Juan Gregorio Regino is one of the leading poets in indigenous languages in the Americas. He is Mazatec, born in 1962 in Chicicazapa, Solyaltepec, Oaxaca. In 1987, he received his bachelor’s degree in ethnoliguistics and a second degree from the Center for Research and Graduate Studies in Social Anthropology.
He was president of the Center for Writers in Indigenous Languages during the 1990s. Regino’s work follows two distinct paths. One is contemporary, the other is contemporary and based more closely in the Mesoamerican world. Among his best known works is the often translated poem to Maria Sabina, the famed shaman.