Alma Guillermoprieto, a well-known Mexican journalist, will tell Vanderbilt students “How to be a Mexican” during a lecture at 7 p.m. Tuesday at 126 Wilson Hall. 

Guillermoprieto's lecture will be discuss issues of the condition of Mexico, with a specific emphasis on the relationship with the United States. She also will share her knowledge on the culture, identity and heritage of Mexico.

A reception will begin at 6 in the Wilson Hall lobby. 

Born and raised in Mexico, her background gave her an opportunity to speak for Mexicans and her writing is now well known and recognized in the Spanish-speaking world. Guillermoprieto first studied modern dance when she moved to New York City with her mother when she was a teenager. After several years devoting her life to dancing, she became a professional dancer as her early career. 

In her 20s, Guillermoprieto decided to become a journalist, and she covered such events as the El Mozote massacre in which the Salvadoran army killed 900 El Salvadorans in 1981.

“Samba,” her first book published in 1990, covered Guillermoprieto experience studying at a samba school in Rio de Janeiro.

In her 40s, she began to write about the culture and politics of Latin America for The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books.

 -- Sherry Hsieh, Hustler staff