Los Contemporáneos

The group had its origins in friendships and literary collaborations that were formed among students attending Mexico City's elite National Preparatory School; that is where founding members José Gorostiza, Carlos Pellicer, Bernardo Ortiz de Montellano, Enrique González Rojo, and Jaime Torres Bodet met for the first time.

In 1928, Jorge Cuesta would also publish, under the aegis of the Contemporáneos press, a poetic anthology titled Antología de la poesía mexicana moderna, which would give rise to heated polemics because of what were perceived, in certain literary and intellectual quarters, as glaring editorial omissions.

They were also greatly attentive to the evolution of surrealism, and members of the group, while in Europe, made contact with leaders of the movement, including André Breton, author of the Surrealist Manifesto.

The Contemporáneos produced work which was characterized by the extensive, sometimes essentializing, use of metaphor, and complex imagery, which served to express experimental disjointments in narrative time and space meant to convey or reinforce particular philosophical or scientific concepts or concerns.

At times, the Contemporáneos were accused of literary effetism and elitism, especially when compared to groups more politically vocal and nationalist, such as the estridentistas, and of giving excessive preference to the airy and philosophical over the robust, the manly, and the mundane.