Biography de Ramón Amaya Amador
Ramón Amaya Amador was born in the municipality of Olanchito, Yoro, on April 29, 1916, his parents being Isabel Amaya and Guillermo R. Amador. He tragically died in Czechoslovakia in 1966, leaving in his wake a trail of published and unpublished works.
After working as a laborer in the banana fields on the north coast, he began his career as a storyteller and his story «The Christmas Eve of Campeño Juan Blas» was published in number 15 of the ANC magazine, organ of the National Association of Chroniclers, published in Tegucigalpa and corresponding to December 31, 1939.
Who was Ramón Amaya Amador?
Ramón Amaya Amador, narrator and journalist, is one of the most prolific writers in the country and has the most published works: Prisión Verde, Amanecer, El Señor de la Sierra, Los Brujos de Ilamatepeque, Constructores, Red Detachment, Operación Gorilla, Cipotes, With the same horseshoe, Under the sign of peace, The May Road, Jacinta Peralta, Complete Stories and Biography of a machete, remaining unpublished almost twenty more books.
Ramón Amaya Amador began his journalistic life in 1941 as an editor, first, and as editor-in-chief, later, of the newspaper El Atlántico, from La Ceiba, founded and directed by Ángel Moya Posas. Later, on October 8, 1943, Ramón Amaya Amador founded in Olanchito, with Dionisio Romero Narváez, the weekly Alerta, with the valuable collaboration of his companion Pablo Magín Romero.
Exile
The writer left his homeland in 1944 due to the persecution of the Cariato, settling in Guatemala, where he worked as an editorialist for Nuestro Diario, during the democratic regime of Dr. Juan José Arévalo, also giving his contributions to the Diario de Centro América, El Popular Progresista. and Noon. At the fall of the government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, our compatriot took refuge in the headquarters of the Argentine Embassy, traveling to that southern nation. In Buenos Aires he worked in the publishing house «Ariel» and in Sarmiento, a popular education newspaper, edited in the city of Córdoba.
On May 19, 1957, Ramón Amaya Amador returned to Honduras, accompanied by his wife Regina Arminda Funes, originally from Córdoba, Argentina; In that year he joined the editorial staff of Alejandro Valladares’ newspaper El Cronista, and founded in Tegucigalpa, with Luis Manuel Zúniga, the magazine Vistazo.
The Honduran Literary Circle paid tribute to him in the Auditorium of the National Autonomous University in Tegucigalpa on November 11, 1958, with the rector Lisandro Gálvez and university students Rafael Leiva Vivas, J. Delmer Urbizo and Oscar Acosta taking part in the act.
On that occasion, Ramón Amaya Amador read an extensive speech of thanks in which he stated that it was the first time in his country that he had received an honorable distinction for his work in literature and culture. This document can be considered as his literary testament.
On April 19, 1959, he left Tegucigalpa with his wife Arminda and their young children: Aixa Ixchel and Carlos Raúl, to settle in Prague, Czechoslovakia, integrating the editorial staff of the magazine Problems of Peace and Socialism.
Death
On November 24, 1966, near Bratislava, the Soviet plane Ilushyn-18, of the Bulgarian airline Tabso, crashed, killing all its occupants, including Ramón Amaya Amador and three co-workers at the magazine we have mentioned. : the Brazilian Pedro Motta Lima, the Argentine Alberto Ferrari and the Japanese Sigho Kadzito.
Eleven years later and after arduous efforts initiated by the Honduran poet Oscar Acosta (then Ambassador of Honduras in Spain) and which lasted four years, the repatriation of the mortal remains of Ramón Amaya Amador was achieved, which were sent from Czechoslovakia to Madrid. and then transferred to Tegucigalpa in September 1977, leaving the urn with the ashes of Amaya Amador in the Honduran Collection Section of the UNAH Library.
The commission in charge of the transfer was made up of Oscar Acosta; Rigoberto Paredes, Head of the Department of Letters and Languages of the National Autonomous University of Honduras; Héctor Hernández, President of the UNAH Workers Union; Alejandro Gutiérrez, Secretary General of the Federation of University Students of Honduras, and Livio Ramírez Lozano, Cultural Attaché of the Honduran Embassy in Madrid.
However, the repatriation of the remains did not prevent his works from being persecuted for almost another decade. Another fourteen years had to pass before the main archive with the unpublished works of Ramón Amaya Amador written during his long exile could return to Honduras.
In April 1991, in a solemn ceremony at the National Autonomous University of Honduras, the President of the Republic, Lic. Rafael Leonardo Callejas, received on behalf of the people of Honduras, more than twenty unpublished titles that were repatriated from the Casa de las Americas, Havana, Cuba where they were taken from Prague, Czechoslovakia.
This time the efforts initiated by Carlos Amaya Fúnez, son of the writer, were backed by a commission made up of Oswaldo Martínez and Neptalí Orellana from Radio Progreso, Juan Ramón Durán, Director of the UNAH School of Journalism, David Romero from Diario Tiempo, Adelma Argueta, Diario La Prensa and Dr. Víctor Ramos; who obtained the support of the government of the Republic to expedite and facilitate the transfer of the works.
Eight years later, and thirty-two after his death, his town and his people mobilized to take the ashes of the remarkable writer from Olanchito to his definitive abode.
A commission of olanchitos chaired by Prof. Esaú Juárez González and integrated by Prof. Fabio Bernardino Cárcamo, Director of the House of Culture of Olanchito, Juan Carlos Medina, Vice President of the Unified Union of Workers of the Standard Fruit Company; Jose Luis Bardales Cano; Rony Javier Cruz; Gustavo Sosa Martinez; Fernando MacLean; Geovana Spears; Santiago Manzanares; Raúl Cortes and Eduardo Manuel Cruz Martínez; organized the return that took place on May 19, 1999.
Since 1966 much has been written about the life and work of Ramón Amaya Amador, among which we can mention Dionisio Romero Narváez, the Prologue by Longino Becerra that appeared in the 2nd edition of Prisión Verde, the biographical essay by Max Sorto Batres, published by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in 1990, and the extensive and documented biography made by his countryman Juan Ramón Martínez, which appeared under the seal of the Editorial Universitaria de la UNAH in 1995.
Published works
- Green Prison (1945)
- Dawn (1947)
- The Indian Sanchez (1948)
- Under the Sign of Peace (1953)
- Build (1957)
- The Lord of the Saw (1957)
- The Sorcerers of Ilamatepeque (1958)
- Memoirs of a Scoundrel (1958)
- Biography of a Machete (1959)
- Red Detachment (1960)
- The May Road (1963)
- Cipotes (1963)
- With the Same Horseshoe (1963)
- Jacinta Peralta (1964)
- Operation Gorilla (1965)
-
Morazaneida (1966) So far only one volume out of five edited
- The rebels of the town of San Miguel 1964-1966
Unpublished Books
- The Grinding (1944)
- The India of Defeated Love (1955)
- Mahogany Borders (1956)
- Memoirs of a Scoundrel (1959)
- Jar Seekers (1961)
- A Messiah’s Apprentice (1961)
- Wild lands of the coyol or cinchonero (1962)
- The Bottled Man (1965)
- Holy Land (1965)
-
Morazaneida (1966) So far only one volume out of five edited
- The Junco Hat
- The Pa and the Blood
- Mountain Shadows
- The Last Order
