The Guadalajara Reporter

Respected intellectual, writer, political analyst, historian, publisher loses once sharp critical eye, finds president’s questionable ways compatible

“Vigilantes on the March” was the rousing title of an op-ed piece in the New York Times February 3.

But the piece caught many readers’ attention not for its headline but for its byline and its passive content. It especially grabbed the interest of those with a serious interest in Mexico’s culture and politics. That’s because it was written by Enrique Krauze.  For those not enchanted by the intellectual/political trajectories of this country, Krauze’s impressive credentials are usually lengthily rolled out: “A Mexican public intellectual, cultural entrepreneur, historian, essayist, critic, engineer, polemicist and publisher.” In his 20s, Krauze became an associate of the godfather of Mexico’s 1950‘s literary “boom,” submitting articles to Octavio Paz’s ”Plural” magazine. When that publication was shut down by an angry President Luis Echeverria (1960-1976), he became assistant to Paz who founded the magazine “Vuelta.”  (Paz was to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990.) 

The sweep of this list of Krauze’s expertise and accomplishments makes the NYT column that much more surprising for many.  Krauze’s adoption of a new, complacent post-2012 election view of Mexico shocked many Mexican readers.

Through his “cultural” magazine “Letras Libres,” distributed in a number of Spanish-speaking countries, he has in the past presented a more acute – and accurate – examination of Mexico’s reality than much of this country’s media. Krauze, a survivor of the government’s student massacre of 1968, is now 67, no longer considered demographically as “old” as it once was.

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