Guillermo Prieto Yeme

Guillermo Prieto Yeme, a Mexican journalist, writer, poet, translator and activist was born in August 9, 1889 in Tacubaya, Mexico City into a 17 brothers and sisters family. His formation years were plenty on cultural roots, trips, academic studies and political issues. In his 20s, during Mexican Revolution, it's been said that he took part as a propaganda writer for the government of Venustiano Carranza. During his productive life he was also known as Alvaro Jimeno, Armando Monteverde and presumably other pseudonyms for some writings. Amongst his outstanding translations it is probably the most known the one he made for The Mexican War by William Jay (1849), called "Causas y Consecuencias de la Guerra del 47", a registered and published work for the centennial (1948) under his name. He was also one of Rabindranath Tagore's translators to Spanish. Owner of a fine stock of books, which goes from novels and poetry to political and historical matters, he had friendship with a lot of well known authors and artists of his time, which dedicated a lot of works to him, such as Jaime Torres Bodet, Ruben Dario and Ramon Lopez Velarde. After the revolutionary period he traveled to the United States and met Magdalena Prince Cordero, a 16 years younger Mexican pianist. They married around 1928 and had three children: Ana Maria (b. 1929, San Antonio, Tx. d. 2001), Armando Guillermo (b. 1932, Los Angeles, Ca., architect and father of biographer who passed away in 1998) and Magdalena (b. 1940, Mexico City) who lives in Mexico's capital. It was in Hollywood where he made his contributions to the "Talkies" in early 1930s, rendering very nice adaptation pieces into Spanish language for the Latinamerican versions of some movies, including The Sacred Flame (La Llama Sagrada) and La Dama Atrevida, both from 1931 or 1932. As an activist he was head of the Union Civica Internacional and other civic organizations. He was well known as an anti communist for all of his life. Also a founder of the Mex-American Publishing Co. which had offices at the well known Colonia Condesa at Mexico City for several years. Many poems from Guillermo Prieto Yeme were published, for example "Estados de Anima"(1919) and some times he was quoted in literature reviews such as "Historia de la Literatura Mexicana: Desde los origenes hasta nuestros dias" (History of Mexican Literature: From its origins to our days), a 1940 edition by Carlos Gonzalez Pena. In last chapter he is identified within La Generacion Nueva (The New Generation) amongst people like Alfonso Reyes, Jose Vasconcelos and Antonio Caso. Guillermo's second last name 'Yeme' is a curious invention itself, that he managed to turn out official. It was really Marmolejo. As a result of his sense of humor, and in order to do a shorter signature, he came out with an ingenious way to say the initial "M" which in Spanish is spelled "Eme". So he was actually Prieto y Marmolejo, and later on Prieto Yeme. He was baptism godson of poet, politician and historian Guillermo Prieto Pradillo, his great uncle. Guillermo Prieto Yeme died on December 1977 at age 88 in Mexico City. Eleven of the grandchildren to Guillermo and Magdalena are alive. APS, 2012.