Birth of Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz was born on 31 March 1914 in Mixcoac. A Mexican poet, essayist and diplomat, Paz was a leading Latin American intellectual of the twentieth century. His poems, such as Sunstone and Blanco, combined surrealism, Eastern thought and a meditation on time and love, and his essays, particularly The Labyrinth of Solitude, examined Mexican identity. He served in the diplomatic corps as ambassador to India, resigning in 1968 to protest the Tlatelolco massacre of students in Mexico City. He founded the literary magazines Plural and Vuelta, and in 1990 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.

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