A bookshop with no published address. El Burro Culto is in the Roma, and its location is deliberately kept secret. The owner, Max Ramos, a bibliophile specialising in drama, withheld it after the shop was robbed in its early years and irreplaceable texts were taken. His reasoning is that anyone genuinely interested will find a way to get there — and will be received with coffee or wine and a conversation.
What is on the shelves. More than seven thousand volumes, assembled over eighteen years, divided into Mexican history, Mexican literature, first editions of Spanish-language writing, and a mixed section covering architecture, photography, philosophy, nineteenth-century mathematics and old law.
What has passed through it. Signed first editions of Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo, Cortázar's Rayuela and García Márquez's Cien años de soledad; first editions of Hermann Hesse; presidential correspondence; and a copy of Indumentaria mexicana, the first explanatory book on the Maya region, written by a Belgian colonel with engravings by Antonio de Castañeda, of which only 200 copies were printed.
And buried under the floor. Beneath the wooden boards, Max and several associates have interred a chest holding fifty works representing Mexican literature — Fernando del Paso, Jaime Sabines, Alfonso Reyes, Octavio Paz — waiting for somebody to find them.
Practical notes. Contact the shop through its own channels to arrange a visit; this is not a walk-in. Spanish is essential. Metro Insurgentes and Hospital General, line 1, serve the Roma.
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