Biography
Jorge Debravo (Guayabo de Turrialba, Costa Rica, 31
January 1938 – 4 August 1967). By the
time of his death at the age of 29, Costa Rican poet Jorge Debravo had already
published ten books of poetry: Milagro Abierto [Open miracle], 1959; Vórtices [Vortices], 1959; Bestiecillas Plásticas [Plastic little
beasts], 1960; Consejos para Cristo al
Comenzar el Año [Advice for Christ at the start of the New Year], 1960; Devocionario del Amor Sexual [Devotional
of sexual love], 1963; Poemas Terrenales [Poems of the earth], 1964; Digo [I mean to say], 1965; and Nosotros los Hombres [We mankind],
1966. Two works appeared
posthumously: Canciones Cotidianas
[Daily songs], 1967; and Los Despiertos
[The awakened ones], 1972. A collection
of least twelve other books of poetry, dating from 1960 to 1967, remain
unedited. In 1989 Editorial Costa Rica
published a new anthology of his work entitled Antología mayor, edited by Joaquín Gutiérrez. The poem, “Los amantes,” appeared in this
anthology.
Born Jorge Bravo, son of Joaquin Bravo Ramírez and
Cristina Breves, Debravo was the oldest child of five; his father was
illiterate and both parents were agrarian farmers in the area of Guayabo de
Turrialba, a mountainous farming community west of the capital of San José. In the 1940s Guayabo did not have a primary
school; the closest one, in Santa Cruz, was four hours away. His mother, therefore, was the first person
to teach him the alphabet and how to write his name. He worked in his dad’s plot of land, and with
these earnings he bought his first book, a dictionary. At the age of 14, and after receiving a
state scholarship thanks to the aid of devoted teacher in Santa Cruz, Debravo
was able to finish his elementary education in the city of Turrialba.
After finishing his third-year of secondary education, he
dropped from school and started working for Turrialba’s Social Security Office,
Costa Rican’s socialized healthcare agency.
While in this city he published his first poems and developed ties with
other local poets belonging to the “Circle of Turrialban Poets”, such as
Laureano Albán, Marcos Aguilar, among others.
In 1959 he married Margarita Salazar Madrigal, and in the next few
years, two children, Lucrecia and Raimundo, were born. In 1961, and thanks to his good rapport with
workers, he was named inspector, and the Social Security Office sent him to
other agrarian cities, including San Isidro del General and Naranjo. Throughout his life as inspector, Debravo was
exposed to social problems, such as access to health care, affecting
working-class Costa Ricans. In the 1989
prologue to her late husband’s anthology of poetry, Debravo’s wife recalled an
episode in which a politician in Naranjo employed close to 200 workers and
refused to pay their social security work fees.
Because of Debravo’s close ties with the workers and the trust he
engendered, he obtained all the names of
the workers in the politician’s payroll and was able to enroll them for medical
benefits (Gutiérrez 11-12).
By 1965 Debravo had finished his high school degree, and
a year later he enrolled at the university.
That same year, in 1966, he bought a motorcycle, and on the night of
August 4th, as he was driving back home, he was struck by a drunk
driver. He died instantly.
Themes in Debravo’s work
His working-class background, the international
geo-political shifts of the 1960s, and the role of the Costa Rican intellectual
inform Debravo’s poetic output. In his
prologue to the 1989 anthology and edition of major poems, Joaquín Gutiérrez
summarizes some of the main themes in Debravo’s poetry: aesthetic principles co-existing with
humanitarian ideals; the poet as creator and as active participant in social
movements; the effects of anguish and love; the incorruptibility of a good
conscience; and the realities of oppressed peoples (33). In a May 1967 interview, three months before
his death, Debravo remarks on the various systems which oppress marginalized
peoples: “Las oligarquías nacionales,
las compañías extranjeras, el colonialismo cultural y las religiones, que han
sido, en la mayoría de los casos, instrumentos para adormecer la justa rebeldía
de los Hombres” (31; National
oligarchies, foreign companies, cultural colonialism and religions, have been,
for the most part, instruments to subdue the just revolt of Man). Such a remark is as surprising now as it was
then; Debravo critiques three pillars of Costa Rica’s economic and cultural
life: coffee, Catholicism, and foreign
capital. Specifically, Debravo questions
the involvement of Costa Rica’s coffee-family oligarchies in national politics
and economic incentives, the impact of repressive religions, and finally, the
on-going neo-colonization of Costa Rican flora and fauna by foreign
companies. Today, foreign capital and
desires perversely foster Costa Rica’s infamous sexual tourism trade involving
minors as well as young working-class men and women.
