Los Hijos de la Malinche is a global magazine with more than 60 collaborators from all over the world. Based primarily in Mexico, the online journal is a youth cultural alternative that seeks to present itself as a space for the sharing and creation of ideas, art, creativity and knowledge. Its founder and CEO, Emilio Lezama, stat down with Latin Times to talk about what inspired him to start the project, how he plans to foster U.S.-Mexico relations and the power the Mexican government has over the Media.
LT: Where are you from originally?
I am from Mexico City.
LT: What made you want to go to the U.S.?
I’m doing a Masters degree at George Washington University in Global Communications. It’s degree that brings together my two interests which are media and communications and international affairs in the world of politics. And they are the two subjects that are most pertinent to the magazine I direct.
LT: What magazine is that?
Well I have been director of ‘Los Hijos de la Malinche’ for five years. It is an online magazine based in Mexico that deals with cultural, political and international issues.
LT: What inspired you to start this magazine?
The lack of spaces for young people to write, to express themselves. Mexico’s media was very controlled by an old oligarchy, this older political class. There was really no platform for young people to express themselves. We thought that we had something to say, that we had to harvest a new generation of artists, thinkers, writers, analysts, and that the only way to do it was to do it ourselves because no one else was going to do it.
LT: What was your main aim in starting it?
To create a group that was going to break into the Mexican public debate. To think of Mexico in a different way than the generations before us. Another objective was to create good journalism, quality journalism, without all the old habits of certain Mexican journalism schools that, to my idea of what journalism is, is not the ideal way of dealing with it. So we wanted independent media, that had a good literary quality, that wasn’t just reporting but had substance to it. And all that came together on ‘Hijos de la Malinche.’ It gave us a platform with greater freedom that wasn’t limited to what the official discourse wanted to hear, to what the diversity of Mexico really represents.
LT: How did you find your writers?
Well I found some and some found us. At the beginning we made a group of about thirty writers that we knew, that we found through reading other magazines, that we interviewed. People that were having the same curiosity, the same problems dealing with the normal media that we were and that were good writers, good thinkers, good journalists.
LT: Is your focus news reporting or more analysis?
It’s more analysis. We do have some reporting, but it’s more about profound analysis. It’s a mixture between political analysis and culture and art. We have a great literature section with some of the best writers in Mexico, with short stories, poems etc. And that is something that is lacking in Mexico and in the world. Most magazines in the U.S. have started eliminating their literature sections because they have the idea that people won’t read them and I think people will read them if you make an effort for people to read them and if you give them quality.
LT: How has coming to the U.S. changed your perspective on Los Hijos and journalism in both countries?
Journalism is very different in the United States. I’ve been doing this in several countries – I was in France before. Journalism in France wants to know about the world, it’s more open to the world. Journalism in the United States often jumps from New York to Baghdad and skips everything in between. Latin America is unfortunately not present in American journalism, at least not in a significant way.
LT: Is that something you want to change, to have more of a Latin American presence in the United States?
Definitely. One of our projects is to have an English version of Los Hijos de la Malinche, a new version that would have content from Mexico. We need to bring Mexico back to the United States. We are neighbors – we share a two thousand mile border and yet there is so little said about us. U.S. presidential candidates campaigned for hours about the Middle East, about Europe, about China, even about Canada. You have your southern neighbor, with 120 million people, that will become one of the top 10 economies in the world in the next 20 years, you have 30 million Mexicans in the United States, and yet nothing is said about Mexico in the press, in presidential debates, in anything. I think that’s something we want to change. We don’t want to change it from a Latin perspective, we want to change it from a global perspective. We want a magazine that has quality and talks about Latin America.
LT: You recently gave a presentation at Harvard. Can you tell us what that was about?
Well I was invited with a group of Mexicans to this event called ‘Laboratorio de Ideas’ or ‘Ideas Lab,’ where a lot of people present different ideas. I presented ‘Los Hijos de la Malinche,’ I talked about the project and what we’ve achieved in five years. We’ve won two national awards, The National Communications Award and the National Youth Award. I talked about what we want to do with literature, how we want to create a new generation of thinkers. And I got a really great response – it was great to be there. It was important to reach out to the Mexican student community but also to the general student community which is interested in these subjects. There is a very entrepreneurial culture in the United States and we want to tell them ‘Hey south of the border we have the same interests as you and there is so much going on. Come to Mexico City, read Los Hijos de la Malinche, and you’ll be surprised. And try our great food by the way.’
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