The Modern Novel

Biography

Elena Garro was born in 1920 in Puebla, Mexico. Her father was a Spanish architect, while her mother was Mexican. She grew up in Mexico City and then Iguala before returning to Mexico City to study literature, choreography and theatre at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. She became active in Julio Bracho‘s theatre group. She met Octavio Paz, whom she married in 1937. The marriage was not a success, not least because, according to Garro, Paz blocked her aspirations to becoming an actress. Her love for the theatre led to her writing plays and playwriting also influenced her novel-writing. In later life, she became very much involved in the defence of Indian land rights. Following the Tlatelolco Massacre, she was alleged to have accused some Mexican intellectuals of having instigated the students to riot and then abandoning them. She was ostracised by the intellectual community and subsequently went into exile for twenty years. She returned to Mexico in 1993 and died five years later. Garro has never really had the recognition she deserves. She felt that the Mexican literary establishment, and Octavio Paz in particular, were very much against her. Her first novel, Los recuerdos del porvenir (Recollections of Things to Come), is undoubtedly a classic of both Mexican and Latin American literature, using elements of magic realism four years before Cien Años de Soledad (One Hundred Years Of Solitude) was published. Sadly, only two of her works are available in English.

Books about Elena Garro

Sandra Messinger Cypess: Uncivil Wars: Elena Garro, Octavio Paz, and the Battle for Cultural Memory

Other links

Elena Garro
Elena Garro de Paz Allegation (possible links to Lee Harvey Oswald)
Elena Garro de Paz, who claimed that Oswald… (possible links to Lee Harvey Oswald)
Obituary
Obituary
Obituary
It’s The Fault Of The Tlaxcaltecas (translation of the story La culpa es de los tlaxcaltecas
Elena Garro (in Spanish)
Elena Garro (in Spanish)
Una biografía de Elena Garro (in Spanish)
Elena Garro, una carrera literaria entre la persecución (in Spanish)
Las muchas fugas de Elena Garro (in Spanish)
Elena Garro, personaje de su existencia (in Spanish)