Rafael Arévalo Martínez

Rafael Arévalo Martinez
Arévalo Martinez in the 1930s
Born	(1884-07-25)25 July 1884 Guatemala City  Guatemala
Died	12 June 1975(1975-06-12) (aged 90)

Rafael Arévalo Martínez (25 July 1884, Guatemala City –12 June 1975, Guatemala City) was a Guatemalan writer. He was a novelist, short-story writer, poet, diplomat, and director of Guatemala’s national library for more than 20 years. Though Arévalo Martínez’s fame has waned, he is still considered important because of his short stories, and one in particular: The man who resembled a horse and the biography of president Manuel Estrada Cabrera, ¡Ecce Pericles!. Arévalo Martínez was director of the Guatemalan National Library from 1926 until 1946, when he became for a year Guatemala’s representative before the Pan American Union in Washington, D.C. He was the political and literary counterpart of his more famous countryman, Nobel Prize winner Miguel Ángel Asturias; while Arévalo Martínez was an unapologetic admirer of the United States, Asturias was a bitter critic of the New Orleans-based United Fruit Company (now part of United Brands Company), which he felt had plundered his country.

Arévalo Martinez was a shy child, prone to sickness but with acute talent. His mother took care of him, given that his father died when he was only four years old. He attended Nia Chon and San José de los Infantes, schools, but could not even finish high school due to his health problems.

Along with artist, writers and poets like Carlos Mérida, Rafael Rodríguez Padilla, Rafael Yela Günther, Carlos Valenti, and Carlos Wyld Ospina among others, worked very closely with Jaime Sabartés, a Spaniard that arrived to Guatemala in 1906 from Barcelona, where he was a close friend of Pablo Picasso; the group was known as the "1910 generation". Arévalo Martínez and the other members of his generation were crucial for the literature and arts of the 20th century in Central America as they abandoned Modernism in search of new trends. Later on Arévalo Martínez created his own style, although there are a number of Guatemalan writers that are grateful for his grammar advice.