Eraclio Zepeda

Eraclio Zepeda was a Mexican writer, poet and politician. He was born on March 24, 1937 in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas. He attended college at the Universidad Militarizada Latinoamericana, where he started a Marxism study group with Jaime Labastida, Jaime Augusto Shelley and Nils Castro. He studied Social Anthropology at Universidad Veracruzana, where he joined leftist political groups, which reflects on his literary works. In 1960, he attended the first Youth Latin America Congress in Cuba and during the Bay of Pigs Invasion he enrolled as a soldier with Carlos Jurado, Nils Castro, and Roque Dalton, being named the official responsible for the Combat Special Unit. He taught at various universities in Mexico, Cuba and China. He also founded the Theatre of Rural Orientation and the newspaper El Correo Campesino. ¹ He participated in several movements against the governor of Chiapas, Efraín Aranda Osorio, because of his actions of social dissolution. He was a member of the Rural Worker's Party, the Mexican Communist Party, the Unified Socialist Party of Mexico and the Socialist Mexican Party, being a candidate for the presidency and a candidate for senator of Chiapas. He was federal deputy of the USPM in the LIII Legislature of the Congress of Mexico. In 1989, he was cofounder and a member of the warranty commission of the Party of the Democratic Revolution. Between December 1994 and April 1997, he was secretary of government in the state of Chiapas, with governors Eduardo Robledo Rincón and Julio César Ruiz Ferro. ¹ He received several awards and honors for his literary and political work, such as the Commemorative Medal of the National Indigenist Institute in 1980, the Xavier Villaurrutia Award for Andando el tiempo in 1982, the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor in 2014 and the National Prize of Arts and Sciences in 2014. ¹² His literary work covered genres such as theater, novel, short story and poetry. He was influenced by the oral tradition and folklore of Chiapas, as well as by the social and political issues of his time. Some of his most notable works are Asalto nocturno (1965), Benzulul (1969), Andando el tiempo (1982), La espiga amotinada (1986) and Las grandes lluvias (2005). ¹ He died on September 17, 2015 in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, due to a heart attack. He was 78 years old. ¹