Biography of Miguel Angel Asturias, Guatemalan Poet and Nobel Laureate

Miguel Ángel Asturias (1899-1974) was a Guatemalan poet, writer, diplomat, and Nobel Prize winner. He was known for his socially and politically relevant novels and as a champion of Guatemala's large indigenous population. His books were often openly critical of both Guatemalan dictatorships and American imperialism in Central America. Beyond his prolific writing, Asturias served as a diplomat for Guatemala in Europe and South America.

Early Life

Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales was born on October 19, 1899 in Guatemala City to a lawyer, Ernesto Asturias, and a teacher, María Rosales de Asturias. Fearing persecution by the dictatorship of Manuel Estrada Cabrera, his family moved to the small city of Salamá in 1905, where Asturias learned about Mayan culture from his mother and nanny. The family returned to the capital in 1908, where Asturias received his education. He entered university to study medicine at the University of San Carlos in 1917, but quickly changed to law, graduating in 1923. His thesis was entitled "Guatemalan Sociology: The Problem of the Indian," and won two awards, the Premio Galvez and the Chavez Prize.

Early Career and Travels

After finishing university, Asturias helped found the Popular University of Guatemala to offer educational access to students who couldn't afford to attend the national university. His leftist activism led to a brief imprisonment under President José María Orellana, so his father sent him to London in 1923 to avoid further trouble. Asturias quickly moved on to Paris, studying anthropology and Mayan culture at the Sorbonne with Professor Georges Raynaud until 1928. Raynaud had translated a sacred Mayan text, "Popol Vuh," into French, and Asturias translated it from French into Spanish. During this time, he traveled extensively in Europe and the Middle East, and also became a correspondent for several Latin American newspapers.

Asturias returned to Guatemala briefly in 1928, but then left again for Paris, where he completed his first published work, "Leyendas de Guatemala" (Legends of Guatemala) in 1930, a recreation of indigenous folklore. The book received an award for best Spanish-American book published in France.

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Asturias also wrote his novel "El Señor Presidente" (Mr. President) during his stay in Paris. Literary critic Jean Franco states, "Though based on incidents that occurred during Estrada Cabrera's dictatorship, the novel has no precise time or locale but is set in a city where every thought and every move comes under the surveillance of the man in power, an evil demiurge surrounded by a forest of listening ears, a network of telephone wires. In this state, free will is a form of treason, individualism spells death." When he returned to Guatemala in 1933, the country was being ruled by another dictator, Jorge Ubico, and Asturias could not bring the still-unpublished book with him. It would remain unpublished until 1946, well after the Ubico regime collapsed in 1944. During the period of the dictatorship, Asturias worked as a radio broadcaster and journalist.

Asturias' Diplomatic Posts and Major Publications

Asturias served as a deputy in the Guatemalan National Congress in 1942, and would go on to hold a number of diplomatic posts beginning in 1945. The president who succeeded Ubico, Juan José Arévalo, appointed Asturias as the cultural attaché to the Guatemalan Embassy in Mexico, where "El Señor Presidente" was first published in 1946. In 1947, he was transferred to Buenos Aires as a cultural attaché, which two years later became a ministerial post. In 1949, Asturias published "Sien de Alondra" (Temple of the Lark), an anthology of his poems written between 1918 and 1948.

That same year, he published what is considered to be his most significant novel, "Hombres de Maiz" (Men of Maize), which drew heavily on indigenous, pre-Colombian legends. His next three novels, beginning with "Viento Fuerte" (Strong Wind), were grouped into a trilogy—known as the "Banana Trilogy"—focused on American imperialism and U.S. agricultural companies' exploitation of Guatemalan resources and labor.

In 1947, Asturias separated from his first wife, Clemencia Amado, with whom he had two sons. One of them, Rodrigo, would later become, during the Guatemalan civil war, head of the umbrella guerilla group, the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity; Rodrigo fought under a pseudonym taken from one of the characters in Asturias' "Men of Maize." In 1950, Asturias remarried, to Argentinian Blanca de Mora y Araujo.

The U.S.-backed coup that overthrew democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz led to Asturias' exile from Guatemala in 1954. He moved back to Argentina, his wife's native country, where he published a collection of short stories about the coup, titled "Weekend in Guatemala" (1956). His novel "Mulata de tal" (Mulata) was published the following year. "A surrealistic blend of Indian legends, [it] tells of a peasant whose greed and lust consign him to a dark belief in material power from which, Asturias warns us, there is only one hope for salvation: universal love," according to NobelPrize.org.

Asturias served in a number of diplomatic roles again in the early 1960s in Europe, spending his final years in Madrid. In 1966, Asturias was awarded the International Lenin Peace Prize, a prominent Soviet award previously won by Pablo Picasso, Fidel Castro, Pablo Neruda, and Bertolt Brecht. He was also named the Guatemalan ambassador to France.

Literary Style and Themes

Asturias was considered to be an important exponent of the famed Latin American literary style magical realism. For example, "Legends of Guatemala" draws on indigenous spirituality and supernatural/mythical elements and characters, common features of magical realism. Although he did not speak an indigenous language, he used Mayan vocabulary often in his works. Jean Franco interprets Asturias's use of an experimental writing style in "Men of Maize" as offering a more authentic method for representing indigenous thought than traditional Spanish-language prose could offer. Asturias's style was also greatly influenced by Surrealism, and he was even involved in this artistic movement while in Paris in the 1920s: "El Señor Presidente" demonstrates this influence.

As should be evident, the themes Asturias tackled in his work were very much influenced by his national identity: he drew on Mayan culture in many of his works, and used his country's political situation as fodder for his novels. Guatemalan identity and politics were major features of his work.

The Nobel Prize

In 1967, Asturias was was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In his Nobel lecture, he stated, "We, the Latin American novelists of today, working within the tradition of engagement with our peoples which has enabled our great literature to develop—our poetry of substance—also have to reclaim lands for our dispossessed, mines for our exploited workers, to raise demands in favour of the masses who perish in the plantations, who are scorched by the sun in the banana fields, who turn into human bagasse in the sugar refineries. It is for this reason that—for me—the authentic Latin American novel is the call for all these things."

Asturias died in Madrid on June 9, 1974.

Legacy

In 1988, the Guatemalan government established an award in his honor, the Miguel Ángel Asturias Prize in Literature. The national theater in Guatemala City is also named after him. Asturias is particularly remembered as a champion of the indigenous people and culture of Guatemala. Beyond the ways indigenous culture and beliefs were reflected in his literary work, he was an outspoken advocate for a more equal distribution of wealth in order to combat the marginalization and poverty faced by Mayans, and spoke out against U.S. economic imperialism that exploited Guatemala's natural resources.

Sources

• Franco, Jean. An Introduction to Spanish-American Literature, 3rd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
• "Miguel Angel Asturias – Facts." NobelPrize.org. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1967/asturias/facts/, accessed 3 November 2019.
• Smith, Verity, editor. Encyclopedia of Latin American Literature. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997.