Quick Facts
Biography
Mario Santiago Papasquiaro is the pen name of José Alfredo Zendejas Pineda (Mexico City, December 25, 1953 – 1998). Mexican poet and co-founder of the infrarrealista poetry movement.
Biography
His first reading was in 1973. In 1976 he founded the infrarrealismo (infrarealism) movement along with Roberto Bolaño, Cuauhtémoc Méndez Estrada, Ramon Méndez Estrada, Bruno Montané, Rubén Medina, Juan Esteban Harrington, Oscar Altamirano, Jose Peguero, Guadalupe Ochoa, Jose Vicente Anaya, Edgar Altamirano, Elmer Santana and Mara Larrosa. Infrarealism was a vanguard literary movement representing a rupture with the Mexican literary establishment; Santiago is considered by many to be the principal exponent and purest stylistic representative of the movement. His poems are complex, erudite, and highly metaphorical. Santiago sought an aesthetic of signs, much like the calligrams of Guillaume Apollinaire. The majority of his work is still unpublished.
Roberto Bolaño used Santiago as the basis for the character of Ulises Lima in his novel The Savage Detectives. Like Santiago, the Lima character is an eccentric adventurer, and an opponent of the traditional forms of writers who sold out for state scholarships. Santiago frequently made enemies due to his sincerity and open criticism of what he deemed inferior forms of poetry, the literary elite, and poets themselves. He has gained slight recognition, though he is recognized and lauded by the recorded oral testimonies of his "comrades-in-arms".
Works
His poems were collected in Aullido de cisne, published in 1996. He died after being hit by a car on January 10, 1998 in Mexico City. This is the last poem he wrote was EME ESE PE, published in La Jornada newspaper days before his death.