In the 80s, French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio was once a professor in the Michoacan College, learned the local purepecha language and wrote “The divine conquest of Michoacan”, all becoming a testament of the influence of the Mexican state in his life.

Le Clezio, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2008, said the current wave of violence in Michoacan represents “a dramatic situation for one of the most cultured states of the Mexican republic, with one of the oldest cultures, the purepechas”.

“Today, times are cruel with civilizations, not only in Mexico, but everywhere, because of how easy it is for money, weapons traffic and violence, for all those nemesis of culture and history,” said the French writer in a press conference Sunday morning.

The author, born in Nice on April 13, 1940, from a Mauritian family, hopes that Michoacan will, again, survive to an awful situation and again will have the strength to resist and oppose the rule of violence.

“I don’t know if I have hopes, but Mexico and the state of Michoacan have been through terrible situations in their history, just like today. I am confident, no doubt about it, that the Michoacanian society has, like the whole of Mexican society, the capability to resist and oppose the domain of violence. The 16th century was awful for Michoacan, with just the sixth part of its population being able to survive the conquistadors, but it came back little by little... That was a different problem, but it showed the resistance of the Michoacanian and Mexican peoples.”

Le Clezio is in Mexico for the celebrations for the centennial of poet Octavio Paz birth.