BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA – The door to Eloísa Cartonera, a small publishing cooperative, is wide open. Inside, wooden stands display books with bright, hand-painted covers, as cardboard mobiles dangle from the ceiling and a poster of Bolivian President Evo Morales adorns the wall.
A volunteer arranges freshly printed pages as her daughter runs throughout the room, dodging chairs, tables and, in the corner, a pile of flattened boxes. The publishing cooperative uses recycled cardboard to make one-of-a-kind editions of books by Latin American authors.
Meanwhile, Miriam Merlo, one of the cooperative’s seven members, rocks her 3-month-old to sleep in her arms then puts the baby in a stroller. She looks out the window, awaiting the arrival of a group of students who are coming to visit the workshop, which stands on a corner in La Boca, a neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina’s capital, known for its brightly painted houses and tango history.
The innovative construction of the books that the cooperative crafts offered Merlo a new way to work with cardboard. Previously, she had worked as a “cartonero” – someone who gathers and sells cardboard, or “cartón” in Spanish.
“Before, I used to be out in the streets collecting boxes,” Merlo says. “In the year 2006, I came here, and they taught me to assemble books, to paint and to collate the pages. Now, I have my own work.”
August marks Eloísa Cartonera’s 10th anniversary of publishing books by Latin American authors that its members make by hand from materials salvaged by cartoneros. Promoting reading is also part of the group’s mission, so it sells its titles at low prices and runs bookbinding workshops for students. As a cooperative, members share profits and responsibilities equally with a nonhierarchical structure. Fundamental to its success is the support of well-known authors who let the small press publish their work without paying for publication rights.
Aug. 15 marked the cooperative’s 10th anniversary. In 2003, writer Santiago Vega, who publishes under the pseudonym Washington Cucurto, and artist Javier Barilaro began publishing books of Latin American poetry. Vega chose the authors, and Barilaro handled design. They named the venture Ediciones Eloísa, after one of Barilaro’s love interests, says Alejandro Miranda, a member of the cooperative since 2008.
Then came Argentina’s economic crisis in 2001. Paper prices skyrocketed, and Vega and Barilaro struggled to afford the materials they used to make books, Miranda says. At the same time, many people lost their jobs and began to scratch together a living as cartoneros.
Vega and Barilaro revamped their techniques to use photocopied pages bound in covers composed of cardboard that they bought from cartoneros. Ediciones Eloísa became Eloísa Cartonera.
“It started as something very small, without grand ambitions,” Miranda says. “After, it was becoming a publishing house. It was adding authors, people. It became a cooperative.”
Eloísa Cartonera’s catalogue contains poetry, stories, novels, dramas and children’s literature. It has about 200 titles, about half of which are currently in print.
The cooperative’s use of recycled materials in its artisanal bookbinding process make its works stand out. Eloísa Cartonera buys materials for the covers directly from cartoneros, who rescue cardboard from the trash and bring it to the workshop’s door, Miranda says.
“We ask that the cardboard is of good quality,” he says, “that it is presentable, that it is clean, that to the eye and to the touch you realize that you can work with it.”
Authors give texts to the publishing house, and members of the cooperative design the pages and print them with an old offset printer. Then, they collate and bind the pages. The workers cut covers from the cardboard and then stencil the titles on. Finally, they paint the books by hand using bright colors.
“Every cover is special, unrepeatable,” Merlo says. “That makes them unique.”
The cooperative’s work has inspired about 60 similar cardboard publishing projects in Latin America and even in Mozambique, according to the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development, a Dutch cultural foundation. The foundation in 2012 awarded Eloísa Cartonera its top prize of 100,000 euros ($133,500), citing its economic and cultural benefits to Argentine society, including expanding the accessibility of books.
Eloísa Cartonera aims to make books accessible and affordable for everyone. Its titles – sold at the workshop, street fairs and some bookstores – cost much less than the same volumes published by other presses.
At the workshop, the books cost between 10 pesos ($1.80) and 30 pesos ($5.40), Miranda says. In bookstores, they cost about 40 percent to 50 percent more, but they are still cheaper than commercial editions.
For example, a different publishing house sells one of the same titles as the cooperative does for 75 pesos ($13.50).
Before joining the cooperative, Merlo did not read books, she says. But now, she loves to read.
The cooperative also promotes reading by teaching children how to bind books. On a recent day at the cooperative's workshop, primary school teacher Gabriela Borini squeezed between tables piled with paintings and cardboard as her fourth-graders made covers for books they had written themselves.
“I emphasize the originality of the work and the encouragement of reading that Eloísa Cartonera promotes,” she says.
The students listen as Miranda explains how to bind the books as Merlo prepares the paints they will use to color the covers.
As Miranda and Merlo demonstrate, the cooperative’s seven members participate in any and every phase of the production process. There is no hierarchical structure or predefined roles, Miranda says. The members divide profits evenly among themselves.
“We are all equal,” says Merlo, one of two ex-cartoneros in the group.
The cooperative’s earnings vary from week to week, ranging from 300 pesos ($55) to 700 pesos ($125), Merlo says. Most of the members have other jobs and work at the press during their free time.
Eloísa Cartonera owes much of its survival and growth during the past decade to the writers who allow the cooperative to publish their texts without paying for rights, Miranda says. The cooperative’s catalogue includes well-known authors such as Argentines César Aira and Ricardo Piglia, Chileans Pedro Lemebel and Gonzalo Millán, Mexican Mario Bellatin – and of course Vega under his pen name of Cucurto.
Although Vega’s busy writing career leaves much of the daily operations to the cooperative’s members, he remains the point of contact for many of the cooperative’s more famous authors, Miranda says. When unknown writers ask the cooperative to publish their books, the members decide by consensus whether to green-light the publication.
“Some authors choose to publish for the first time with us,” Miranda says. “There are also many writers from other countries of Latin America who are not published in Argentina, and we make them known.”
One of Eloísa Cartonera’s most significant achievements is its catalogue, says Constanza Penacini, associate manager of morales.penacini, an editorial development agency, and a former editor in the adult fiction division of Grupo Editorial Norma, a Colombia-based publishing house.
“Anyone who takes a look at its titles and authors can notice that there is a criteria of selection very concerned with the literary quality,” she says of the cooperative. “A good catalogue defines a reader profile and at the same time creates its own readers. This is the case of Eloísa Cartonera.”
Among those readers are the fourth-graders who leave the workshop clutching the books they wrote and bound in their paint-stained hands.
Interviews were translated from Spanish.
