Born in Pamplona on 17 August 1926, María Luisa was the third and last daughter of Luis Elío Torres and Carmen Bernal López de Lago, who had married in 1920.

[5] After arriving in Mexico, María Luisa studied drama with Magda Donato, Margarita Nelken’s sister, at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes.

[7] Octavio Paz, then director of the theater group Poesía en Voz Alta (Poetry Out Loud), invited her to join the troup.

[4][8] Those who came to Mexico as children from Spain as exiles, are sometimes called The Nepantla Generation, a Nahuatl word which describes the state of belonging to two places at the same time.

In several interviews she noted that she started writing because of the explosive atmosphere of the Cuban Revolution and the supporting friends she found there, among others Eliseo Diego, Fina García Marruz, and Alejo Carpentier.

[1] Her literary work first appeared in Mexican newspapers and cultural magazines after her return from Cuba, when she was writing the screenplay for the autobiographical film The Empty Balcony.

[4][8] Her second book, Cuaderno de apuntes en carne viva (Notebook in Living Flesh) published in 1995, attempted to explore the journey of putting her broken pieces back together.

[1] While in Havana, she established ties with Eliseo Diego, Fina García Marruz, Alejo Carpentier, Cintio Vitier, and most of the members of the literary group Orígenes.

Among the most relevant writers and artists, her circle included Leonora Carrington, Salvador Elizondo, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez, Álvaro Mutis, Octavio Paz, and Juan Soriano, among others.

His masterwork, One Hundred Years of Solitude was dedicated to them with the inscription “para (to) jomí garcía ascot y maría luisa elío” (all in lowercase letters).

[1] In 2007, the Spanish Government decorated María Luisa Elio Bernal with the Officer's Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic for her services to Spain.