On May 5, which is a day of celebrating “mexicanidad” we enjoyed the 
inauguration of a new lecture series focusing on writers and scholars 
who are students or former students of the Department of Spanish & 
Portuguese  (“Writers and Scholars from SPAP-UMCP”). The first lecture 
was presented by Ph.D. candidate Álvaro Enrigue currently working in the 
Ministry of Publications for the government of Mexico (Dirección General 
de Publicaciones, del Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 
CONACULTA).  Álvaro received the prestigious Joaquín Mortiz prize for 
his first novel, La muerte de un instalador (1996), and has authored El 
cementerio de sillas (2002), selected as the best book written in México 
in 2002.  Virtudes capitales (1998) was his first short story 
collection. Hipotermia, based on his experiences in Maryland, received 
the Premio Anagrama (2005). A new novel, Vidas perpendiculares was also 
published by Anagrama (2008).  The last two books have been translated 
into French and published by the eminent Gallimard Press (2009), and 
English translations are also in progress.

 Alvaro’s impressive lecture, “El sueño de la República produce
cursis” showed a broad knowledge of Latin American poetics and a sense of humor 
that reached faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students alike. The 
lecture reflected on nineteenth Mexican intellectuals and the birth of 
the middle class alongside the rise of a new modernista language.