This Day In Latino History

On this day in 1888, Ramon Lopez Velarde, considered to be Mexico’s national poet, was born in Jerez, Zacatecas. (Or as we like to call it, Zacky Tackies.) Unlike everyone else we’ve ever listed on This Day In Latino History, Roman was actually born to parents with money! Yaaaay. Which is probably why we’d personally never heard of him before. (You know, NOTHING happened today in Latino history???) But Mexico sure did. He was raised by a lawyer turned Catholic school founder and grew up to study and practice law himself. But he never gave up the pen. In 1916 he published his first book, La sangre devota and it was well received by the literary community. Even if he was a staunch Catholic. In 1919, he published Zozobra, considered by the majority of critics to be his major work. And it wasn’t until after his death in 1920 (syphilis–it’s always the Catholics), that his third book, El son del corazón, was published. It was during this time that Mexican minister of education pushed for various honors to be bestowed upon him posthumously. He was eventually recognized as Mexico’s national poet, “the ultimate expression of post-revolutionary Mexican culture.”