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Rosario Castellanos (25 May 1925 – 7 August
1974) was a Mexico|Mexican poet and author. Born
in Mexico City, she was raised on the family ranch
near Comitán in the southern mexican state|state
of Chiapas. She was an introverted young girl, who
took notice of the plight of the indigenous Maya
people|Maya who worked for her family. According
to her own account, she felt estranged from her
family after a soothsayer predicted that one of
her mother's two children would die shortly, and
her mother screamed out, "Not the boy!"

The family's fortunes changed suddenly when
President of Mexico|President Lázaro Cárdenas
del Río|Lázaro Cárdenas enacted a land reform
and peasant emancipation policy that stripped the
family of much of its land holdings. At sixteen,
Rosario Castellanos and her parents moved to
Mexico City. One year later, her parents were dead
and she was left to fend for herself. 

Although she remained introverted, she joined a
group of Mexican and Central American
intellectuals, read extensively, and began to
write. She studied philosophy and literature at
the UNAM|National University, where she would
later teach, and joined the National Indigenous
Institute, writing scripts for puppet shows that
were staged in impoverished regions to promote
literacy. Ironically, the Institute had been
founded by President Cárdenas, who had taken away
her family's land. She also wrote a weekly column
for the newspaper Excélsior.

Throughout her career, Castellanos wrote poetry,
essays, and two novels the semi-autobiographical
Balún Canán, and The Book of Lamentations
(novel)|The Book of Lamentations, depicting an
imaginary peasant uprising in Chiapas. In
recognition for her contribution to Mexican
literature, Castellanos was appointed that
country's ambassador to Israel. She died in Tel
Aviv from a freak electrical accident, when she
tried to plug a lamp into a wall socket. Though
she died young, she had opened the door of Mexican
literature to women, and left a legacy that still
resonates today, and is helpful in understanding
the current unrest in Chiapas.