García Monge, Joaquín

Born Jan. 20, 1881, in San José; died there Oct. 31, 1958. Costa Rican writer, publicist, and public figure.

García Monge was minister of education and director of the National Library. He published Repertorio Americano (1919-58), a literary magazine in which he championed the Spanish Republic and opposed imperialism, colonialism, and the reactionary regimes of Latin America. A realist who dealt with ordinary life, García Monge portrayed the hard life of the poor in his novels The Orphan (1900), Daughters of the Fields (1900), and Self-sacrifice (1902) and in the collection The Wicked Ghost and Other Stories, as well as in other works. In 1905 he translated L. Andreev’s The Red Laugh into Spanish. He was one of the organizers of the Congress in Defense of Peace and Culture (1953).