Alejandro Angulo Guridi

Alejandro Angulo Guridi (May 3, 1823 – January 17, 1906) was a Dominican writer and politician who held portfolios of Justice and Foreign Affairs. According to some historians, he wrote the first Dominican short story and probably also the first novel (although there is no evidence to support the latter). His contributions to Dominican literature took him throughout Latin America, making him perhaps one of the most influential Dominican writers of the 19th century.

Early life He was son of the military man Andrés Angulo Cabrera, a Spaniard, and his Dominican wife Francisca Guridi Leos y Echalas-Heredia; he was the youngest of four brothers (the oldest being Bernardo Andrés, Francisco Javier and Ramón María) and the only one who was not born in Santo Domingo, since in 1823 the family emigrated due to the period of Haitian rule.

Alejandro studied at the San Carlos Seminary in Havana, where he began to publish (as did his brother Francisco). There, in 1841, the novels La joven Carmela and Cecilia were published in installments in El Eco de Villaclara (that is, before El montero by Pedro Francisco Bonó, published in Paris in 1856), as well as legends and traditions in La Prensa. At the end of the following year, he published, also in El Eco... in collaboration with Francisco Javier Blanchié, the Cuban novel La vengancia de un hijo and in 1843, he published Los amores de los indios.

In 1846, he graduated as a lawyer and founded the newspaper El Prisma with Víctor Kruger de Hidalgo and Ricardo Delmonte.

Two years later he was accused of conspiracy against the Spanish colonial government in Cuba and after Cirilo Villaverde was imprisoned, Alejandro Angulo fled and settled in the United States.

United States, Dominican Republic and Venezuela In New York, he wrote for La Verdad, a spokesman for the Cuban independence activists in exile, using the pseudonym J. Cubanacán. In 1851, he wrote El Eco del Ozama, in Santo Domingo, and in August he wrote from Jacksonville to the merchant T. Rosis a letter reflecting the economic hardships he was going through in the U.S.

Alejandro Angulo Guridi arrived in Santo Domingo at the beginning of September and at the end of the year he joined the teaching staff, as a professor of Law and Literature, at the recently founded Colegio de San Buenaventura. He began working as an editor for El Progreso, a newspaper directed by Nicolás Ureña de Mendoza, in February 1853 and there he published in installments a part of Cecilia, his novel written in Cuba.

In March, he obtained the revalidation of his titles issued by the Royal Agreement of the Royal Pretorial Court of Havana and in July he established his law office in the Plazuela de la Merced.

The political, literary and commercial newspaper El Orden, (in which he himself directed), began to circulate on January 11, 1854, and on April 22, he published in this medium, under the pseudonym Taramayna, the costumbrista story El garito, considered the first Dominican story. He wrote poems for the Official Gazette signed as Floriano. When Buenaventura Báez assumed power, Angulo Guridi, persecuted, chose to seek asylum in the American consulate, where he remained for two months, until he obtained a passport and safe conduct that allowed him to take refuge first in Curaçao and then to the Turks and Caicos Islands, from where he would return to the Dominican Republic to settle in Santiago.

During the Cibaeño Revolution, he joined the liberal revolutionaries and was acquired into the government of General José Desiderio Valverde, who appointed him editor of the Official Gazette, a position he held until the following year.

Death He died on January 17, 1906, in Masaya, Nicaragua at the age of 82.