ve cried,
the pains I’ve agonized,
the aches I’ve endured-
will this year be,
the year we finally say,
“Happy New Year?”

we succumbed to the whims
and caprices of being young
and restless,
tortured our hopes and our dreams
’till there was none to begin,
no more wantings,
no more needings,
no more longing,
yet, in the silence of our stubborn hearts, we dare and say
“this year will be, the beginning of our forever.”

no more doubts,
no more hesitations,
not even a room for “what-ifs”
and “what could-have-beens,”
for we are certain (amidst all the uncertainties today) we claim;
“this is a Happy New Year.”

*first appeared on Spillwords

______

Author’s Bio

All writers and poets are writing out of «the Self» however there are directions that the self speaks into, that change. Now Ray’s writing is to put foremost in his work, just who he is writing for. He intends on writing for the everyday man and woman. He firmly believes that poems need to reach into the everyday person’s pictures in their minds, and engage with those. This is where he aims to make a difference in his creative writing. He’s fulfilled when he sees that his work is provoking thought in his readers. Ray has five books published, and two chapbooks. His work has been published in fourteen different countries.

Reed More: HotelMasticadores (Read blog)

Daily Update from Chewers & MasticadoresUSA
Gobblers / Interviews
MasticadoresCanada Editor: Ray Whitaker (Daily Update)

LatinosUSA

Overview

Masticadores.com and masticadoresdeLetras belong to the NGO Masticadores. We promote culture and communication. We publish in eight languages ​​(Spanish, English, Portuguese, Tagalog, Romanian, Italian, French and Catalan). And we publish in twelve countries (France, Italy, Brazil, USA, Mexico, Argentina, India, Taiwan, France, Turkey, Uruguay, Philippines. On 22 blogs. With 24 editors, and 450 writers.

The idea and founder of Masticadores and MasticadoresdeLetras is: Juan Re Crivello.

Raison d’être

We work to promote culture and communication in an environment of freedom and respect for the ideas of all citizens.

Income

The operating costs of the site are funded by members. The editors involved in selecting works for the cover donate their time for the enjoyment that is generated by promoting the work of other artists, photographers and writers.

How we select collaborative work

The site editors review submissions, primarily from email submissions. See the conditions for submissions on each particular blog.

Advertising

Masticadores does not display advertising. Occasionally, artists, photographers or writers may provide links to their work elsewhere. Masticadores does not receive compensation for such links, nor does it endorse or validate them.

If you would like to help cover the cost of running Masticadores and donate you can go to fleminglabworkmail.com.

Cover Illustrations

The images, art or illustrations we use to accompany some of the features on the site are either original works provided by the author to Masticadores for the purpose of illustrating a feature or are pulled from Unsplash or Flickr, or Pinterest, using the «commercial use allowed» filter. Unless the cover author created the illustration, we also provide attribution. Please contact us if you have any concerns about any of the illustrations.

LatinosUsa (EnglishEdition)

Founder and editor: J. Re Crivello

Contacto:

Email: fleminglabwork@gmail.com

The Hotel by Masticadores

Editor: Michelle Ayón Navajas

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