Gonzalo Arango - Life

Life

Gonzalo Arango was born in Andes, a town of the Antioquian South-Eastern region in 1931, in a time known in Colombia as the Regimen of the Liberals that had to face the Great Depression. It was also the time of Constitutional and social reforms such as that of president Alfonso López Pumarejo. When he was an adolescent he saw the falling of the country in a bloody fight between the two traditional political parties after El Bogotazo of April 9, 1948 with the murder of the presidential candidate Jorge Eliecer Gaitán. He lived also a time when the Catholic Church in Colombia possessed the control of education, thanks to the Colombian Constitution of 1886, and thus exerted a great authority over political, cultural and social matters, such as in the censorship over intellectual material produced in the nation. As an example, one of the works by philosopher Fernando González Ochoa, "Viaje a pie" (Trip by foot) was forbidden by the Archbishop of Medellín under death penalty in 1929. This social context witnessed the growing of an eccentric writer and thinker, and would influence Arango's work.

Arango was the last son of the 13 children of Francisco Arango (known as Don Paco) and Magdalena Arias. Don Paco was the telegraphist of the town and Madgalena was a housewife.