Díaz Castro, Eugenio (1804–1865)
Díaz Castro, Eugenio (1804–1865)
Eugenio Díaz Castro (b. 1804; d. 11 April 1865), Colombian author noted for his novels and local-color sketches (cuadros de costumbre). Born in Soacha, Díaz studied in Bogotá's Colegio de San Bartolomé but spent most of his life in agricultural endeavors. When he was over fifty, he became acquainted with José María Vergara y Vergara, who published his sketches of rural life in Vergara y Vergara's literary magazine El Mosaico. Díaz also wrote three novels: Manuela (1858), Los aguinaldos en Chapinero (1873), and El rejo de enlazar (1873), only the first of which is well regarded. Set in 1856 in a small town near Bogotá, it is partly a romantic love story centered on the simple but sharp-witted Manuela. The novel also effectively portrays the ideological disputes of the era and points up the gulf between recently enacted reform legislation and the realities of rural Colombia.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Eugenio Díaz Castro, Novelas y cuadros de costumbre, 2 vols. (1985).
Raymond L. Williams, The Colombian Novel, 1844–1987 (1991), esp. pp. 56-68.
Additional Bibliography
Botía Niño, Julio. Análisis de Manuela, Eugenio Díaz Castro. Bogota: Panamericana Editorial, 2003.
Helen Delpar