San Francisco Frontiers - Mexican writer Elena Poniatowska's typewriter, photographs go on display

Poniatowska, winner of the 2013 Cervantes Prize -- the most prestigious award in Spanish-language literature -- and still active at the age of 93, was not at all pleased with the idea of an exhibition about her life.

"But what I've done my whole life is give a voice to others!" the writer protested when organizers proposed the project to her, according to Alejandro Brito, director of the Museo del Estanquillo in the historic center of the Mexican capital.

The exhibition, which explores her career in journalism and literature, opens on Saturday at the museum founded by Carlos Monsivais, Poniatowska's close friend and literary partner who died in 2010.

On display is a 1955 essay on photography by Mexican painter Diego Rivera, a letter from author Fernando del Paso and photographs from Poniatowska's interviews with figures who have shaped Mexico's artistic, political and social life over the past seven decades.

The writer, born in Paris in 1932 and distantly related to the last Polish king, arrived in Mexico aged 10 and developed an interest in journalism and literature early on.

- 'Massacre in Mexico' -

Photographs show her reporting from a prison, where she interviewed students who were political prisoners following a massacre against student demonstrators in 1968.

Those interviews inspired her to write one of her most courageous and well-known books "Massacre in Mexico."

At the time, the work was hailed for raising awareness about the brutal military repression that had been kept under wraps.

According to her son Felipe Haro, director of the Elena Poniatowska Amor Foundation, his mother wrote the book because "she felt comfortable in the prison; she liked the stories" she found there.

"Elena is a great storyteller," he told AFP during a media tour of the exhibition.

The author, who continues to write and publish, recently visited President Claudia Sheinbaum at Mexico's National Palace.

Sheinbaum asked if Poniatowska needed help getting from the parking lot to the presidential office.

"She almost took offense when we asked her (...) she walked in perfectly fine, completely lucid," the president said at a press conference this week.

During the press tour, Haro said the family had received offers from abroad to display the archives, but that his mother wanted the collection to remain in Mexico.

"Taking the archive away is like taking away the memory" of a country, Haro said.

H.Reyes--SFF