Guzmán was born in
Chihuahua, Chihuahua, the son of a colonel in the
Federal Army, who was attached to the Mexican consulate in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S. His father was killed in one of the early skirmishes of the
Mexican Revolution and Guzmán left for Mexico City. For several months in 1914, he was under the direct orders of General
Francisco "Pancho" Villa, later writing a five-volume
biography of Villa,
Memorias de Pancho Villa (1936–1951). On Villa's orders, Guzmán witnessed the entry of
Venustiano Carranza's
Constitutionalist Army to Mexico City, following the fall of
Victoriano Huerta's government in July 1914. Carranza had him jailed, since as an adherent of Villa, formerly a Constitutionalist general who had broken with Carranza, Guzmán was a political enemy. He was released during the factional dispute between the Constitutionalists and the Army of the Convention, led by Villa. Guzmán went abroad to Paris and Madrid in 1914, where he began writing articles for the Spanish weekly magazine,
España, founded by
José Ortega y Gasset, and became part of the circle of Spanish intellectuals. His first published work,
La querella de México, was his assessment of Mexico's problems and limitations. Leaving Spain for the United States, he represented
España and taught a short course at University of Minnesota, returning to Mexico briefly, where he worked at Mexican newspapers. Following the ouster of Carranza in 1920 by Sonoran generals
Alvaro Obregón,
Plutarco Elías Calles, and
Adolfo de la Huerta, Guzmán returned to Mexico and became the private secretary to
Alberto J. Pani, President Obregón's minister of foreign affairs. Guzmán was involved in the 1921 centenary of the achievement of Mexico's independence. He subsequently ran afoul of Obregón's government when Obregón sought to impose Calles as his successor. Guzmán backed Adolfo de la Huerta's 1923 unsuccessful rebellion against Obregón and Calles, and was forced into exile to Spain for a decade, becoming a Spanish citizen. He again became involved in journalism, but his largest contribution to writing was his work of revolutionary fiction,
El águila y la serpiente. With the presidency of
Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–40), who had turned against his political patron Calles, Guzmán was invited to return to Mexico, where he returned to journalism and began writing
Memorias de Pancho Villa. Martin Luis Guzmán was a public figure in Mexico: he was elected to the
Chamber of Deputies for the
Federal District's 6th congressional district in 1922 and served as a
senator for the Federal District from 1970 to 1976. He was also a member of the
Mexican Academy of Language. He died suddenly on December 22, 1976, in
Mexico City due an acute myocardial infarction. His widow Ana West died seven years after him, on October 21, 1983. She was 95 years old when, after being hospitalized for some days due to an acute bilateral pneumonia, she suffered a cardiac arrest and died. ==Works==