Elena Garro: an intellectual and her battles. Press, literature and politics in Contemporary Mexico (1952-1968)

Abstract

The present research project seeks to analize the journalistic and literary production of the Mexican writer Elena Garro (1916-1998), between 1952 and 1968 - a period marked by the growing authoritarianism of the State, culminating in the Tlatelolco Massacre. During these seventeen years, Garro lives in Mexico and writes most of her journalistic and literary work, dialoguing with the political debates of her period. Publishing twelve theatre plays, four novels and one collection of short stories, besides collaborating with many newspapers - the main ones being Novedades, Presente!, Siempre!, Sucesos [para todos], ¿Por qué?, Revista de América, Revista Mexicana de Literatura - the writer produces a great number of works that mark her debut on the intellectual world and her recognition as an author.Therefore, we wish to analize the fictional and non-fictional texts of Elena Garro throughout her books, newspapers and magazines, trying to understand her position in the Mexican society and in the relational networks of Latin-American intellectuality, at mid-20th century. By means of her publications and their repercussion in the public space, we aim to map out - beyond the consensual opinion that she was a good writer - how Elena Garro was known and became an exponent of the ideas of revaluation of the Mexican Revolution and the social and political guidelines. Mainly, we will give special attention to the way past and present are called upon in the texts by the intellectual for reading historical process and interpreting her reality, in the 1950 and 1960's decades. (AU)