In this interview with the translators of The Voice of Blood (1990), the University of Tampa Press asked M. Elizabeth (Libby) Ginway and Enrique Muñoz-Mantas to talk about the importance of this collection of vampire stories by Mexican author Gabriela Rábago Palafox and the process of translating the work of this award-winning author.
Much has changed since The Voice of Blood was first published 35 years ago. What do you think The Voice of Blood offers readers in this moment? What do you hope readers will take away from the collection?
Even after 35 years, we think readers will find the twelve stories of Gabriela Rábago Palafox’s The Voice of Blood to be both timeless and topical. Her creative use of the of the vampire figure captures both psychological and personal anguish as well as Mexico’s historical and contemporary trauma. When The Voice of Blood was first published in 1990, Mexico was beginning a decade of profound change, marked by three key events: the passing of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) in 1994, the widely publicized protests against NAFTA by the Zapatistas in support of rural populations and indigenous rights, and the political assassination of the ruling party’s popular presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio, at a rally in Tijuana. This act of political violence presaged the end of Mexico’s one-party system, and the new parties that emerged have increased foreign investment and reinforced neoliberal policies while at the same time dismantling agricultural social programs and other state-owned enterprises that traditionally protected Mexican interests. The 1990s also saw an increase in Mexican cartel violence, as well as the wave of violence against women in border cities like Ciudad Juárez. Even though the tales of The Voice of Blood transcend facile political allegory, many of the stories anticipate the economic, social and political crises of contemporary Mexican society that are still present today.
Thus, through the unifying motifs of the vampire and blood, Rábago Palafox captures the paradoxes of Mexican culture and its obsessions with the past and present. The unapologetic parasitism of Spanish elites is thematic in “The Physician” and “Lorquiano, the Mystical Vampire,” while the outworn political structures of Mexico’s one-party system and its machismo are critiqued in “The Letter to Glafira.” The suppressed presence of indigenous culture and rural poverty forms the substrate of “Creatures of the Night,” “Don Calaco,” and “The Woman Who Buys Children.” The hidden despair of women is captured in “A Fondness for Hell” and “Germánica,” while other stories in the collection, including “The Boy with Red Hair” and “Duplication,” approach issues of childhood trauma with both horror and sensitivity. Finally, the tales of “First Communion” and “Life Sentence” are highly original takes on the vampire and the themes of gender and sexuality.
Gothic and horror fiction are popular in Latin America. How does The Voice of Blood fit into these genres? How does it relate to literary stereotypes of magical realism often tied to Latin American fiction in the Anglophone world?
With the recent popularity of translations of works written by Latin American women authors, including Mariana Enríquez, Samanta Schweblin, Monica Ojeda, Giovanna Rivero, Lina Meruane, and Fernanda Melchor, among others, several critics and publishers have labeled this new wave as a “boom” of the Latin American female gothic. We would argue that Gabriela Rábago Palafox is a precursor of this new wave in her portrayals of female oppression and social disparities in eerie stories that capture the violence of the past that still haunts the present. This is different from the phenomenon known as magical realism typically associated with Latin America. This mid-twentieth century movement included authors such as Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, Julio Cortázar, Juan Rulfo, and even Jorge Luis Borges. Although these authors had different styles and themes, all used a distinctly “magical” or “fantastic” approach to literature that challenged the nationalist and regionalist paradigms of previous generations. This approach is distinct from the use of gothic in the literary boom being championed by contemporary women authors: they use bodily transformation and horror to portray environmental issues, violence against women, and economic privation.
Indeed, Gabriela Rábago’s stories anticipate the contemporary female gothic in their portrayal of familial and collective trauma. In two of her stories, for example, young boys become vampires for different reasons having to do with disparities of class. In “The Boy with Red Hair,” the boy vampire is part of a physically and morally decadent well-to-do family, symbolized by blood diseases and impure desires, while in “Creatures of the Night,” the boy vampire is an avenger of the poor. His role implies that the Catholic Church has been indifferent to the needs not only of the poor but also to those of the indigenous, whose sacred lands have been chosen as sites for churches.
The Voice of Blood takes up a range of topics including sexuality, religion, class, and feminism. Why and how is speculative fiction a useful avenue for addressing these topics?
By estranging readers from everyday experience, speculative fiction allows readers to immerse themselves in a new reality, disconnecting them from preconceived notions about class, race, gender, and sexuality. Vampires are creatures of the night that bring out hidden perspectives and desires, exposing the structures of oppression in a seductive and uncanny way that surprises the reader. In Rábago Palafox’s stories, the vampire figure can alternately indicate the parasitism of the rich on the poor, or the psychological draining of energies from partners or family members.
In a society where women are expected to be compliant and passive, Rábago Palafox approaches taboo subjects such as feminism and religion head on, but without confronting the institutions of marriage and the Catholic church directly. The subtlety of Rábago Palafox’s criticism is embedded in her psychological approach to social critique. For example, the story “A Fondness for Hell” portrays an unhappy married woman who feels trapped in a strange house that she feels is haunted by an inescapable evil presence, symbolizing traditional marriage. The trappings of the church and social critique are used to great effect in “First Communion,” in which the church’s traditional iconography is undermined when the statues of Catholic saints appear to come to life and call to a young nun who yearns to fulfill forbidden sexual desires. This story shows how horror fiction and the uncanny are particularly effective in conveying the often invisible psychological and social anguish of women, as attested by the long tradition of gothic literature beginning with Ann Radcliffe and Mary Shelly.
