Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz Lozano (31 March 1914 – 19 April 1998) was a Mexican poet, essayist and diplomat, born and died in Mexico City.

He entered Mexico's diplomatic service in 1945 and served abroad for more than two decades, including as ambassador to India from 1962 to 1968; he resigned that post in protest at the Mexican government's suppression of the student demonstrations at Tlatelolco.

His work moves between poetry and the essay — the long poem Piedra de sol (Sunstone), the book-length meditation on Mexican identity The Labyrinth of Solitude, and the criticism of The Bow and the Lyre and Children of the Mire. He received the Premio Cervantes in 1981 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1990.