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The Most Famous

WRITERS from Mexico

This page contains a list of the greatest Mexican Writers. The pantheon dataset contains 5,755 Writers, 28 of which were born in Mexico. This makes Mexico the birth place of the 37th most number of Writers behind Bulgaria and Georgia.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary Mexican Writers of all time. This list of famous Mexican Writers is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of Mexican Writers.

1. Octavio Paz (1914 - 1998)

With an HPI of 66.82, Octavio Paz is the most famous Mexican Writer. His biography has been translated into 91 different languages on wikipedia.

Octavio Paz Lozano (March 31, 1914 – April 19, 1998) was a Mexican poet and diplomat. For his body of work, he was awarded the 1977 Jerusalem Prize, the 1981 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature.

2. Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648 - 1695)

With an HPI of 64.59, Juana Inés de la Cruz is the 2nd most famous Mexican Writer. Her biography has been translated into 54 different languages.

Doña Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana, better known as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (12 November 1648 – 17 April 1695) was a Mexican writer, philosopher, composer and poet of the Baroque period, and Hieronymite nun. Her contributions to the Spanish Golden Age gained her the nicknames of "The Tenth Muse" or "The Phoenix of America",; historian Stuart Murray calls her a flame that rose from the ashes of "religious authoritarianism".Sor Juana lived during Mexico's colonial period, making her a contributor both to early Spanish literature as well as to the broader literature of the Spanish Golden Age. Beginning her studies at a young age, Sor Juana was fluent in Latin and also wrote in Nahuatl, and became known for her philosophy in her teens. Sor Juana educated herself in her own library, which was mostly inherited from her grandfather. After joining a nunnery in 1667, Sor Juana began writing poetry and prose dealing with such topics as love, environmentalism, feminism, and religion. She turned her nun's quarters into a salon, visited by New Spain's female intellectual elite, including Doña Eleonora del Carreto, Marchioness of Mancera, and Doña Maria Luisa Gonzaga, Countess of Paredes de Nava, both Vicereines of the New Spain, amongst others. Her criticism of misogyny and the hypocrisy of men led to her condemnation by the Bishop of Puebla, and in 1694 she was forced to sell her collection of books and focus on charity towards the poor. She died the next year, having caught the plague while treating her sisters.After she had faded from academic discourse for hundreds of years, Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz re-established Sor Juana's importance in modern times. Scholars now interpret Sor Juana as a protofeminist, and she is the subject of vibrant discourse about themes such as colonialism, education rights, women's religious authority, and writing as examples of feminist advocacy.

3. Thomas Mayne Reid (1818 - 1883)

With an HPI of 59.95, Thomas Mayne Reid is the 3rd most famous Mexican Writer. His biography has been translated into 33 different languages.

Thomas Mayne Reid (4 April 1818 – 22 October 1883) was an Irish-American novelist, who fought in the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). His many works on American life describe colonial policy in the American colonies, the horrors of slave labour and the lives of American Indians. "Captain" Reid wrote adventure novels akin to those by Frederick Marryat and Robert Louis Stevenson, and set mainly in the American West, Mexico, South Africa, the Himalayas, and Jamaica. He was an admirer of Lord Byron.

4. Juan Rulfo (1917 - 1986)

With an HPI of 58.89, Juan Rulfo is the 4th most famous Mexican Writer. His biography has been translated into 49 different languages.

Juan Nepomuceno Carlos Pérez Rulfo Vizcaíno, best known as Juan Rulfo (Spanish: [ˈxwan ˈrulfo] audio ; 16 May 1917 – 7 January 1986), was a Mexican writer, screenwriter, and photographer. He is best known for two literary works, the 1955 novel Pedro Páramo, and the collection of short stories El Llano en llamas (1953). This collection includes the popular tale "¡Diles que no me maten!" ("Tell Them Not to Kill Me!").

5. Juan Ruiz de Alarcón (1581 - 1639)

With an HPI of 54.45, Juan Ruiz de Alarcón is the 5th most famous Mexican Writer. His biography has been translated into 29 different languages.

Juan Ruiz de Alarcón (c. 1581 - 4 August 1639) was a New Spain-born Spanish writer of the Golden Age who cultivated different variants of dramaturgy. His works include the comedy La verdad sospechosa (es), which is considered a masterpiece of Latin American Baroque theater.

6. Laura Esquivel (1950 - )

With an HPI of 53.99, Laura Esquivel is the 6th most famous Mexican Writer. Her biography has been translated into 33 different languages.

