Ah, what fun. I got an email today from Dr. Rivera-Ayala that was cc’d to my Dean and the President of my college. I thought you’d like to see the exchange, starting with the email I sent to Sergio Rivera-Ayala after my last post about the strange emails and comments about his book.

I’ll put a few notes after the emails.

Steve Lawson slawson@coloradocollege.edu    
Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 10:18 AM
To: Tamesis Books trading@boydell.co.uk, Sergio Rivera-Ayala sergio.rivera-ayala@ucr.edu, 
Sergio Rivera-Ayala sriveraa@uwaterloo.ca

Dear Tamesis Books and Dr. Rivera-Ayala,

I thought you both should know that someone has been sending emails to
at least one librarian posing as a student at that librarian's
institution with the purpose of getting her to buy Dr. Rivera-Ayala's
book, "El discurso colonial en textos novohispanos: espacio, cuerpo y
poder."

When my friend, Iris Jastram, who received this email posted something
about the incident to her blog, she got a few comments from someone
calling him or herself "Verga Parati." You probably know better than I
that "verga para ti" in Spanish means  "cock for you." The comments
were much like the original email in that they appear to be wholly
fraudulent.

You can find the post that Ms Jastram wrote here, along with the
comments from "cock for you":

http://bit.ly/knear

I wrote about it on my blog, too:

http://bit.ly/2dSmqk

If either of you are responsible for these incidents, I suggest a
public apology to Ms Jastram is in order. If you are not responsible,
perhaps you could look into finding out who is?

I think it might also be necessary for me to say that any attempts to
intimidate or silence me about this matter will be met with as much
publicity as I can muster.

Sincerely,
Steve Lawson

--
Steve Lawson, Humanities Librarian
Colorado College, Colorado Springs
slawson@coloradocollege.edu
719-389-6857

Sergio Rivera-Ayala sriveraa@uwaterloo.ca   
Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 9:51 AM
To: Steve Lawson slawson@coloradocollege.edu
Cc: Richard@artsservices.uwaterloo.ca, F.@artsservices.uwaterloo.ca, 
Celeste@artsservices.uwaterloo.ca, president@coloradocollege.edu, 
Susan@artsservices.uwaterloo.ca, A.@artsservices.uwaterloo.ca, 
Ashley@artsservices.uwaterloo.ca, sashley@coloradocollege.edu, 
eferguson@boydell.co.uk, sriveraa@uwaterloo.ca


Dear Mr Lawson
I have received your email and I very much regret that someone has sent
anonymous emails to personnel of the library at Colorado College in
connection with my book. But neither I nor Tamesis is in any way responsible
for the initial request or the subsequent messages on the blog, and we
therefore do not feel that it would be appropriate for us to become
involved.
I would urge you to remove your unfounded accusations.
Respectfully,

-- 
Sergio Rivera-Ayala, PhD
Assistant Professor
Dept of Spanish and Latin American Studies
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario
Canada N2L 3G1
Phone: 519-888-4567, ext. 38906
Fax: 519-746-7881

http://www.spanish.uwaterloo.ca//rivera.html

Steve Lawson   Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 10:28 AM
To: Sergio Rivera-Ayala sriveraa@uwaterloo.ca
Cc: sashley@coloradocollege.edu, eferguson@boydell.co.uk, Iris Jastram ijastram@carleton.edu

Thank you, Dr. Rivera-Ayala. I'll update my blog posts with your
message just so it's clear. I'm pretty sure I took pains not to make
any accusations; I'll re-read the post and if I did accuse anyone of
anything, I'll address that as well.

Thanks, also, for emailing my Dean and attempting to email the
President of my college [I was wrong about this. In that mess of CCs in 
his message, I think he actually did manage to email the President of 
Colorado College]. I'll make sure and note that on my blog, too.
Keep it up and I promise to respond in kind.

Lastly, you or your publisher really should get in touch with Iris
Jastram (I'm copying her on this email), as she has the IP addresses
of the person who left the comments with the insulting pseudonym. Of
course it would be hard to pin those comments on any one individual,
but they make for pretty interesting circumstantial evidence as to who
is lying and trying to intimidate librarians. If I were you or your
publisher, I'd really want to know who is making me look bad.

--
Steve Lawson, Humanities Librarian
Colorado College, Colorado Springs
slawson@coloradocollege.edu
719-389-6857

OK, so. I took the messages copied to the Dean and President as “attempts to intimidate or silence me about this matter” which is why I’m posting it here. I looked back at my post and I don’t believe I did make any unfounded accusations. I noted that while my first assumption upon reading the email that Iris posted was that it must have been the author or publisher, I also noted that it was impossible to tell and in fact could have come from anyone.

I’m guessing this goes nowhere after this, but that’s what I would have said yesterday before getting this email. Stay tuned.