"El emigrante" (The migrant) is a flash fiction story by Mexican writer Luis Felipe Lomelí, published in 2005.
[1] The type of micronarrative or microfiction of which "El emigrante" is a famous example has precursors in the 1980s and 1990s with the work of Jacques Sternberg and Philippe Delerm, but perhaps has been brought back to life through the influence of Facebook and Twitter.
He was given a grant by the Mexican Foundation for Literature that included obligatory attendance at a workshop on micro-stories and, without thinking much, wrote the story down.
[3] "El emigrante" appeared in Lomelí's second book, Ella sigue de viaje, published in March 2005.
Nonetheless, "El emigrante" has brought widespread recognition to the author, who has since moved on to writing a full-length novel, at the opposite end of the extreme.
[15] The artist has said she addresses the dialectic between construction and destruction as an event that helps us understand and accept the transformation of life as inevitable.