Miguel Ángel Asturias

Guatemalan novelist, dramatist, and nonfiction and short-story writer

• Born: October 19, 1899
• Birthplace:Guatemala City, Guatemala
• Died: June 9, 1974
• Place of death:Madrid, Spain

Biography

Miguel Ángel Asturias (ahs-TEWR-yahs) is considered one of the three most important Latin American writers of his generation (Jorge Luis Borges and Alejo Carpentier are the other two) and one of the two major influences in the twentieth century on the development of the Latin American novel. He was born in Guatemala City, Guatemala, to Ernesto Asturias, a magistrate, and María Rosales, a schoolteacher, on October 19, 1899, a year after the accession to the presidency of the infamous dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera. Unable to tolerate the politically vindictive and repressive measures of the Estrada Cabrera regime, Ernesto Asturias moved his family to a small village near the outskirts of Guatemala City. There, and later in Salamá, an even smaller village in the Guatemalan interior, young Miguel’s contact with the magical vision of the indigenous cultures initiated his personal education and stimulated his artistic development.

Travels into the hinterland with his maternal grandfather to oversee the family estates were also a regular part of his early years and subsequently provided the intimate knowledge and experience of Indian languages, lifestyles, and traditions that would lead Asturias in later years to first the writing of a thesis (Sociología guatemalteca: El problema social del indio) on the social problems of the Indians in Guatemala and later, in the mid-1920’s, to the formal study (and translation into Spanish) of pre-Columbian literary and mythological texts.

The years from 1899 to 1920, lived under the sternly repressive government of Estrada Cabrera, were decisive in shaping the political and artistic temperament of the writer. As a student activist, Asturias spearheaded the founding of a popular university in 1922 following the overthrow of the Estrada Cabrera dictatorship (an event to which his activities had significantly contributed). As a community project, the popular university was intended to increase the social and political influence of the underprivileged sectors of Guatemalan society through the contributions and active involvement of the middle class in educational and other programs for the poor.

Although granted his law degree in 1923, because he was an editor of a weekly journal called Tiempos Nuevos (new times), Asturias was forced into exile when the paper fell into disfavor with the succeeding regime. It was during this first of several exiles in London, and later Paris, that Asturias returned to his diary in a notebook—begun in December of 1917, in response to the great earthquake that leveled Guatemala City—to produce the stories that were subsequently transformed into his first expression of devotion to his country and his published work, Leyendas de Guatemala (legends of Guatemala).

Breaking with the realist and naturalist traditions of “Indianist” writings of previous generations, Asturias expanded the possibilities of the genre by infusing a conventional narrative style with the mythopoeic language and the oneiric texture and modes of perception found in the sixteenth-century works Popol Vuh and Annals of the Cakchiquels. Under the notable influence of these surviving sacred texts of the Maya Quiché and Maya Cakchiquels, his authoritative knowledge derived from five years of literary and anthropological studies at the Musée de l’Homme and the Sorbonne in Paris, and inspired by the theories and techniques of French Surrealism for exploring the unconscious in literature and art, Asturias brought an unprecedented degree of innovation and authenticity to Latin American imaginative writings about Indians.

Although the critical reception accorded Leyendas de Guatemala was favorable and encouraging, nearly sixteen years separate those stories from Asturias’s acclaimed novel The President. It began as a short story (“Los mendigos politicos,” the political beggars) written originally for a literary contest in Guatemala in 1923 but never submitted. Stimulated by personal memories evoked by meetings of exiled writers to discuss and compare anecdotes on Latin American dictatorships they had known, the story evolved over the next two decades from oral speech and tale into what is generally considered to be the author’s most important novel. First published in Mexico in 1946, The President epitomizes the most characteristic and persistent elements found in Asturias’s fiction: the fusion of myth, dream, and magic to establish a specific cultural frame of reference; political portraiture and social criticism; linguistic inventiveness; complexity of narrative structure; and technical experimentation designed to expand the experience of the novel beyond the narrow confines of naturalism and literary regionalism. The themes of humankind in harmony with nature, people’s resistance to economic exploitation, and the evil and cruelty of political corruption are also central to the novel’s purpose.

In 1952 Asturias received the Prix International du Livre Français for the French translation of The President and, in 1972, the William Faulkner Foundation’s Ibero-American Novel Award when the English translation appeared. Although based on incidents of the Estrada Cabrera dictatorship, the novel’s events exist in that kind of fantastically timeless dimension and locale intended to evoke the “hallucinatory” perception and experience of the world that Asturias associates with the indigenous, pre-Columbian imagination: realismo mágico. This Magical Realism became the dominant tendency in Latin American prose fiction of the twentieth century, and Asturias is considered one of its inventors and (along with Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier) most successful practitioners.

