Distinguished historian Enrique Florescano Mayet died on March 6, 2023, in the house that he and Alejandra Moreno Toscano—no less distinguished a historian—built and lived in in Cuajimalpa, Mexico City, on the old Carretera México-Toluca. The dwelling housed his impressive library and was a mandatory rendezvous for various generations of historians. For decades, trips to Cuajimalpa were a matter of legend among us historians. On March 6 I last visited the house; gone was the library, Florescano's friends were performing Indigenous death rituals, and we all were there, with Alejandra, seeing him off, that great friend, that man who, paraphrasing Jorge Luis Borges, “tantos hombres había sido.”
Since his return to Mexico from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in the early 1970s, Florescano became for decades a gravitational force in Mexican historiography. He was a prolific historian who moved freely, with precision, erudition, and ingenuity, from pre-Hispanic...
