JULIO PAZOS BARRIER: BIOGRAPHY, WORKS AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS - BIOGRAPHIES - 2024

Julio Pazos Barrera (1944) is an Ecuadorian writer very prominent for his works of poetry. Although his contribution to the literary world in Ecuador was so broad that he even wrote about cooking, he stood out for his art and literature criticism, in addition to conducting different investigations.

Pazos Barrera was the winner of the Casa de las Américas prize awarded in Cuba in 1982. In 2004 he managed the newspaper Letras del Ecuador, a publication with more than 70 years of history that is still in force. Three years later he was the director of America.

Source: El Imperdible EsCom / FCLL / PUCE, via Wikimedia Commons.

There is a large number of anthologies where all the poetic works of Pazos Barrera have been compiled over the years.

Biography

Early life and personal life

Baños de Agua Santa was the city in which Julio Pazos Barrera was born on August 19, 1944. It is a city located in the eastern part of Ecuador and of great relevance for being a very important tourist destination in the country. His parents were Julio Pazos Jurado and Rosa Barrera.

When he was just a five-year-old boy, he experienced an earthquake that caused serious damage to Baños, his hometown of Baños. The writer assured that he never managed to overcome the trauma generated by the experience he lived at that time.

He married Laura Carrillo, a teacher with whom he has been married for more than 50 years. The couple had three children. Alexis was the first-born, Yavirac was born a year later and completed the Santiago family. They already have six grandchildren.

His wife was one of the architects, along with Gladys Jaramillo, that Pazos Barrera received the Casa de las Américas award. Between them they were in charge of sending the book Rising of the country with free texts to Cuba.

Studies and professional career

Pazos Barrera went to the university in Quito, specifically the Catholic University, where he trained as an educator and a literary man. At the institution of higher education he also completed a doctorate in Letters.

He completed his training with studies abroad. In Colombia she attended the Instituto Caro y Cuervo, while in Spain she was part of the Hispanic Culture. In those countries he was able to deepen his knowledge of language and literary art.

He came to work as a teacher in different institutions and countries. In Ecuador he was a professor for forty years and even held the position of dean of the literature faculty of his alma mater. In addition, he was invited on several occasions to teach at the University of New Mexico, located in the United States.

He retired in 2013 when he abandoned his teaching responsibilities at the Catholic University of Ecuador. Since 2018 he is one of the members of the board of Grupo América, a corporation in which he holds the position of president. No ties to political parties have ever been known to him and he defined himself as a religious person.

In recent years, your health has been affected by different diseases, especially psoriasis and diabetes.

Influence

He had a great interest in the culinary world. She blamed her grandmother and father for this hobby. He saw his grandmother Aurora Castro prepare countless dishes in the hotel that she founded in Baños during the 1930s.

His father, for his part, had an important career as a pastry chef. He worked from a very young age in an important bakery in Guayaquil and cakes or pastries were always present in the writer's life.

In the world of literature, he recognized the influence he had on reading renowned authors such as César Vallejo or Antonio Machado. He always remembers his primary education where his teacher, surnamed Vayas, introduced him to the work of Juan Montalvo, an Ecuadorian writer of great relevance during the second half of the 19th century.

Characteristics of his works

Pazos Barrera himself has described his work and has recognized that his working method was based on the construction of rhythms and pauses. He did not make sonnets. His poetry has been based on traditional themes where he spoke of love, life or death. Feelings and emotions are visible in their works.

The language used in his works is discreet. He was not characterized by adorning his prose much. He moved away somewhat from the influence of European literature. Some of their stories starred or feature anonymous characters.

He exalted elements of Ecuadorian popular culture. He wrote about things that generated interest in him. He wrote about Ecuador, its landscapes and its traditions.

Plays

Pazos Barrera published 20 books of poems. The first of them was the collection of poems Plegaria azul, which appeared in 1963. Rising the country with free texts was perhaps his most important work. He made three different editions of that work, which also gave him great international fame and important awards.

Among his works are Mujeres, Holograma, Escritos de cordel, Constancias and La ciudad de las visiones. Her last published poetry collections were Silva de la tierra y el amor con safedo de otros poemas that appeared in 2014 and Indicios in 2015.

He wrote numerous texts on the plastic arts, especially since the 1990s. In them he studied the works of artists such as Miguel Betancourt, César Carranza, Gustavo Egüez or Antonio Romoleroux, among others.

Two books are a clear example of his passion for cooking. In 2014 he was the author of the work Cocina del Ecuador and in 2017 published In Praise of the traditional kitchens of Ecuador.

Thanks to his collaborations with different magazines he wrote dozens of stories. His ideas and studies were widely disseminated, since he participated in various conferences around the world, as a speaker, organizer and jury. Although at one time he had a hard time being able to attend, as he recognized his fear of airplanes.

There are at least four anthologies where his works were compiled. Two of them were at the initiative of the House of Ecuadorian Culture.

Awards

Throughout his professional life he was awarded numerous times. He won a poetry contest in 1968, being awarded by the Conrado Blanco Foundation. In 1979 he received the National Prize for Literature.

In addition, he was distinguished on two occasions by the Ambato municipality and was recognized for his work as a teacher. In 2010 he was awarded the National Prize, recognition granted by the President of Ecuador at that time, Rafael Correa.

References

1. Aulestia, C. (2008). Poetic Anthology Julio Pazos. Recovered from casadelacultura.gob.ec
2. Page of Poetry No. 124: Julio Pazos Barrera. Recovered from circulodepoesia.com
3. Julio Pazos Barrera. (2019). Recovered from asale.org
4. Julio Pazos Barrera. (2016). Recovered from autoresecuatorianos.utpl.edu.ec
5. Chair. (2013). Mr. Julio Pazos Barrera. Recovered from academiaecuatorianadelalengua.org