Preceded by Romulo Betancourt Religion Roman Catholic Name Romulo Gallegos Books Dona Barbara, Canaima | Political party Accion Democratica Signature Role Venezuelan Politician Movies Dona Barbara, Canaima | |
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Succeeded by Carlos Delgado Chalbaud Born 2 August 1884
Caracas, Venezuela ( 1884-08-02 ) Died April 7, 1969, Caracas, Venezuela Spouse Teotiste Arocha Egui (m. 1912) Parents Romulo Gallegos Osio, Rita Freire Guruceaga Similar People Romulo Betancourt, Marcos Perez Jimenez, Arturo Uslar Pietri, Isaias Medina Angarita, Carlos Delgado Chalbaud | ||
Biografias romulo gallegos m4v
Romulo Angel del Monte Carmelo Gallegos Freire (2 August 1884 – 7 April 1969) was a Venezuelan novelist and politician. For a period of some nine months during 1948, he was the first cleanly elected president in his country's history.
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Romulo Gallegos was born in Caracas to Romulo Gallegos Osio and Rita Freire Guruceaga, into a family of humble origin. He began his work as a schoolteacher, writer, classical music enthusiast, and journalist in 1903. His novel Dona Barbara was first published in 1929, and it was because of the book's criticisms of the regime of longtime dictator Juan Vicente Gomez that he was forced to flee the country. He took refuge in Spain, where he continued to write: his acclaimed novels Cantaclaro (1934) and Canaima (1935) date from this period. He returned to Venezuela in 1936 and was appointed Minister of Public Education.
In 1937 he was elected to Congress and, in 1940–41, served as Mayor of Caracas. In 1945, Romulo Gallegos was involved in the coup d'etat that brought Romulo Betancourt and the "Revolutionary Government Junta" to power, in the period known as El Trienio Adeco. In the 1947 general election he ran for the presidency of the republic as the Accion Democratica candidate and won in what is generally believed to be the country's first honest election. He took office in February 1948, but officers Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, Marcos Perez Jimenez and Luis Felipe Llovera Paez, threw him out of office in November in the 1948 Venezuelan coup d'etat. He took refuge first in Cuba and then in Mexico. From 1960 to 1963, he was a Commissioner of the newly created Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (created on 18 August 1959), and he was also its first President (1960).
He was able to return to Venezuela in 1958. He was appointed a senator for life, awarded the National Literature Prize (1958, for La doncella), and elected to the Venezuelan Academy of the Language (the correspondent agency in Venezuela of the Spanish Royal Academy). He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1960, largely due to the efforts of Miguel Otero Silva, and gained widespread support in Latin America, but ultimately lost out to Saint-John Perse. The Romulo Gallegos international novel prize was created in his honor in 1964, with the first award being made in 1967. Romulo Gallegos Freire died in Caracas on 5 April 1969.
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