Covid suspended Ricardo Siles as a sports journalist, but he reinvented himself and wrote a novel

Ricardo Siles is one of the most well-known Spanish-speaking journalists in the United States, but like many, 2020 has been a tough year to pursue his career. The Covid-19 pandemic has caused a widespread shutdown not only in the sports field, but in almost all social aspects.

The Tampico native, Tamaulipas, was affected by his being unemployed, because when he works as a “freelancer” (freelance journalist), the organizations he works for are temporarily not obligated to continue to provide a fixed salary.

However, Celes, who lives in Miami and considers himself hyperactive, somehow didn’t waste time getting busy, so he “flicked” some documents he had acquired years ago and kept on his computer.

Four months later, Seles had written a book unrelated to her field of work: Trampling snakes – sacred treasure or the end of the world awaits.

After he was with his family at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa while he was at Univision, they embarked on a vacation trip to France. On a visit to the historic Notre Dame cathedral, in Paris, the French capital, he sparked a different private dedication to gathering information that he would eventually use—without planning—to write his book.

In front of Celes, there was a mosaic of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which was not affected after nine years during the fire that devoured much of the religious center.

The sports journalist recounted: “When we were there… I asked my son something about what he saw there, and there was a nun next to me.” “Because of her accent I think she was Spanish and she asked me where she came from and called her Mexican. He asked me if I knew the secret symbols in the portrait of Our Lady of Guadalupe and I was sad to say I knew nothing.”

Since then, he began to get acquainted with the topic of secret symbols of the picture and little by little he was working on archiving it.

Ten years later and in confinement caused by Covid-19 in 2020, Celes found herself without a job, where chances of attending sporting events were non-existent. Creating something with all the information collected, he took on the task of creating his work.

The book is an exciting story mixed with reality.

“I didn’t intend to write a book, I memorized everything out of curiosity,” said Siles. “Libraries in Miami weren’t closed, so the local library would go and get everything about mathematics in religion, secret societies in Latin America, all about the mysteries of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the conquest of Mexico…and all that. I would interweave it in the novel, Which people can find on Amazon.com.”