José Rafael Pocaterra: Master of Magical Realism in Venezuela (+Christmas)

On December 18, 1889, the Venezuelan writer and politician, José Rafael Pocaterra, was born in Valencia, Carabobo state, who published numerous short stories, novels, articles and press reports. His best-known work is Memories of a Venezuelan of Decline, one of the most severe critiques of the regime of Juan Vicente Gómez. He participated in the invasion of Cumana aboard the Falke steamer in 1929. As a journalist and diplomatic official, he lived in the United States and Canada.

At the age of 18, he suffered a year in prison, for having collaborated in the newspaper in Caín, a newspaper that identified itself as an enemy of the government of President Cipriano Castro. A year later, he accompanied Vargas as private secretary, who was appointed president of the state of Guárico. There he wrote his first novel, Doctor Baby, where he satirizes the figure of Samuel E. Niño.

In 1912 he returned to Caracas, where he wrote Dark Lives. From there he moved to Maracaibo and there he collaborated with the phonograph and shared the address of that newspaper together with Eduardo López Bustamante. Between 1916 and 1918, Pocaterra held various political positions in the state of Zulia. In April 1917, the magazine Characteres, which he directed, appeared in Maracaibo, and at the same time he wrote his third novel, Tierra del Sol Amada.

José Rafael Pocaterra, writer of the realistic genre, noted as one of the masters of the Venezuelan short story in the 20th century, won his first prize in the floral games organized by Contemporary Venezuela with the story Patria, la Mestiza. But his most outstanding works were Panchito Mandefuá, a character in one of his Grotesque Tales, who became a symbol of the street child. At the same time, his Memoirs of a Venezuelan constituted a symbol of the decadence, the tragic chronicle and the amazing events of Venezuelan life between 1900 and 1920, as well as a violent and brilliant pamphlet against the regimes of Cipriano Castro and Juan Vicente Gómez.

Mazo News Team