Andres Henestrosa

Andrés Henestrosa was a Mexican writer and politician who was born in Ixhuatán, Oaxaca, on November 25, 1906. He belonged to the Zapotec ethnic group and learned Spanish as a second language when he was 15 years old. He moved to Mexico City to study at the National Teacher's School, the National High School, the Jurisprudence National School, and the Philosophy and Literature Faculty at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He was influenced by his teacher Alfonso Caso, who encouraged him to write down Zapotec myths, legends and fables, which formed the basis of his first book, The Men Scattered by Dance, published in 1929. He also wrote essays, poems, stories, and political documents during his long career. In 1936, he received a scholarship from the Guggenheim Foundation to investigate Zapotec culture and language in the United States, where he phonetized the Zapotec language, adapted the Latin alphabet, and created a Zapotec–Spanish dictionary. During this trip, he also wrote one of his most famous books: My Mother’s Portrait. He was a member of the Mexican Language Academy from 1964 to his death, and served as its treasurer from 1965 to 2000. He was also one of the most prominent members of the Mexican intelligentsia and the literary movement called Indianismo, which exalted the indigenous cultures of Mexico. He supported the presidential campaign of José Vasconcelos in 1929, and was elected to the federal legislature, serving three terms in the Chamber of Deputies, and as a senator for the state of Oaxaca from 1982 to 1988, as a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party. He died on January 10, 2008, in Mexico City, at the age of 101.