- published: 20 Jun 2011
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Alfonso Reyes Ochoa (17 May 1889, Monterrey, Nuevo León – 27 December 1959, Mexico City) was a Mexican writer, philosopher and diplomat.
Alfonso Reyes parents were Bernardo Reyes and Aurelia Ochoa. His father was in important government positions during the government of Porfirio Díaz, such as the governorship of Nuevo León and the Secretary of War and Navy.
Alfonso Reyes was educated primarily in Mexico City.
In 1909, he and other like-minded young intellectuals such as Martín Luis Guzmán and José Vasconcelos, founded the Ateneo de la Juventud to promote new cultural and aesthetic ideals and educational reform in Mexico. At the age of 21, Reyes published his first book, Cuestiones estéticas. The following year, 1912, he wrote a short story, La Cena ("The Supper"), considered a forerunner of surrealism and of Latin American magical realism. In that year he was also named Secretary of the Escuela Nacional de Altos Estudios at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Reyes obtained his law degree in 1913, the same year that his father would die participating in an attempted coup d'état.