“Debauchery, when done well, is high literature”; that's why The Cowboy Bible is back

Daniel López Aguilar

La Jornada Newspaper, Tuesday, July 8, 2025, p. 5

With the smell of reheated machaca, warm beer, prayers to Saint Jude Thaddeus, and echoes of the Cadets of Linares on an iPod, The Cowboy Bible by Carlos Velázquez returns, now published by Océano.

This reissue is not a nostalgic gesture, but rather a confirmation of the relevance of a text that redefined the narrative of northern Mexico with corrosive humor, delirious imagination, and an aesthetic proposal that transformed satire into an act of resistance.

My intention was to show that this region is much more than stories of drug lords , said the author, born in Torreón, Coahuila, in 1978, a lover of concerts, Ramones riffs and language distortions.

“Behind the fascination with narcoculture lies a very rich layer of identity, and this book was my way of exploring it. It was also a response to solemn literature, the kind that takes itself too seriously and ends up gathering dust in academia.”

Velázquez worked for 10 years in a record store before becoming a chronicler and narrator. But it was The Cowboy Bible that, in his words, launched him as a writer.

I had previously published another book, but I didn't feel like an author. With this project, I knew I would dedicate myself to writing stories for the rest of my life.

The new publication preserves the explosive manifesto that has characterized it since its first appearance in 2009: a collection of interconnected stories that inhabit an imaginary map populated by wrestlers, DIYers, truck drivers, bartenders, former wetbacks, donkeys, drug connections and paradoxical shadows of national history , as its back cover points out.

The idea of ​​inventing a unique geographic space comes from Burroughs. He spoke of zones where evil is rife. I wanted to do something similar, but in a northern key, where everything would fit in: from popular culture to the echoes of Joyce or Cortázar , the author added in an interview with La Jornada.

“This work eschews conventional narrative forms. It's a construction based on winks, as if a sound mixer were blending literary pastiches and street experiences to form a new rhythm: that of language as a living creature, lurking in the corner of every sentence.”

“At that time, I felt like Mexican writers were trying to kill the language. Not me. I wanted to listen. To the street, to the books, to the speech of the north. With that, I tried to create a new sound, one that responded to a need for reinvention that many of us suffered.”

The result is prose that oscillates between punk babble and the eloquence of a drunken preacher in an abandoned station cantina.

In the text, humor doesn't function as simple relief: it's a sharp knife, a laugh that cuts deep.

For Carlos Velázquez, those of us who laugh take reality more seriously. At a dinner party, where would you rather be? With people stiff as wax monkeys or with people laughing until they cry? I chose a long time ago. That may have cost me readers, but I don't write to please the guardians of the dominant discourse .

The influences that permeate these pages are as diverse as they are contradictory: from David Lynch's Lost Highway , which inspired the narrative structure of reincarnation, to Rodrigo Fresán's Mantra ; Cortázar's The Pursuer ; and music as a true ideology.

“It's not just sound. It's part of the book's DNA. Music also writes. Sometimes with riffs, other times with silences,” the author emphasized.

Faced with the threat of neutral language, which tends to homogenize voices and accents, Velázquez remains steadfast in his dissent. The cowboy bible doesn't ask permission: it bursts into the solemn celebration of Mexican literature like a freak, turning on the console with an irreverent noise.

Today, only one literary movement dominates. I refused to jump on that bandwagon, and I'm fine with that, because chaos, when done right, can also be high literature. Here, it certainly is , he concluded.

Omar González Morales

La Jornada Newspaper, Tuesday, July 8, 2025, p. 5

The book Tales from the Dark Side, published by Planeta, is more than just horror stories: it's a journey through more than 30 years of stories told by the audience of the radio show of the same name.

Author and host José Ramón Cantalapiedra, engineer, has witnessed firsthand the return of the narrative radio genre, which has now found its new home on YouTube, where he has consolidated his project.

Of Basque origin, José Ramón Cantalapiedra was always drawn to stories. As a young man, while studying engineering at a university in Puebla, he did voiceover work for commercials and radio broadcasts on the institution's radio station. After completing his studies, he focused on his profession, unaware that he would soon return to the stage.

In an interview with La Jornada, the writer spoke about his transition from radio to YouTube, and now to written fiction, after hearing hundreds of stories from his listeners.

Getting into radio in 2003 was a real pleasure. I used to do it for college assignments, but I loved it, and at the same time, I was a civil engineer. A friend, who was already a producer for another show, invited me to the project. When I arrived, I realized that listening to people was exciting , she commented.

The narrator explained that it was very difficult to combine his work as an engineer with that of a voiceover artist.

I didn't want to leave because there was so much to talk about. Just as my life as an engineer was ending, I would step into the booth and it was a different world. I don't know how I would have been able to live my life without it. It was a sharp cut from the reality of construction problems to a place where I could talk about a variety of topics , he explained.

He asserted that in the field of communication, it is key to never lose the capacity for wonder: on the contrary, I remain more interested than before in what people tell me, because the world and the stories are bigger than we think .

The YouTube channel Tales from the Dark Side is a hit. Its audience transcends ages; children, young adults, and adults enjoy Cantalapiedra's storytelling of horror and legends. But it's not all fiction; it also covers historical accounts, such as plane crashes, natural disasters, and real and literary crimes, all thoroughly documented.

It's complicated because today's audiences are so immersed in the immediate. A young person can spend three hours on their phone looking at 10 things, but only three of them were interested in what they saw. That's the challenge we all face as journalists, writers, and content creators , Cantalapiedra said.

The narrator stated that the Internet gives the advantage of generating a sense of closeness with the public , because now a person who arrives home from work, and does not want to listen to the news, can easily open the Internet and listen to a story told by a man sitting in front of him, who describes or explains something, making him feel accompanied and breaking a cycle of loneliness .

YouTube is home to many projects on a variety of topics, but the horror community has found the platform to be the perfect place for the genre, which has led to more viewers immersing themselves in the literary genre.

“I liked the theme of horror because it's relatable to everyone. It returns us to a natural, vulnerable state, making us rethink our conditions. People can have an orderly life: home, work, family… but when you realize that all of that can be shattered, and that it can happen to you, you start to think about it. That adrenaline is what makes us aware that something might happen,” commented José Ramón Cantalapiedra.

The writer spoke about his project's strong radio precedent: "If we have to talk about horror programs, of course we must return to the case of La mano peluda; they told very engaging stories, because the audience created them, but they always focused on the same themes. We seek to vary and give the 'fine details' to the stories; that defines our work a lot."

With thousands of stories in the background, the book Tales from the Dark Side is a small sample of the program's consolidation: "I'm not a writer: I'm a numbers and math person, and from there to jumping into radio and then into narrative has been a wonderful experience.

"I never knew when we'd have enough for a book. I wanted to add more, but it wasn't the right time, although we could do another one because I've heard stories that would last a lifetime. We don't cover many other topics, and we don't know what the future holds, but this program's adventure continues ," he concluded.