page_title: Tomás Carrasquilla
section_title: Context
hierarchical_section_title: Tomás Carrasquilla / Context
caption_attribution_description: English: A photography of the Colombian writer Tomás Carrasquilla by Melitón Rodríguez in Medellín, 1928. Una fotografía del maestro Tomás Carrasquilla realizada por el otro maestro de la fotografía, Melitón Rodríguez en Medellín, 1928.
context_page_description: Tomás Carrasquilla Naranjo was a Colombian writer who lived in the Antioquia region. He dedicated himself to very simple jobs: tailor, secretary of a judge, storekeeper in a mine, and worker of the Ministry of Public Works. He was an avid reader, and one of the most original Colombian literary writers, greatly influencing the younger generation of his time and later generations. Carrasquilla was little known in his time, according to Federico de Onís, a scholar of Carrasquilla's works. It was only after 1936, when he was already 68 years old, when he was awarded with the National Prize of Literature, that Carrasquilla got a national recognition. Tomás Carrasquilla Library Park is named in his honor.
  The Colombian civil wars of the second part of the 19th century prevented young Carrasquilla from continuing his studies at the University of Antioquia. A committed intellectual, Carrasquilla organized tertulias—social gatherings to read books and discuss them—in his Medellín house. Many young writers and intellectuals of his time joined those tertulias; from that time he was called "Maestro Tomás Carrasquilla."
context_section_description: Carrasquilla's life straddled two centuries, becoming a link between two epochs in Colombia's history. When he was born in 1858, the country was called the Republic of New Granada, newly independent of Spain. In his work La Marqueza de Yolombó, Carrasquilla described how the most simple people of the end of the 18th century saw the events that broke the Colombia's political dependence on Spain.
  He was also a citizen of the once-called United States of Colombia (1863–1886), a time when the Paisa Region saw the colonization of the current coffee areas. He also saw the Colombian industrial revolution at the beginning of the 20th century, the Thousand Days War, and many other changes in his country.
  The Colombian civil wars of the 19th century were the reason why Carrasquilla could not finish his studies of Law at the University of Antioquia.
  One of those civil wars was reflected in his works Luterito and El Padre Casafús (in English, "The Reverend Casafús"). Those books were set in the context of the civil war of 1876, started by the Conservative partisans of Antioquia, Cauca and Tolima against the Liberal government of president Aquileo Parra, who intended to secularize the education. The story develops in the town of Cañasgordas, where a group of fighters prepare themselves to "defend the Faith." In this case, Carrasquilla's work is an approach to the deepest feelings of people during historical events.
caption: Don Tomás Carrasquilla in 1929, a picture by Melitón Rodríguez.
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