Reyes, Alfonso

1889–1959

(17 May 1889, Monterrey, Nuevo León – 27 December 1959, Mexico City) was a Mexican writer, philosopher, and diplomat. He was son of General Don Bernardo Reyes y Ogazón, and of Doña Aurelia Ochoa y Sapi'sn de Reyes. He was educated primarily in Mexico City. In 1909, he and other like-minded young intellectuals such as Martín Luis Guzmán and José Vasconcelos, founded the "Ateneo de la Juventud" a cultural society to promote new cultural and aesthetic ideals and educational reform in Mexico. At the age of 21, he published his first book "Cuestiones Estéticas". The following year, 1912, he wrote a short story "La Cena", considered a forerunner of surrealism and of Latin American magical realism. In that year he was also named Secretary of the "Escuela Nacional de Altos Estudios" at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He obtained his law degree in 1913 and joined Mexico's diplomatic service in France. From 1914 to 1924, he was posted in Madrid (Spain), and was Mexico's Chargé d'affaires, 1920-24. He also pursued a literary career as journalist, investigator, translator, critic, and writer. By virtue of this extended stay in Madrid, he was spared the violence of the Mexican Revolution. In 1915, he wrote what is probably his best known essay, "Visión de Anáhuac (1519)," with its famous epigraph, "Viajero: has llegado a la región más transparente del aire", the source of the title of Carlos Fuentes's novel "La región más transparente". He continued his diplomatic service in

69 books in the database