Joaquín Gallegos Lara

Joaquín Gallegos Lara (April 9, 1909 – November 16, 1947) was an Ecuadorian social realist novelist, short story writer, poet, and essayist.

Joaquín Gallegos Lara was born in Guayaquil in 1909, the son of Emma Lara Calderon and Joaquín Gallegos Del Campo (1873-1910) who founded a newspaper called "El Caustico" in 1895, which was satirical in nature and pro-Eloy Alfaro. Besides being a journalist, his father also wrote poems, which his wife Emma published after his death in a book called Mis Recuerdos (1912), which contained two poems dedicated to his son Joaquín Gallegos Lara: "A mi primogenito" and "El primer diente".

Despite being crippled, Lara fought as a militant communist and intellectual in Ecuador. He participated in street battles and blockades, with the help of a friend who carried him on his shoulders and acted as his legs. He never attended school and was completely self-taught. He spoke French, German, Italian, and Russian almost perfectly. He started writing poems at about 10 years old, when he found out of the suicide death of Medardo Ángel Silva (1898-1919).

Lara's early poems include "Al Potro", "Vieja Despedida", and "Mamá-Jijí" (a character in his novel Las Cruces Sobre el Agua), among others. These poems were published in the literary magazines "Páginas Selectas", "Variedades", "Letras y Números", "Cosmos", and "Ilustración". Years later his poetry took on a social and political view, such as "Poemas de Miss Ecuador" (dedicated to Sarita Chacón Zúñiga, the first Miss Ecuador), "Bandera Roja", "Film Ferroviario", "Romance de la rural", and "Guayas", which were published in newspapers such as La Prensa, El Telégrafo, and Bandera Roja (the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Ecuador).

Many of his stories were collected in Las Cruces Sobre el Agua, a novel published in 1946, which he wrote in pencil 5 years earlier at the age of 21. Two other works, "Los Guandos" and "La Bruja," were published posthumously.

In 1930, he wrote the collection of short stories Los Que Se Van, together with Demetrio Aguilera Malta and Enrique Gil Gilbert. He was part of the "Guayaquil Group" (a group of authors who used social realism in their writing) and played an active role in leftist politics.

In 1947, shortly before his death, he published the book of short stories La Ultima Erranza. In 1952, his Biografía del Pueblo Indio (completed in 1936) was published, and in 1956 another book of his stories was published.