María Enriqueta Camarillo


María Enriqueta Camarillo was a Mexican poet-novelist, short story writer and translator. She was highly decorated for her works having schools and libraries named after her, as well as a bust by Spanish sculptor Mariano Benlliure erected in Hidalgo Park in Mexico City in her honor. She received the 1923 literary prize from Académie française for her novel El Secreto. She was awarded a collaborative partnership in 1927 with the Real Academia Hispano-Americana de Ciencias y Artes of Cádiz for her textbook Rosas de la Infancia and for the same work a prize as best children's literature at the Literary Salon of the Universal Exposition in Seville, Spain. Camarillo was granted the Order of Isabella the Catholic in 1947 and in 1948 received the Civil Order of Alfonso X, the Wise.

Biography

María Enriqueta Camarillo y Roa was born 19 January 1872 in Coatepec, Veracruz, Mexico to Alejo Camarillo and Dolores Roa Bárcena who, turn was niece of the writer José María Roa Bárcena. There is a plaque affixed to the house she was born in located on Jiménez del Campillo Street in Coatepec. In 1879, her father was elected to the Chamber of Deputies and moved the family from Coatepec to Mexico City. In 1887, she entered the National Conservatory of Music and earned her diploma as a piano teacher in 1895. Without giving up her music, Camarillo then takes up painting and writing verse. In 1897, her father was posted to an administrative position in Nuevo Laredo and the family left the capital.
In 1894 she published her first poem, “Hastío” in the literary supplement of the newspaper El Universal, using the pseudonym Ivan Moszkowski. She kept sending poems to El Universal and the Revista Azul even after the family moved to Nueva Larado. In 1897, she began sending work to Mundo Ilustrado, El Expectador in Monterrey, Crónica in Guadalajara and the El Diario in Mexico City, as well.
In 1898, Camarillo married and returned to Mexico City. Her first book, one of a single long poem was published in 1902. The following year, her father died and Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera offered her the opportunity to tell his story in Revista Azul. "El maestro Floriani" was her first published prose piece and was dedicated to her father's memory. The first book of a poetry collection Rumores de mi huerto appeared in 1908 and would be republished in 1922.
She worked at a feminist magazine, called La Mujer Mexicana from 1904 to 1906. The ideology was directed to the nineteenth century culture of domesticity, but it was one of the first Mexican magazines written by women for women. The women who wrote for La Mujer Mexicana were poets, writers, teachers, lawyers, and doctors, including besides Camarillo, attorney María Sandoval de Zarco; writers Dolores Roa Bárcena de Camarillo, Laura Méndez de Cuenca, Dolores Jiménez y Muro and Dolores Correa Zapata, who was also a teacher; the medical doctors Columba Rivera, Guadalupe Sánchez and Antonia Ursúa; and the teachers Luz Fernández Vda. de Herrera and Mateana Murguía de Aveleyra.
In 1912, she was commissioned by the publisher Viuda de Charles Bouret of Paris to write a series of children's books for grammar schools—one book for each grade. Rosas de la Infancia was written in 6 volumes, but only 5 were published. The work was to be used as textbooks, and after its 1914 printing, became mandatory under the educational reforms initiated by José Vasconcelos, Secretariat of Education. They remained a mainstay in Mexican education until Lázaro Cárdenas changed school curricula to a Socialist ideology. The book won several awards from Spain as well, but they were much later, after Mexico was no longer using it as a textbook. In 1927, she was awarded a collaborative partnership with the Real Academia Hispano-Americana de Ciencias y Artes of Cádiz and in 1930, she won best children's literature for Rosas de la Infancia at the Literary Salon of the Universal Exposition in Seville, Spain.
Her first novel, Mirliton was published in Madrid in 1918 and well-received, being then translated into French. That same year, she published Jirón de Mundo and followed that with Sorpresas de la vida in 1921. El Secreto was one of her most praised works. It was translated into Italian and Portuguese and, in Mexico, schools and libraries were renamed in her honor. A monument was erected in Hidalgo Park in Mexico City, which featured a bronze bust of Camarillo, created by the Spanish sculptor Mariano Benlliure. The novel was selected in 1923, by the Académie française of France, as the best Hispanic female novel and was translated into French. She received a prize from the Académie, as well as receiving praise from Paul Valéry.
Entre el polvo de un castillo was a children's book. El misterio de su muerte and Enigma y Símbolo were both published in 1926, after which she returned to poetry with Album sentimental. Cuentecillos de cristal was another collection of children's stories translated into Portuguese and was followed by El arca de colores in 1929. Her next book Brujas, Lisboa, Madrid is unlike anything she had written before. It was a travelogue of a sort, looking at the spirits of the cities of Bruges, Lisbon, and Madrid and how the essence of each city had affected her. Del tapiz de mi vida is a collection of autobiographical reflections on children, he mother's death, and travels through Belgium, Switzerland, and Spain.
Camarillo's husband was a diplomat in the service of President Porfirio Díaz. When Díaz was ousted from power, the couple went into exile in Spain. She lived in Spain for 32 years. After the death of her husband in 1942, Camarillo decided to return to Mexico and permanently returned in 1948.
In addition to her own writing, Camarillo translated the works from classical French theater and literature of the seventeenth century; witnesses of the French Revolution; and philosophers like Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Henri-Frédéric Amiel, and Rodolphe Töpffer.
Camarillo died on 13 February 1968 in Mexico City, Mexico and was buried in the City Cemetery of Coatepec, Veracruz.

Personal details

In 1898, she married the historian and diplomat Carlos Pereyra. They had no children.
Her house was converted into a museum. Now it called the "House Museum Maria Enriqueta Camarillo" and is located in her hometown of Coatepec, Veracruz, Mexico, at the following address: Ignacio Zaragoza 3 Centro, 91500 Coatepec, Veracruz-Llave, Mexico. Phone: +52 228 816 0499. This home was not where she was born, but she received it as a gift when she returned to Mexico after living abroad for many years.

Awards

Poems