The
Mexican writer and journalist Juan Villoro said the following about
Carlos Castaneda on the program "Luz Verde" ("Green Light," number 2, year 1):
« Carlos
Castaneda is a rather Andean-looking guy, they told me he was a man
with an indigenous face but more like from areas of Bolivia, somewhere
around there.
Castaneda was always giving advice, for
example, if you were eating tacos with him, he would tell you: "Don't
put so much salt on them because salt is bad for you, and be careful
with the spice because it irritates you, etc." In other words, he was a
guru even in the most everyday things.
It
also seems clear to me that he was an extraordinary rogue in the sense
that he could make us believe anything and turn the simplest things into
something transcendent.
Carlos
Castaneda had extraordinary luck in Mexico because he had an editor
like the poet Jaime García Terrés, a translator like Juan Tovar, a cover
artist like Francisco Toledo, and a prologue writer like Octavio Paz.
This dream team for any writer welcomed Carlos Castaneda and revealed one of the most unique writers of recent years.
For
me, Carlos Castaneda represents the rediscovery of the desert as a
poetic theme, the possibility of finding inner landscapes, and the
use—let's say, religious and metaphysical—of endemic Mexican plants like
peyote; and from there, to do spiritual exercises, that is, to discover
that the perception of reality is a form of power, as he himself said. »
VIDEO
You can see and hear Juan Villoro say that in the following video at minutes 10:40 to 11:10 and 12:25 to 13:20.
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