José María Vargas Vila José María de la Concepción Vargas Vila Apolinar Bonilla was born in Bogotá, in a family of radical ideas, on 23 July 1860. Died in Barcelona on May 23, 1933. His parents were José María Vargas Vila general and Elvira Bonilla. He studied secondary school in Bogotá. very early part in political struggles as a journalist, agitator and orator. I was sixteen when he enlisted in just the liberal forces of General Santos Acosta. At age 24, in 1884, served as general secretary of the radical Daniel Hernandez, during the uprising that he led against President Rafael Núñez, head of the "nationalist" and leader of the "National Regeneration." Colombia was then a Federal Republic made up of "sovereign states" and is often shaken by regional uprisings and civil wars. The uprising of General Daniel Hernandez started in the Sovereign State of Santander (northeast of the country) and soon spread to the whole nation. In 1885 the rebels defeated the government troops at the Battle of the smoke, but its losses were so great that they found it impossible to continue operations. The very leader of the rebellion died in that terrible carnage. His secretary, Vargas Vila, fled to the plains of Casanare, where General Santos Gabriel Vargas offered hospitality and shelter. He wrote his book "Brush Strokes on the latest revolution in Colombia, silhouettes war." With this book was born Vargas Vila devastating, iconoclastic, pamphleteer. It drew portraits cruel, grotesque, major political leaders of the "Regeneration", emphasizing to caricature the Catholic confessional, disqualifying with Adjectives Lapidary, burning, all the supposed virtues of such civic leaders and presenting them as monsters and power-hungry Uploaded with all sorts of moral evils. The government's response was immediate: offered a reward for the capture of Vargas Vila, alive or dead. The pamphlet fled to Venezuela and settled in Rubio, where he founded the newspaper "The Federation." Colombia's government, through pressures and protests, succeeded in this publication was closed by the authorities of Venezuela. Vargas Vila moved to Maracaibo and there began producing his first novels, he published and sold in pamphlet form, for delivery. In 1891 he traveled to the United States and settled in New York, where very soon entered into relations with many Latin American exiles, intellectuals and conspirators. A warm friendship joined the admirable José Martí and attended events together, literary meetings, forums and meetings of workers, politicians and poets. Martí left us the testimony of a meeting with workers in which he was passionate, "the passionate enthusiasm with which, taken out of their seats by impetus of love, saluted those slaves of America peroration rhythmic, inspired, a most gallant of the Colombian Jose M. Vargas Vila, who has his days and glorious and famous battles of his words and his pen in favor of freedom. " In New York, Vargas Vila founded and edited the magazine "Latin America" \u200b\u200band the newspaper "El Progreso." There was also published his book "Providenciales" ferocious tirade against warlords and dictators arrogant American. In 1893 he traveled to Venezuela where President Crespo was appointed his private secretary. But this did not last long, as Crespo Vargas Vila was overthrown and had to return to his exile in New York. They documented their frequent meetings with José Martí and the latter letter, written in late 1894, shows that Vargas Vila was informed by his Cuban friend about plans to return to the island to join the war of independence. Few months later, on May 19, 1895, Martí fell mortally wounded on the floor of the home he had loved above all things in life. Vargas Vila he moved to Paris, where so many brilliant writers had taken refuge in Latin America (Fombona Rufino Blanco, Enrique Gomez Carrillo and many others). With these established relations of personal friendship and intellectual, while continuing to publish articles, essays, novels, stories and political pamphlets. In New York, where he returned in 1902, founded the magazine "Nemesis", which soon became very popular. He wrote and edited in full and in your pages be the finest and most terrible battle of his sentences. Vargas Vila is notable that chose to move to New York to write there, and elsewhere, a violent book "Before the barbarians" relentless indictment of U.S. expansionism, with its brand new gun and his "Big Stick Policy." Again established in Paris, remained there the publication of "Nemesis." But his personal life had reached a critical point. It was intellectually admired and feared, but also deeply hated by governments, academia and intellectual traditionalists. He was a loner, like a raging bull fighting in the middle of the ring without intimate emotional life without a deep love, without a lasting company. Neurosis began to manifest as aggressive and intolerant attitudes, even toward one's friends who believed and admired. Her doctor told her to move out. He moved to Venice. Although the Venetian parentheses was brief (he returned to Paris in 1904), decadent extravagance contributed there to feed the Black Legend of Vargas Vila had already begun to grow like a hydra. In Paris, Bogota, Caracas, New York, said the pamphlet was immensely rich. Who lived like a prince. Who hated women, the priests and nuns. That his misanthropy and hatred of the church from being born the son of a parish priest and a nun depraved. That was an anarchist and helped with their money to the followers of Malatesta, financing assassinations and bombings against Dukes and Marquises. He was gay. Presiding over meetings of Satanism with his friends and accomplices. I was powerless and that this was the reason for his hatred of all living things. That was a hermaphrodite. The mere enumeration of perversions and psychopathology that were awarded to Vargas Vila could serve to make the catalog of perversions and their slanderers psychopathologies: the traditionalist piety of his country, old swollen clerical circles of privilege, full of bitterness and hatred, unable to feel love, Christian, disabled for reconciliation and kindness. Intellectuals in support of these critters did not mention even the name of Vargas Vila. They spoke of "expatriate", the "satanic", the "bastard", the "linguist contemptible", the "unnatural", the "blasphemous", "The Luciferian mendacious", the "enemy of peace, order and authority "" the pernicious decadent, "the" solvent ", the" degenerate. " Never did a literary criticism of his works, an analysis of their ideas, reasoned questioning of his thought, style or language. They had no value, or moral grandeur and sufficient intellectual capacity to do so. They came across the line, below and pygmies. All they could oppose Vargas Vila was a string of vile slander. Of course, the pamphlet was by no means perfect. His views were sharp, categorical, left no room for dissent. Devoid of intellectual modesty, was arrogant and conceited. He was convinced that his genius was unparalleled. It frequently praised himself an irritating manner. His ego was monumental. This gave his enemies plenty of material. But the root cause of the grudge against Vargas Vila was his uncompromising anti-clericalism, his passionate defense of free thought. In the eulogy for his friend the poet Diogenes Arrieta (1897), in Paris, gave this statement on Colombia, which has never forgiven - Sleep in peace, friend, far from the monastic rule that shame us! Vargas Vila always used all their firepower, his ferocious style and scathing virulent against the excessive privileges of the clergy and the Church, against the dogmatism and intolerance. Used phrases and metaphors that opened wounds incurable and then put salt in those wounds or acid burning of renewed oaths. It was a virtuoso of shame and the rant, at the service of secular thought. His style was prophetic: he used big words, verbs and adjectives tremendous. Abstract concepts presented as mythological beings, with names in capital letters: Ambition, Hate, Hypocrisy, Greatness. Their sentences were terse. Their findings, proverbial. Paradox used as a bludgeon to crush his opponents. His phrasing was choppy, with arbitrary hiatus evoked disheveled style of Simon Rodriguez, but unlike him, never was folksy and familiar. It is sometimes said that it was too gimmicky, contrived, with a taste decadent decorations charged, to D'Annunzio, but none of his opponents was unhurt and smiling after a discharge of such anthologies. would be foolish to argue that all the work of Vargas Vila deserves admiration. In his writings there are a lot of litter, many extravagances of little merit, loud and shrill many phrases without much substance. But in those lines where his talent shines, able to formulate their own ideas and concepts admirable. It then shows, impressive and passionate. Your stay in Paris (1904) was very brief. Nicaragua's government called him to fulfill consular functions in Spain. There, Ruben Dario, integrated Boundary Commission to Honduras before the king of Spain, who was then a mediator in the dispute. But Vargas Vila was not a man of diplomatic posts, and soon returned to his creative work. Took over the editing of his books and after brief stays in Paris and Madrid he settled in Barcelona. It was there where it started, by agreement with the Editorial Sopena, the publication of his complete works. This was one of the great publishing successes of those years. Vargas Vila came to enjoy very substantial income with this issue. Its popularity as a writer was immense. His name was not mentioned (not even mentioned today) in anthologies, in stories in literature or literary criticism. But his books circulated in taverns, in the corridors of the universities, the blacksmith, at the offices of trade, tailoring shops, including public service employees, the customers of hairdressers and of the carnage. Vargas Vila has been for that, as few, creator and teacher of popular culture in our America. I have found her books in spirit drinkers (Colombia), among packages of potato, in a cafe in Buenos Aires, in the port area, fueling talk of the parishioners at the time a nap, in the portfolio of a postmistress of Montevideo, for work carried Sorocabana coffee Freedom Square, where a group of friends waiting for the intellectual debate of the evening, in a fish shop in Valparaiso, owned interrupted customer care to read my whole paragraphs of "The Caesars of decadence" with sincere enthusiasm, in a "fruitful" Brazil, where more literate mulatto was in charge of workers gathered to read some text "good for the soul" ; in a salon of Cuzco (Peru), interspersed with fashion magazines and sports, for customers who paid for the shorn ("sitting, 10 soles; Standing, 5 soles) may be illustrated, and of course, in my own school desk in Santiago, Chile, when I founded a teen club conspirators and traffickers of banned books and blasphemous. Vargas Vila toured America America in 1923. He visited Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico, Havana and other major cities. Lectured very hectic and busy. controversial book through the newspapers. Journalists made her outrageous interviews. It caused uproar and din . The priests giving sermons from the pulpits of the eternal flames of hell to apostate who read books by this monster. "This made explosively increasing sales of their works. was at the end of this tour, in Havana, where Vargas Vila contracted a strange disease that affected his sight and which would eventually leave him blind. He returned to Barcelona, \u200b\u200bwhere he spent the last years of his life in complete solitude, without giving or asking for mercy to their spiteful enemies. He died in 1933, when he began to take shape the terrible drama of the English civil war. The circles of anarchist and socialist workers read it avidly and enthusiasm, respected and recognized him as a teacher. And indeed, above all, Vargas Vila was always an apostle of libertarian ideas. This was the best of their ideology, because sometimes lost in the labyrinths of the doctrines or disbelief in the pursuit of "superman" of Nietzsche. Excites note that none of its major flaws made him lose his breath humanist.
wrote stories, novels, travel narratives, plays, letters and aesthetic history, lectures, articles of criticism and political essays. Abounds in all the love for freedom and passion for social justice.
CV (Stockholm, 1997) .
wrote stories, novels, travel narratives, plays, letters and aesthetic history, lectures, articles of criticism and political essays. Abounds in all the love for freedom and passion for social justice.
CV (Stockholm, 1997) .
