Jorge Debravo (January 31, 1938 - August 4, 1967) was a prominent

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

from

Costa Rica Costa Rica (, ; ; literally "Rich Coast"), officially the Republic of Costa Rica ( es, República de Costa Rica), is a country in the Central American region of North America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the no ...

. Debravo was born in Guayabo, on the slopes of the

Turrialba Volcano Turrialba Volcano is an active volcano in central Costa Rica that has been explosively eruptive in recent years including 2016 and in January, March and April 2017. Visitors used to be able to hike down into the main crater, but increased volc ...

in Costa Rica. He was the oldest of five children where he spent his early years helping his father, Joaquín Bravo Ramírez, manage a small

milpa Milpa is a crop-growing system used throughout Mesoamerica. It has been most extensively described in the Yucatán peninsula area of Mexico. The word ''milpa'' is derived from the Nahuatl word phrase ''mil-pa'', which translates into "cultivated ...

. Debravo was taught to read and write by his mother, Cristina Brenes and by the age of fourteen he was able to enter the fifth grade thanks to a scholarship. The first book he purchased was a

dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies ...

. A popular anecdote says that Debravo wrote his first poems on

banana paper Banana paper is a type of paper created from banana plant bark or banana peel fibers. Banana paper has a lower density, higher stiffness, higher disposability, higher renewability, and higher tensile strength compared to traditional paper. These ...

. Eventually, his first works would get published in a local magazine called "El Turrialbeño" by the time he was in the ninth grade. He would soon leave school to start working for the Caja Costarricense del Seguro Social (Social Security). In 1959 he married Margarita Salazar, with whom he had two children: Lucrecia, in 1960, and Raimundo in 1961. Jorge Debravo was killed in 1967, at age 29, when he was the victim of a drunk driving accident, being hit by a drunk driver while driving his motorcycle to his job in San Pedro,

San José San José or San Jose (Spanish for Saint Joseph) most often refers to: *San Jose, California, United States *San José, Costa Rica, the nation's capital San José or San Jose may also refer to: Places Argentina * San José, Buenos Aires ** San ...

January 31, the day he was born, is celebrated in Costa Rica as the National Day of Poetry.

References

*Fernández Lobo, M.(2002) Decimocuarta edición.Textos de lectura y comentario. San José: Fernández Arce.
Vida y obra de Jorge Debravo, Editorial Costa Rica

{{DEFAULTSORT:Debravo, Jorge 20th-century Costa Rican poets Costa Rican male poets 1938 births 1967 deaths People from Cartago Province Road incident deaths in Costa Rica 20th-century male writers