The critical success of The President was followed three years later by Men of Maize, the novel Asturias identified as his favorite. Based on Indian legends of humankind’s creation by the gods from corn, the novel is much more obscure, much more Indianist, and much less nightmarish in atmosphere than The President.

Asturias returned to Guatemala in 1933 and established a radio news program, “El diario del aire” (daily news on the air). It was the only news commentary program under the right-wing regime of then-president Ubico Castañeda. Following the 1944 revolution, Asturias was appointed to diplomatic posts in Mexico, Argentina, France, and El Salvador. The years from 1954 to 1959 saw him again in exile. Artistically, these were very productive years. He completed his Banana Trilogy, begun in 1950 with Strong Wind and followed by The Green Pope and The Eyes of the Interred. This trilogy was followed by The Bejeweled Boy, Mulata, and Maladrón, along with several collections of short stories, several volumes of poetry, and numerous journalistic writings.

In 1966 Asturias was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize. He was named the Guatemalan ambassador to France that year. In 1967 he became the first Latin American novelist to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, and in 1970 he was made a member of the French Légion d’Honneur. These prestigious awards gave international recognition of his importance. They also contributed greatly to diminishing negative criticism of the author’s works because of the pervasive Marxist, anti-American themes explicit in his narratives. Today there is neither question of Asturias’s literary achievements nor debate over the significance of his contribution to world literature.

Asturias died of a respiratory illness and intestinal tumor on June 9, 1974, in Madrid, Spain. In the decades following his death, several volumes of his correspondence and essays were printed, as was the previously unpublished long novella El árbol de la Cruz.

Author Works

Long Fiction:

La barba provisoria, 1929

El Señor Presidente, 1946 (The President, 1963)

Hombres de maíz, 1949 (Men of Maize, 1975)

Viento fuerte, 1950 (The Cyclone, 1967; better known as Strong Wind, 1968)

El papa verde, 1954 (The Green Pope, 1971)

Los ojos de los enterrados, 1960 (The Eyes of the Interred, 1973)

El alhajadito, 1961 (The Bejeweled Boy, 1971)

Mulata de tal, 1963 (The Mulatta and Mr. Fly, 1963)

Maladrón, 1969

El árbol de la Cruz, 1993 (Aline Janquart and Amos Segala, editors)

Short Fiction:

Leyendas de Guatemala, 1930

Week-end en Guatemala, 1956

El espejo de Lida Sal, 1967 (The Mirror of Lida Sal, 1997)

Novelas y cuentos de juventud, 1971

Viernes de dolores, 1972

Drama:

Cuculcán, pb. 1930

Soluna: Comedia prodigiosa en dos jornadas y un final, pb. 1955

La audiencia de los confines, pr., pb. 1957 (rev. and expanded, 2007)

Chantaje, pr., pb. 1964

Dique seco, pr., pb. 1964

Teatro, pb. 1964

Poetry:

Sonetos, 1935

Con el rehén en los diente: Canto a Francia, 1942

Poesía: Sien de alondra, 1949

Ejercicios poéticos en forma de sonetos sobre temas de Horacio, 1951

Bolívar: Canto al Libertador, 1955

Clarivigilia primaveral, 1965

Miguel Angel Asturias, raíz y destino: Poesía inédita, 1917-1924, 1999 (Marco Vinicio Mejía, editor)

Nonfiction:

Sociología guatemalteca: El problema social del indio, 1923 (Guatemalan Sociology: The Problem of the Indian, 1977)

La arquitectura de la vida nueva, 1928

Carta aérea a mis amigos de América, 1952

Rumania: Su nueva imagen, 1964 (essays)

Latinoamérica y otros ensayos, 1968 (essays)

Comiendo en Hungría, 1969 (with Pablo Neruda; Sentimental Journey around the Hungarian Cuisine, 1969)

Tres de cuatro soles, 1971

América, fábula de fábulas y otros ensayo, 1972, 1972 (Richard Callan, editor)

Mi mejor obra: Autoantología , 1973

Sinceridades, 1980 (Epaminondas Quintana, compiler)

París 1924-1933: Periodismo y creación literaria, 1988 (Amos Segala, coordinador)

Cartas de amor, 1989 (Felipe Mellizo, editor)

Fragmentos de una correspondencia: Brañas-Asturias, 1929-1973, 2001 (Julio Pinto Soria et al., editors)

