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Alfonso Reyes parents were Bernardo Reyes and Aurelia Ochoa. His father was in important government positions during the government of Porfirio Diaz, such as the governorship of Nuevo León and the Secretary of War and Navy.

Alfonso Reyes was educated primarily in Mexico City.

In 1909, he and other like-minded young intellectuals such as Martín Luis Guzmán and José Vasconcelos, founded the Ateneo de la Juventud to promote new cultural and aesthetic ideals and educational reform in Mexico. At the age of 21, Reyes published his first book, Cuestiones estéticas. The following year, 1912, he wrote a short story, La Cena ("The Supper"), considered a forerunner of surrealism and of Latin American magical realism. In that year he was also named Secretary of the Escuela Nacional de Altos Estudios at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Reyes obtained his law degree in 1913, the same year that his father would die participating in an attempted coup d'etat.

Alfonso Reyes was posted Mexico's diplomatic service in France from 1913 to 1914. From 1914 to 1924, he was exiled in Madrid, Spain, and pursued a literary career as journalist, investigator, translator, critic, and writer. In 1915, he wrote what is probably his best known essay, "Visión de Anáhuac (1915)," with its famous epigraph, "Viajero: has llegado a la región más transparente del aire", the source of the title of Carlos Fuentes's novel La región más transparente.

Reyes is reinstated into diplomatic in 1920 as second secretary in Spain, in Paris (1925—27), then served as ambassador to Argentina (1927—30 and 1936—37) and Brazil (1930—35 and 1938—39). In 1939, he retired from the diplomatic corps and returned to Mexico, where he organized what is today El Colegio de México and dedicated himself to writing and teaching.

The great Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges paid homage to the excellence of Reyes's style with the following words: "Alfonso Reyes, the greatest prose writer in the Spanish language of any age, said to me: 'Groussac taught me how to write in Spanish.' "

At least five avenues in Monterrey's metropolitan area, and three in the municipality, are named after Reyes.

Poetry:

• Huellas
• Ifigenia Cruel
• Yerbas del Tarahumara
• Minuta
• Homero en Cuernavaca

Nonfiction:

• Cuestiones estéticas
• El suicida
• Visión de Anáhuac
• Vísperas de España
• Cartones de Madrid
• Simpatías y diferencias
• Calendario
• Homília por la Cultura
• Capítulos de Literatura Española
• Pasado Inmediato
• Estudios Helénicos
• La Filosofía Helenística
• La X en la Frente
• Memorias de Cocina y Bodega
• Las Burlas Veras

Fiction:

• Los Tres Tesoros
• El Plano Oblicuo
• Árbol de Pólvora
• Quince Presencias

The Fondo de Cultura Económica published his complete works in 26 volumes, titled Obras Completas de Alfonso Reyes.