Luis Cardoza y Aragón

Luis Cardoza y Aragón (June 21, 1901 - September 4, 1992) was a Guatemalan writer, essayist, poet, art critic, and diplomat born in Antigua Guatemala but who spent a good part of his life living in exile in Mexico.

Cardoza attended primary school in Antigua Guatemala and at the Colegio Centroamericano in Guatemala City. His received a secondary education in the city's Instituto Nacional Central para Varones. In the 1920s, Cardoza moved to Paris, France where he became friends with André Breton. Influenced by the avant-garde members of the surrealist movement, his first work titled "Luna Park" was published in 1923 and dedicated to the Guatemalan writer Enrique Gómez Carrillo (1873–1927). He also got to know fellow Guatemalan writer Miguel Ángel Asturias who came to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. Decades later in 1991 Cardoza wrote a book entitled Miguel Ángel Asturias, Casi Novela (Ediciones Era) about their time in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s that earned him the 1992 Mazatlan Literature award in Mexico.

Luis Cardoza was appointed Consul General of Guatemala in New York City under the Guatemalan government of Lázaro Chacón but in the early 1930s left the job and his country because of the dictatorial rule of new President Jorge Ubico. He chose to live in self-imposed exile in Mexico City where he became a member of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR), an artist and intellectual group (Renato Leduc, Federico Cantú. Federico Cantú Garza Luis Ortiz Monasterio, Alfonso Reyes, Jose Moreno Villa) that at the time had considerable influence on the artistic, cultural and political life of Mexico. In 1936 Cardoza welcomed to Mexico the French artist Antonin Artaud who had been an early influence as part of the Surrealist movement in Paris.

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