Martín Luis Guzmán

Martín Luis Guzmán (* October 6, 1887 in Chihuahua; † December 22, 1976 in Mexico City) was Mexican newspaper journalist and writer and is next to Mariano Azuela as a pioneer of the revolutionary novel, a genre that deals with the Mexican Revolution.

Biography

Guzmán was born on October 6, 1887 in Chihuahua, the son of a professional officer. He grew up in Mexico City and Veracruz, where he attended Catholic boys' schools. In 1908 he took in Mexico City to study law. Among his fellow students count the Pedro Henríquez Ureña later authors, Alfonso Reyes, Antonio Caso and José Vasconcelos. Guzmán participated in events whose group Ateneo de la Juventud, and writes for several newspapers.

With the beginning of the revolutionary unrest in 1910, Guzmán joined the reformers on to the presidential candidate Francisco Madero and took part in demonstrations against the re-election of the dictator Porfirio Díaz. After Madero's assassination in 1913, Guzmán joined the troops of the revolutionary general Francisco Villa and was promoted to colonel. In the same year he was arrested and went the following year into exile in Spain. There he published his first book, La querella de México.

Lived between 1916 and 1920, and he wrote in New York. There he worked as head of the Spanish-language magazine El Gráfico and wrote for El Universal. He published articles in an anthology entitled A Orillas del Hudson ( 1920).

Upon his return to Mexico Guzmán continued working as a journalist and founded the evening newspaper El Mundo. He was elected a deputy of the Partido Nacional Cooperativista, but had to flee into exile to Spain again for president in 1924 after the election of Plutarco Elias Calles. There he remained until the eve of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. In his novels El águila y la serpiente (1928) and La sombra del caudillo who were initially banned in Mexico by the censorship, he processed his memories of the Mexican Civil War and the thereafter. However, his most important work is Memorias de Pancho Villa ( 1940), a fictional autobiography of Pancho Villa, processed numerous historical documents in the Guzmán.

Upon his return, the post-revolutionary political leadership of the PRI stylized him a leading figure of Mexican literature. From 1953 to 1958, Guzmán was UN Ambassador of Mexico. For his novel Muertes Históricas (1958 ), he received the National Book Award. In 1970 he became a senator.

Martín Luis Guzmán died on 22 December 1976 in Mexico City.