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On January 27th, 15 years of this reading promotion group that was born in 2010 as an alternative against bureaucratic authoritarianism. The antecedents of this now emblematic brigade date back to 2001, when Paloma Saiz joined the Arte por Todos Partes program, of the Ministry of Culture of Mexico City, where she designed and coordinated programs to promote reading and participated in the first fairs. of the book directed by José Ángel Leyva.
Among Paloma’s projects, one of the most successful was Para Leer de Boleto en el Metro, which began in 2004 and in just two years became the most important and widest-reaching massive reading promotion program in history. of CDMX, internationally recognized by the Regional Center for the Promotion of Books in Latin America and the Caribbean. The most relevant aspect of this program was the publication of 10 anthologies of 250 thousand copies each, which were distributed among Metro users and reached hundreds of thousands of families. It was a program that was known outside of Mexico and was reproduced in other countries, such as Colombia. However, in 2006 the Ministry of Culture dismissed Paloma from the coordination and considering it unfair, she resigned.
In 2007, with the new government, the Ministry of Culture invited Paloma to restart the program; She accepted, proposing seven other projects: Letras en Guardia, Letras en Rebeldía, Letras en Llamas, Letras en Luz, Sana Sana Leyendo una Plana, Tianguis de Libros and Remate de Libros.
Although these activities were successful, Paloma and her team were unfairly fired by the person in charge of the Ministry of Culture who distinguished herself for her authoritarianism.
Paloma Account: They fired us, but they united us more, there were 15 of us who decided to form a civil association, without financial support we organized book fairs throughout the city, scheduling conferences, presentations and poetry stalls. We had discovered two main reasons why people did not come to read: one was the price and the other the cultural barrier, that is why we decided that our fairs would always be outdoors, where people usually pass, where they do not feel barrier of any kind, and that quality books were offered at low cost. We decided that we also had to publish books to give as gifts
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The Brigade to Read in Freedom carries out many activities on social networks, but it is the book fairs and auctions that have the most impact. They are organized annually in almost all the municipalities of CDMX. In 2024 there were 24, they have also been held in other entities of the Republic, but the Zócalo Fair, in October, is the busiest in the entire country: last year it was estimated that almost a million visitors attended to the forums programmed by the brigade and to the spaces of the 330 publishers that carried their publications.
In these 15 years the numbers of the brigade’s activities are portentous: it organized 282 book fairs and 20 more international ones, published 296 books (29 editions), gave away 395 thousand books, distributed 40 thousand books in 125 libraries, presented 1820 conferences and 1,186 artistic activities, gave away 750,000 poems on the poetry stalls.
In 2010, when the brigade began activities, it had 15 elements. Today there are 13 who coordinate the activities listed. Daniela Campero, Alicia Rodríguez, Óscar de Pablo, Eduardo Castillo, Marina Taibo, José Ramón Calvo, Claudia Sánchez, César García, Sebastián Sánchez, Rosa Valdez, Eduardo Mosches and Beatriz Gutiérrez. The work that such a small team develops is surprising. It can only be explained by the passion that all its members put into their mission, by responsibility, discipline, commitment to the people and to the brigade itself, by the love of books and, of course, adding the accumulated experience, the great creative capacity, but particularly the leadership that Paloma Saiz has earned with her great human qualities.
* Historian
