Salarrué

Salvador Efraín Salazar Arrué (Salarrué)
Born Salvador Efraín Salazar Arrué
October 22, 1899
Sonsonate, El Salvador
Died November 27, 1975 (aged 76)
Planes de Renderos, El Salvador
Occupation Author, Editor, Painter, Diplomat
Nationality Salvadoran
Spouse Zélie Lardé

Salvador Efraín Salazar Arrué (October 22, 1899 – November 27, 1975), known as Salarrué (a derivation of his surnames), was a Salvadoran writer, poet and painter

Born in Sonsonate to a well-off family, Salarrué trained as a painter at the Corcoran School of Art, in Washington, D.C., from 1916 to 1919. He then returned to El Salvador and, in 1922, married fellow painter Zélie Lardé, with whom he had three daughters. In the late 1920s he worked as editor for the newspaper Patria, owned by Alberto Masferrer, an important Salvadoran intellectual. To fill in blank spaces in the newspaper, Salarrué wrote a series of short stories which were collected thirty years later as Cuentos de Cipotes ("Children's Stories"). These and the stories in Cuentos de Barro ("Tales of Clay") became Salarrué's most popular and enduring work, reflecting an idealized version of rural life in El Salvador and making him one of the founders of the new wave of Latin American folkloric narrative (narrativa costumbrista).

However, few readers understand that the stories in Cuentos de Barro were an ingenious literary feat of Salarrué. By disguising through a subtle use of a non-standard, highly inventive language and style, he was able to recall to readers a bloody masacre carried out by the Salvadoran dictator-president, General Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez in 1933, without the authorities being able to interpret Salarrué's defamation of that leader.

Salarrué lived in the United States from 1947 to 1951 while representing his country in diplomatic posts. He died in Los Planes de Renderos, near San Salvador, and is buried in the Cementerio de los Ilustres ("Cemetery of Distinguished Citizens").

Works

External links

A partial translation of Cuentos de Barro/Tales of Clay by Salarrué, as accomplished by Nelson Lòpez, is available in a PDF format:

And a review or "prologo" in Spanish of that book of English translations by Nelson López is published in Carátula, together with the comparison of the Spanish and English of the story "La botija" / "The Botija" or "jug of gold," in an excellent presentation by Dr. Rafael Lara Martínez in Caratula: Revista Cultural Centramericana: