José Eustasio Rivera
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José Eustasio Rivera Salas (February 19, 1888 – December 1, 1928) was a Colombian lawyer and author primarily known for his
national epic A national epic is an epic poem or a literary work of epic scope which seeks or is believed to capture and express the essence or spirit of a particular nation—not necessarily a nation state, but at least an ethnic or linguistic group with as ...
'' The Vortex''.


Early life

José Eustasio Rivera was born on February 19, 1888 in Aguas Calientes, a hamlet of the city of Neiva, later that year the hamlet was incorporated into the newly created municipality of San Mateo, which was later renamed Rivera in honour of José Eustasio. His parents were Eustasio Rivera Escobar and Catalina Salas, and he was the first boy and fifth child out of eleven children, out of which eight made into adulthood, José Eustasio, Luis Enrique, Margarita, Virginia, Laura, Susana, Julia and Ernestina. In spite of his family's economic situation, he received a catholic education thanks to the help of other relatives and his own efforts. He attended Santa Librada school in Neiva and San Luis Gonzaga in Elías. In 1906 he received a scholarship to study at the normal school in Bogotá. In 1909, after graduating, he moved to Ibagué where he worked as a school inspector. In 1912 he enrolled at the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences of
National University A national university is mainly a university created or managed by a government, but which may also at the same time operate autonomously without direct control by the state. Some national universities are associated with national cultural or po ...
, graduating as a lawyer in 1917.


Career

After a failed attempt to be elected for the senate, he was appointed Legal Secretary of the Colombo-Venezuelan Border Commission to determine the limits with Venezuela, there he had the opportunity to travel through the Colombian jungles, rivers, and mountains, giving him a first hand experience of the subjects he would later write. Disappointed with the lack of resources offered by his government for his trip, he abandoned the commission and continued travelling on his own. He later rejoined the commission, but before that he went to Brazil, where he became acquainted with the work of important Brazilian writers of his time, particularly Euclides da Cunha. In this venture he became familiar with life in the Colombian plains and with problems related to the extraction of rubber in the Amazon jungle, a matter that would be central in his major work, ''
La vorágine ''The Vortex'' ( es, La Vorágine) is a novel written in 1924 by the Colombian author José Eustasio Rivera. It is set in at least three different bioregions of Colombia during the rubber boom. This novel narrates the adventures of Arturo Cova ...
'' (1924) (translated as ''The Vortex''), now considered one of the most important novels in Latin American literary history. To write this novel he read extensively about the situation of rubber workers in the Amazon basin. After the success of his novel, he was elected, in 1925, as a member for the Investigative Commission for Exterior Relations and Colonization. He also published several articles in newspapers in Colombia. In these pieces, he criticized irregularities in government contracts, and denounced the abandonment of the rubber areas of Colombia and the mistreatment of workers. He also publicly defended his novel, which had been criticized by some Colombian literary critics as being too poetic. This criticism would be largely silenced by the wide praise the novel was receiving everywhere else.


Death

Rivera had arrived in New York the last week of April 1928 in the hopes of translating his novel into English, publishing it in the United States, and turning it into a motion picture film with the goal of exporting
Colombian culture Many aspects of Colombian culture can be traced back to the early culture of Spain of the 16th century and its collision with Colombia's native civilizations (see: Muisca people, Muisca, Tayrona). The Spanish brought Catholicism, the feudal enco ...
abroad. His venture, albeit riffled with difficulties, was moving along when on November 27 he suffered an attack of seizures and was taken to the
Stuyvesant Polyclinic Hospital The Ottendorfer Public Library and Stuyvesant Polyclinic Hospital are a pair of historic buildings at 135 and 137 Second Avenue in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. The buildings house the Ottendorfer Branch of the ...
where he remained for four days in a
coma A coma is a deep state of prolonged unconsciousness in which a person cannot be awakened, fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light, or sound, lacks a normal wake-sleep cycle and does not initiate voluntary actions. Coma patients exhi ...
tose state until his death on December 1, 1928. After his death, his body was transported by ship from New York to
Barranquilla Barranquilla () is the capital district of Atlántico Department in Colombia. It is located near the Caribbean Sea and is the largest city and third port in the Caribbean Coast region; as of 2018 it had a population of 1,206,319, making it Col ...
on the United Fruit Company's ship the ''
Sixaola Sixaola is a district of the Talamanca canton, in the Limón province of Costa Rica. It is a border town together with Guabito, Panamá Sixaola is right across the Sixaola River from Guabito, Panama. History Sixaola was created on 19 Februar ...
''. At his arrival on port, his body was transported in procession to the Pro-Cathedral of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino where a requiem mass was given and the body laid in ''
chapelle ardente A (; French for "burning chapel") is a chapel or room in which the corpse of a sovereign or other exalted personage lies in state pending the funeral service. The name is in allusion to the many candles which are lighted round the catafalque. ...
''. The casket then made its way down the Magdalena onto Bogotá on the mail steamship ''Carbonell González'', arriving in Girardot and finishing by train to arrive in Bogotá on January 7, 1929 and was taken directly to the Capitolio Nacional where it was placed lying in state for public viewing. His body was finally laid to rest in the
Central Cemetery of Bogotá Central Cemetery of Bogotá (Spanish: ) is one of the main and most famous cemeteries in Colombia located in Bogotá. Houses several national heroes, poets and former Colombian presidents. It was opened in 1836 and was declared National Monument i ...
on January 19.


Selected works

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See also

*
Jorge Isaacs Jorge Isaacs Ferrer (April 1, 1837 – April 17, 1895) was a Colombian writer, politician and soldier. His only novel, '' María'', became one of the most notable works of the Romantic movement in Spanish-language literature. Biography His f ...
*
León de Greiff Francisco de Asís León Bogislao de Greiff Haeusler (July 22, 1895 – July 11, 1976), was a Colombian poet known for his stylistic innovations and deliberately eclectic use of obscure lexicon. Best known simply as León de Greiff, he often us ...


References


Further reading

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rivera Salas, Jose Eustasio 1888 births 1928 deaths People from Huila Department Colombian male writers Colombian diplomats