Mexico in a Nutshell 3: Mexico City

A course by Roberto Frías

With more than nine million inhabitants today, Mexico City is one of the most diverse cultural centres on the planet. Throughout its long history of more than 700 years, it has been the capital of the Mexica Empire on a lake, of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, of one of the first independent republics in America, of two empires, of the fantastic libertarian feat of its revolution and of the strange authoritarian experiment that emerged from it, which subdued the country for 70 years, under the Institutional Revolutionary Party. Today it is the capital of a country plunged in serious problems: violence, drug trafficking, migration, foreign capital interference, etc., but also of a country with many hopes and capacities, both social and economic.

Through this City of Palaces paraded characters such as Moctezuma, Hernán Cortés, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Alexander von Humboldt, Maximilian I of Mexico, Benito Juárez, Antonieta Rivas Mercado, Porfirio Díaz, Frida Kahlo, Leon Trotsky, André Breton, Luis Buñuel, María Izquierdo, William Burroughs, Che Guevara or Leonora Carrington, among many other artists, politicians, spies, scientists, social fighters and a long list of unique characters. We could venture that the whole world, that is, the history of the world, has passed through Mexico City and has transformed it. In turn, these geological layers of history are visible today in its streets, novels, personal stories, and art.

Each week in this 10-session course, we will read and comment on some literary works that best describe this city. We will also learn about its history, from its founding to the present day, through references to documents, art, cinema, chronicles and biographies. We will narrate the life of the Mexican capital as if it were that of a literary character that evolves over the centuries to give us a plausible picture of its current reality.

We will read works by the best writers who have had a relationship with Mexico City, from Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz to Juan Villoro, Roberto Bolaño, Cristina Rivera Garza, Carlos Fuentes, Fernando del Paso or José Emilio Pacheco, among others.

About:

Roberto Frías

Writer

After several years as a journalist, literary critic and cultural manager in Mexico City, where he was acquainted with the artistic field and the literary community, he moved to Barcelona, where he will live between 2001 and 2010, and learn the trades of publisher, literary translator and editorial advisor. His main employees would be Spanish publishing houses of high renown as Anagrama, Penguin Random House, Atalanta, Galaxia Gutenberg, Acantilado, Libros del asteroide, Alfaguara, among many other. He became also an advisor and reader for Antonia Kerrigan’s literary agency.

As a contributor to the literary supplements Cultura/s ––La Vanguardia, Barcelona––and Confabulario ––El Universal, Mexico––, and the magazines Letras libres, SoHo, Chilango and National Geographic Traveller, he has published essays, reviews and features on film, literature, gastronomy and travel, as well as social and scientific subjects. Roberto wrote every week, from 2019 to 2022, about Mexico City for the cultural TV channel Canal 22 and also hosted and directed the brief TV series Mexico 1521 hoy —Mexico 1521 Today. Translator of Thomas Hardy, Oscar Wilde, Hanif Kureishi, Francisco Goldman, Elizabeth Hardwick and many others, he has also finished two novels, an opera libretto and the script for an experimental medium film. A book of short stories is his present project.

Roberto has been the recipient, on two occasions, of the prestigious Mexican grant National System of Art Creators (SNCA), bestowed by the National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA), on the field of literary translation. He has been a resident at the Writer’s Centre, Norwich, UK; Yaddo, New York; Banff Centre, and the Sun Yat-sen University’s International Writers Residence, Guangzhou, China.

On the field of cultural management, Roberto has been, at the Department of Cultural Affairs of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (CulturaUNAM), Coordinator of the Chair Max Aub of Trans discipline in Art and Technology, Coordinator of Vértice (Festival of experimental and avant-garde art) and Curator of its Expanded Literature section, among other responsibilities. At the official national homage to Octavio Paz, he was a member of the organizing committee. And a member of the Advisory Council for Banff’s International Literary Translation Center. His workshops and conferences have been given in Mexico, United States, Canada, China and Spain.

*as a Mexican Cultural Institute's event we cannot do any refunds.