where intrigue, suspicions and relationships unravel among he and his family members. His last novel, Los pasos de López, was published in 1982 and it is a fictional memoir whose characters are based on Miguel Hidalgo and the members of the Querétaro conspiracy of 1810. These three novels are unofficially called the "Plan de Abajo trilogy" because they all take place in the fictional region of Plan de Abajo, which is very similar to Ibargüengoitia's native state of Guanajuato. Ibargüengoitia died before he finished his seventh novel, which would have been set in the period of the Second Mexican Empire of Maximilian I and Carlota of Mexico. It was never published. Weekly columns Ibargüengoitia was also known for his weekly columns in the Mexico City newspaper Excelsior, and later on in the magazines Vuelta and Proceso, which have been collected in a half dozen paperback volumes. Influences and style Ibargüengoitia cited Evelyn Waugh and Louis-Ferdinand Céline as his most influential authors. He is considered one of the first writers who "demystified the contents of the history of Mexico" and humanised its heroic figures, through his use of irony, farce, humour and even grotesque depictions. The periods that most interested him were the Independence of Mexico and the Mexican Revolution. Aside from historical periods, Ibargüengoitia often wrote about details, anecdotes and problems of his daily life. His native state of Guanajuato was also frequently used as a set for his stories, although he almost always used fictional names, such as Cuévano, Plan de Abajo, Muérdago or Pedrones, to stand in for it or its cities. The writer has been quoted as saying he never meant to make anyone laugh, that he thought laughter was useless and a pointless waste of time. Death and legacy In 1983, Ibargüengoitia was invited by Gabriel García Márquez to the First Encounter of Hispanic-American Culture in Bogota, Colombia. Even though he had initially declined to attend, he changed his mind at the last minute and boarded Avianca Flight 011 that departed from Paris and was due to land in Madrid. The plane, a Boeing 747, crashed near the Madrid-Barajas airport as it attempted to land, on November 27, 1983. He perished along with Peruvian poet Manuel Scorza, Uruguayan critic Ángel Rama, Argentinian academic Marta Traba, and 177 others. He is buried in Antillon Park in Guanajuato, named in honor of his great-grandfather General Florencio Antillón, and