Elena Garro


Elena Garro was a Mexican screenwriter, journalist, dramaturg, short story writer, and novelist. She has been as the initiator of the Magical Realism movement, though she rejected this affiliation. She is a recipient of the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize.

Biography

Elena Garro was born in Puebla, Mexico to a Spanish father and a Mexican mother, the third of five children. She spent her childhood in Mexico City but moved to Iguala, Guerrero, during the Cristero War. She studied literature, choreography and theater in the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, where she was an active member of Julio Bracho's theatre group. She married Octavio Paz in 1937 and began a career in literature and theater. Garro's fiction explored political and social causes related to life in Mexico. Her citizenship status and focus on Indian rights aroused controversy in Mexico. After her divorce from Paz in 1959, Garro spent time in seclusion between Madrid and Paris in Europe until moving back to Cuernavaca, Mexico in 1994.