Ali Chumacero

Alí Chumacero was a Mexican poet, translator, literary critic and editor. He was a member of the Mexican Academy of Language. He was born in Acaponeta, Nayarit, in 1918 and moved to Guadalajara with his family. In 1937, he went to Mexico City to study Philosophy and Literature at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), but he could not enroll immediately due to some academic difficulties. He used the time to read and explore the city. In 1940, he founded the magazine Tierra Nueva, along with Jorge González Durán, Leopoldo Zea and José Luis Martínez, which was in circulation until 1942. In this publication, the authors sought to balance the spontaneity of modern literature with the rigor of academic literary studies. He married Lourdes Gómez Luna in 1949 and had five children. He worked as an editor of various publications, such as Letras de México, El Hijo Pródigo and La cultura en México. He also edited works of nineteenth-century Mexican Romantic poets and of Alfonso Reyes and Xavier Villaurrutia. He collaborated with Octavio Paz, José Emilio Pacheco and Homero Aridjis in the preparation of the influential anthology Poesía en movimiento. He was a director of the Fondo de Cultura Económica and became a member of the Mexican Academy of Language in 1964. He died in Mexico City from pneumonia in 2010, aged 92. His poetry, almost all of it written before 1956, is a very carefully crafted, subtle exploration of existential desolation, solitude, and the inadequate consolations of love. The earlier poems (Páramo de sueños and Imágenes desterradas) are quite hermetic, bearing traces of his predecessors, the Contemporáneos (most notably José Gorostiza and Villaurrutia). The later poems (Palabras en reposo) are more accessible, though no less complex. He won many prizes for his poetry, including the Xavier Villaurrutia Award, the Alfonso Reyes International Prize, the National Art and Sciences Award, the Medalla Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor from the Mexican Senate, and the Premio Estatal de Literatura Amado Nervo. He received a homage in the Palacio de Bellas Artes on the occasion of his 90th birthday, attended by some of his friends such as Carlos Montemayor and Eduardo Lizalde. The Ali Chumacero People's Theater was inaugurated in 1987 in Tepic, and is the most important cultural venue in the state of Nayarit.