Gabriela Rábago Palafox’s vampires are complex, ranging from real to metaphorical, terrifying to mundane. What are the origins of vampire stories in Latin American literature and what the significance of the vampire for Rábago Palafox?
Vampire tales have been present in Latin American literature since the early twentieth century, often reworking European archetypes to reflect local realities. In Mexico, the figure has been “nationalized” to represent everything from colonial invaders to rebels and anti-colonial avengers. Authors have blended European vampire traditions with Mexican folklore, indigenous myth, and Catholic symbolism, turning the vampire into a lens for exploring inequality, gender roles, and cultural resistance. For Gabriela Rábago Palafox, the vampire is both literal and metaphorical: her vampiric characters may feed on blood, but just as often, they drain emotional energy, economic resources, or personal freedom. While some embody machismo, religious hypocrisy, exploitation, and trauma, others serve as figures of defiance and liberation.
The Voice of Blood has a wide range of stories in terms of topic, voice, form, and style. What is your favorite story in the collection and why?
Enrique’s favorite is “Life Sentence,” a brief but powerful story that likens vampirism and its literary traditions to homosexuality—hence the references to “the Irishman” in the text may refer either to the Irishman Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula or to Oscar Wilde, who was put on trial for his homosexuality. The narrator embraces his “dark” side, reclaiming an identity that society has forced into the shadows. In just a few pages, Rábago Palafox turns the vampire into a metaphor for stigma, pride, and the right to live authentically. Its concision, emotional resonance, and subversive reworking of the vampire myth make it unforgettable. Enrique was struck by how much the story achieves with so few words, leaving a strong emotional impact that lingers long after reading.
Libby’s favorite story is “First Communion” because of its baroque style, haunting imagery and complex portrait of gender and sexuality. Set in a convent, the story explores forbidden desire through the fascination that a beautiful young nun feels for statues of saints. Indeed, her obsessive yearning to taste their blood is a surreal blend of religious devotion and transgressive longing. Echoing the themes of the story “Life Sentence,” it elegantly and eloquently depicts lesbian yearnings. Through the evocation of blood, Rábago Palafox undermines the traditional power of the Catholic Church and its rituals, using vampire motifs to challenge taboos and combine intimate emotions with unsettling horror and desire.
You spent more than a year translating The Voice of Blood. Can you tell us about your translation process, including some of your primary and secondary research?
Our translation process began with a close reading in Spanish, noting intertextual references to Spanish, Mexican, and global literature, as well as cultural allusions ranging from the zarzuela (a form of Spanish operetta) to indigenous folklore. We spent the summer of 2024 exchanging versions of each of the stories in order to be faithful to the Spanish while also sounding natural in English. We both bring different strengths to the process, linguistically and scholarly. Libby had written on the vampire figure in Brazil and Mexico, but since little has been written on Rábago Palafox, primary sources were limited. Because of his strength in Spanish and talent in researching primary sources, Enrique initiated a series of interviews with Rábago Palafox’s friends and family in Mexico to bring more details of her career and influences to light. They generously offered valuable information and little-known documents that played a vital role in the formulation of two publications: first, an academic article on The Voice of Blood written by Enrique, and later, the introduction to our translation. We also consulted secondary sources on Mexican horror, the feminist gothic, and vampire studies, documenting them in the introduction.
We aimed to preserve the author’s precise, fluid prose while maintaining the shifts in tone among horror, satire, and lyrical reflection. Important cultural references were retained in Spanish through the use of footnotes for English readers, adding subtle context that illustrates the depth of the author’s imagery and allusions. Finally, asked to include illustrations for the stories, we chose images by the famous Mexican printmaker José Guadalupe Posada (1852-1913), whose uncanny prints capture Mexico’s distinct relationship to the dead and gothic horror, adding a visual dimension to the text.
M. Elizabeth (Libby) Ginway is Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at the University of Florida, where she teaches courses on Brazilian literature and culture, Portuguese language, as well as Brazilian and Spanish American speculative fiction. Her most recent book is Cyborgs, Sexuality, and the Undead: The Body in Mexican and Brazilian Speculative Fiction (Vanderbilt UP 2020). She is the author of Brazilian Science Fiction: Cultural Myths and Nationhood in the Land of the Future (Bucknell UP, 2004) and co-editor of Latin American Science Fiction: Theory and Practice (Palgrave, 2012) with J. Andrew Brown. She is currently co-editing a volume of SF essays on political and ecological crisis in Latin America with Terry Harpold for the UP of Florida. Her work has appeared in journals such as Alambique, Extrapolation, Hispania, Luso-Brazilian Review, Modern Language Studies, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, Paradoxa, Revista Iberoamericana, Science Fiction Studies and Zanzalá. Read more about Ginway’s recent work in her MLA Interview.
Enrique Muñoz-Mantas is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the department of Languages and Global Studies at the University of North Dakota. He recently earned his Ph.D. from the University of Florida in May 2024. His research interests cover the fields of Peninsular and Catalan Studies, primarily on issues related to memory, trauma, identity, and gender. One of his goals is to show the complex processes of identity hybridization and the impact of trauma and censorship on marginalized voices while in exile, either external or internal. He primarily works with literature and film covering the Spanish Civil War, Francoist era, and the Democratic Transition in Spain, but is also interested in Speculative Fiction both Iberian and Latin America. His research has been published in venues such as Alambique: Revista Académica de Ciencia Ficción y Fantasía, ÍMPETU, and Revista de Estudios de Género y Sexualidades.