Luis Carlos Fallas

Born Jan. 21, 1909, in Alajuela; died May 7, 1966, in San José. Costa Rican writer.

Fallas, one of the organizers and leaders of the People’s Vanguard Party of Costa Rica, also helped organize the first Costa Rican trade unions. He led detachments of workers in the Civil War of 1948. Although he did not receive a formal education, Fallas became the author of works that forcefully express the workers’ awakening class consciousness and their struggle for a better future; a typical example is his autobiographical novel Mamita Yunay (1941; Russian translation, 1952). The workers and peasants of Costa Rica are the subject of the short-story collection Big and Little People (1947). Fallas also wrote a novel about the adventures of a little Costa Rican boy, Marcos Ramirez (1952; Russian translation, 1958).