Acapulco, 1918 – Cidade do México (México), 1986

Flávio Aguiar

The worldview that the Mexican writer infused into his fiction prose showcases realistic, revolutionary, and poetic aspects. To achieve this, he employed brief narratives and concise language. The settings of his texts reveal a country ravaged by revolutions such as the Cristero War and the Mexican Revolution, facing a universe filled with tragedies, violence, and misery within a fictional and non-linear timeframe.

He published only two books: the short story collection El llano en llamas (1953) and the novel Pedro Páramo (1955). In both works, the author’s social and political concerns are evident. Also common is the indigenous tradition of Aztec mythology and the theme of death, which encompasses the issue of violence amid peasant disputes.

For the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes, a follower of this literature, his small body of work had a universal impact. Gabriel García Márquez highlights the temporal recreation of this narrative, shared by many fiction writers of the Boom generation.

By recounting the hardships of a people caught in the triangulation of mysticism, land disputes, and natural problems, the writer resonated with the social narratives of Graciliano Ramos in a different key.

He divided his literary activity with screenwriting, created the Voz Viva collection, which compiled recordings of writers, worked at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the National Indigenous Institute, contributed to the founding of the Latin American Community of Writers, and served as a literary advisor for the Mexican Center of Writers. He received the National Literature Prize (1970) and the Prince of Asturias Award (1983).