La experiencia italiana de Miguel Ángel Asturias (1959-1973), 2013 (Patrizia Spinato Bruschi, editor)

Miscellaneous:

Obras completas, 1967 (3 volumes)

Viajes, ensayos y fantasías, 1981 (Richard J. Callan, compiler)

Leyendas y poemas, 1981

Children's/Young Adult Literature:

El hombre que lo tenía todo todo todo, 2001

Bibliography

Barrueto, Jorge J. “A Latin American Indian Re-Reads the Canon: Postcolonial Mimicry in El Señor Presidente.” Hispanic Review 74, no. 3 (Summer, 2004). Barrueto reevaluates The President, considered a novel of political criticism that ascribes the problems of Guatemala to the nation’s indigenous peoples. Barrueto seeks to broaden analysis of the novel by examining the book from the perspective of the Guatemalan Indians.

Brotherston, Gordon. The Emergence of the Latin American Novel. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977. This scholarly work is intended as an introduction to the Latin American novel, particularly from the 1950’s to the 1970’s. The chapter on Asturias discusses the author’s work in the light of his politics, culture, and literary influences. Contains a general bibliography of secondary works on Latin American literature as well as a list of works by and on the major authors mentioned in the text. Accessible to general readers.

Brushwood, John S. “The Spanish American Short Story from Quiroga to Borges.” In The Latin American Short Story: A Critical History, edited by Margaret Sayers Peden. Boston: Twayne, 1983. A brief discussion of Asturias’s appropriation of legends to use as story material; includes a brief discussion of “The Legend of the Tattooed Woman.”

Callan, Richard J. India’s Mythology in the Novel “El Alhajadito” (“The Bejeweled Boy”) by Miguel Ángel Asturias. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2003. Callan analyzes The Bejeweled Boy within the context of Hindu mythology. He describes how Hinduism informed Asturias’s plot and characterization and how Asian deities and beliefs are expressed in Asturias’s metaphors, reflecting Asturias’s conviction that mythology is the ancient literary means for expressing the doubts, desires, and conflicts of human experience.

Callan, Richard J. Miguel Ángel Asturias. New York: Twayne, 1970. Callan’s book both acquaints English-speaking readers with the author’s works and ideas and outlines the substructure of Asturias’s work: the depth psychology of Carl Jung. Beyond sketching the historical and cultural context of Asturias’s work, Callan plunges into its essential depths. Supplemented by an annotated bibliography, a chronology, and notes.

Gonzalez Echevarria, Roberto. Myth and Archive: A Theory of Latin American Narrative. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Although the book focuses on other writers, Asturias’s work is briefly discussed and placed within the context of other Latin American novels. A very helpful volume in coming to terms with Asturias’s unusual narratives.

Harss, Luis, and Barbara Dohmann. “Miguel Ángel Asturias: Or, The Land Where the Flowers Bloom.” In Into the Mainstream: Conversations with Latin-American Writers. New York: Harper & Row, 1967. Based on interviews, the section devoted to Asturias offers useful information on the author’s thought.

Henighan, Stephen. Assuming the Light: The Parisian Literary Apprenticeship of Miguel Angel Asturias. Oxford, England: Legenda, 1999. Henighan focuses on Asturias’s time in Paris during the 1920’s and 1930’s, which, he argues, was the most crucial and least understood period of the author’s career. Henighan studies The President and other works to demonstrate how Asturias shaped his definitions of Guatemalan cultural identity and Spanish-American modernity from a French perspective.

Peden, Margaret Sayers, ed. The Latin American Short Story. Boston: Twayne, 1983. The essays in this insightful collection chart the main currents and principal figures of the historical mainstream of the Latin American short story, suggesting the outlines of the great depth and breadth of the genre in these lands. The section devoted to Asturias focuses on Leyendas de Guatemala. Contains a selected list of authors, collections in English, and critical studies in English.

Prieto, Rene. Miguel Ángel Asturias’s Archaeology of Return. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. An excellent study of the novelist’s body of work. Prieto discusses both the novels and the stories, taking up issues of their unifying principles, idiom, and eroticism. Prieto’s measured introduction, in which he carefully analyzes Asturias’s reputation and identifies his most important work, is especially useful. Includes detailed notes and a bibliography.

Williams, Raymond Leslie. The Modern Latin American Novel. New York: Twayne, 1998. This examination of Latin American novelists includes a chapter on Asturias and places his work within the general tradition of modernist Latin American fiction. Includes a bibliography and an index.