Alvaro Mutis Dies: Famed Colombian Poet And Author Dead At 90 In Mexico City

Álvaro Mutis, the Colombian poet and author who won a plethora of Spanish-language literature's most prestigious awards, died on Sunday at 90 in a Mexico City hospital. Mexican media reported that the cause of death was complications arising from ongoing heart troubles and a bout of pneumonia. One of the most important Latin American writers of his era, he leaves behind nine volumes of poetry and well over a dozen books of fiction and non-fiction narrative, most notably his seven novellas narrating the adventures of Maqroll the Sailor, whose restlessness of mind and flesh place him decidedly among the classic quixotic characters of modern literature.

Mutis was born on August 25, 1923 in Bogota, Colombia, and published his first volume of poetry, "The Balance", at the age of 25. A second, "Elements of the Disaster", followed five years later. But it was his trip to Mexico in 1956 which was to mark out his path as a very different one. Three years after he got there, while working as head of public relations for US oil firm Standard Oil, the company accused him of embezzlement, and he spent 15 months in Mexico City's Lecumberri prison. Upon his release, he wrote and published an account of his experiences in that notorious jail called simply "Diary of Lecumberri". In it, he called his time in prison "a lesson in the most intense and profound layers of pain and failure".

Some of that can be sensed on the pages of Maqroll's adventures. In 2001, when fellow author Francisco Goldman pointed out that there was "a sense of renunciation about Maqroll" in an interview for BOMB magazine, Mutis agreed: "Yes, radical renunciation. But he, unlike Saint Francis, does not want to make this renunciation into a regimen for others or for a community. He says no to things precisely because of his philosophy of not trying to change anyone-each person is the way he is and that's it. Now, if I were to load up on-as Maqroll would say-luxury items and objects, and these objects were to define me, I would be forced to stay still, not move. This doesn't suit me; I don't need anything."

Though Mutis's fiction was to frequently depict ramshackle ports in tropical backwaters of Latin America, he was to remain in Mexico City, which he called his home for some 50 years. A wake will be held in a funeral home today in the south of the Mexican capital.

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