Carlos Luis Fallas

Carlos Luis Fallas Sibaja (January 21, 1909 – May 7, 1966), also known as Calufa (from the initial syllables of his first, middle and last name), was a Costa Rican author and communist political activist.

Born in Alajuela to a single mother, Fallas completed only the first two years of secondary schooling before moving to Limón, on the Atlantic coast, where he worked in the banana plantations of the United Fruit Company.

As an author he is best known for his novels Mamita Yunai (1940), which denounced the harsh condition endured by workers for the United Fruit Company and which is referenced in Pablo Neruda's Canto General, and for Marcos Ramírez (1952), a humorous bildungsroman about the life of a Costa Rican boy in the early 20th century, taken largely from Fallas's own life.

He received the Magón Prize, Costa Rica's highest recognition for cultural work, shortly before his death from kidney cancer at the age of 57.

The Costa Rican Congress posthumously declared him Benemérito de la Patria ("Deserving Citizen," the highest distinction that the government can extend) in 1977.