Thursday, October 20, 2005, 4:00PM
Center for Government and International Studies
(CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge St.) [map]
Carlos Monsiváis
"The USA from a Latin American Viewpoint"

Carlos Monsiváis is Mexico's leading cultural critic, and Mexico City's greatest living chronicler. He has written extensively and in evocative journalistic detail about Mexican history, culture and politics. He was born May 4, 1938, in Mexico City, and studied philosophy, economics and literature at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Monsiváis's main publications are collections of literary journalism-in fact, he has pioneered the genre of "nueva crónica," which often has been compared to the "new journalism" of the United States. The first collection, Días de guardar (Days to Remember, 1970), chronicled the 1968 student movement in Mexico. Amor perdido (Lost Love, 1977) is more sprawling, treating Mexican popular culture, famous communists, high society, the Mexican hippie movement, and Mexican cultural history more generally. Escenas de pudor y liviandad (Scenes of Power and Frivolity, 1981), about Mexican romantic life, won the Jorge Cuesta Literary Award. He wrote about the organization of Mexican society in Entrada libre (Free Pass, 1987), and about consumerism in Mexico City in Los rituales del caos (The Rituals of Chaos, 1995).

Monsiváis won Spain's Premio Anagrama de Ensayo, as well as the Anagrama International Literature Prize for Aires de familia: Cultura y sociedad en América Latina (Family Pedigree: Culture and Society in Latin America, 2000), which treats Hollywood, TV, mythology and folklore in Latin America from 1880 to 1920. Additionally, he has edited books on art and poetry, and written biographies of Mexican artists and writers, including Amado Nervo, Salvador Novo, and Jorge Cuesta. A selection of Monsiváis's essays, Mexican Postcards (1997), is available in English translation.

Other honors include the National Journalism Award (1977), the Mazatlán Prize for Literature (1987), the Manuel de Buendía Prize for Literature (1988) and the Francisco Zarco Journalism Award (1995). Carlos Monsiváis lives in Mexico City.