Quote by Rosario Castellanos: “Hope is the bread of the poor.”

For people who have nothing material to sustain them, hope serves the same function as food — it is the thing that keeps them going when there is nothing else. But like bread, hope must be constantly renewed, and like the poor, it is always at risk of running out.

Castellanos began her literary career in the late 1940s while working among impoverished indigenous communities in Chiapas. Post-war Mexico was experiencing rapid economic modernization that bypassed rural and indigenous populations, deepening inequality even as urban Mexico grew wealthier.

Mexican poet, novelist, and diplomat who used literature to confront the racial and gender hierarchies of mid-twentieth-century Mexico. Her novels Balún Canán and Oficio de Tinieblas drew on indigenous Mayan experience and the violence of colonial social structures.