Rafael Maluenda Labarca (18 March 1885 – 4 September 1963^[1]) was a Chilean journalist and writer.

Early life and education

Maluenda was born on 18 March 1885 in the Posada del Corregidor in Santiago,^[2] where his parents were attending a party.^[3] He was the eldest of three children born to Colonel Aarón Maluenda Araos, a veteran of the War of the Pacific, and Mariana Labarca Toro, sister of Guillermo Labarca Hubertson.^[4] He attended primary school at a public school and the Patronato de San Rafael,^[4] a school of the Seminario de Santo Domingo.^[1] In 1903, he enrolled at the Instituto Nacional, where he completed his humanities in 1904. While there, he founded, edited, and illustrated the school magazine El Deber.^[3][4] He received a scholarship.^[4]

In 1904,^[4] when he was nineteen years old, he began working for five years as a reporter for the newspaper La Ley,^[2] where he published his first critical article.^[4] That September, he also published his first short story, "Rebelión", in the magazine Chile Ilustrado.^[5] In 1905, he enrolled at the University of Chile's Faculty of Architecture,^[2] where he was classmates with Pedro Prado.^[4] After his mother's death the following year, he abandoned these studies to focus on journalism and writing.^[4]

Early career

From 1906 until 1909, Maluenda was Secretary of Commissions for the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Chile, working under José Toribio Medina.^[4] Also in 1906, he began writing short stories and plays for the magazine Zig-Zag.^[4] In 1909, Maluenda published his first book, Escenas de la vida campesina, a collection of short stories.^[4] These included "No Pancho", a revised version of "Rebelión";^[5] "En el rodeo," which he had previously read aloud in sessions at the Ateneo de Santiago;^[4][6] and "El gañan", which won first place in a literary competition organized by the journal Letras y Ciencias Sociales (from Tucumán, Argentina) and directed by Ricardo Jaimes Freyre.^[4] In 1911, he became editor for Zig-Zag and El Diario Ilustrado;^[4] he gained the latter job after examining the University of Chile's budget and discovering that the rector and subsecretary of instruction were embezzling.^[2] Also in 1911, one of his short stories won a national short story contest organized to celebrate the republic's centenary.^[2] In 1912, he translated Karin Michaelis's novel The Dangerous Age and Henri Bernstein's play The Claw from French into Spanish, and in 1913, wrote the plays La suerte, La esfinge, and Ibrahim Bey.^[4]

In 1914, Maluenda married Teresa Merino Feliú,^[2] with whom he would bear three children,^[4] and moved to Chillán, where he founded the newspaper El Día and took charge of the local theater, organizing the seasons of touring theater companies.^[4] In 1915, he wrote La Pachacha, and in 1916, published Venidos a menos.^[4] On 25 December 1916, he became director of La Discusión.^[4] In 1918, he left this job and returned to Santiago.^[2] There he collaborated with the magazine Sucesos, publishing a series of short stories that would later become the 1937 collection Colmena urbana.^[3] In 1919, he was asked by Arturo Alessandri to lead the journalism campaign for his 1920 presidential candidacy,^[2][4][7] for which he wrote a page in El Mercurio.^[2] Its founder, Agustín Edwards Mac-Clure, was so impressed with Maluenda that he hired him permanently.^[2] Maluenda wrote the newspaper's "Day to Day" section, which included political commentaries, essays, short stories, and literary criticism.^[3]

Later career

Maluenda shared his time between El Mercurio and his own writing, which became increasingly focused on theatre.^[2] In 1920, he published two more plays, Luz que no muere and La madeja del pecado.^[4] Between 1922 and 1923, he oversaw the creation of two films, La copa del olvido and La víbora de azabache, making him a pioneer in Chilean cinema.^[4] Nevertheless, he would continue writing articles for the capital's newspapers and short stories, and in 1942, he published a novel, Armiño negro.^[4] In 1946, Maluenda became director of El Mercurio; he continued working for it until his death in 1963.^[2] His last major work published prior to his death was Historias de bandidos (1961); he died while preparing a collection of short stories about animals titled De pluma y pelo,^[4] which was published posthumously in 1989 by Editorial Andrés Bello.^[3]

During this time, he remained linked to Alessandri, promoting his ideas and developing his own.^[7] Of these, one of the most important was his proposal and orchestration of a campaign to organize the middle class.^[4][7] As part of this campaign, he edited a booklet titled: Manifiesto, Estatutos Generales y Documentos que sirven de base para la organización de la clase media en Chile and presented it to the Assembly of Santiago.^[4][7] However, despite receiving the support of important sectors of the country, this campaign failed to achieve the anticipated results.^[4]

Maluenda was also sent abroad on numerous occasions.^[7] In 1921, he travelled to Brazil on a journalistic mission.^[4] In 1922, he was sent to Asia as Consulate Inspector.^[7] In 1928, he became advisory secretary for the newly established Chilean embassy in Peru; while there, he wrote articles for El Mercurio about the customs of Limans that he would later use while writing Armiño negro.^[7] He travelled to Montevideo in 1933 and Buenos Aires in 1936 to cover the Seventh and Eighth Pan-American Conferences for El Mercurio,^[4] meeting Franklin Roosevelt at the latter.^[7] In 1942, he attended the Conference of Chancellors in Rio de Janeiro, where American republics severed ties with the Axis powers.^[7] He also covered the 1945 San Francisco Conference, which wrote the United Nations charter.^[4]

In 1954, Maluenda won the National Prize for Journalism.^[4] On 6 April 1955, he was appointed to the Chilean Academy of Language.^[1] On 23 April 1962, the Society of Chilean Playwrights gave him a medal to honor his forty years of playwriting.^[4]

References