de Recacoechea, Juan

(Juan Recacoechea S., Juan Recacoechea, Juan Recacoechea Sáenz)

PERSONAL:

Born in La Paz, Bolivia.

CAREER:

Writer, journalist. Worked as a journalist in Europe; founder and general manager of Bolivia's first state-run television network.

AWARDS, HONORS:

National Book Award of Bolivia for American Visa, 1994.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Fin de semana, Editorial Los Amigos del Libro (La Paz, Bolivia), 1977.

La mala sombra, Editorial Los Amigos del Libro (La Paz, Bolivia), 1980.

Toda una noche la sangre, Libreria Editorial Juventud (La Paz, Bolivia), 1984.

American Visa, Editorial Los Amigos del Libro (Cochabamba, Bolivia), 1994, translated by Adrian Althoff, Akashic Books (New York, NY), 2007.

Chicani: comedia dramática en dos actos, Libreria Editorial Juventud (La Paz, Bolivia), 1994.

Altiplano Express, Alfaguara (La Paz, Bolivia), 2000.

Paris no era una fiesta, Plural Editores (La Paz, Bolivia), 2002.

Kerstin, Plural Editores (La Paz, Bolivia), 2004.

ADAPTATIONS:

American Visa was adapted for film in 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

Juan de Recacoechea was born in La Paz, Bolivia. Growing up, he moved several times, first leaving Bolivia when he was fifteen years old to go to a high school in Spain. His experiences as a boarding student, and as a witness to the regime of Franco, had a powerful effect on him. From there he went to Lima, Peru, where he finished high school at a different boarding school. Following graduation, he traveled further, first to Spain and then on to Paris, where he was enamored of the cultural scene and the many artists and intellectuals living and working there, such as Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Genet, Jean-Luc Godard, and Samuel Beckett. It was there that de Recacoechea studied journalism, staying in France for approximately five years before moving on to London, then Copenhagen, Eastern Europe, and Sweden. He eventually followed a friend to New York, but left upon receiving news that his father back in Bolivia was ill. De Recacoechea later returned to Paris on scholarship, and this time studied filmmaking, going on to work in French television for a period of time prior to finally returning to Bolivia once more. It was this last experience that provided him with the impetus to start the first national television network in Bolivia, for which he did much of the production work, writing scripts and producing films.

The change in government ultimately led de Recacoechea to write novels. He had been thrown out of his job as general manager at the television network, and worked a number of odd jobs, but it was at this time that he wrote his first book, a love story set in Paris about a French girl and a boy from Bolivia. Despite the difficulties of publishing in Bolivia, de Recacoechea went on to write a number of books, including American Visa, for which he won the National Book Award of Bolivia in 2004, and which ultimately became the first of his works to be published in the United States in an English translation. It was also adapted for film. The book follows the story of Mario Alvarez, who, desperate to get an American visa, robs and kills someone in order to get enough money for the document. Set in La Paz, the book reflects the frenetic pace of the city and the ways in which the pressures to escape can sometimes bubble up to overflowing. It is a story of class struggle in a city where the classes might bump up against each other and even mingle briefly depending on the circumstances and the surroundings, but where they will never truly meld or overlap for any real length of time. Alvarez discovers this when, wandering around in a panicked daze, he meets a wealthy young girl who is searching for her brother. Although he develops feelings for her, Alvarez knows it is pointless, as the girl is a different class, status, even color than he is. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly praised the book, and the way it ‘makes Alvarez's crime less a puzzle than an intriguing window onto a society on the fringes of globalization.’ In a review for Booklist, Hazel Rochman remarked that the author ‘celebrates the hybrid in ethnicity and culture, and he does it without reverence or even respect.’ A contributor for Kirkus Reviews called the book ‘a serious novel made palatable by humor as dry as the Andean uplands in which it is set.’ Glenn Harper, writing for the International Noir Fiction Blog Web site, found the book ‘a valuable addition to the South American repertory available in English."

American Visa is one of very few Bolivian novels to be translated into English. Asked by Caitlin Esch for the Brooklyn Rail Web site why so few of the nation's books are translated, de Recacoechea commented: ‘The themes of Bolivian novels were not always relevant to an American audience, they were not universal.’ De Recacoechea felt that with American Visa, he made it relevant and was able to cross that divide.