Author Michael Hogan, a longtime resident of Guadalajara, spent the last two weeks touring Ireland as a guest of the Mexican embassy in Dublin. His mission was to promote Mexican-Irish solidarity and stimulate both trade and cultural exchanges between the two counties.
Hogan accompanied the Mexican Ambassador to Ireland, Carlos Garcia de Alba, to a wreath-laying ceremony in Clifden, County Kerry, where John Riley was born. He also presented a documentary film and launched the revised edition of his book at the National University of Ireland in Galway City to a capacity crowd. In the week that followed he presented lectures at the Clifden town hall and at Trinity College, Dublin, and accompanied the ambassador, the mayor of Dublin and 1,000 guests to a “grito” celebrating Mexican Independence at the Clyde Court Hotel in Dublin. Among the guests was Lorenzo Zambrano, CEO of the CEMEX (Mexico’s leading building materials suppliers and cement producers) who has done much to promote cultural exchanges between the two countries and whose company is involved in major construction projects in Ireland.
At Trinity College in Dublin, Ambassador Garcia de Alba noted, “Michael Hogan has done more than any single individual in Mexico to promote solidarity between Ireland and Mexico, and to remind us of our common histories.”