La estatua de sal (English: The Salt Statue) is an autobiographical work by Mexican writer Salvador Novo, written around 1945–1946 and published posthumously in 1998.
[1] In Novo's diary-style memoirs collected in La vida en México en el periodo presidencial de Adolfo Ruiz Cortines contain for the first brief reference to La estatua de sal in a 1953 entry where the writer makes some mention of an autobiographical work that had been interrupted six years before, which places the origin of the work around halfway through the 1940s.
After Novo's death in 1974, his documents, along with his copyright, passed to his nephew and heir Antonio Lopez, who did not make any effort to bring the complete work to light.
[4][5] Ultimately, the complete text was not published until 1996 when Guillermo Rousset Banda delivered the manuscript to the general publications address for the Secretariat of Culture, formerly known as CONCULTA, so that they could include it in a series of Mexican memoirs.
Therefore, the first edition of La estatua de sal was published in 1998, funded by CONCULTA, and included a foreword by Carlos Monsiváis who commented that this edition was a milestone in homosexual visibility in Mexico, stating:[6] Having a Mexican publishing house publish this book demonstrates the profound advances in tolerance and in admitting books previously considered "unprintable" to the literary canon.La estatua de sal recounts memories of Novo's youth from his birth in Mexico City and childhood in Torreón, Coahuila, through his adventures in his 20s, with particular emphasis on his sexual life and explicit descriptions of his intimate liaisons with other men.