Germán Arciniegas Angueyra

Germán Arciniegas, the great grandson of Perucho Figueredo, was born on December 6, 1900, and was baptized on February 6, 1901, in the Iglesia [church] de la Veracruz, in Bogotá.  Historian, essayist, diplomat, and statesman, Arciniegas was one of the most eminent men of letters of contemporary Spanish America.  His long and distinguished career in journalism and public service strongly influenced the cultural development of Colombia in the 20th century, and his contributions abroad as an educator and a diplomat played an important role in introducing North Americans and Europeans to Spanish-American history and contemporary culture.

At the age of 20 he entered law school at the prestigious National University in Bogotá.  He immediately became an agitator and radical student leader.  He marched to loosen education from Jesuit control, staged riotous student carnivals, and organized a nationwide federation to protest government educational programs, politics and appointees.  He narrowly missed being killed when a bullet grazed his head as he harangued authorities from a Bogotá balcony, fellow activists were thrown into jail.

He graduated from law school in 1924, and, on November 19, 1926, in Medellin, Colombia, married Gabriela Vieira y Llano, who was born on September 5, 1903, in Medellin.

Germán  contributed essays to several newspapers and magazines, founding the review Universidad in Bogotá in 1928, and becoming editor of the newspaper El Tiempo there in 1939.  He was twice a congressman and, active in education, served as Colombian minister of education in 1941 and again in 1945.  He taught at several universities in the US, including Berkeley in 1939, Chicago in 1944, and Columbia from 1947 to 1957, where he was visiting professor of Spanish-American literature.

He wrote more than 60 books and is described as “one of the continent’s most important writers”. Such works as Caribbean, Sea of the New World, in 1946, and Latin America: A Cultural History, in 1966, introduced an international audience to Arciniegas' panoramic view of his continent.

Joaquin Maurin, in Cuadernos magazine described the decade from 1947 to 1957, when Arciniegas lived in New York, as “years in exile” in which he “meticulously documented the jailings, tortures, and murders committed as military dictatorships spread across the continent ….”  Rafael Trujillo, president of the Dominican Republic, put Arciniegas on his hit list.  Arciniegas’ 1952 book, Between Freedom and Fear, condemned authoritarian rulers around the region, was banned in several countries, and burned by Colombian officials.  In the US, Arciniegas was an outspoken critic of the State Department’s conciliatory policies towards these regimes.

In 1953, after having lived in New York for more than five years, Arciniegas was detained for “security questioning” at New York’s Idlewild Airport on his return from a European vacation.  He was held at Ellis Island overnight and released after a media campaign led by the New York Times and representation on his behalf by the Colombian Embassy in Washington.

Again in 1954, and in 1957, he was detained by US customs officials when returning to the US from trips abroad.  Following the third incident, the NYT reported that Arciniegas believed that political enemies in Colombia had compiled a dossier on him “proving” that he was a communist and had sent this information to the FBI.

Later in the 50s, Arciniegas turned to a diplomatic career and in 1959, was appointed Colombian ambassador to Italy; later he served in Israel, Venezuela, and the Vatican.  In 1997, Arcineagas, 97 years old and blind, dictated his twice-a-week columns for newspapers including Bogotá’s El Tiempo, Buenos Aires’ La Nacion, and Miami’s Diario Las Americas.  “His newspaper columns lash out at drug trafficking and Marxist guerrillas, which he believes are subverting his nation’s freedom.  He attacks restrictive immigration policies in the US, exhorts Europe to join America in the preservation of the Amazon and Pacific basins, and urges the world to fight the drug scourge”.

Germán and Gabriela had two children, Aurora and Gabriela.  Gabriela (the mother) died in Bogotá on September 3, 1996, and Germán, also in Bogotá, on November 30, 1999.