Román Mayorga Rivas

Román Mayorga Rivas (1862 – 28 December 1925) was a Nicaraguan journalist and poet. He is considered the founder of modern journalism in El Salvador.

Biography Mayorga Rivas was born in 1862 in León, Nicaragua. Mayorga Rivas was the son of the politician Cleto Mayorga, and the grandson of the Nicaraguan President Patricio Rivas. He was a childhood friend of Rubén Darío and José Martí. He moved to the city of San Salvador, El Salvador at the age of twelve and studied at the school of Hildebrando Martí and Anselmo Valdés. In 1876, he founded the newspaper El cometa, and he later founded Diario del cometa (1878) and El estudiante. In late 1879 he returned to Nicaragua to participate in intellectual life of his hometown, León.

In the field of literature, Mayorga Rivas is considered a part of the second wave of romanticism in El Salvador, and also an important promoter of modernismo. He also translated from English, Italian, Portuguese, and French literary works. He became a member of the Academia Salvadoreña de la Lengua in 1915, and that year he also published his only book of poetry, Viejo y nuevo.

As a public official, Mayorga Rivas headed the Oficina Central de Estadística in El Salvador. He also served as Secretary of the Nicaraguan Embassy in Washington D.C., Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs and Public Instruction in Nicaragua, and El Salvador's envoy to the Panamerican Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Mayorga Rivas died on 28 December 1925 in San Salvador, El Salvador.