Manuel Maples Arce

Manuel Maples Arce (1900-1981) was born in Papantla, Veracruz. The son of a judge, he spent time in Tuxpan before the family moved to Xalapa, where he attended prep school. He studied law in the city of Veracruz and Mexico City. In 1921, he published the first Stridentist manifesto, which drew a number of like-minded avant-gardists into his orbit and helped make connections with other radical artists in both Latin America and Europe. He returned to Xalapa in 1925 and was first a judge and then General Secretary of local government under General Herberto Jara, Governor of Veracruz at the time. Maples used his position to turn Xalapa into a center of revolutionary art, attracting left-wing artists from throughout Mexico and the world. When General Jara was removed from office, the artistic community in Xalapa fell apart and Maples entered the foreign service, serving in numerous diplomatic posts around the world. Though he abandoned both the politics and the avant-garde modes of his youth in later years, his major works of the period, Andamios interiores (1922), Urbe: superpoema bolchevique en cinco cantos (1924), and Poemas interdictos (1927) remain key texts of the global 20th century avant-garde.