Quote by Elena Poniatowska: “The poor exist so that we may feel the guilt of our comfort.”

Poverty persists partly because it serves a psychological function for the comfortable — the existence of the poor allows those with more to feel benevolent, to give charity, or to feel guilty without fundamentally changing anything. This exposes the moral convenience of inequality.

Poniatowska published Massacre in Mexico in 1971, a testimonial account of the 1968 Tlatelolco student massacre in which the Mexican government killed hundreds of protesters days before the Olympic Games. The book was a landmark act of witness journalism in a country where media was largely controlled by the ruling party.

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.