Guayaquil Group
It was composed of five main writers: Joaquín Gallegos Lara, Enrique Gil Gilbert, Demetrio Aguilera Malta, José de la Cuadra, and Alfredo Pareja Diezcanseco.
[1] The group eventually disintegrates after the death of two of their writers, José de la Cuadra and Joaquín Gallegos Lara, the inactivity in literature by Enrique Gil Gilbert, and the long trips away from Ecuador by Demetrio Aguilera Malta and Alfredo Pareja Diezcanseco in the mid 1940s.
[3] Yet for the coast, especially in Guayaquil, the newly opened markets allowed for prosperity attributed to the increasing demand for cacao and the emergence of a new exporting class.
With great discontent, the Ecuadorian working class found themselves participating in a general strike on November 15, 1922, which was violently repressed resulting in around 1,200 to 1,500 people dead.
In a speech, Alfredo Pareja Diezcanseco discusses how the group came about:"Los adolescentes y niños que, ocho años después, integraríamos el Grupo de Guayaquil, vimos espantados la bárbara matanza.
Lo cual nos condujo a poner una excesiva atención en el mundo exterior de las relaciones humanas.
It's hardly obvious to suppose that, partially, at least, that brutal occurrence mark the intimate resolution within us to create a literature of denunciation and protest.
[3] - Alfredo Pareja Diezcanseco (Guayaquil Group Writer)This was the reason for the works produced during this period being focused largely on dialogue and representing the true Ecuadorian "montubio", and "cholo."
Not only were they attempting to maintain a certain balance of senses, but they wanted to somehow keep their works distanced from political labels doing so by putting an emphasis on the characters and making them something beyond stereotypes.
The works focused on humanizing the "montubio" and "cholo" to the point of presenting the injustices they experienced to the reader without a lineal narrative.
This exposed him to several groups of people where he develops friendships with montubios, giving him enough material for the novel "Los que se van."
His activism forces him out of college thereafter leading him to traveling around Ecuador where he spent a lot of time with families in the country exposing him montubios.
He was considered the most versatile member of the group due to his ability to manifest his works in a variety of forms like: novels, short stories, poems, theatre, sculptures, and war reports.
[12] As a lawyer, he found himself often serving "montubios" in criminal cases which exposed him to several ethnic-social groups giving him the necessary material for his writings.
[2] Considered to be the most adaptive to situations, Pareja Diezcanseco's background is aristocratic yet his family's social standing descends to middle class after his father's death.
[2] Los que se van (1930) A series of stories by Demetrio Aguilera Malta, Joaquín Gallegos Lara, and Enrique Gil Gilbert.
The collection of stories manages to focus on three things: the environment as a physical and spiritual entity, the camaraderie within the social groups, and society in general.
This work makes an attempt to capture a way of life that the authors thought was en route to going extinct, hence the need to write about montubios and cholos.
