Vicente Alberto Masferrer Mónico | |
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Alberto Masferrer
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Born | Vicente Alberto Masferrer Mónico July 24, 1868 Alegría, Usulután, El Salvador |
Died | 8 November 1932 Tegucigalpa, Honduras (disputed) |
(aged 64)
Occupation | Author, Editor, Diplomat, Professor, Deputy President, Teacher, Journalist, Publicist, Politician |
Nationality | Salvadorean |
Genre | Essayist and Philosopher |
Literary movement | Vitalismo |
Vicente Alberto Masferrer Mónico, known as Alberto Masferrer, was a Salvadoran essayist, philosopher, fiction writer, and journalist, best known for the development of the philosophy of 'vitalismo'. He was born in Alegría, Usulután formerly Tecape, Usulután on 24 July 1868. He did not receive a formal education, instead claiming to have been educated by "the university of life," but he did travel widely, having lived in several Central American countries, as well as in Chile, New York, and several European nations. During his public career at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of El Salvador, he served as an ambassador of El Salvador in Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, and Belgium, and served as a professor in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Chile, and Argentina. Having served in the government of President Arturo Araujo, he was sent into exile in Honduras by the dictatorship of Maximiliano Hernández Martínez following the uprising of 1932 known as the 1932 Salvadoran peasant massacre, dying that same year on 8 September in the city of Tegucigalpa. (There are some uncertainties regarding his death, with some sources claiming that he died in El Salvador, though these claims are in the minority. He was well respected during his life, having earned the praise of such major Salvadoran figures as Arturo Ambrogi, Miguel Ángel Espino, Claudia Lars, and Salarrué.
Alberto Masferrer was born in a town in eastern El Salvador, pipil home and subsequently dominated by the Lenca. The home he was born in was owned by the Mejia family and is now a small museum. His education was self-education in combination with formal education. His love of reading led him to choose teaching as a career. In this regard, Arturo Ambrogi stated that "I have rarely seen a lecturer as tremendous as Alberto."
Between 1928 and 1930, he founded and directed the newspaper Patria, which was social criticism and called for justice for those most in need in the context of widespread poverty in the country. He worked day and national and international journals, was editor of the newspaper El Chileno and El Mercurio, Santiago de Chile, the weekly La Reforma newspaper The workers united, in the magazines The Republic of Central America, News, Scientific Bibliographic Literature, The Seed and others.
He began his political career as consul of El Salvador in Argentina (1901), Chile (1902), Costa Rica (1907) and Belgium (1910), and in the International Court of Justice in 1912 [also served as Archivist of nation's largest auditing office], editor and director of the Official Journal (1892), Secretary of the National Institute (1890) and Advisor to the Ministry of Education (1916). Under the basic premise of the peaceful struggle for the rights of each individual, became the ideologue and political campaign manager for the future president, the engineer Arturo Arajo in 1930. That same year he was elected as national deputy president separating himself politically from the president and their positions.