Rinoceronte

How did this place come about and what made it different from the start?
This bookstore was born from the unexpected union between an elephant and a rhinoceros. The elephant was named Abul Abbas, the name, at the same time, of the first white elephant to set foot in Europe, owned by Carlo Magno, and of a small fanzine. The small fanzine was sold in some bookstores around the city; one of them was called Rinoceronte, located in the hospital district of Tlalpan.

At the end of 2017, we were told the bookstore would close and that we should pick up the fanzines that hadn’t sold. But the bookstore didn’t close, nor did we take back the Abul Abbas copies, we became the new managers instead. We spent about six years in Tlalpan and, when we had to move, we arrived in Coyoacán (we’ve been there a year and a half). Very recently, we also opened another location in Santa María la Ribera.

What made us different from other second-hand bookstores from the very beginning was our absolute ignorance of the field. We didn’t know how to get books or how to sell them. The only thing we knew was that we liked them. Apparently, that was enough. Based on our tastes, and those of the clients we gradually gained, we shaped the bookstore’s catalog.

Another thing that set us apart was that the space was very small (in Coyoacán it still is, though less so), which means we have to be extremely selective when shelving a book; there isn’t room for all of them, only for those we consider the best.

What part of the day, space, or creative process do those who work here enjoy the most?
Half the work of selling books consists of buying them. That’s the part we enjoy most. Obviously, it’s deeply satisfying when a customer buys a book they’ve been searching for for decades or one they fell in love with at first sight, and they thank us as if we’d saved their life, or when they talk to us about an author with a devotion we share… but for that book to reach their hands, we first had to find it ourselves.

Every week, a large number of books arrive on their own, without us requesting them: people simply bring them in to sell. Quantity-wise, that alone would be enough to keep the shelves well stocked; in fact, they always arrive faster than they can be sold, which results in our famous mountains of unshelved books appearing in the most unexpected corners of the shop. Quantity, therefore, is guaranteed: scarcity of books is something we’ll never experience.

Quality, on the other hand, doesn’t arrive so easily. In search of it, we’ve visited personal libraries, warehouses, other bookstores, distributors; we place orders in Argentina and España… In short, we search everywhere, we find things everywhere. It’s something we never tire of and always enjoy.

If someone is coming in for the first time, what should they not miss?
There are always certain books you can’t find in any other bookstore in the city. Several are in plain sight; others require a bit more searching, but if you spend a few minutes, they’ll appear. It’s worth diving into the shelves for a while.

What has been an interesting challenge that has made you rethink something about the project?
The pandemic. We closed completely for three months, and partially for several more. We began posting books daily on Instagram; digital commerce was the only way to keep generating income, because even though we were kindly given a discount, the rent kept running.

The response on social media was unexpected; once or twice a week we walked through the city’s deserted streets delivering books to people’s homes. We also frequently went to the post office to ship packages to other cities in the country. There weren’t many places to get books, and that’s how we found distributors and started selling new titles. What seemed like a possible ending made our books reach parts of the city and country they otherwise never would have.

What influence, idea, or reference continues to shape the way you work today?
Probably the idea of trying to sell what we like; of imposing our literary taste. Simon Reynolds says that in a certain period of music criticism, young music lovers like himself wrote in magazines according to Percy Bysshe Shelley’s maxim: “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” They acted as if they were dictating universal laws of good and bad musical taste, and from their passionate judgments arose unconditional loves and furious hatreds toward records and bands.

Our case is very different: we sell a bit of everything, and whatever people ask for, we’ll always try to get. Still, that maxim is always in the background of our decisions, and the writers we love most will occupy privileged places on our shelves, waiting for a kindred reader.

If your space could invite someone to collaborate for a day, who would it be and what would you do together?
At the presentation of the small fanzine Abul Abbas, there was a little room where only one person could enter at a time. Inside, a character waited behind a table with five playing cards face down. Each card, instead of aces or kings, had a particular drawing; each represented a short text from the fanzine.

The visitor had to uncover a card at random and instantly the character, like an oracle, recited in a neutral tone the text represented by the card. This small act was partly inspired by Mario Bellatin and his double-writer project: in it, Bellatin chose four important Mexican writers (Elizondo, Pitol, José Agustín and Margo Glantz) and assigned each of them a person completely unrelated to literature to “train” for several months on topics relevant and representative of each author. Afterwards, he took the trained subjects to París so they could be questioned by the public and, based on their training, answer as the real writers would have.

Something like that could be interesting at Rinoceronte, and Bellatin could probably come up with another variation in which literature and ideas could be transmitted in a way that avoids traditional book presentations or readings aloud.

Is there an object, corner or detail of the place that has a story that few people know?
In both locations we have paintings depicting rhinoceroses. Occasionally someone is interested in them and wants to know their price. But they’re not for sale: practically everything else is or could be, but those paintings are not. They were painted by artists we asked to create a piece for the bookstore on our anniversary. The 2025 painting was made by Julián Madero. The previous year’s was by Chilean artist Wladymir Bernechea, and two years ago Argentine artist Nadja Valsa made the illustration.

There are also some rhinoceros figurines scattered throughout the shops that we can’t sell either: a volcanic-stone rhinoceros, a fabric one, a plastic one, some illustrations as well… they were gifts from customers who felt a special fondness for the animal whose name we bear, who collected them and decided to share them with us.

If this project were a city, a book, or a record, which would it be and why?
We could say Psychocandy from The Jesus and Mary Chain: the noise and distortion would be the mountains of books, fascinating but overwhelming, among which bright melodies appear—or in our case, literary gems—that give meaning and unity to everything else.

Also, that mix of experimental avant-garde with pop (imagine Einstürzende Neubauten as the backing band for Beach Boys) fits our aesthetic quite well: we can have rare, experimental books that not many people would read (one example that comes to mind: Inquietoby Kenneth Goldsmith, where the author minutely describes the sensations passing through his body during a day: if he moves his leg, if he swallows, everything is written down), alongside other universally acclaimed and popular books that we also love.

Psychocandy is a fairly well-known album, but not too well-known—slightly cult—like Rinoceronte, which, although it has its devoted followers, comfortably stays on the margins of fame.

Answers by Carlos Ramírez and Itzel Pedrozo, administrators of Rinoceronte