Which Mexican poet wrote 'The Labyrinth of Solitude'?

Octavio Paz wrote The Labyrinth of Solitude, a landmark study of Mexican identity and history.

Originally published in Spanish as El laberinto de la soledad in 1950, the work is a book-length collection of essays. Paz examines Mexican culture through subjects including the pachuco figure, public masks, the Day of the Dead, the Spanish conquest, colonialism, independence, the Mexican Revolution, and the country’s intellectual life.

The title’s “solitude” refers to a deep feeling of isolation that Paz saw within Mexican historical and social experience. The book is not a novel or a poetry collection, although Paz was an acclaimed poet as well as an essayist. Readers may also encounter Posdata, a later three-part essay sometimes added to editions; it discusses the 1968 massacre of Mexican students. Pablo Neruda, Juan Rulfo, and Carlos Fuentes were major Latin American writers, but none authored this work.