Jorge Ibargüengoitia Antillón was a Mexican novelist and playwright who achieved great popular and critical success with his satires, three of which have appeared in English: Las Muertas, Dos Crímenes, and Los Relámpagos de Agosto. His plays include Susana y los Jóvenes and Ante varias esfinges, both dating from the 1950s. In 1955, Ibarguengoitia received a Rockefeller grant to study in New York City; five years later he received the Mexico Cityliterary award. He died in Avianca Flight 011en route to Frankfurt via Paris, Madrid, and Caracas to Bogotá that crashed on November 27, 1983.
Work
Often, in his fiction, he took real-life scandals and subjected them to whimsical, sardonic treatment. Thus, Los Relámpagos de Agosto uses cartoonish mayhem to debunk the Mexican Revolution's heroic myths; improbably it won for its author the Premio Casa de las Américas, despite or because of the consternation which its flippancy caused. For Las Muertas he turned to the most outrageous criminals of his native state: the brothel-keepers Delfina and María de Jesús González, whose decade-long careers as serial killers emerged in 1964. Ibarguengoitia himself met a tragic end, on what became one of the blackest days in Latin American artistic history: departing from his then home in Paris, he perished along with Peruvian poet Manuel Scorza, Uruguayan critic Ángel Rama, Argentinian academic Marta Traba, and 177 others in the crash of Avianca Flight 011 on 27 November 1983. La ley de Herodes is a collection of short stories, most of which are clearly based on details from his own life. He describes, among many other events, the misadventures of getting a mortgage in Mexico and his experiences at Columbia University's International House. Like his novels, these stories combine farce, sexual peccadilloes, and humor. "Estas ruinas que ves" is a farce based on realistic details of academic life that are still visible in early 21st century Guanajuato: the clanging of church bells disconcerting a speaker, cutting the ribbon at museum openings, the set of cultural movers and shakers who have known each other since kindergarten. "Maten al leon" although set on an imaginary island is a novel mirroring the Latino-american dictatorships; its details are comic but the end is dark. Ibarguengoitia was also known for his weekly columns in the Mexico City newspaper Excelsior which have been collected in a half dozen paperback volumes. His novels are also available in paperback. The writer has been quoted as saying he never meant to make anyone laugh, that he thought laughter was useless and a pointless waste of time. He is buried in Antillon Park in Guanajuato where a talavera plaque marks his remains. In translation, it says simply, "Here lies Jorge Ibarguengoitia in the park of his great-grandfather who fought against the French."
Drama
La lucha con el ángel.
Clotilde en su casa, como Un adulterio exquisito. Publicada, en Teatro mexicano del siglo XX. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1956.
Ante varias esfinges.
El viaje superficial. Published in Revista Mexicana de Literatura, junio-septiembre, 1960.
Obras de Jorge Ibargüengoitia. Teatro I. Contiene: «Susana y los jóvenes», «Clotilde en su casa» y «La lucha con el ángel». México: Joaquín Mortiz, 1989.
Obras de Jorge Ibargüengoitia. Teatro II. Contiene: «Llegó Margó», «Ante varias esfinges» y tres piezas en un acto: «El loco amor viene», «El tesoro perdido» y «Dos crímenes». México: Joaquín Mortiz, 1989.
Obra de Jorge Ibargüengoitia. Teatro III. Contiene: «El viaje superficial», «Pájaro en mano», «Los buenos manejos», «La conspiración vendida» y «El atentado». México: Joaquín Mortiz, 1990.
