The U.S.-based publisher carried a display of hundreds of books and pamphlets by revolutionary leaders, and about the lessons of the modern working-class movement. Pathfinder publishes books ranging from works by Marx and Engels to the speeches of Cuban revolutionary leaders Fidel Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara, to books by communist leaders in the United States.

Jamming the booth, young people, workers, and others who had bought some of these books in previous years contended with those discovering this revolutionary arsenal for the first time.

A total of 545 Pathfinder books were sold at the fair, about 20 percent more than last year. Readers purchased 135 different titles.

Isaac Gallaga, an English teacher in Guadalajara who has come to the Pathfinder stand at the fair for the last three years, said, "I’m tired of reading what people want me to read. I want to read what great revolutionaries like Malcolm, Che, and Fidel have to say. That’s why I come to the fair."

José Luis Ortega and several friends came to the booth the first day and explained the fight they are involved in for student rights at their high school. He returned twice for more discussions. After reading The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning by Jack Barnes, he came back and bought Their Trotsky and Ours to learn more about an international revolutionary perspective. Seven copies of that new title were sold, along with five copies in Spanish of The History of American Trotskyism, by James P. Cannon, a founding leader of the Socialist Workers Party.

Víctor Martínez and five friends from his high school came by to browse the books. In an interview, they explained the crisis that small farmers and cattle ranchers face in Mexico. "The situation facing hog farmers is that the farmers used to export to the United States. Now the United States is shipping pork here," Martínez said. "Agriculture as a livelihood is finished for many people." He said the trade pacts signed between the U.S. and Mexican governments is responsible for this crisis.

Explaining why Mexican farmers have a hard time competing with U.S. agriculture, the students said that in the United States there is greater use of modern technology, allowing better feeding, disease prevention, and artificial fattening of the livestock. "There are big slaughterhouses in places like Nebraska where they process them," one youth noted.

Asked how they knew so much about farming, the youth explained that many of them work on farms during school vacations. A couple have relatives that raise animals outside of the city. They were surprised to hear that many small farmers in the United States are also being driven off the land.

With Cuba the featured country at the book fair this year, the interest in books on the Cuban Revolution was even higher than on previous occasions. Fair visitors bought 310 books related to the Cuban Revolution. The top seller at the booth was Che Guevara Talks to Young People: 69 were sold in Spanish and 4 in English.

The Transformation of Learning sold 65 copies between the Spanish, English and French editions. A high school librarian from the United States bought six copies to bring to her colleagues.  
 
Interest in Malcolm X
There was also great interest in the title Malcolm X Talks to Young People, published for the first time in Spanish just in time for the fair. Twenty-one copies were sold. The photos and captions in the book depicting the Black rights struggle in the United States in the 1960s were a feature that attracted many. A student asked Nan Bailey, a garment worker from Los Angeles staffing the display, "Where’s the Malcolm X?" He had just heard a report on the Guadalajara University radio station about the Pathfinder booth that mentioned some of the featured titles.

"Why is The Jewish Question only pub lished in English?" asked Ariel Sacks. Originally from Boston, Sacks is teaching English at a school in Guadalajara. She explained that she has run into anti-Semitism, stereotyped views of Jews, and general ignorance of the situation that existed in Germany during the Nazi regime, including the fascist slaughter of Jews.

Those staffing the Pathfinder booth described the efforts of volunteers around the world to digitize and translate the entire list of Pathfinder titles. Eva Chertov, a bilingual teacher in a New York City high school who helped staff the booth, is one of the more than 200 volunteers digitizing the backlist of Pathfinder Press.

Many who came to the booth bought the titles on the Middle East that are currently available only in English. Thirty-one copies were sold of issue no. 1 of Nueva Internacional, "Washington’s Assault on Iraq: The Opening Guns of World War Three."

Judith Trujillo Roque, a worker who is also a student at the University of Guadalajara, was glad to meet Francisco Picado, a union coal miner from Colorado helping staff the booth. "She said she is looking for people who think ‘like this,’ pointing to the books," Picado reported.

Roque described to Picado a recent experience in the electronics factory where she worked. After she led job action to demand higher wages and better working conditions, the bosses convinced her that taking a job as a lead was a way to improve everyone’s wages. When she realized what they were doing--she was earning more than her co-workers--she quit the job. "Some of the people I go to school with think I’m crazy," she said.  
 
‘Important to know our past’
Montserrat Maldonado, 18, spent a good bit of time in the booth talking to Natalie Stake-Doucet, a member of the Young Socialists living in Vancouver, Canada. Stake-Doucet explained the tremendous impact that the book Women’s Evolution by Evelyn Reed had on her when she was new to a revolutionary perspective. "I like the feminist perspective. It’s important to know our past, our history," Maldonado replied. She bought the book and asked Stake-Doucet to keep in touch by e-mail.

An important part of the book fair was the hundreds of work shops, book launchings, and cultural presentations. A young woman asked at a workshop on world poverty, "Isn’t there a contradiction between the distribution of resources and capitalism?" Natalie Stake-Doucet invited her to visit the Pathfinder booth, where she bought nine titles and a copy of the socialist magazine Perspectiva Mundial.

While the fair was taking place, Mexican farmers were demonstrating in the capital city nearly every day, demanding relief for farmers devastated by the lifting of protective tariffs on Mexican farm products as a result of trade agreements promoted by Washington.

These events, together with discussions about the worldwide crisis facing workers and farmers and a revolutionary alternative to that crisis, helped make Capitalism’s World Disorder one of Pathfinder’s top sellers.  
 
 
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