Guzmán, Martín Luís (1887–1976)

Martín Luís Guzmán (b. 6 October 1887; d. 22 December 1976), Mexican literary figure and cultural entrepreneur best remembered for his post-Revolutionary novels El áquila y la serpiente (1928) and La sombra del caudillo (1929). Based on personal experience, these works provide some of the best insights into the Revolution as well as a condemnation of the leading post-Revolutionary figures of the 1920s. Although he was part of the El Ateneo literary group in 1911, Guzmán largely abandoned his literary career in the 1930s, instead pursuing journalism and publishing.

The son of an army officer who died in combat during the Revolution, Guzmán joined the Constitutionalists. After founding many newspapers, he spent five years (1915–1920) of self-imposed exile in Spain and the United States. When his daily, El Mundo, was confiscated by the Obregón administration, he again exiled himself to Spain (ca. 1923–1936), where he directed several newspapers. In the 1940s he founded a number of publishing companies as well as the weekly magazine El Tiempo (modeled after Time magazine), which he directed until his death. He received the National Prize for Literature in 1958.

See alsoMexico, Wars and Revolutions: Mexican Revolution .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ruth Stanton, "Martín Luís Guzmán's Place in Modern Mexican Literature," in Hispania 26 (1943): 136-138.

Martín Luís Guzmán, Apunte sobre una personalidad (1955); Tiempo (3 January 1977): 5-23.

William Megenney, ed., Five Essays on Martín Luís Guzmán (1978).

Additional Bibliography

Rosado, Juan Antonio. El presidente y el caudillo: Mito y realidad en dos novelas de la dictadura: La sombra del caudillo, de Martín Luis Guzmán y El señor presidente, de Miguel Ángel Asturias. México, D.F.: Ediciones Coyoacán, 2001.

Sánchez, Aideé. La heterogeneidad en El águilay la serpiente de Martín Luis Guzmán. Méxcio, D.F.: Plaza y Valdes Editores, 2002.

                                         Roderic Ai Camp