Postscripts

Consortium, the book distributor for El Paso'sCinco Puntos Press, has sold all 3,000 of its copies of Cinco Puntos' La Historia de los Colores (The Story of Colors), which might not be that noteworthy had it not been for the fact that all those copies sold nearly two months before the book's originally planned publication date of May 1. But when a reporter from The New York Times calls William Ivey, the head of the National Endowment for the Arts, to ask about the circumstances behind the NEA granting Cinco Puntos $7,500 to publish The Story of Colors, a children's book by Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, the leader of the Zapatistas, upon which Ivey immediately revokes the grant because he just realized -- far too late -- the political implications of that grant decision, and news of that decision appears in The New York Times, well -- then it becomes possible for your distributor to sell out of all copies of a book before its planned publication date. "The interesting thing about the book is that it's really an apolitical book," Bobby Byrd, poet and publisher of Cinco Puntos Press, says (Byrd's wife Lee, daughter Susannah, and son-in-law Eddie also run the press and his son John does translations on a freelance basis). The Story of Colors follows Subcomandante Marcos and old man Antonio on a walk as they see a macaw, whose feathers are brilliantly hued, and whose presence reminds old man Antonio of a story, the story of how the gods found all the colors in the world. "I think it's important that it starts like that, that they take a break from whatever they're doing in their life and remember a story that's important to their heritage," Byrd says.

Controversy over the book rests on one crucial misunderstanding: Ivey canceled Cinco Puntos' grant for fear that NEA funds would eventually benefit armed rebels who live in the jungles of Chiapas, and almost certainly felt justified in that decision due to the precarious political climate the NEA presently finds itself struggling with. But Byrd says that "it wasn't like we were doing a fast one on these guys" since it had provided the required author biography and had specified that not Cinco Puntos but the Colectivo Callejero, an artists' collective in Guadalajara, would benefit from the grant (the Colectivo owns the rights to the book and one of its leaders, Domitila Dominguez, is the book's illustrator). On March 11, the day after the Times story appeared, the Lannan Foundation announced it would donate $15,000 to Cinco Puntos to replace the lost funds.

According to Byrd, The Story of Colors would have been published without incident had Julia Preston from The New York Times not called Ivey. In fact, Byrd says, Preston was simply calling Ivey to verify facts and "thought it was a done deal." "She called me immediately. ... She likes the book and she was really upset but the thing is, why cave in on something that's not even an issue yet?" Byrd asks. Byrd didn't get an answer to that question from Ivey, who did at least call Cinco Puntos to talk about his decision. "He was nice," Byrd recalls. "He had that voice that's full of political smoothness, you know, 'Please apply again, blah blah blah, blah blah blah.' He was sorry to cause us any inconvenience. I said, 'You know, this is a small press; $7,500 is a lot of money.' But that was that. ... I think the American process is, or should be, one of discussion and argument and a dialectic, and Bill Ivey, by his actions, tried to deny the dialectic." Bobby Byrd will be in Austin at FringeWare on Saturday, March 20 at 8pm to enact the dialectic about his most recent collection of poetry, The Price of Doing Business in Mexico.