José Luis Martínez Rodríguez


José Luis Martínez Rodríguez was a Mexican academic, diplomat, essayist, historian, bibliographer and editor. He was the director of the Fondo de Cultura Económica from 1977 to 1982 and professor of literature with the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Career

He became an Academic Numerary of the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua in 1960. From 1980 to 2002 he was the Director and, in 2003, was named Honorary Director in perpetuity. He was also a numerary at the Academia Mexicana de la Historia, beginning in 1993, and a corresponding member of the Academia Peruana de la Lengua and the Academia Dominicana de la Lengua. From 1965 to 1970 he was Director general of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes.
In addition to his academic posts, he served as Mexico's representative at UNESCO for the year 1963-64 and was ambassador to Greece from 1971 to 1974.
Among the many awards and honors he has received are the National Prize for Arts and Sciences for Literature and Linguistics, the Alfonso Reyes International Prize, the Menéndez Pelayo International Prize, the Spanish Civil Order of Alfonso X, the Wise and the French Legion of Honor. In 1967, he became a Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.
His personal library was one of the largest in Mexico; it has been preserved in the National Library.

Director of the Fondo de Cultura Económica

During his leadership of the Fondo de Cultura Económica, over 700 new titles were published and he created the Revistas Literarias Mexicanas Modernas collection, which reprinted, in facsimile editions, the most important literary magazines published in Mexico during the first half of the twentieth century. He also focused on rebuilding the general catalog by reissuing a total of 1084 titles of continuing cultural significance.

Selected works