Education
National Autonomous University of Mexico.
National Autonomous University of Mexico.
His first reading was in 1973. In 1976 he founded the infrarrealismo (infrarealism) movement along with Roberto Bolaño, Cuauhtémoc Méndez Estrada, Ramon Méndez Estrada, Bruno Montané, Rubén Medina, Juan Esteban Harrington, Oscar Altamirano, Jose Peguero, Guadalupe Ochoa, Jose Vicente Anaya, Edgar Altamirano, Elmer Santana and Mara Larrosa. Infrarealism was a vanguard literary movement representing a rupture with the Mexican literary establishment.
Santiago is considered by many to be the principal exponent and purest stylistic representative of the movement.
His poems are complex, erudite, and highly metaphorical. Santiago sought an aesthetic of signs, much like the calligrams of Guillaume Apollinaire.
The majority of his work is still unpublished. Roberto Bolaño used Santiago as the basis for the character of Ulises Lima in his novel The Savage Detectives.
Santiago frequently made enemies due to his sincerity and open criticism of what he deemed inferior forms of poetry, the literary elite, and poets themselves.
He has gained slight recognition, though he is recognized and lauded by the recorded oral testimonies of his "comrades-in-arms".