Luis Cardoza y Aragón

Who was Luis Cardoza y Aragón?

Luis Cardoza y Aragón 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. 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 about their time in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s that earned him the 1992 Mazatlan Literature award in Mexico.