Federico Campbell dies at 72; Mexican writer known for Tijuana stories

Mexican author, journalist and essayist Federico Campbell, 72, died Saturday in a Mexico City hospital, according to a statement from the National Institute of Fine Arts.

No cause was disclosed but, citing an interview with the author’s son Federico Campbell Pena, the Mexico City newspaper Excelsior said he suffered a stroke after being hospitalized with the H1N1 flu virus.

Campbell was best known for his short story collection “Tijuanenses,” which was published by the University of California Press in 1995 as “Tijuana: Stories on the Border.”

The collection is “Campbell’s fond, forgiving, backward glance at his own youth,” The Times said in 2004. The author called it “my bildungsroman, my ‘American Graffiti’.”

In his story “Tijuana Times,” Campbell wrote about teenage boys in a gang called Pegasos, a group that liked to drink beer and sing Fats Domino’s “Blueberry Hill” or listen to San Diego radio stations playing Elvis.

“A city, I think, is like a person,” said Campbell, a resident of Mexico City since 1997. “Either you know it well or not at all.”

Born in Tijuana on July 1, 1941, Campbell was the son of a teacher and a telegraph operator, whose family traveled from Virginia to Tijuana more than a century before. He studied law, literature and philosophy in Mexico City and journalism at Macalester College in Minnesota.

Campbell worked as a foreign correspondent in Washington, founded a publishing house and translated works of Harold Pinter and David Mamet.

He published nearly two dozen other works of fiction and nonfiction including novels, short story collections, essays and interviews.