In translating Debravo’s “Los amantes” [The Lovers] and in offering this concise
biography, I cannot help but recall the life of another working-class
intellectual, Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937).
In his Prison Notebooks
(written between 1929 and 1935), Gramsci reminds us how organic intellectuals
have roots in the working class and represent their realities. Jorge Debravo emerged from a working-class
family, and in his work and in his poetry he strived to represent the various
ways of achieving liberty. Liberation in
his poetry can be reached by challenging dominant poetic and social conventions: “Soy hombre, es decir, / animal con palabras. /
Y exijo, por lo tanto, / que me dejen usarlas” (“Hombre” [Mankind], 80; I am man, in other words / an animal with
words. / I demand, therefore, / to be allowed to use them). In “Los amantes,” translated here for this issue, lovers are free from
discrete genders, sexual orientations, and from ethnic, class, or racial
origins; instead, they have a close kinship with the divine, and with nature on
this earth and in the universe. It is a poem about finding kinship with each
other not only in life, but also in death.
A kinship, as his poetry sadly predicted, that would arrive all too soon
for the writer Jorge Debravo.
Los amantes
Son grandes, venturosos, como
hechos de luna, en
medio de la noche.
Arden como maderas. Destilan un agua fresca y
deliciosa, como savia de los
grandes árboles.
No parecen llegar de las
rocas terrestres: los
imaginamos brotados de las
cuevas más salvajes y
profundas. O salidos tal vez de un foso oceánico
donde han aprendido de las
sirenas el arte del abrazo
hasta lograr que los brazos
se transformen en culebras.
Si no tuvieran nombres como
nosotros, no los
creeríamos humanos. Los pensaríamos habitantes de
estrellas desconocidas, de
planetas de trigo.
Entre la sombra se confunden,
a veces, con los
dioses. Resbalan y se asustan como animales, que es
otra manera de parecerse a
los dioses.
No osan la palabra: usan el gemido y el arrullo. Las
palabras más cortas de la
tierra y más palabras, sin
embargo.
Cuando regrese a casa le
pediré a la Muerte que no
venga por ellos. Bello sería que los dejara libres para
siempre y que salieran a la
calle enlazados, como
profetas de un rito vegetal y
poderoso.
Nosotros les cantaríamos
canciones de alegría y les
pondríamos collares de hojas
frescas. Grandes collares
que les sirvieran como
almohadas cuando se hallaren
sin almohadas en algún sitio
amargo de la
tierra. (131-132)
The Lovers
They are impressive,
fortunate, made of moon, in
the middle of the night.
They burn like timber. They exude fresh and
delicious water, like the
sap of large trees.
They don’t seem to come from
terrestrial rocks: we
imagine them sprouting from
caves more savage and
deep. Or rising perhaps from an oceanic pit
where from sirens they have
learned the art of embracing
until arms achieve the
transformation into snakes.
If they had names like us,
we would not
believe them to be
human. We would think of them as
inhabitants of
stars unknown, from planets
of wheat.
Among shadows they mingle,
sometimes, with the
gods. They slip and are frightened like animals,
which is
another way of appearing
like gods.
They don’t dare use the
word: they moan and coo. The
shortest words on the earth
and more words,
nevertheless.
When I return home I will
ask Death not to
come for them. Beautiful it would be for them to be free for
ever and for them to emerge
out into the streets joined, like
prophets of a powerful and
vegetative ritual.
We would sing them songs of
joy and we
would dress them with
garlands of fresh leaves. Large garlands
that would comfort them when
they find themselves
without pillows in some
bitter place upon the
earth.
____________________________________________________________
Works Cited
Debravo, Jorge. Antología
mayor. Ed. Joaquin Gutiérrez. San José, Costa Rica:
Editorial Costa Rica, 1989.
Gramsci, Antonio. Selections
from Prison Notebooks. Ed. Quintin
Hoare and Geoffrey
Nowell-Smith.
London: Lawrence and Wishart,
1971.
Dr. Oscar Fernández, Assistant
Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at Portland State University
(Portland, Oregon), was born and raised in San José, Costa Rica. Specializes in Inter-American literatures and
literary theory.