Efraín Huerta Roma (June 18, 1914 – February 3, 1982) was a Mexican poet and journalist. Born and raised in the state of Guanajuato, he moved to Mexico City initially to start a career in art. Unable to enter the Academy of San Carlos, he attended the Escuela Preparatoria Nacional, where he met writers such as Rafael Solana, Carmen Toscano and Octavio Paz. He had been writing poetry since he was young, but initially opted to attend law school; however, when he published his first book of poems, he left it to pursue writing full-time. As a poet, he published regularly from the 1930s to the 1980s, and as a journalist collaborated with over twenty newspapers and journals, under his own name and using pseudonyms. He was also active politically, a communist and Stalin supporter through his life with his social and political ideas finding their way into his writing. Poetically, he is part of the Taller generation of Mexican poets, although his development was a bit different from others in this group. Near the end of his career, his work had developed a colloquial style, including work focusing on Mexico City and creating a new form called a “poemínimo.”
Efraín Huerta was born Efrén Huerta Roma in Silao, Guanajuato, Mexico, in 1914, during the Mexican Revolution which would have a profound impact on his life and Mexico in the 20th century. He was the seventh of eight children born to José Mercedes Huerta, a lawyer and judge and Sara Roma, with two of his siblings dying in childhood.
The family moved to Irapuato in 1917, where the parents separated, with Huerta moving with his mother and siblings to León, and later in 1925 to Querétaro. Huerta's father remained in Irapuato where the poet visited him on occasion as a teenager. Huerta began primary school late in León, and went on to middle school in Querétaro, attending the Colegio Civil del Estado and later the Academia de Bellas Artes. In his youth he held various types of jobs including drawing advertising posters. In his free time, he was a passionate soccer player, and later in his life would become a fan of the Mexico City Atlante team, never missing a home game.
Huerta's interest in drawing prompted him to move to Mexico City at age 16 and live with family members while he tried to get into the Academy of San Carlos, but was not accepted. Nonetheless, Huerta would remain in this city for the rest of his life, living in various neighborhoods in the center and west such as Tabacalera, El Periodista, historic center and Polanco.
Instead, Huerta entered the National Preparatory School in 1931, studying under Julio Torri and Agustín Loera y Chávez and forming friendships with Rafael Solana and Carmen Toscano. Huerta also met Octavio Paz at the institution, who was one year ahead of him. Paz and Huerta formed a close relationship in their youth, sharing social, literary and political interests. However, in later life, these two would become distant as their political views diverged.
Huerta entered the law school of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1933, but stayed for only two years. At this time, he changed his name to Efraín, at the suggestion of Rafael Solana, with the idea that it sounded better. For a short time he also used the Hebrew version Ephraím. During his time in law school, Huerta had continued to write poetry, and when the book Absoluto amor (which he dedicated to Adela María Salinas) was published in 1935, he left to dedicate himself to writing.
In 1941, Huerta married his first wife, Mireya Bravo Munguía, who he had known for a decade prior, with Octavio Paz as best man. She appears in his poetry as “Andrea de Plata. The couple had three children Andrea Huerta Bravo (1943), Eugenia Huerta Bravo (1945) and David Huerta Bravo (1949-2022). Much of his day-to-day life during this period revolved about the historic center of Mexico City, especially the area around the Monument to the Revolution and the main street called San Juan de Letrán (today Eje Central). Late nights he was a regular customer at Sidralí, a hot dog and cider establishment, a favorite among journalists, and every Sunday was spent at the Ciudad de los Deportes to watch a bullfight or a match involving the Atlante team. He was an involved father, especially with his two daughters, taking them to the movies, to the Zaplana bookstore, Super Leche (known for its hamburgers and bottles of milk) and El Moro for churros and hot chocolate, all along San Juan de Letran. However, according to one of these daughters, he was not faithful to their mother. His son David would grow up to also be a poet and critic, but in a style very different from his father’s.
Huerta married for the second time in 1958 with poet and fellow radical Thelma Nava. With her he had two more daughters Thelma Huerta Nava (1959) and Raquel Huerta Nava (1963). With these two he traveled to Morelia, Guanajuato and Querétaro, along with small towns, often looking for Mexican handcrafts. With this family, he lived in Polanco, where he wandering would take him to nearby cafes and restaurants.
The origin of Huerta’s nickname El Cocodrilismo “The Crocodilism” is in late 1949, during funding drive for a school in San Felipe Torresmochas, Guanajuato. Here Huerta told crocodile stories, saying that we all have a crocodile in us. In 1973, Huerta was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx, and had the organ removed. Although he survived the cancer, it left him mostly voiceless, recuperating some of his ability to speak with the help of speech therapy.
Efraín Huerta died almost ten years later in Mexico City at the age of 67 due to kidney failure after battling a return of cancer. He is buried in Xochitepec.
Huerta is best known for his poetry, which he began writing as a student. His first publication was a poem called El Bajío, appearing in a local paper called La Lucha, followed by Tarde provinciana. His first book was Absoluto amor (Absolute love), published in 1935, but very few copies remain. This success convinced Huerta to dedicate himself full-time to poetry, politics and journalism. Huerta's first important publication is Los hombres del alba (Men of the dawn), published in 1944, and is considered a classic of 20th century Mexican poetry. In this volume his first works using Mexico City as a subject appears. It was followed by Línea del alba in 1946, with similar themes, a compilation of poems previously published in magazines such as Taller.
In 1950 he published a small volume with six poems called La rosa primitiva, but it was virtually ignored by critics at the time. Another important work is El Tajín (1953), named after the archeological site in northern Veracruz. In 1956, he published Los poemas de viaje, works inspired by his travels to the United States, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and his observation of social and political issues. It also contains poems about his new son, David, written while he was in Czechoslovakia. In the same year, he published Estella en alto, a mix of love poems with those with political topics.
His later works include Poemas prohibidos y de amor (1973), Transa poética (1980), an anthology of previously published and unpublished work, Estampida de poemínimos (1981), and Amor patria mía (1981).
Influences on Huerta's work include works by Juan Ramón Jiménez, the Generation of ’27, the Contemporáneos and those by Pablo Neruda. He is part of the Taller generation in Mexico, along with Octavio Paz, Rafael Solana, Salvador Toscano and others, which rejected lyricism subjectively and aesthetically, opting instead to promote an idea of universal solidarity. This generation was also known for its political and poetic militancy. His work continues the Whitmanian tradition of rebellious non-conformity and vitality, but he eliminates Whitman’s base idealism and employs anti-rhetorical lyricism.
His years at law school influenced the logic and diction of his work, especially his early work, although over time, Huerta would abandon the formats of his youth entirely. Huerta differed from others in his generation in that instead of moving towards romanticism and symbolism, his poetry evolved towards the use of analogy, colloquial realism (influence from José Emilio Pacheco) and less academic, more colloquial style, an “anti-poem.” His work has been described as “…bringing a loose-jointed exuberance into Mexican poetry.”