BIODATA

Natalia Moreleon, Hellenist, she had dedicated her professional life to the teaching of ancient and modern Greek language and the dissemination of Greek culture.

She hold a BA and MA in Classical Philology from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and had done postgraduate studies in Greece on a scholarship from the Greek State. In 1969 she even received the first scholarship granted by the State Scholarship Foundation (IKY) in Mexico.

She taught Modern Greek from 1979 to 2016 at the Centre for Foreign Language Teaching, Ancient Greek at the Classical Department of the UNAM Faculty of Philosophy from 1973 to 1979, and seminars in classical theatre and translation at the Faculty of Philosophy from 2005 to 2014.

In 1997-1998, she gave courses in Modern Greek as a guest lecturer at the University of Granada, Spain, both at the School of Interpreters and Translators and at the Centre for Modern Languages. Late in the year she received an invitation from the same University of Granada to accompany her students to Greece and continue her courses there in a summer program, in Rhodes, at the University of the Aegean.

For 4 years, namely from 2000 to 2003, she taught summer intensive courses at the University of Havana, Cuba.

As part of the Onassis Foundation USA Academic Seminars Program, she also taught Modern Greek for the first time at the Classics Department of the University of de Los Andes, Venezuela, in 2007, and in 2014, at the University of Costa Rica.

She had participated in more than 40 academic and cultural conferences, workshops, etc., with papers, lectures, speeches and poetry readings.

As a translator of Greek poetry, she had published in various magazines and newspapers poems by Cavafis, Seferis, Sikelianos, Elytis, Ritsos, Pratikakis, Fostieri, Sinopoulos, Patrikios, Angelidou, Pasiardi, Pieris, etc. And in bilingual translation, 10 books so far, in Mexico, Greece and Paris. These books are by Elytis (2), Ritsos (2), Patrikios, Montis, Pratikakis (2), Kasimatis, Sinopoulos.

She was the interpreter for the Prime Minister of Greece, the late Andreas Papandreou, during the First Official State Visit to Mexico, as well as for the Summit of the Six Leaders for Disarmament and Peace in 1986, and for the Hellenic Parliament’s Mission to the Senate of the Republic of Mexico in 1998.

In 1999, under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture of Greece and the Cultural House of Mexico City, she organized the 1st Meeting of Greek and Mexican Poets in Mexico, in which 6 poets from Greece participated. This three-day meeting was a great success and was published in almost all the newspapers.

As for the dissemination of Greek culture, she had organized numerous poetry evenings, painting and sculpture exhibitions, film circles and concerts, as well as theatre seminars, as interpreter of the Greek actress Filareti Komninou, both at UNAM University (2014) and at the National Theatre of Fine Arts of Mexico (2015).

She had also promoted Greek theatre. With the support of the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs of Greece and the Cultural House of Mexico City, she organized, in 2000, the 1st Greek Theatre Competition, where 60 groups from all over the country took part. The winning troupe of high school students received as a prize an invitation to perform Aeschylus’ play “The Hephores” at the Panhellenic Student Games in Athens and Delphi.

At the invitation of the Ministry of Education and the Organization for the Dissemination of the Greek Language, Mexican students participated (100 for the first time) in the Ancient Greek Contests in high schools for three consecutive years. This competition was later canceled in Greece, but in Mexico it is still held every year, Olimpiadas Grecolatinas, under the auspices of UNAM University and with the support of the Embassies of Greece and Cyprus, because Mexico is the only country in the entire American continent that has a classical high school.

SCHOLARSHIPS

In 1984, the Ministry of Culture gave her a scholarship for summer courses at the IMHA in Thessaloniki for Modern Greek Language and Culture.

In 2004, the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation awarded her a scholarship for 6 months to do a study on “Erotokritos” by Vincenzo Kornaros.

In 2004, she won another scholarship from the Mexican State to translate “The Lady of the Vineyards” by Yannis Ritsos.

AWARDS

In 2001, he was awarded the Metal of the Order of Honor of the Golden Cross by the President of the Greek State, Konstantinos Stephanopoulos.

In 2002, she was honoured as Ambassador of Hellenism by Mrs. Eleni Bespea, Prefect of Athens.

In 2019, she obtained the Greek Honorary Nationality from the President of Greece, Mr. Prokopios V. Pavlopoulos (07/06/2019).

In 2020 she obtained the Humanism Award SPEK 2020, from de Cultural Association Greece Cyprus.

In 2022 she was elected corresponding member of the Society of Writers, of Greece.

She passed away in 2023.