The few, the proud, the work of Juan Rulfo (1917–1986)
In the darkest days of the Battle of Britain, Winston Churchill said of the RAF that "never has so much been owed by so many to so few." To paraphrase the great statesman, it could be said of the Juan ...
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Octavio Paz: Nobel winner and noble man (1914–1998)
1998 witnessed the passing of such diverse figures as Frank Sinatra, legendary boxer Archie Moore, two-term Florida Governor Lawton Chiles, cowboy star and entrepreneur Gene Autry, and Clayton ("Peg Le...
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Mexico's Voltaire: José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi (1776–1827)
Because of the many fables he wrote, there are those who may wish to compare José Joaquin Fernández de Lizardi to La Fontaine. Such a comparison fails to do justice to both writers. Apart from the Co...
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Zapata by John Steinbeck
In 1952, John Steinbeck won an Academy Award nomination for his screenplay of the movie, Viva Zapata! Many years later, however, a manuscript was found in UCLA Library in which it was discovered he had...
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The Underdogs (Los de Abajo): A Novel of the Mexican Revolution by Mariano Azuela
This novel is described in several places as a classic of modern Hispanic literature and it really is a powerful book. Novelist Mariano Azuela knew what he was writing about, having served as a doctor in Pancho Villa's army and having participated in several key engagements in that conflict.
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The Old Gringo by Carlos Fuentes
The story is based on the mysterious death/disappearance of the American writer Ambrose Bierce who, at age 71, went into Mexico in 1913 during the Revolution and vanished. Bierce is the author of such works as "The Devil's Dictionary" and "Incident at Owl's Creek Bridge." He was a contemporary of writers like Bret Harte and Mark Twain. He was also a newspaper reporter, employed at the time of his death by the San Francisco Chronicle, which was part of the William Randolph Hearst empire. Bierce had also seen distinguished service in the Civil War.
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Did you know? Mexico's first tourists
Father Alonso Ponce and Friar Antonio de Ciudad Real were probably Mexico's first ever tourists.
Father Alonso Ponce de León arrived in Veracruz in September 1584 and spent the next five years travel...
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Bobby Vaughn's Black Mexico - further reading
This is a list of 17 sources in Spanish and English dealing with black
Mexicans from a variety of perspectives. I chose these few sources from
a large bibliography that I have been compiling sinc...
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