Joaquín García Monge

Joaquín García Monge (20 January 1881 – 31 October 1958) was a Costa Rican writer, educator, journalist, editor and intellectual, recognized as a central figure in the country's culture and thought during the 20th century.^[1] His work encompassed literary narrative, pedagogy^[2] and the dissemination of Hispanic American ideas, with emphasis on social justice and humanism.

Joaquín García Monge was born into a humble family in Desamparados, San José Province. He completed his primary education at the local school in his native canton and secondary education at the Liceo de Costa Rica boarding school. In 1899 he obtained his baccalaureate by examination and in 1900 began his teaching career as a teacher at the Edificio Metálico school in San José.

In 1901 he received a government scholarship to study at the Pedagogical Institute of the University of Chile in Santiago. During his stay there, he lived near Carmen and Lira streets, which inspired the pseudonym of his friend María Isabel Carvajal, who adopted the name Carmen Lyra. He returned to Costa Rica in 1904 and joined the Liceo de Costa Rica as a Spanish teacher, but was dismissed six months later by the government of Ascensión Esquivel Ibarra, which labeled him subversive and anarchist.^[3] In 1905, with the change of administration, he was reinstated and remained in secondary education until 1915, when he became professor and later director of the Normal School of Heredia.

In 1917, following the 1917 Costa Rican coup d'état that established the dictatorship of the Tinoco brothers, he was removed from his position and traveled to New York seeking funding for an editorial project.^[4] With the fall of the regime in 1919, during the provisional government of Francisco Aguilar Barquero, he was appointed Secretary of Public Instruction. That same year he founded the magazine Repertorio Americano, which he directed for almost four decades until its closure in 1959. Between 1920 and 1936 he directed the National Library of Costa Rica, promoting the modernization of library and educational systems, until his dismissal under the government of León Cortés Castro.^[5]

He participated in the founding of the Workers, Peasants and Intellectuals Alliance Party in 1929, precursor to the Costa Rican Communist Party. In 1935, he was invited by the League of Nations to Geneva as an international observer. Throughout his life he showed constant identification with marginalized classes, accepting candidacies as deputy without lasting success.

In 1921, during the centennial celebrations of independence, he delivered a patriotic speech^[6] to students from Liceo de Costa Rica and Colegio de Señoritas at the foot of the National Monument, where he emphasized the need to preserve freedom, reject caudillismo and oligarchies, and build a society based on justice and solidarity, warning about risks to national sovereignty.

He died in San José on 31 October 1958, shortly after being declared Benemérito de la Patria (Meritorious of the Nation) by the Legislative Assembly of Costa Rica. The central library of the National University of Costa Rica, on the Omar Dengo campus in Heredia, bears his name.

García Monge's main editorial contribution was the magazine Repertorio Americano,^[7] published from 1 September 1919 to May 1959, with more than 1,186 issues in 39 years of existence. Inspired by the homonymous publication by Andrés Bello from 1826, it became a continental forum for intellectuals, covering literary, philosophical, political, social and scientific topics. From its pages, García Monge denounced dictatorships such as those of Leónidas Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua and Fulgencio Batista in Cuba, facing censorship and distribution obstacles.^[8] The magazine promoted a unifying Hispanic Americanism and served as a space for supranational interaction, without stable funding, which forced García Monge to manage its production in an artisanal and solitary manner, acting as editor, distributor and manager of advertisements for its survival.

It drew from diverse materials of the era and published views of intellectuals such as José Carlos Mariátegui, Miguel de Unamuno, Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda. It represented an open window to the world and a voice of denunciation in the first half of the 20th century. Additionally, he edited the magazines Ariel and El Convivio from 1906.^[9]

In 2019, the National Library hosted the exhibition "A Century of Repertorio Americano," which collected issues, documents and aspects such as the role of advertising in its permanence, letters from collaborators like Unamuno and the impact of his solitary editorial work.

García Monge's narrative production was limited, prioritizing his editorial and public work. He began at age 19 with realist novels that portrayed Costa Rican rural and social life. His works include novels, short stories, articles, letters and criticism. Among the notable ones:

• El Moto (Editorial Costa Rica, 2017). ISBN 9789977239156.
• Las hijas del campo (Editorial Costa Rica, 1984). ISBN 9789977230771.
• Abnegación (Ministerio de Cultura, Juventud y Deportes, 1977). ISBN 9789977230771.
• La mala sombra y otros sucesos (Editorial Costa Rica, 1979). ISBN 9789977230771.
• El difunto José (EUNED, 2000). ISBN 9789968311243.
• Tres novelas (Ministerio de Cultura, Departamento Editorial, 1959). ISBN 9789977230771.
• Una extraña visita (Editorial Costa Rica, 1984). ISBN 9789977230771.
• Cuyeos y majafierros y otros cuentos (EUNED, 2009). ISBN 9789968316439.

His literary creation practically ceased in 1917, absorbed by Repertorio Americano, although he maintained a keen interest in writing until his final days, planning unfinished novels such as Barrio Keith and Un viaje en tranvía.

García Monge received multiple international recognitions for his cultural and educational work:

• Order of Rubén Darío in the degree of Grand Cross Silver Plate (Nicaragua).
• Medal of Honor of Public Instruction (Venezuela).
• Order of Boyacá in the degree of Officer (Colombia).
• National Order of Merit in the degree of Commander (Ecuador).
• Decoration of Merit in the degree of Commander (Chile).
• Grand Cross of the Order of the Sun (Peru).
• Order of the Aztec Eagle (Mexico).
• Benemérito de la Patria (Costa Rica, 1958).

The Joaquín García Monge National Prize for Cultural Communication was established in his honor.^[10]

Joaquín García Monge is remembered for his commitment to education, social justice and Hispanic American integration. As a humanist and Latin Americanist, he defended the causes of the marginalized and promoted unifying thought, influenced by figures such as Simón Bolívar. His Repertorio Americano stood as a tribune against authoritarianism and a space for continental intellectual dialogue, representing an idealistic desire for perfection and against mediocrity, as evoked by José Ingenieros' quote in "The Mediocre Man." Despite his coherence between thought and action, he faced criticism and dismissals due to political vendettas. His 1921 speech remains a civic reference, and his editorial and literary work is essential for understanding Costa Rican and Latin American cultural history.

The book "El hombre del Repertorio Americano," written by his son Eugenio García Carrillo, chronicles his life and work.

• Various stories
• Letras Ticas (archived)
• Repertorio Americano digitized