Alfredo Pareja Diezcanseco

Pareja married his cousin, Mercedes Cucalón Concha in 1934. His wife was the niece of Carlos Concha Torres, a famous Equadorian colonel.

Together with his wife, Mercedes, he fathered three children: Cecilia, Jorge and Francisco.

During the dictatorship of Federico Paez, Pareja was incarcerated and eventually exiled (1935-1937). Upon his exile, Pareja fled to Chile.

Alfredo Pareja was born on 12 October 1908 in Guayaquil, Equador, to Fernando Pareja y Pareja and Amalia Diez-Canseco y Coloma, grandchild of the former Peruvian President Francisco Diez Canseco y Corbacho.

From the age of 14, Pareja helped support his family by working at the Colegio Vicente Rocafuerte, a local high school.

His education began in his hometown at the Colegio San Luis Gonzaga, a religious school of the Congregation of Christian Brothers, a Roman Catholic order.

At the age of 22, he left his home for the United States. There, he took an assortment of jobs, including a stint on the New York docks.

On returning to Ecuador, he entered the field of academics with a position at the Universidad Laica Vicente Rocafuerte de Guayaquil as a professor of history, Spanish and American literature.

During the same period, he also took a post as superintendent in Guayas Province, where he was responsible for Secondary Education across the entire province.

Between 1935 and 1937, during a temporary exile in Chile, he briefly worked in the publishing industry at the Ercilla Publishing House.

In 1937, as the dictator Paez was replaced by President Aurelio Mosquera Narvaez, Pareja was able to return to Ecuador and to serve as a member of the Assembly.

In 1933, he wrote ‘El muelle’ (‘The Pier’), a novel based on his experiences working on the docks of New York during the Great Depression.

In 1944, his novel-biography ‘The Barbaric Bonfire’ depicted the life and death of General Eloy Alfaro. The work extended Pareja’s fame within Ecuador to a worldwide level.

In 1944, he published the novel ‘Las tres ratas’ (‘The three rats’), a novel noted for its realism and its depiction of contemporary Ecuador. The novel would be made into an Argentine film just two years later.