Alma Guillermoprieto

Alma Guillermoprieto is widely read in both the English- and Spanish-speaking worlds, where she's considered an authority on the cultural and political life of Mexico and South America -- especially as they relate to the United States. Writing for the last thirty years with a journalist's breadth and depth -- but also (and always) folding in her personal experiences -- she traces the history of Latin America, while giving us a glimpse into its future. Quite simply, she has "set the standard for elegant writing in English on Latin America," writes The New York Times Book Review.

Born in Mexico, and raised in Mexico and in the U.S., Alma Guillermoprieto is a MacArthur Fellow, and a winner of the George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting. In the 1990s, for The New Yorker and other magazines, she wrote a remarkable series of stories on Latin America, covering everything from the Colombian Civil War to the "Dirty War" in Argentina. Later collected into two books, Looking for History and The Heart That Bleeds, these stories form a definitive portrait of Latin America during the "Lost Decade." Her other books include Samba, about the year she spent with carnival-makers in Rio, and Dancing with Cuba, about the six months she spent teaching dance in Cuba in the 1970s.

Select Keynotes by Alma Guillermoprieto

How to Be Mexican

Issues surrounding Mexico -- especially U.S.-Mexican relations -- have never been more heated. With globalization reshaping traditional Mexican ways of life, Guillermoprieto asks, What does it mean to be a Mexican today? How is it different from what this meant a decade ago? How "Mexican" are the new Mexicans? Drawing from one of the most respected bodies of journalism of the past three decades, she answers these questions as only she can.