To Kanellos, each bitter letter from a former associate reflects the press' achievements. While frankly admitting that the press' contracts "were not real good" in its early years, Kanellos puts that down to the early struggles of a grassroots endeavor fueled mostly by what he likes to call a mission. Rather than any wrongdoing by Arte Pœblico, he says, his normally friendly voice taking on a slight whine, it is New York agent Bergholz's concerted efforts to steal his stable of writers that has caused much of the writers' discontent with Arte Pœblico. In fact, if anyone was victimized by Arte Pœblico's amateurish early contracts, it was the press itself, he contends. Although Bergholz extricated Cisneros' successful The House on Mango Street from Arte Pœblico, by the time of Chavez's lawsuit, Kanellos says, "we had some contracts and (Bergholz) couldn't repeat her deadly deed."
Bergholz calls Kanellos' accusations absurd, saying Cisneros called after getting Bergholz's card from a common acquaintance, and other writers followed.
"I don't do that -- that's not my style," she says of Kanellos' accusation that she had stolen writers away from Arte Pœblico.
Yet Bergholz acknowledges that most of the two dozen or so Hispanic writers she now represents have been published at Arte Pœblico. Then again, she adds, so have most of the more respected Latino writers in the country. In addition to the normal desire of gifted writers to seek wider acceptance and sales in the mainstream, the writers she represents left Arte Pœblico because of Kanellos' paternalism and the publishing house's shoddy contracts, Bergholz claims.
Still, the agent bookends her complaints about Kanellos with accolades for the publisher.
"Whatever Nick thinks of me," she says, "I think he has made an incredible contribution to American literature. No one can take that from him."
Perhaps because its participants are all uncommonly articulate, what in another industry might be simple legal and business conflicts are, in Arte Pœblico's case, fraught with nuance. Denise Chavez's statements have an elegiac quality, voicing ire but also melancholy at a mentor she believes exploited her. To Rudolfo Anaya, the dean of Hispanic letters, the conflict between Chavez and Nick Kanellos sadly threatens the fraternity and goals of all Latino writers.
But perhaps most damning of all for a purportedly activist, minority operation, Puerto Rican-American author Nicholasa Mohr thinks Arte Pœblico's conflicts -- which she knows of only secondhand -- reflect a transition from business, family-style, to something more conventional. Mohr, who has worked with Arte Pœblico since 1986, says she is quite content with the relationship. But while the personal touch remains, Mohr says, authors now may be best off regarding Arte Pœblico with the caution they do any other company.
"I've had no problems and no complaints," says Mohr, who also publishes with several mainstream presses. "[But] I was already making a living as a writer, so I come from that point of view. I like working with Nick. He's fair.
"If I have a contract with Nick I negotiate it; I don't just take it as it is," she adds. "In all fairness to these people, they may not understand that. It's just like any other enterprise -- it's a business.