Laura Beatriz Esquivel Valdés (born September 30, 1950) is a Mexican novelist, screenwriter and politician, serving in the LXIII Legislature of the Mexican Congress in the Chamber of Deputies for the Morena Party from 2015 to 2018. Her first novel Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate) became a bestseller in Mexico and the United States, and was later developed into an award-winning film.

7. Rosario Castellanos (1925 - 1974)

With an HPI of 53.69, Rosario Castellanos is the 7th most famous Mexican Writer. Her biography has been translated into 34 different languages.

Rosario Castellanos Figueroa (Spanish pronunciation: [roˈsaɾjo kasteˈʝanos]; 25 May 1925 – 7 August 1974) was a Mexican poet and author. She was one of Mexico's most important literary voices in the last century. Throughout her life, she wrote eloquently about issues of cultural and gender oppression, and her work has influenced Mexican feminist theory and cultural studies. Though she died young, she opened the door of Mexican literature to women, and left a legacy that still resonates today.

8. Don Miguel Ruiz (1952 - )

With an HPI of 50.24, Don Miguel Ruiz is the 8th most famous Mexican Writer. His biography has been translated into 15 different languages.

Miguel Ángel Ruiz Macías (born August 27, 1952), better known as Don Miguel Ruiz, is a Mexican author of Toltec spiritualist and neoshamanistic texts. His work is best-received among members of the New Thought movement that focuses on ancient teachings as a means to achieve spiritual enlightenment. Ruiz is listed as one of the Watkins 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People in 2018. Some have associated Ruiz's work with Carlos Castaneda, author of The Teachings of Don Juan.

9. Mariano Azuela (1873 - 1952)

With an HPI of 50.09, Mariano Azuela is the 9th most famous Mexican Writer. His biography has been translated into 27 different languages.

Mariano Azuela González (January 1, 1873 – March 1, 1952) was a Mexican author and physician, best known for his fictional stories of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. He wrote novels, works for theatre and literary criticism. He is the first of the "novelists of the Revolution," and he influenced other Mexican novelists of social protest. Among Azuela's first published writing were some short pieces for the magazine Gil Blas Cómico, where he wrote under the pen name of "Beleño", and his writing published under the heading Impresiones de un estudiante (Impressions of a Student) in 1896. His first novel, Maria Luisa, was written in 1907, followed by Los fracasados (The Failures) in 1908, and Mala yerba (Weeds) in 1909. The theme of his beginning novels are about fate. He wrote of the social life of Mexicans during the Díaz dictatorship. After experiencing the Mexican Revolution first-hand, his writing style became sarcastic and disillusioned. His first novel with the Revolution theme is Andrés Pérez, maderista in 1911, followed by Sin Amor (Without Love) in 1912, and his most popular, Los de abajo (The Underdogs) in 1915. He continued to write short works and novels influenced by the Revolution. It includes El camarada Pantoja (Comrade Pantoja) in 1937, Regina Landa in 1939, La nueva burguesía (The New Bourgeoisie) in 1941, and La maldición (The Curse, published posthumously) in 1955. These works mainly depicts the satirical picture of life in post revolutionary Mexico sharply and angrily stigmatizing demagoguery and political intrigue.

10. Cesar Millan (1969 - )

With an HPI of 49.87, Cesar Millan is the 10th most famous Mexican Writer. His biography has been translated into 27 different languages.

César Felipe Millán Favela (; Spanish: [ˈsesaɾ miˈʝan]; born August 27, 1969) is a Mexican-American dog trainer. He is widely known for his Emmy-nominated television series Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan, which was produced from 2004 to 2012 and is broadcast in more than 80 countries worldwide.Millan is a New York Times best-selling author and has his own line of dog products and instructional DVDs. Prior to The Dog Whisperer series, Millan focused on rehabilitating severely aggressive dogs and founded a rehab complex, the Dog Psychology Center, in South Los Angeles (2002–2008). Millan's first three books, including Cesar's Way, all became New York Times best sellers, have cumulatively sold two million copies in the United States, and are available in 14 other countries.With Ilusión Millan, his former wife, he founded the Millan Foundation – later renamed the Cesar Millan Foundation and currently called the Cesar Millan PACK Project. The foundation was established to provide financial support to animal shelters and organizations engaged in the rescuing, rehabilitating, and re-homing of abused and abandoned animals, and to fund spay/neuter programs.

People

Pantheon has 28 people classified as writers born between 1581 and 1997. Of these 28, 11 (39.29%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living writers include Laura Esquivel, Don Miguel Ruiz, and Cesar Millan. The most famous deceased writers include Octavio Paz, Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Thomas Mayne Reid. As of April 2022, 2 new writers have been added to Pantheon including Valeria Luiselli and Alejandro Rejon Huchin.