We recently sat down (virtually) with author, academic, and 11th-generation South Texan Ito Romo, to discuss the ten years of research that went into his short-but-mighty first novel Filth Eaters, a future classic in the "Chicano Gothic" tradition.

You’ve said that this book took you ten years to write, and that much of that time was spent on research. Can you describe your research process?

For ten years, as I wrote, I got lost in beautiful tangential research, or as the kids say, I went down many rabbit holes—you know, the long, enjoyable research where one "find" leads to a book and that book leads to another five sources. For example, in Filth Eaters, I had to find out how the vampire Radamés would’ve actually traveled to the New Spain. Turns out, he’d have traveled by frigate ("types of boats used to travel from the Iberian Peninsula to the Port of Veracruz, Mexico, 1866", but that’s another research story). Then that "travel search" info made me think about the history of this intercontinental route.

So here’s the story: The vampire Radamés arrived at the very port Carlota and Maximilian had just come through less than a year and a half before him in May of 1864. And before that, Hernán Cortés himself founded the port in 1519 after traveling north from his initial arrival in the Yucatan Peninsula. And before him, the people of the great Olmec empire had inhabited the Veracruz area as far back as 1000 BC. There are just so many stories happening in the same place, all of those lives connected by the intertwining of space and time and history, so many levels of existence, there is so much to learn before I write. And I love this.

What are some facts most Americans don’t know that informed your perspective on the history you’re telling?

What I learned during my research--particularly the information about the history of the Americas, especially the stories about the Americas that we're not told--deeply informed my writing. A few facts you may not know:

The Great Pyramid of Cholula (Mexico) is the largest pyramid (by volume/4.5 million cubic meters) in the world.
World Populations, 500 AD: Constantinople 400,000; Rome 100,000; Antioch 150,000; Carthage 100,000; Athens 110,000; and Teotihuacán (Mexico) 125,000
Chewing gum was brought to the US from Mexico by Gen Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna (1860s). Both the Aztecs and Maya used gum for fresh breath and teeth hygiene.
At the time of the Spanish conquest in 1521, Tenochtitlán, present day Mexico City, had 200,000 inhabitants. Madrid had 100,000. London had 50,000.
The tomato is not from Italy. It was found to be already domesticated by 500 BC in México.
The potato is not Irish. It originated in southern Peru and northwestern Bolivia and was domesticated 7,000 to 10,000 years ago. There are over 4,000 varieties.
Corn was domesticated in southern Mexico 10,000 years ago. Today, more corn is produced and consumed globally than rice! (1.2 billion metric tons to 500–800 million tons).

Ito Romo was born and raised on the border in Laredo, Texas. His work, dubbed “Chicano Gothic” and “Chicano Noir,” shows the dark and gritty life along Interstate 35 through South Texas, where his family has lived for 11 generations. A former Professor of English Language and Literature, Romo was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2019. His books include The Border is Burning  and El Puente / The Bridge, both published by the University of New Mexico Press. He lives in San Antonio.

A Brief Interview with Ito Romo