Antonieta Rivas Mercado: notable cultural promoter of the early 20th century

Abstract

This article examines the life and work of Antonieta Rivas Mercado (1900-1931), not only as a tragic muse, but also as a decisive cultural agent in the cultural modernization of Mexico. Through an analysis of her private correspondence, her political chronicle of the Vasconcelos campaign, and her financial and intellectual involvement in projects such as the Teatro Ulises and the journal Contemporáneos, her figure is reconstructed beyond the myth of her suicide at Notre Dame. It explores the tensions between her private and public life, characterized by a constant challenge to folkloric nationalism in favor of a universalist culture, concluding that her writing and patronage constituted an act of resistance and a search for her own identity in a patriarchal and post-revolutionary environment.