Ciro Alegría Bazán (1909- 1967) , was the author of The world is wide and alien was born in the farm "Quilca", district of Sartimbamba, in the province of Huamachuco (department of La Libertad), on November 4, 1909. His parents were José Eliseo Alegría Lynch and María Herminia Bazán Lynch, natives of Huamachuco. Alegría lived until she was four years old in “Quilca” and then spent the rest of her childhood in the “Marcabal Grande” hacienda, as well as in small towns in the region, such as Cajabamba. His early games with Indian children left an indelible mark on his life and work; Already in his youth he would share agricultural tasks and rodeos with Indian laborers and cholos. His primary and secondary studies were carried out in the city of Trujillo; in 1917 he was a student of the great poet César Vallejo at the national school of San Juan . His favorite authors include Jules Verne and Antonio Raimondi, whose book El Perú arouses his keen interest. In 1920 he and his father visited the house of the painter José Sabogal, one of the pioneers of indigenism, an artistic and ideological movement to which Alegría's work is usually associated.
His beginnings as a writer
In 1924 he defines his vocation and writes, encouraged by his family, his first stories and poems. The following year he became a peonage racionero and assistant in the warehouse of his uncle Constante Bazán, in the "Galindo" hacienda. Later, the writer and philosopher Antenor Orrego, a member of the "Bohemia Trujillana" and director of the newspaper El Norte, accepted him as a reporter, incorporating him into his literary group. That was a time of intense political effervescence and confrontation between the supporters of Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre and the followers of José Carlos Mariátegui -for whom Alegría always showed the greatest respect, due to his accurate understanding of the indigenous problem-. However, in 1930, when he entered the University of Trujillo, he decided to join Apra, the party founded by Haya and Orrego. Being a member of the executive committee of Apra he is cruelly tortured, because of his opposition to the Leguía dictatorship.
Edition of The Hungry Dogs and The World is Wide and Alien
During the government of General Benavides (1933) he began to work in the clandestine newspaper La Tribuna de Lima. He also collaborates in the magazines Panoramas, Word and Social Chronicle. On December 13, 1934 he travels to Valparaíso and then to Santiago de Chile; his arrival coinciding with the death of the poet José Santos Chocano. The year 1935 is important in his life because he marries his aunt Rosalía Amézquita and transforms his story "Marañon" into what would be his first novel:The Golden Serpent, for which he is awarded the "Nascimento" prize in Chile. The following year, Alegría is elected a member of the board of directors of the Society of Writers of Chile and begins to work at the Ercilla publishing house, as a proofreader. He also translates works by Stefan Zweig and Ylia Ehremburg, for the Zig-Zag publishing house. In 1938 his health problems worsen and he suffers a cerebral embolism, temporarily losing the ability to write. During his recovery and based on previous materials, he composes his novel The Hungry Dogs. Among 62 presented novels he gets the "Zig-Zag" award. The novel was published in August 1939. His novel The world is wide and alien, an unavoidable classic in Peruvian literature, obtained in 1940 the renowned "Farrar &Rinehart" award, convened from the United States by the publisher of the same name.
Ciro Alegría's trip to Puerto Rico and the United States
On April 19, 1941, in the company of the Venezuelan essayist Mariano Picón Salas, Alegría traveled to Puerto Rico and participated in the Inter-American Conference of Writers. He later attends the Congress of American Writers in Washington, where he meets the American writer Waldo Frank, with whom he will maintain a great friendship. In October 1941 the English translation of The world is wide and alien appears and his book is located by the press in fourth place in sales . After the bombing of Pearl Harbor (1942) he gets a job at the Reader's Digest magazine and takes a position in the United States war propaganda office, as a coordinator. During 1945 he dedicated himself to working as a translator in the film company Metro Goldwin Mayer. He, too, is called by don Federico de Onís to teach a course on the Hispano-American novel at Columbia University. Her friend Gabriela Mistral invites him from San Francisco (1946) and this visit will serve for her posthumous book Gabriela Mistral intimate. In 1948 Ciro Alegría publicly and irrevocably separated from the APRA party . He publishes articles in El Diario de New York and in English-language magazines such as Encore . In 1953 Alegría is invited to the Martí Congress in Havana, where more than a hundred writers from Europe and America met. Based on the Caribbean island, he collaborates from there with the magazine Letras Peruanas. In 1956 he is invited by the Universidad de Oriente to teach a course on the novel and its technique. That same year he met the Cuban poet Dora Varona Gil, with whom he married in 1957 . At the end of that year, after a long absence, the novelist returns to Peru, being the object of a massive reception, which is overwhelming due to his natural shyness.
