Manuel Ulacia (1953 – 2001) was the grandson of Manuel Altolaguirre and Concha Mendez, two artists in Spain’s “Generation of ’27,” associated with the liberal leftist reform movement of Spain and persecuted by Franco at the start of the Spanish Civil War. Ulacia’s family first fled to Cuba and then settled in Mexico, where the poet was raised. Manuel received a master’s and Ph.D. in Hispanic literature at Yale in the 1970s, where he specialized in the poetry of the gay Spanish poet Luis Cernuda. Ulacia would then return to Mexico, teach at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, become a protégé of Octavio Paz, and eventually become president of PEN’s Mexico chapter, where he actively supported dissident writers. Furthermore, Ulacia was gay. He died in 2001 at age 48, swept out to sea while swimming off a Mexican beach. Read More
