A hundred years after his death, the life and work of poet Amado Nervo was celebrated this Friday morning at Casa Haas with an emotional tribute organized by the MunicipalIInstituto de Cultura, Turismo y Arte de Mazatlan with the participation of artists and local intellectuals, and also, with the presence of Mayor of Mazatlan, Luis Guillermo “El Químico” Benítez Torres and the Director of Cultura, Marsol Quiñónez.
Organized by Alonso Guerra, the event was conducted by Fernando Alarriba and was formally inaugurated with the emotional reading of the poem “El Beso”, by María Muñiz. Later, writer Juan José Rodríguez was commissioned to highlight the universal transcendence of Amado Nervo, a writer who marked Latin American poetry and whose work was marked by mysticism, passion and melancholy.
Along with the reading of the poem “If you tell me to see,” novelist Aleyda Rojo spoke of her experience with Nervo’s work and pointed out that, for her generation, modernism defined the way of conceiving poetry.
For his part, “El Químico” Benítez recalled how from his childhood and youth the presence of Amado Nervo in Mazatlan was a fact that filled him with emotion and a deep desire to know the way in which this author reached universality through poetry. He also stressed the commitment of his administration to digitally restore the collection that the Municipal Archive protects to ensure that the cultural heritage of the Mazatlecan people is kept alive.
Luis Antonio Martínez Peña highlighted the importance of the two years that Nervo spent in Mazatlán: definitive years for his literary vocation, years in which he captured the daily life of the buoyant port, years in which he accumulated images and sensations that later shone in his poetry, years of construction of an intellectual legacy that is still with us and that must be preserved.
Finally, maestro Ramón Gómez Polo, director of the theater area of the Municipal Arts Center of Mazatlán, recited the poems “La espina que me huiere” and “En paz”, a reading that moved the audience and vibrantly closed this tribute to a giant of universal literature.
