A treinta anos de Plural (1971-1976), revista fundada y dirigida por Octavio Paz.

• Author: Perales, Jaime
• Position: Books: mishaps, myths, and antimodernism

A treinta anos de Plural (1971-1976), revista fundada y dirigida por Octavio Paz (Plural [1971-1976]: Thirty Years Later: A Magazine Founded and Edited by Octavio Paz). Eds., Marie-Jose Paz, Adolfo Castanon, and Danubio Torres Fierro. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 2001.

Octavio Paz's magazine Plural, an elegant fusion of literature and politics, came into being in October 1971, three years after the Mexican police fired on a student march protesting the army's occupation of the National Polytechnic Institute, on October 2, 1968. Paz resigned as Mexican ambassador to India to protest the events of 1968, articulating his strong differences with the government of President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz (1964-70) and with the PRI regime. Nevertheless, Plural flourished during five of the six years of the regime of President Luis Echeverria (1970-76).

In the symbolic month of October, in 2001, A treinta anos de Plural was published in celebration of the magazine's anniversary. It was edited by the poet's widow, Marie-Jose Paz, and two close collaborators, Adolfo Castanon and Danubio Torres Fierro. This year the Fondo de Cultura Economica will publish a facsimile edition of all fifty-eight impossible-to-find issues. It's comforting to know that any reader who is interested in the cultural life of Mexico during that period will be able to read Plural without having to traipse to four or five different libraries making photocopies.

The volume brings together collaborators' testimonies and commentaries, as well as several texts by and interviews with Paz that appeared in other volumes published during the poet's lifetime (for example, El ogro filantropico y Pasion critica). The collaborators' commentaries and previously unpublished anecdotes are important because they allow us to perceive the dimensions and development of the magazine in the highly politicized cultural environment of the sixties.

The group of testimonies...