¿They say I¿m very fierce and impetuous. I know that I cause turmoil: I don¿t like that because it complicates things, but I fully accept it. I provoke reactions because I don¿t bow to conventional patterns. I try, I don¿t know if I manage it, to have a very open and free spirit that allows me to locate things as I believe. People have many fears, and that profoundly irritates me because they are scared of life and creative expression. When, in history, have we seen a work of art that generates negative things: wars, crimes, delinquency?¿ Iturbe said to the writer Angelica Abelleyra on May 21st 2000. Mercedes Iturbe was one of those personalities that flooded the space that they occupied. She walked with poise and elegance; she spoke French using the most contemporary slang; she had the strange gift of being in the right moment and with the correct person, which made her witness and protagonist of the most relevant cultural movements from the second half of the 1950s, in literature, visual art, cultural administration and in contemporary thought. She studied psychology in UNAM and then did a postgraduate in the Sorbonne in Paris. As a writer, she published Espíritus cómplices (Accomplice spirits), a book which for Alvaro Mutis is an ¿arduous and delightful confession¿. Luis Buñuel and Vlady, Juan Rulfo and Juan Carlos Onetti, Severo Sarduy and Josef Koudelka interact in this book. In France she founded the Premio de Cuento Juan Rulfo that since 1984 is endorsed by the most important cultural institutions in both countries, among which is Radio France International. One of her first public assignments was the Salon of Mexican Visual Art, during perhaps the best period of this space since its foundation. She then formed part of the delegation from Mexico that met the Organization of the United Nations for Education, Science and Culture, and of the Mexican Embassy in France, as the head and at the helm of the Mexican Cultural Center in Paris, whose administration deserved a recognition of the importance of the Decoration of the Order and Literature of France. Although her work in this city assumed the support of Mexicans in France, she wasn¿t detained by formal trifles and set up a network of support to French people in Mexico, which resulted in one of the richest and largest cultural exchanges between both countries. Shrewd and of a notable quick wit, she always knew how to detect the emerging creators who with time would become, at times under her wing, at others with her persuasion, bastions of current art. Among the activities that she developed, it is worth mentioning the Direction of the International Cervantino Festival; she was then appointed to the Morelos Cultural Institute, commissioned for the participation of Mexico in the Universal Exhibition of Hanover 2006, director of the Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts and finally was Director of the Carrillo Gil Museum of Art. There her days ended at the head of a museum whose eclectic characteristics were certainly about to experience profound changes under the restless gaze of Mercedes Iturbe. There remain dozens of journalistic articles that she regularly published in La Jornada, as well as prologues to books, texts for catalogues and a vast investigation in popular Mexican art. Her journalistic articles left their mark, undoubtedly, on the themes that she dealt with. She also left her smile; today we are her orphans. The journalist Jose Cueli, a close friend from their student days, published in La Jornada (April 6th 2007) that ¿Mercedes was utter vitality in all that she did. She was always the same: nervous and joyful as life was for her; childishly mischievous and ingenuously carefree. She used to wear colorful necklaces and earrings, as if she was another piece of art.¿ Mercedes Iturbe passed away in her house in Cuernavaca on April 1st 2007.