About Alfonso Reyes
Alfonso Reyes Ochoa (17 May 1889 – 27 December 1959) was a Mexican writer, philosopher and diplomat. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times and has been acclaimed as one of the greatest authors in the Spanish language. He served as ambassador of Mexico to Argentina and Brazil. == Biography == Born in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Alfonso Reyes was the ninth of the twelve children of General Bernardo Reyes Ogazón, Governor of Nuevo León and Secretary of War and Navy under President Porfirio Díaz (considered by some to be his natural successor), and his wife Aurelia Ochoa-Garibay y Sapién, a member of a prominent family from Jalisco, direct descendants of Conquistador Diego de Ochoa-Garibay, as documented by Reyes in his Parentalia. Reyes was educated at various colleges in Monterrey, the Liceo Francés de México, the Colegio Civil de Monterrey, and later at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria and graduated from the Escuela Nacional de Jurisprudencia, which later became the law school at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in 1913. In 1909, he helped to found the Ateneo de la Juventud, along with other young intellectuals including Martín Luis Guzmán, José Vasconcelos, Julio Torri, and Pedro Henríquez Ureña, to promote new cultural and aesthetic ideals and educational reform in Mexico. In 1911, Reyes published his first book, Cuestiones estéticas. The following year, he wrote the short story La Cena ("The Supper"), which is considered a forerunner of surrealism and Latin American magical realism. In that year he was also named Secretary of the Escuela Nacional de Altos Estudios at the National University. Reyes obtained his law degree in 1913, the same year that his father died while participating in an coup d'état against President Francisco I. Madero.
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