Pareja Diezcanseco, Alfredo (1908–1993)

Alfredo Pareja Diezcanseco (b. 12 October 1908; d. 3 May 1993), Ecuadorian novelist and historian. Born in Guayaquil, Pareja had to interrupt his education after primary school because of the untimely death of his father when the young author was just thirteen. Later he attended the University of Quito, after which he became involved in several business activities. Only later did he turn to journalism and literature.

Throughout his long career, Pareja not only wrote extensively both fiction and nonfiction, but he also participated in diplomacy and politics. He represented Ecuador in Mexico, Argentina, and Chile, and he served as the administrator of the United Nations Relief Agency for Central America. In domestic politics, Pareja became elected deputy to the Constituent Assembly of Ecuador in 1944, and a leader in the Democratic National Front in 1956 and 1960. On occasion his impassioned opposition to dictatorial regimes cost him his freedom and forced him into exile.

It is Pareja's written work, however, that built a solid reputation for him within and outside his country. He wrote several realistic novels in the 1930s and 1940s on the harsh life endured by the working Ecuadorian people. Later he turned to biographies and then to histories, culminating in his well-received Historia del Ecuador (2 vols., 2d ed. [1958]). His later work Las pequeñas estaturas (1970) is renowned for its impact on Hispanic narrative technique. He incorporates various stylistic techniques to exemplify the various assimilations that he saw taking place around him.

See alsoLiterature: Spanish America .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lilo Linke, "The People's Chronicler: Novelist Alfredo Pareja Writes About His Native Ecuador," in Américas 8 (1956): 7-11.

Unión Panamericana, Diccionario de la literatura latino-americana: Ecuador (1962), pp. 144-147.

Agustín Cueva, La literatura ecuatoriana (1968), pp. 41, 48-49.

Additional Bibliography

Pérez, Galo René. Literatura del Ecuador 400 años. Quito: Ediciones Abya-Yala, 2001.

Rengifo, Alberto. La narrativa de Alfredo Pareja Diezcanseco. Quito: Banco Central del Ecuador, 1990.

                                    Jack Ray Thomas