Quote by Elena Poniatowska: “The poor are invisible to those who have never been poor.”

Poverty is not just a material condition — it is a social one. People who have never experienced economic precarity often literally cannot see what is right in front of them. Invisibility is not natural: it is created by the habits and assumptions of the comfortable.

Poniatowska published La Noche de Tlatelolco in 1971, documenting the October 2, 1968 massacre of student protesters at Tlatelolco plaza in Mexico City. The book gave voice to hundreds of survivors and witnesses and became one of the founding documents of testimonial literature in Latin America.

Mexican journalist and novelist, winner of the Cervantes Prize in 2013, considered one of the most important voices in Latin American literature and investigative journalism. Her 1971 chronicle La Noche de Tlatelolco documented the 1968 student massacre through survivor testimonies.