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"He was like a man who had served a term in prison or had been to Harvard College or had lived for a long time with foreigners in South America." Carson McCullers on Jake Blount, in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

Geoffrey Fox , creative director of Geoffrey Fox Productions, did graduate from Harvard College and lived a long time with foreigners in South America, but so far he has spent only a few unpleasant hours (seemed like much longer, especially that night in Caracas) in jail. He is the author of Welcome to My Contri (short stories), young readers' books on Argentina and Venezuela, and other works. His latest book is Hispanic Nation: Culture, Politics and the Constructing of Identity. Current projects include a novel and the book Latin American Architecture and Urbanism (to be written with Susana Torre), due to W. W. Norton in 2003.

See also Chapter 1 of Hispanic Nation.

For publications and positions held, please see Curriculum vitae. 

For a historic photo of a very young Geoff Fox, see "Freedom Drivers."

And for another note, see "Madman on the Subway"

For recent fiction and other writings, see links on the home page.

Building a Stairway

When I graduated from college, all I wanted to do was save the world and meet girls. I leapt at the opportunity to do both when a US community development organization called "ACCION en Venezuela" came to town looking for volunteers to send me and 30 other young foreigners to Venezuela to bring American "know-how" and initiative to the shantytowns, and organize them. The prevailing idea among the corporate and government leaders backing the project was that underdevelopment was the fault of the poor themselves, and the cure was to change their culture. That we were new to the tropics, the language and the culture, was considered a minor inconvenience, almost an asset, because it meant we were uncorrupted by the local laxity and lethargy.

Barrio Sucre, as I soon learned, was already organized. In this narrow gulley on the eastern edge of Caracas, some 300 houses of cardboard and mud-and-wattle (bahareque) perched precariously on the slopes. The stairway was a long-standing goal of a group bound by kinship, hometown origins, and a history of struggle that I caught only hints of. They supplied the "know-how," including the ability to mobilize; I had a jeep and contacts for getting donations of cement, sand, gravel and lumber. Together, we built it one Saturday, swinging bucket after bucket of cement mix up to our shoulders, scrambling up the slope to dump it into the topmost frame laid out by their own master carpenter and staggering down to do it again. Afterward, we celebrated with a huge sancocho. 

When I went back a few years ago, the houses were brick and the stairway a part of the landscape, taken for granted by its many users. Most were strangers, but I saw one man who had worked at my side that day, and we hugged and smiled. Together, and with those other compañeros of long ago, we had saved a small part of the world. It had been a good place to start.

It took me a little longer to discover that meeting girls, while fun, was not enough -- I needed to find the right one, because saving the world, even one small part at a time, requires a lot of combined strength. After several false starts, I finally did. For the past 20 years my accomplice has been the architect Susana Torre, and we're still trying to save whatever portions of the world we can, by writing, design, teaching, and just trying to be decent persons. I'm still building that stairway.

Ursus Major, known in our offices as "Bear," joined Geoffrey Fox Productions in December of 1996. He propped open the window of our bedroom on one dark and troubled night and clambered in, giving us quite a fright until we realized that he was guarding the house rather than attacking it. Since then he has assumed many critical duties, including bookkeeping and dunning creditors (at which he is very effective). He is an essential part of the team, making sure that projects stay on track and that deadlines are met. He has collaborated on every bit of writing from Geoffrey Fox Productions since joining the team, and often serves as team captain on particular nonfiction projects -- especially when they begin to lag behind deadlines..

Leon Arslan, or "Lion," joined Geoffrey Fox Productions at approximately the same time as Bear -- or more precisely, about five minutes later, sliding gracefully through the already opened window. Like Bear, he immediately assumed a position as protector of the household, though in quite a different style. Lion is more openly confrontational, and although he sometimes has to be restrained from taking offense where none was intended, his roar can be very effective in getting attention. While he does not have the same steady attention span as bear, he thinks quickly and frequently comes up with startling solutions to difficult problems. In recent years, he has specialized in assisting Geoffrey Fox Productions on fiction projects. On some short pieces, he has served as the project captain -- though everyone on the team is expected to collaborate on all projects.

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