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Fondo de Cultura Económica
Company type	Publisher
Founded	September 14, 1934; 90 years ago
Founder	Daniel Cosío Villegas
Headquarters	Lima, Perú
Website	www.fce.pe

FCE Perú (Fondo de Cultura Económica del Perú or simply "Fondo") is a Spanish language, non-profit publishing group, partly funded by the Mexican government. It is based in Mexico but it has subsidiaries throughout the Spanish-speaking world.

It was founded in 1934 by Daniel Cosío Villegas with the original purpose of providing students of economics from the Escuela Nacional de Economía with specialized books in Spanish. Soon, it expanded its interests to other subjects: humanities, literature (mostly works written in Spanish), popular science, children's books and literature for young adults.

FCE's backlist encompasses more than ten thousand volumes, approximately 5,000 of which are still in print, and it has an electronic catalog of more than 1,300 titles. FCE has published the books of 65 authors who were awarded with the Nobel Prize; 33 authors awarded with the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, 29 authors honored by the Princess of Asturias Awards, and over 140 authors who were awarded the Mexican National Prize for Arts and Sciences.

The word Económica [“economic”] in its name does not allude to the low sales price of its books, a permanent goal of this publishing house, but to the aforementioned initial objective of publishing works on economics. Furthermore, the Mexican government provides resources to partially cover the costs of production, allowing books to be comparatively more affordable.

Moreover, FCE has representative offices in Bolivia, Canada, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Honduras and Puerto Rico, besides having distribution partners in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama and Uruguay.

It publishes three periodicals: El Trimestre Económico, founded a few months before FCE itself; La Gaceta, founded in 1954; and Diánoia (jointly published by FCE and the Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas, UNAM), in circulation since 1955.

Fondo annually or biennially organizes five prizes and competitions for authors, illustrators and readers: Concurso Leamos la Ciencia para Todos (the Let's Read Science for All competition), Concurso de Álbum Ilustrado A la Orilla del Viento (the Picture Book at the Edge of the Wind competition), the Premio Hispanoamericano de Poesía para Niños (the Hispano-American Prize for Poetry for Children, together with the Fundación para las Letras Mexicanas), the Premio Internacional de Divulgación de la Ciencia Ruy Pérez Tamayo (the Ruy Pérez Tamayo International Prize for Science Exposition), and the Concurso Iberoamericano de Ensayo para Jóvenes (the Iberoamerican Essay Competition for Youth).

In 1989, FCE was awarded the Princess of Asturias Awards in the category of Communications and Humanities as recognition for its work in Spanish-speaking countries. In 1987, La Gaceta earned the Mexican Premio Nacional de Periodismo (National Journalism Prize).

History

The history of the Fondo de Cultura Económica (FCE) in Peru began in the late 1950s, when the then director, Arnaldo Orfila Reynal, entrusted writer Magda Portal with the distribution of FCE books in the country. In early 1961, Portal found a suitable space on the third block of Jiron Apurimac in downtown Lima, where she set up a small office and the first local bookstore. However, this initial stage of the Fund suffered an unexpected setback with the economic crisis of 1967, which impacted the exchange rate and, therefore, imports.

After a pause, in 1974, another outstanding poet took over the national leadership. Under the direction of Blanca Varela, the corporation was created and a beautiful bookstore was established on Los Pinos Street, in Miraflores. Four years later, in a more favorable context, an emblematic locale was acquired, an old English mansion on Berlin Street in the same district. Varela directed the Fund for approximately 25 years; for this reason, and due to the importance of his poetry, the bookstore bears his name.

In the 1990s, it began to promote its own publishing program, with a catalog that currently includes almost 200 titles by authors such as José María Arguedas, Jorge Eduardo Eielson, Emilio Adolfo Westphalen, Miguel Gutiérrez, Victoria Guerrero, Karina Pacheco, José Carlos Agüero, Rossella Di Paolo and Alonso Cueto, among others. Over the years, new bookstores were also opened, such as the well-remembered one on Tarata Street, named 'Magda Portal'; the splendid premises on Esperanza Street, which unfortunately had to close during the COVID-19 pandemic; and the 'José María Arguedas' bookstore, located at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.

