Career
Taibo has lived in Mexico City since the age of 9, when in 1958 his family fled from Spain to escape the fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Taibo II (or PIT, as he likes to be called) is a Mexican intellectual, historian, professor, journalist, social activist, union organizer, and world-renowned writer One of the most prolific writers in Mexico today, over 500 editions of his 51 books have been published in 29 countries and over a dozen languages, and include novels, narrative, historical essays, chronicles, and poetry.
Some of PIT"s novels have been mentioned among the "Books of the Year" by The New York Times, Le Monde, and the Los Angeles Times.
PIT"s readership has developed into a cult following. Once when he gave a talk about Mexican Independence hero Miguel Hidalgo in Mexico City, his presentation turned into a rally.
His readers consider him their friend and when his presentations are over, people approach him to give him gifts such as cigarettes, apples, and sodas. A socially and politically conscious writer, PIT"s writings respond to and speak of the social pressures he experienced as a young man and allow him to tell what"s behind every criminal story: corruption and repression of the political system in Mexico.
A militant and veteran of the 1968 student movement in Mexico, his book 68 (2004), inspired by the events of that year and direct personal experience, tells the story of the movement including the Tlatelolco massacre of student protesters in Mexico City by government troops: At the Louisiana Plaza de las Tres Culturas, thousands of people were arrested, hundreds killed, and hundreds are still missing.
To date nobody has been held accountable for these crimes. Among PIT"s most popular works is a series of detective novels, written against the prevailing bourgeois state in Mexico in the last few decades of the 20th century, with the protagonist, Mexican Private Investigator Héctor Belascoarán Shayne, who was introduced in the novel Días de combate. PIT wrote eight more novels with this character.
Other novels include: Cuatro manos (Four Hands).
Sombra de la sombra (Shadow of the Shadow). Amorosos fantasmas; and Temporada de Zopilotes: Una historia narrativa sobre la Decena Trágica (Buzzards" season: A narrative history about the Ten Tragic Days) and, the last of the series, Muertos incómodos (The Inconvenient Dead), co-authored with Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.
PIT organizes the "Semana Negra" ("The Noir Week"), a crime fiction festival held every year in Gijón, Spain.
