Ana María Cetto Kramis (born 1946) studied physics at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and biophysics at Harvard University. As a faculty member back in Mexico, she spent over half a century delving into the fundamentals of quantum physics, with a singular focus on its stochastic interpretation. In addition to her theoretical work, she founded Latindex and has become a key figure in the open access movement. She has also had a long and influential contribution to international scientific cooperation. Her professional and personal journeys culminate with the dynamization of the International Year of Quantum Science and Technologies 2025, aiming to shed light on her understanding of quantum science and of science as a whole. This chapter is mostly based on an oral history, which is here also revisited as a historiographical methodology from its early use at the origins of the history of quantum physics.

This chapter focuses on how Bolaño’s short novel Amulet (1998) approaches the tumultuous period of Mexico 1968, with its effervescent student movement and the subsequent violent governmental repression that led to the military occupation of the country’s most important university, UNAM, as well as the massacre at Tlatelolco on October 2nd. Through the narration of Auxilio, an Uruguayan poet who remained locked in a women’s bathroom at UNAM during the two week span of the university’s occupation, the novel reconstructs this period yet shies away from a linear, chronological narration with a transparent claim to truth. On the contrary, by intertwining historical facts with fiction, Amulet’s unreliable and anachronistic narrator works against closure, embracing political defeat as a means to propose listening as a form of continued engagement.