As indicated by the Secretariat in a statement, the jury appreciated that their texts, both journalistic and literary, have “narrated, through testimonies and fiction, capital moments in the recent history of Mexico.”
Some were the 1968 student movement (compiled in “The night of Tlatelolco”), the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City (joined in “Nothing, nobody. The voices of the tremor”) or the uprising of the Zapatista guerrillas in Chiapas in 1994.
From a very young age, he began working as a journalist, interviewing personalities such as the Mexican Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz and rubbing shoulders with greats, as he recounts in “The Polish Lover.” From those 50s and 60s until now he has not lost the pleasure of writing and has touched on almost all genres: novels, short stories, poetry, essays, journalistic chronicles, interviews and even theatrical adaptations.
Poniatowska was born in Paris on May 19, 1932, the daughter of Jean E. Poniatowski and María de los Dolores Amor Escandón (known as Paula Amor), her mother being a descendant of an exiled Mexican family. Her family emigrated back to Mexico during World War II and she Poniatowska became a naturalized Mexican in 1969 when she married Mexican astronomer Guillermo Haro.
“We are all deprived, all destitute, our strength lies in recognizing this,” Poniatowska said in 2014 upon receiving the Cervantes Prize, considered the Nobel Prize for Literature in Spanish and which she dedicated to all the marginalized and women who suffer violence. “I am proud to walk alongside the deluded, the ramshackle, the naive,” she added.
Last year he celebrated his 90th birthday with an emotional tribute at the Teatro de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, where the greatest in the country are usually fired when they die but who wanted to celebrate it while they were alive.
Months earlier, in an interview with the AP, he talked about how the years gave him the confidence to write. “I do it better now than I did before, it’s easier,” she said. “I feel like I’m messing around less, that I have more experience, that people already know me better… I’ve always felt very surrounded by affection.”
The international Carlos Fuentes award was established in 2012 in memory of the Mexican writer, author of classics such as “The Death of Artemio Cruz”, and in previous editions it has gone to writers such as the Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa (2012), the Nicaraguan Sergio Ramírez ( 2014), the Spanish Luis Goytisolo (2018), the Chilean Diamela Eltit (2020) or the also Mexican Margo Glantz (2022).
FOUNTAIN: Associated Press
