Legacy of Rosario Castellanos deposited in the Caja de las Letras, in Madrid

Madrid. An album of family photographs and 14 first editions of some of their most important books, such as the novel Balloon Cannon or the compilation of letters Letters to Ricardo, They are part of the legacy of the Mexican writer Rosario Castellanos that was deposited in the Caja de las Letras of the Instituto Cervantes in Madrid, which has become a place to protect the cultural heritage of some of the great creators of our language.

From now on, these objects and literary texts of the Chiapas author will share space with the legacy of other figures, such as Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz, Juan Gelman, José Emilio Pacheco, Gabriel García Márquez, Miguel Hernández, Juan Ramón Jiménez and Ernesto Cardenal, among others.

The box assigned to Rosario Castellanos’ legacy was number 165, in which the family photo album was placed, among which was an image of her in her office at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) along with Juan Rulfo, José Emilio Pacheco, Carlos Vélez and Juan García Ponce. In addition to copies of his books, including the first edition of his first novel, Cannon Balloon, and three other first editions of Royal City, his first book of stories; Woman who knows Latin, from 1973, dedicated to the exiled Spanish philosopher Luis Villoro; and The sea and its fish, whose originals were received two days before his death, in 1974, becoming his first posthumous work.

The compilation also lies in the warehouse Letters to Ricardo, 1974, with a foreword by Elena Poniatowska, and new editions of the work that have been published, especially in this year that commemorates the centenary of her birth.

The family photo album was delivered thanks to the author’s son, Gabriel Guerra Castellanos, who thanked through a video that the Cervantes Institute opened a space for his mother in the Caja de las Letras; Furthermore, he recalled that “Rosario Castellanos spent a deeply significant and formative year of her life in Spain.

She won a scholarship that she shared, with this spirit of friendship without barriers, without borders, without selfishness, with her best friend of all life, Dolores Castro, also a poet. He shared the scholarship and they lived with the deprivations that this entailed in Madrid in the 1950s, where they discovered that whole world in which even in the dark times of dictatorships it flourished thanks to Hispanic culture, history and tradition.

“That today the doors of the Caja de las Letras archive are opened to adopt the legacy of a woman who worked not only for culture and letters, but also for the great causes of her life, that of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, that of women, equality, care for the discriminated against, the unprotected, excites and moves me,” said Guerra Castellanos.