Hoja Frugal

by Dolores Dorantes

Hoja Frugal (Frugal Page) is a project that came into being on September 9, 2001 in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua (the so-called “crime frontier”). Our idea was to share the readings and translations in which we as writers are engaged. But more than anything, to share them with the community as a whole, not with the “intellectual” community. Our intention was to give the community a breath of respite in the context of the growing phenomenon of violence we experience daily in this border zone.

In Mexico, most cultural publications are sponsored by the government, and for that reason they need to justify their existence by functioning as a “forum for young artists,” or exhibiting some other marketable tag, which is exactly what we did not want with Hoja Frugal. As this is a project designed expressly for people who rarely read books, and who never read poetry, we couldn’t see ourselves exposing readers solely to incipient local writers. For that reason, another of Hoja Frugal’s aims, aside from presenting translations, was to bring together writers with a solid and unquestionably “revolutionary” trajectory within Mexican poetry specifically, and Latin American poetry in general. Over the internet, we asked writers to support our “cause” and give us one or two poems, so that we could publish them.

Our editorial criteria are kept completely separate from any governmental or institutional concerns, and pertain solely to the “makers” of the Hoja: Juan Manuel Portillo, Dolores Dorantes and Sergio Valero. Through the Hoja, therefore, what readers receive is a poem of a certain quality, which is above all framed in history, representative of a “time,” steeped in the present. Hoja Frugal was born as a gift artists give to the border community; it is currently distributed all over Mexico and in some areas of the United States and Spain.

For more information on Hoja Frugal, or if you would like to distribute the Hoja in your area, please contact Dolores Dorantes or Jen Hofer.

© Dolores Dorantes. All rights reserved.