Has your poetry had an impact on your minimalist approach to fiction? Are you still writing poetry?

This is related again to precision. I grew up adoring the early poetry of Ezra Pound and the work of Chilean poet Gonzalo Millán. They could both accomplish a lot with very few elements. I have never given up poetry and, even though I love Chilean narrators such as González Vera or Adolfo Couve, I feel closer to Chilean poetry than to Chilean narrative fiction.

Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier wrote in an essay that a Baroque style was the natural mode for Latin American fiction. He claimed that an excess of language was needed to account for an unknown reality. It was not possible to write “a ceiba”, he said, as one wrote “a pine tree”. It was necessary to describe and define the ceiba. Is it necessary to create a Latin American minimalism?

No, it isn’t. I don’t promote minimalism nor maximalism. I think people should write what they want and need to write. I think Carpentier’s observation is beautiful, but it implies a risky idea regarding audiences. Whom do we have to explain ourselves to? I believe to no one. We should not write to let the ceiba be known. We should write because of a personal need, because it’s what we do best.