Elena Poniatowska - Advocacy and Writing Style

Advocacy and Writing Style

Her work is a cross between literary fiction and historical construction. She began to produce major works in the 1960s and her work matured in the 1970s, when she turned to producing works in put herself in solidarity with those who are oppressed politically and economically against those in power. Her work can be compared to that of Antonio Skármeta, Luis Rafael Sánchez, Marta Traba, Sergio Ramirez, Rosario Ferré, Manuel Puig and Fernando del Paso . Although most of her fame is as a journalist, she prefers creative writing. Her creative writings are philosophic meditations and assessments of society and the disenfranchised within it. Her writing style is free, lacking solemnity, colloquial and close. Many of her works are about deconstruction societal and political myths, but they also work to create new ones. For example, while she heavily criticizes the national institutions which evolved after the Mexican Revolution, she promotes a kind of “popular heroism” of the common person without name. Her works are also impregnated with a sense of fatalism.

Like many intellectuals in Mexico, her focus is on human rights issues and defending various social groups, especially those she considers to be oppressed by those in power, which include women, the poor and others. She speaks and writes about them even though she herself is a member of Mexico’s elite, using her contacts as such on others’ behalf. She is not an impartial writer as she acts as an advocate for those who she feels have no voice. She feels that a personal relationship with her subjects is vital. She stated to La Jornada that the student movement of 1968 left a profound mark on her life and caused her consciousness to change as students were murdered by their own police. It was after this that she was clear that the purpose of her writing was to change Mexico. She has visited political and other prisoners in jail, especially strikers and the student protestors of 1968. According to one biography, her house was watched around the clock. She was arrested twice (one in jail for twelve hours and once detained for two) when observing demonstrations. However, she has never written about this.

She has involved herself in the causes of her protagonists which are generally women, farm workers and laborers and also include the indigenous, such as the Zapatistas in Chiapas in the 1990s. She puts many in touch with those on the left side of Mexico’s and the world’s political spectrum although she is not officially affiliated with any of them. She considers herself a feminist to the bone and looks upon civil movements with sympathy and enthusiasm. However she has resisted offers to become formally involved in political positions. She became involved in Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s 2005 presidential campaign. She wrote about the seven week occupation of the Zócalo that followed López Obrador’s loss in 2006. She blames Mexico’s businessmen and the United States for his loss as well as López Obrador’s naivete.