Juan Rulfo, biography of a literary genius

Juan Rulfo was a vital and moving writer who gave Mexican farmers a universal voice. Despite not winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, he bequeathed two great works, the novel Pedro Paramo and the story book The Burning Plain.
His real name was Juan Nepomuceno Carlos Pérez Rulfo Vizcaíno. It is not known exactly where he was born and several locations are being considered: Sayula, as her birth record says; Apulco, where her mother’s farm was; or San Gabriel, the town that marked her heart. What these places have in common, in addition to being in Jalisco, are the scars of the Mexican Revolution and the Cristero counterrevolution.

An act of violence marked the childhood of this fabulous writer. He was born on May 16, 1917 and witnessed the great social upheavals of the 1920s in Mexico. When he was only 6 years old, his father was murdered. His mother She was very affected and died 4 years later.. This caused Juan Rulfo’s childhood to be plunged into an emotional fracture for which he only found solace in art.

Books, life…

Juan Rulfo’s education was unstable, he had to change schools several times for various reasons. After the death of his mother, in 1927, he was admitted to the Luis Silva school in Guadalajara, by decision from his uncle, which had been left in his charge. There he remained until he was 15 years old.

One of his teachers, Father Irineo Monroy, unintentionally gave him a definitive legacy: the books. That priest had been an ecclesiastical censor, he went around the houses reviewing the publications to determine if it was legal to read them. He kept those that he considered prohibited, in this way, he formed an extensive library.

When he left, he left all his books in the house where Juan Rulfo lived. From this moment on, reading would become Rulfo’s great hobby. Rulfo himself once said that: “I spent all my time reading You couldn’t go out on the street because you could get hit by a bullet. ”. This is how he grew and was formed: between books by Alexander Dumas, Victor Hugo and any work that fell into his hands.

Actually, Rulfo He was not an author who liked to talk about his life, sometimes he fell into ambiguities or gave uncertain data.. For a long time, he claimed to have been born in 1918, but, according to the most reliable documents, he was born in 1917. Surely, he changed his date of birth to get closer chronologically to the younger authors of the boom literature that was lived on the continent.

Juan Rulfo, a traveler and a creator

Juan Rulfo belongs to that group of writers who never obtained a university degree; he was a self-taught author. He tried to begin his studies at the University of Guadalajara, but a long strike prevented him from doing so. He wanted to revalidate his academic credentials, but was denied. So, In 1934, he decided that he would not enter academic life, choosing to embark on a new path. From this moment on, his soul as a traveler took hold of him.

In 1937, he began working as an archive classifier at the Guadalajara Government Secretariat. At that time, he also began a decisive friendship with Efrén Hernández, the first person who believed in his writing. and encouraged him to make it public. In 1941, he held the position of migration agent and there he met the writer Juan José Arreola, who exerted a strong influence on Rulfo.

At that time, he had already developed the other passions that always accompanied him: photography, history and anthropology.. The Juan Rulfo who later became known through great works was already formed.

A universal writer

In 1948, Juan Rulfo married Clara Aparicio, with whom he had several children. Little by little His fame as a writer and intellectual grew and he was awarded several scholarships that were awarded to him by the Mexican Center of Writers, This allowed him to dedicate himself fully to writing.

In 1953 he published The Burning Plain and, in 1955, Pedro Paramo. The latter is considered one of the great novels of universal literature.

These two great works gave Juan Rulfo national and international fame. At the time, he was the most recognized writer in all of Mexico, received praise from great writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Susan Sontag, Gabriel García Márquez and many others.

The last twenty years of his life were dedicated to the National Indigenous Institute of Mexico, where he edited one of the most important collections of anthropology. He also had several photographic exhibitions and published new literary works in the 80s.

Rulfo was one of the first authors who managed to incorporate popular and local speech into his novels without the need to include a glossary., that is, without the need for a manual to decode it. The text itself already served to interpret the meaning and understand those most popular aspects of its language. In Latin America, there is a growing trend towards regionalism and even creolism.

Herminio Martínez and Juan Rulfo

Rulfo would mark a before and after; Without his work, we would not be able to understand subsequent literature.. Rulfo’s world is not so much regionalist, but rather rural, but he will be in charge of becoming a mythical author who would be referenced and praised by countless authors.

The legend of Rulfo is constructed as a kind of myth, it marks a kind of ironic distance between the reader and him.. This legend was reinforced by his silence; Rulfo stopped publishing after 1955, but the reasons are uncertain. Some scholars have wanted to see a certain anxiety in them, but it has not been possible to clarify either. The paradoxical thing about this author is that, as his fame as a writer increases, his production decreases.

His fame established him as one of the most recognized authors in Mexico and the awards were not long in coming. In 1983, he received the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, although he would die a few years later, in 1986.

It is not easy to describe in words what Juan Rulfo’s work inspires. Suffice it to say that it is unlike anything and, at the same time, familiar to everything.

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