"A visit to the Mexican literary world recalls Dante’s procession through the inferno. I don’t want to point the finger at anyone in particular; it’s a collective evil. Octavio Paz was lucky to have lived in happier times. Though writers were already “yoked to the chariot of power”—the phrase was coined by Margo Glantz—as they have been since independence, their conscience and good names were still intact. I am especially disturbed by the corruption of the craft of the writer—contractors pass themselves off as intellectuals, thugs pretend to be poets—which has been so damaging to our critical conscience. This corruption reached grotesque levels during the term of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. We suffer at the hands of pseudohistorians and corrupt political analysts whose work legitimizes truly sinister public officials."