A review of the literary field of Chihuahua in the 1980s: Palabras sin arrugas magazine and the Cosecha supplement

Abstract

This paper examines the historical relevance of two literary publications from Chihuahua that shaped dominant authorships within the local literary field, establishing a literary canon in Chihuahua’s capital during the 1980s. On Sunday, November 13, 1977, the cultural supplement Cosecha was published at the initiative of Professor Francisco Flores Aguirre, then director of the Escuela de Filosofía y Letras at the Universidad Autónoma de Chihuahua (UACH), in the newly created Section "C" of El Heraldo de Chihuahua. In October of the following year, Lourdes Carrillo and Federico Urtaza independently published the first issue of the magazine Palabras sin arrugas. During the publication period of these two cultural spaces, dominant positions emerged among their contributors, influencing the literary field in the following decades. Cosecha and Palabras sin arrugas played a crucial role for emerging authors, as these platforms helped define their literary positions. This analysis draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s (2002) concepts of the literary field and habitus, as well as Wendell V. Harris and Itamar Even-Zohar’s notion of the canon, derived from the theory of cultural polysystems. These theoretical frameworks will provide a deeper understanding of the role these publications played in shaping the literary field of the city of Chihuahua.