Picón Salas, Mariano (1901–1965)

Mariano Picón Salas (b. 26 January 1901; d. 1 January 1965), Venezuelan essayist, teacher, and diplomat. After publishing his first book, Buscando el camino (1920), Picón left the Venezuelan dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez in 1923, seeking intellectual freedom in Chile. He completed his education at the University of Chile, where he taught and wrote until Gómez's death. Upon his return to Venezuela in 1936, Picón worked to improve national intellectual life. He held posts in Venezuela's Ministry of Education between 1936 and 1940, founded and directed the Revista Nacional de Cultura (1936), founded and was first dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) (1946), and taught at UCV and in Mexico, Argentina, and the United States. Although he was uncomfortable with political activism, Picón admired and enjoyed a warm friendship with social democrat Rómulo Betancourt, founder of the Democratic Action Party (1941).

In his numerous publications, Picón stressed the importance of spiritual and cultural progress, preferring the universal humanistic values of the eighteenth century to the materialistic tenets of communism or positivism. His historical works, Pedro Claver, el santo de los esclavos (1950), Miranda (1946), and De la conquista a la independencia: Tres siglos de historia cultural hispanoamericana (1944) emphasize humanistic values, as does his autobiographical novel Viaje al amanecer (1943). Picón served as Venezuelan ambassador to Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, and UNESCO; as secretary-general in the Venezuelan cabinet (1963–1964); and at the time of his death as president-designate of the National Institute of Culture and Fine Arts.

See alsoGómez, Juan Vicente .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Thomas O. Bente, "Man and Circumstance: A Study of Mariano Picón Salas' Work" (Ph.D. diss., UCLA, 1968).

J. M. Siso Martínez and Juan Oropesa, Mariano Picón Salas (1977).

Thomas D. Morin, Mariano Picón Salas (1979).

Additional Bibliography

Díaz Seijas, Pedro. Mariano Picón Salas, o, El ámbito universal de una vida y una obra. Caracas: Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, 2004.

Márquez Rodríguez, Alexis. Mariano Pícon Salas: El arte y la costumbre de pensar. Caracas: Vadell Hermanos Editores, 2002.

Zambrano, Gregory. Mariano Picón-Salas y el arte de narrar. Mérida: Universidad de los Andes, Vicerrectorado Académico, 2003.

                                      Judith Ewell