I was initially drawn to Pablo Somonte Ruano’s work of electronic literature Textos Guerreros in the fourth volume of the Electronic Literature Collection because as someone who is learning to speak and read Spanish, I am always looking for ways to expand my taste in literature of other languages. In addition, Textos Guerreros was an attractive option to review because it was built using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript on a website, making it easy to operate by anyone with access to a web browser.
Textos Guerreros is built upon a deceptively simple premise: a found collage poem composed of words the artist documented in the Guerrero neighborhood of Mexico City, where the words are swapped out merely by hovering over it with your cursor. It is impossible to control which word might come up next, as the action requires no clicking, adding an element of chaos. Rule 2 of Stephanie Strickland’s article on e-literature "Born Digital" states that electronic literature must “do” things rather than strictly “say” things: “To read e-works is to operate or play them (more like an instrument than a game, though some e-works have gamelike elements).” On this one-page website, however, there is very little on the part of the reader to actually do besides move their cursor. What the poem is “doing” instead is relying on the reader to engage with it just enough in order to get its message across. The reader could do nothing to the poem and read it as is; however, the real experience of this poem comes across in its operation.
It would have been very hard though not impossible to recreate this digital experience in print. Tristan Tzara’s Dadaist cut-up poem method is called to mind in terms of similarity, in which the poet cuts words out of a newspaper and shuffles them in a hat, drawing them at random to create a poem. However, Textos Guerreros relies on a set structure that is not truly random, and is limited to a few words that were chosen by the artist, whereas in Tzara’s cut-up method, the poet can be more discerning with what words they choose.
Overall, the experience of using and reading Textos Guerreros is not as immersive or expansive as I would expect some other works of electronic literature to be, but that’s not to say that it is not impactful. Textos Guerreros real impact comes from its message, elucidated in Somonte Ruano’s artist statement about the work: “Text in public space occupies an important role in a neighborhood’s identity and struggles.” Textos Guerreros is not just an art project, it is an act of resistance against “the government’s structures of control.”