Elena Garro

Elena Garro was born in Puebla, Mexico, to a Spanish father and a Mexican mother. She spent her childhood in Mexico City and Iguala, Guerrero, where she witnessed the Cristero War. She studied literature, choreography, and theater at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where she met and married the poet Octavio Paz. She began her literary career in the 1950s, writing novels, short stories, and plays that explored the political and social realities of Mexico, often with a touch of magical realism. She was considered one of the most original and influential writers of her generation, and the initiator of the Latin American Boom. She also worked as a screenwriter, journalist, and activist, supporting various causes such as indigenous rights, feminism, and democracy. She divorced Paz in 1959 and lived in exile in Spain and France for many years, due to political persecution and personal conflicts. She returned to Mexico in 1994 and died of lung cancer in Cuernavaca in 1998.