alurista

alurista is one of the leading literary figures of the Chicano Movement era. He is most well-known for his support of the Chicano Movement through his literature and poetry. alurista was born in Mexico City on August 8, 1947, given the name Alberto Baltazar Alurista. It was in 1966 that he began to write ardent poetry for publication and adopted the pen name alurista, the only name he uses now. When alurista began to publish poetry in the late 1960s he soon became recognized for his dexterity in English, Spanish, Raya, and Nahuatl, and also for blending standard and slang languages in his writings.

After coming to the United States as a teenager, alurista graduated from High school in 1965 and began studying business administration at Chapman College, in Orange, California, only to find that this field was uninteresting to him. He then transferred to San Diego State College and began studying religion. However, when he found the overwhelming dogma of the instructors too much for him, he switched to sociology, and then to social welfare. It was at San Diego State that alurista helped establish MECHA in 1967. During the Denver Youth Conference in 1969, alurista helped draft El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan (The Spiritual Plan of Aztlan), which offered support to the resolutions being adopted by the conference members. alurista went on to earn his M.A. from San Diego State in 1978 and then his Ph.D. in literature from the University of California, San Diego in 1983. He focused his dissertation on Oscar Zeta Acosta’s, The Revolt of the Cockroach People. He has published five anthologies of his poetry, and many essays on the Chicano Movement as well as on Chicano culture. He resides in Denver, Colorado, where he is a faculty member at Escuela Tlatelolco teaching Chicano thought, culture, and literature.

The alurista papers were established in CEMA in 1991.

For his earlier literary transcripts, see the Benson Latin-American Collection at UT, Austin.