LatinosUSA

A short story – Poetry – Bookshelf – Essays – Hotel of the Broken Hearts – Interviews – Contact- English Edition

LatinosUSA Editors: J. Ré Crivello, Nolcha Fox, Michelle Ayón Navajas, Francisco Bravo, Robbie Cheadle, Barbara Leonhard
Masticadores -en español / LatinosUsa —Click to read in Spanish
A Short Story

Pombo and the Inner World

by Lorenzo Rodríguez Garrido

Letras Libres in April 2025. We wish to thank Daniel Gascón, editor of Letras Libres in Spain, for allowing us to share this text with LALT’s readers.

Álvaro Pombo, who received the Miguel de Cervantes Prize in April 2025, says that money is hard to get if you’re a writer. But a simple review of his career, full of numerous prizes, is enough to confirm that he has managed to make quite a good living, even if his mother accused him of being a spendthrift. A writer of enormous verbosity, despite being a latecomer (his fiction debut came in 1977, at the age of 38, with his Relatos sobre la falta de sustancia, although it’s true that he had already shown proof of being a poet before then), he seems to embody these words: “I write, therefore I am. Therefore there is an irrevocable world from the work and the grace of my words, of the words, of the verb that becomes flesh and dwells within us.” These words are from the narrator of El hijo adoptivo (1984), and they undoubtedly convey an experiential fact, a yearning for reality and survival through writing. Isn’t that—to exist—what any artist wants and what all of us want? To avoid being tarnished by the loathsome cold of unreality?

According to his friend José Antonio Marina, whom Pombo met at the college residence hall when both were new arrivals in Madrid, Álvaro Pombo’s literary work seems to be a lucid protest against the trivialization of living. This “lucid protest” is deliberately divided into two periods: one marked by the lack of substance and the other by reality, or as the author himself prefers, as it’s a more philosophical concept, that of religation. The first period ends with Los delitos insignificantes (1986), one of his most, and better, conversational novels where dialogue, apart from giving life to a minimal plot (the title is not deceptive), serves to reveal the soul of two characters sunk in a pool of failure. The second opens with El metro de platino iridiado (1990), a masterpiece through which to understand his poetics of goodness. From lack of communication and pessimism, from the bleak and the ghostly marked by the footsteps of T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (“I should have been a pair of ragged claws / scuttling across the floors of silent seas”), which preside over narrations not so much realistic but rather of “psychology-fiction,” to an open literature, with ethical aspirations, celebratory, touched by the fury of Rainer Maria Rilke, an incessant invocation of the invisible. In short: nurturing a lack of substance with substantial servings of light, as Simone Weil aspired. Or at least trying to do so.

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Reviews / Books recommended by Masticadores

Epicentre South Africa

Editor: Robbie Cheadle

Masticadores —To day —in spanish
Poetry

Editors: Michelle Ayón Navajas, Francisco Bravo Cabrera, J. Re Crivello

Little Chews
Editor: Nolcha Fox
Revival

—Barbara Leonhard, Nolcha Fox, and J. Ré Crivello have decided that Revival will feature articles published in older editions of MasticadoresUSA, Chewers, and Latinos. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, this section will feature contributions from over 300 writers we have published since 2023.

  • 5 Collages by Bill Wolak

    5 Collages by Bill Wolak

  • An Old Tree by Shalini Kathuria Narang

    An Old Tree by Shalini Kathuria Narang

    An Old TreeThe tree is bent, like a person spent,dropping at an angle, some branches still dangle. Do its roots mingle with another? Making each other stronger. or sharing worldly bother,like a brother with a…

  • Before and Again by Luanne Castle

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    Before and AgainThe we of my belief lived in a landof easy comfort, brief and surface woundings,even when tussled by historythat lasted a month on our portable television. We swept the…

Feedback / Essay
Hotel: «Hotel of the Broken Hearts» Editor: Michelle Ayón Navajas

ANGEL’S TONE by Friscia Magbanua

I still ask for you.

Not out of desperation,
but because loving you
never felt like a mistake.

So I ask Him
to mend what broke in me,
to steady my hands
if they ever hold you again.

And if He’s listening—

tell Him
I’m still here,
still yours,
just waiting
for the love I kept
to find its way back to you.


….. Read More…. By MasticadoresHotel

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.

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

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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

LatinosUSA (en español)

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