Mexico’s Paco Taibo on Coca-Cola, ‘El Che’ and Argentina

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Like his fictional private detective, Héctor Belascoarán Shayne, the Mexican author Paco Ignacio Taibo II has an admitted fondness for a certain soft drink.

‘If Che liked Coca-Cola, why shouldn’t I?’ Taibo asked in an interview published in Argentina’s Página/12 newspaper, alluding to the Argentine-born Cuban revolutionary, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara.

Taibo may be best known for his thrillers involving Belascoarán Shayne, the half-Basque, half-Irish one-eyed private eye trolling the noir streets of Mexico City. But the Mexican author is also a Guevara buff, having penned a biography of the guerrilla leader and having just edited a new collection (‘El Cuaderno Verde del Che — El Che’s Green Notebook’), an anthology of poems by Pablo Neruda and others said to have been found in the slain militant’s rucksack.

Taibo has pondered the many distinctions between Mexico, a nation that exalts its mestizo heritage, and Guevara’s birthplace, Argentina, where European immigration supplanted indigenous cultures.

‘How do you fluster an Argentine?’ Taibo asks, providing his own answer: ‘Take him to Machu Picchu [the ancient Inca citadel in Peru] and tell him: ‘Colleague, this is you, but you don’t know because your country won’t let you.’ ‘

Posted by Patrick J. McDonnell in Buenos Aires

Photo: Paco Ignacio Taibo II; Credit: Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images