Canales, Nemesio Rosario (1878–1923)

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Canales, Nemesio Rosario (1878–1923)

Nemesio Rosario Canales (b. 18 December 1878; d. 14 September 1923), Puerto Rican writer and statesman. Nemesio R. Canales interrupted his studies of medicine in Saragossa, Spain, in 1898, when Puerto Rico came under United States sovereignty. He left the island two years later to study at the Baltimore School of Law. After graduating in 1903, he returned to Puerto Rico to practice law and began a career in politics. He wrote articles for the Revista de las Antillas and La Semana, and a column for the Ponce newspaper El Día; he also cofounded Juan Bobo, a weekly, and edited Cuasimodo, an inter-American journal on culture. Concerned with politics and the economy as well as social, labor, and cultural issues, he served in the Puerto Rican Congress and in the Department of Justice. His most famous work is a collection of humorously ironic articles entitled Paliques (Chit-chat, 1913). Canales also published a novel, Mi voluntad se ha muerto (My will has died), in 1921, and a drama, El héroe galopante (The galloping hero), in 1923, the year of his death in New York.

See alsoJournalism .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

José Gelpí, ed., Nuevos Paliques y otras páginas de Nemesio R. Canales (1965).

María Teresa Babín, Genio y figura de Nemesio R. Canales (1978).

                                          Estelle Irizarry