Carlos Luis Fallas Sibaja (January 21, 1909 – May 7, 1966), also known as Calufa (from the initial syllables of his first, middle and last name), was a Costa Rican author and communist political activist. Born in

Alajuela Alajuela () is a district in the Alajuela canton of the Alajuela Province of Costa Rica. As the seat of the Municipality of Alajuela canton, it is awarded the status of city. By virtue of being the city of the first canton of the province, it i ...

to a single mother, Fallas completed only the first two years of secondary schooling before moving to

Limón Limón (), commonly known as Puerto Limón, is a district, the capital city and main hub of Limón province, as well as of the Limón canton in Costa Rica. It is the seventh largest city in Costa Rica, with a population of over 55,000, and is ho ...

, on the Atlantic coast, where he worked in the banana plantations of the

United Fruit Company The United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) was an American multinational corporation that traded in tropical fruit (primarily bananas) grown on Latin American plantations and sold in the United States and Europe. The company was formed in 1899 fro ...

. Finding conditions there intolerable, he returned to Alajuela at the age of 22 and found work as a

shoemaker Shoemaking is the process of making footwear. Originally, shoes were made one at a time by hand, often by groups of shoemakers, or cobblers (also known as '' cordwainers''). In the 18th century, dozens or even hundreds of masters, journeymen ...

. Fallas became active in the organized labor movement and in the

Communist Party of Costa Rica The People's Vanguard Party, or Popular Vanguard Party () is a communist party in Costa Rica. PVP was founded in 1931 as the Workers and Farmers Party, but was soon renamed to the Communist Party of Costa Rica (''Partido Comunista de Costa Ric ...

. After a bloody clash between striking workers and the police, a judge sentenced him in 1933 one year of banishment in the Atlantic coast. There, Fallas became the leader of the 15,000-strong banana workers' strike of 1934. In 1942, Fallas was elected city council representative and in 1944 he became a national congressman. He fought in the Costa Rican Civil War of 1948 on the side of the government forces, to which the

communists Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

were then allied. As an author he is best known for his novels ''Mamita Yunai'' (1940), which denounced the harsh condition endured by workers for the United Fruit Company and which is referenced in Pablo Neruda's '' Canto General'', and for ''Marcos Ramírez'' (1952), a humorous

bildungsroman In literary criticism, a ''Bildungsroman'' (, plural ''Bildungsromane'', ) is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from childhood to adulthood (coming of age), in which character change is import ...

about the life of a Costa Rican boy in the early 20th century, taken largely from Fallas's own life. Other works include ''Gentes y gentecillas'' (1947), and ''Mi madrina'' (1954). Despite his brief formal schooling and relatively meager output, Fallas is one of the most widely read Costa Rican authors. In 1962 he was awarded the

William Faulkner William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most o ...

Foundation's

Ibero-America Ibero-America ( es, Iberoamérica, pt, Ibero-América) or Iberian America is a region in the Americas comprising countries or territories where Spanish or Portuguese are predominant languages (usually former territories of Portugal or Spain). ...

n Novel Prize for ''Marcos Ramírez''. He received the Magón Prize, Costa Rica's highest recognition for cultural work, shortly before his death from kidney cancer at the age of 57. The Costa Rican Congress posthumously declared him ''Benemérito de la Patria'' ("Deserving Citizen," the highest distinction that the government can extend) in 1977.

Works

* "Barreteros y otros cuentos" 1987 * "Mamita Yunai" Novel,1941. * "Marcos Ramírez" Novel, 1952. * "Mi madrina" Novel, 1954. * "Gentes y gentecillas" Novel, 1947. * "Cuenta Braña: un mecánico comunista en la Europa nazi"

References

Biography from ''Espíritu del 48''
(in Spanish)
William Faulkner's Ibero-American Novel Project
by Deborah Cohn

External links

Gentes y gentecillasMi madrinaMamita Yunai
1909 births 1966 deaths People from Alajuela Costa Rican people of Spanish descent People's Vanguard Party (Costa Rica) politicians Costa Rican male short story writers Costa Rican short story writers Costa Rican male writers Marxist writers People of the Costa Rican Civil War Deaths from kidney cancer Deaths from cancer in Costa Rica Place of death missing {{Activist-stub