His work reaches popular diffusion with the Peruvian Book Festival, which is attended by friendly writers such as Pablo Neruda, Jorge Icaza and Enrique López Albújar. He successively he is appointed doctor honoris causa by the University of Trujillo.
Collaboration with Ciro Alegría in international newspapers and festivals
Since February 1958, the novelist collaborated assiduously in the newspaper El Comercio, doyen of the national press. On April 23, 1960, the Peruvian Academy of Language -directed by Víctor Andrés Belaunde- elects him unanimously as a full member.
He then attends the Third Book Festival of America, in Buenos Aires. He travels to Montevideo and meanwhile collaborates with the famous Argentine newspaper La Nación. Since 1961 he writes for the newspaper Expreso and for the magazine Caretas. At the beginning of 1963, Alegría reached a deputation for Lima, as a member of the Popular Action party. In September of the same year, his book of stories Duelo de Caballeros was published by Manuel Scorza's Populibros publishing house. He is invited to the Second International Meeting of Writers, held in Berlin in 1964 and attended -among others- by Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Ramón Ribeyro. At the invitation of the French Parliament, he traveled to France and then to Italy and the USA (1965). On his return to his country, he attends the First Meeting of Peruvian Storytellers, convened by the House of Culture of Arequipa, directed by the critic Antonio Cornejo Polar . On May 28, 1966, Alegría was elected president of the National Association of Writers and Artists, defeating Luis Alberto Sánchez, then rector of the University of San Marcos. A bohemian and heavy smoker, Alegría - who considered himself a member of the "30's generation" - frequented artists from different generations. He was a regular attendee at the gatherings organized by the bookseller Juan Mejía Baca, alternating with Martín Adán, Arturo Hernández and Francisco Izquierdo Ríos. Ciro Alegría and José María Arguedas felt a reciprocal esteem and both defended themselves against useless competitions that some wanted to establish between them. Alegría specified that the Indian revealed by his books belongs to a very different zone from the one observed by Arguedas; he is a more acculturated Indian and generally does not know Quechua but, obviously, he is no less representative of Peru for that.
Death and works of Ciro Alegría
Ciro Alegría died on February 17, 1967, due to a cerebral hemorrhage, in Chaclacayo (Lima) . He was decorated, as a posthumous tribute, with the magisterial palms in the degree of Amauta. He was survived by his wife and his six children:Ciro and Alonso (from his first marriage); and Cecilia, Ciro Benjamín, Gonzalo and Diego, from his marriage to Dora Varona.
She has been in charge of publishing the unpublished work of Ciro Alegría, which includes the following titles:Lázaro (novela); Good luck with fed up stick (memories); The stone offering (Andean stories); The sun of the jaguars (Amazon tales); Krause's dilemma; seven palmistry stories (written in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Cuba); Gabriela Mistral intimate; Dream and truth of America; The enchanted bird that sings in the night; American Fables and Legends; "Sacha in the kingdom of trees", "A child is born in the Andes", "Fitzcarrald, the god of black gold" and "Panki and the warrior" (children's stories). They are still in preparation:My typewriter; Three books of chronicles:sketch of a portrait of Peru and Brief journey through literature.
Dora Varona in The Shadow of the Condor:Illustrated Biography of Ciro Alegría (1993) brings us closer to the intimate facet of man:“Ciro Alegría was a survivor of many deaths, not only physical, but also emotional. His poor health kept him awake until his last breath. And this laborious fight he always waged, since his difficult birth, because he loved life and desperately clung to it, like a lonely branch that he made blossom ” .