Aguilera Malta, Demetrio (1909–1981)

Demetrio Aguilera Malta (b. 24 May 1909; d. 29 December 1981), Ecuadorian novelist and playwright. Hailing from the Andes mountains and the coast, respectively, Jorge Icaza (1906–1979) and Aguilera Malta are the two best-known Ecuadorian fiction writers. The latter's fiction spans several decades, beginning with Don Goyo (1933) and ending forty years later with El secuestro del general (1973). Early on, Aguilera Malta copublished a set of short stories, Los que se van (1931), that focused on problems of economic and ethnic exploitation of the coastal lower classes. His other novels take up many themes, among them, problems of economic development, the Cuban Revolution, the travels of Vasco de Balboa, and indigenous beliefs and customs. An intriguing, well-crafted novel, Siete lunas y siete serpientes (1970) adeptly meshes legend, witchcraft, and modern superstition with the machinations of a local, lustful political boss bent on governing with an iron hand. In this work Aguilera Malta blends magic and realism to make an ironic commentary on Ecuadorian politics. In El secuestro del general, Aguilera Malta uses wordplay and irony to capture the way in which the power of language can sway and subjugate people to the absolute power of dictators. Language, myth, legend, fantasy, and concepts of power are the basic ingredients of the fictional worlds of Aguilera Malta.

See alsoIcaza Coronel, Jorge .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gerardo Luzuriaga, Del realismo al expresionismo: El teatro de Aguilera Malta (1971).

Antonio Fama, Realismo mágico en la narrativa de Aguilera-Malta (1977).

Clementine Christos Rabassa, Demetrio Aguilera-Malta and Social Justice (1980).

Additional Bibliography

Troya, María Soledad. Don Goyo: el héroe cholo de Demetrio Aguilera Malta. Quito: Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana "Benjamín Carrión," Fondo Editorial, 1997.

Wishnia, Kenneth J.A. Twentieth-Century Ecuadorian Narrative: New Readings in the Context of the Americas. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1999.

                                               Dick Gerdes