Miguel Angel Asturias

Miguel Ángel Asturias was born in 1899 in Guatemala, where he studied law. In 1923, he published his doctoral thesis on 'The Social Problem of the Indian'. He participated in the overthrow of dictator Estrada Cabrera and later settled in Paris. There, he wrote his first work, "Legends of Guatemala" (preface by Paul Valery), which refers to his country before the Spanish conquest. In 1933, he returned to Guatemala with the manuscript of his novel "The President," which would be published in 1946. That same year, he was appointed as a diplomatic attaché for cultural relations in Mexico and later in Argentina. In 1953, during the Arbenz administration, he was appointed ambassador to El Salvador. After the fall of Arbenz, he was exiled to Argentina, but later lived in France and Italy, and in 1966 he was appointed as Guatemala's ambassador to Paris. He resigned in 1970 and passed away in Madrid in June 1974. In 1966, he was honored with the Lenin Peace Prize and in 1967 with the Nobel Prize in Literature.