Since 2019, a change has been made in the editorial policy with the aim of encouraging a closer approach to readers through a significant reduction in prices and a broadening of the offer. These efforts, together with the purpose of contributing to education and dialogue in democracy, outline the path to follow in the near future.

Releases

Collections

FCE's backlist encompasses more than ten thousand titles, among which five thousand remain available (i.e., reprinted or in stock). Its catalogue is organized in over 100 collections.

Periodicals

Fondo de Cultura Económica publishes three periodicals:

El Trimestre Económico. Forerunner of FCE itself, this journal began by issuing translations of articles published in major journals in English and gradually began including original research by scholars and government officials from Mexico and Latin America.
La Gaceta. Founded by Arnaldo Orfila Reynal on FCE's 20th anniversary, it is a monthly magazine with excerpts, reviews, articles, and poems. With Jaime García Terrés as its chief editor it took an outstanding literary direction and achieved international presence. In 1987, it received the Mexican Premio Nacional de Periodismo. Today it can be read online (as PDF) and through the iOS and Android apps.
Diánoia. It is a peer-reviewed philosophy journal jointly published by FCE and the Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas, UNAM, since 1955. Its main goal is to promote, coordinate and disseminate original and high-level philosophical production in Spanish. Until 2001, it was a yearly periodical and has been biannual since.

Electronic publishing

FCE has four types of electronic publications:

E-books in ePub and other formats, with up to 1,300 available titles in major e-stores such as Amazon, iBooks, GooglePlay, Barnes & Noble, Snowfall, Todoebook, and its own web site.
Interactive Books, both apps and ePub files; for example, Paloma Valdivia's Es así.
iOS and Android apps for tablets; some of them are: Animalario universal del professor Revillod, Archivo abierto: 80 años del FCE, La Gaceta, and a version of José Moreno de Alba’s Minucias del lenguaje.
Web sites; this includes a version of Moreno de Alba's Minucias del lenguaje, La Gaceta, and El Trimestre Económico under the Open Journals Systems standard (forthcoming).

FCE’s Headquarters

Head Office

On September 4, 1992, Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado, then CEO, inaugurated the new FCE's facilities, located in 227 Picacho-Ajusco Highway, in Mexico City. Surrounded by gardens, the facility also houses the Unidad Cultural Jesús Silva Herzog, the Gonzalo Robles Library, which preserves FCE's growing collection, and the Alfonso Reyes bookstore.

Foreign branches

In addition to its central office in Mexico, FCE has subsidiaries in (year of foundation in brackets):

Buenos Aires (Argentina, 1945)
Santiago (Chile, 1954)
Lima (Peru, 1961)
Madrid (Spain, 1963)
Bogotá (Colombia, 1975)
San Diego (United States, 1990) FCE USA
Guatemala City (Guatemala and Central America, 1995)
Quito (Ecuador, 2015)

Bookstores

FCE runs 37 bookstores, 27 in Mexico and 10 all over the Spanish-speaking world. It sells and distributes its own catalog and also books from other publishers.

References and sources

Bibliography

- Aboites, Luis; Loyo, Engracia (2010). “La construcción del nuevo Estado, 1920-1945”. In Erik Velásquez García et al. Nueva historia general de México. Mexico: El Colegio de México. pp. 595–652. ISBN 9786074621792.
- Ángel Mobarak, Gustavo de, and Graciela Márquez (eds.), Respuestas propias. 80 años de El Trimestre, Mexico: FCE, 2014, ISBN 9786071620378
- Díaz Arciniega, Víctor, Historia de la casa. Fondo de Cultura Económica (1934-1994), Mexico: FCE, 1994.
- Pacheco, Cristina, En el primer medio siglo del Fondo de Cultura Económica. Testimonios y conversaciones, Mexico: FCE, 1984.
- Various authors, Fondo de Cultura Económica. Memoria editorial 1990-2000, Mexico: FCE, 2000.
- Various authors, Catálogo histórico 1934-2009, Mexico: FCE, 2009.
- Garone Gravier, Marina, Historia en cubierta. El Fondo de Cultura Económica a través de sus portadas (1934-2009), Mexico: FCE, 2011.

(in Spanish)

This article draws heavily on the [[{{{1}}}|corresponding article]] in the Spanish-language Wikipedia, which was accessed in the version of {{{2}}}.