Biography of Ramón Rosa – Honduran writer and reformer
Ramón Rosa was a Honduran writer, politician, orator. He was born in Tegucigalpa on July 14, 1848 and died in the same city on May 28, 1893 at the age of 45. He is the son of Isidora Rosa and José Soto.
He studied at the elementary school of which he makes nostalgic memories in his costumbrista story «My Scholastic Teacher«.
After the end of the Soto Government, Rosa went into exile in Alajuela, Costa Rica, to move to Guatemala City years later, where he was welcomed and formed part of the Academy of Language in Guatemala. There he wrote biographies of various Guatemalan characters. He returned to Honduras in 1886 to found the newspaper El Guacerique, which did not last long, later dedicated to literary reproduction in Honduras.
Biography of Ramon Rosa
He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the National University of Tegucigalpa and then completed his university studies in jurisprudence at the Faculty of Law and Notaries of the Pontifical University of San Carlos Borromeo in Guatemala , where he was a companion of who would be his inseparable cousin, Marco Aurelio Soto, the diplomat Antonio Batres Jáuregui and the future Archbishop of Guatemala, Ricardo Casanova y Estrada. In this institution he received classes with the historian and diplomat José Milla y Vidaurre and the former president of Colombia Dr. Mariano Espina, who had arrived in exile in Guatemala.
Along with his cousin Marco Aurelio Soto, he took part in the Guatemalan political struggles, which culminated in the triumphant revolution of 1871. Ideologist of the educational changes of the Liberal Reform in Guatemala between 1873 and 1876 during the government of General Justo Rufino Barrios.
Rosa performed in the new regime the positions of Undersecretary of Finance and Minister of the Interior; Undersecretary of Foreign Relations and Minister of Public Instruction.
I also hold some university chairs and the Rectory of the aforementioned institution of higher studies.
In Antigua Guatemala, he married Gertrudis Matute with whom he had four daughters.
Soto and Rosa returned to Honduras to undertake the reformist task: the first as President of the Republic and the second as Secretary General and holder of important ministerial portfolios, where he showed his talent, knowledge and impulsive energy.
As in Guatemala, he undertook in Honduras what is known as the Liberal Reform in Honduras , during the government of his cousin, Dr. Marco Aurelio Soto, where he served as Minister General of the Government and was associated with Soto’s mining investments.
Works by Ramon Rosa
Ramón Rosa was an eloquent writer and speaker who excelled in the genre of essays and biography in the last twenty years of his existence. He wrote the biographies of José Cecilio del Valle (1882), of José Trinidad Reyes (1891), of the Guatemalan poet Manuel Diéguez Olaverry (1889), that of Francisco Morazán, which he left unfinished, and that of Francisco Ferrera.
Publications
- «Social Constitution of Honduras» for many historians is the first sociological analysis of Honduras
- «General Considerations on the Independence of Central America»
- «The political parties»
- «University Opening Speech»
- Central of Honduras»
- «Consciousness of the Past»
Biographies
- Don Jose Milla and Vidaurre.
- Biography of Father Reyes, Tegucigalpa, 1965.
- Biography of the Wise José Cecilio del Valle, Tegucigalpa, 1965.
- History of Benemérito General Don Francisco Morazán, Tegucigalpa 1971.
He was co-founder of the newspaper «El Centroamericano» , from 1876 to 1898 he held the position of general secretary.
«Doctor Rosa» -wrote the historian Rafael Heliodoro Valle-, had magnificent conditions to have left a broader work; but the little he did -speeches, semblances, some pictures of customs- are enough to understand the magnitude of his talent. Unfortunately, he lived through stormy days, and the pages he left serve as a splendid credential.
References
- Ramón Rosa: from ideas to the progress of a nation (Presencia Universitaria)
- Ramón Rosa (EcuRed)
- Ramon Rosa at Wikipedia.org
