Margarita Pena

Margarita Peña was a Mexican writer, translator and researcher, doctor of letters, teacher and emeritus professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Her work focused on Mexican literature of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. She was a great expert on Juan Ruiz de Alarcón and his time. She was widely active in the world of letters, her work extending to the creation of articles, essays, critical editions, compilations and anthologies, short stories, essays, and newspaper articles, among others. Her constant work in the Archivo General de la Nación gave her access to letters, sonnets, romances, declarations of prisoners, spells, and even a fragment of a treatise on palmistry. The work that brings together a wide variety of these writings is called La palabra amordazada, and presents literature censored by the Mexican Inquisition during the colonial period. She wrote more than thirty essays. Her impressive work in document rescue makes her an important Mexican writer and literary figure. The critical edition of the New Spanish songbook of the 16th century, Flores de baria poesía, is part of her work, as is the novel, El amarre. She received her bachelor's and master's degrees in Hispanic literature at the National Autonomous University of Mexico; and her doctorate from El Colegio de México. She served as a teacher at the undergraduate level for more than thirty years at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She belonged to the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (SNI) (level III) since 2003 and was Coordinator of the Extraordinary Chair "Juan Ruiz de Alarcón". She taught in various universities in Mexico and abroad. Her awards and honours include: Premio Universidad Nacional, Premio de la Cámara Nacional de la Industria Editorial, Premio Huehuetlatolli, Premio de Crítica Literaria, and Premio ComuArte. She was married to the writer Federico Campbell and had one son, the journalist Federico Campbell Peña. She died of heart problems in Mexico City, October 7, 2018.