Javier del Granado

He comes from a literary family that traces its roots back in colonial America to that outstanding humanitarian figure who was the Count of Cotoca. His father, Félix del Granado, a notable writer in his own right and rector of the University of San Simón, founded the Bolivian Academies of Language and History. His uncle, the Venerable Francisco María del Granado, a man of deep compassion and a deeply spiritual and holy bishop, was also a gifted orator and writer; particularly dedicated in his concern and love for the poor and Native Americans, he was instrumental in steering the Catholic Church amid a critical era of anticlerical persecution during the 19th century. Bolivian human-rights lawyer Juan del Granado is also a member of this family.

Born into an aristocratic family with a rich literary pedigree, he spent most of his youth on his family's hacienda near Arani, in the department of Cochabamba, Colpa-Ciaco, a colonial-era estate in existence since the 16th century. A quiet life filled with the joys of living in the countryside greatly influenced his works, which combine epic imagery and storytelling with bucolic settings as well as rural and indigenous themes and the use, in addition to Spanish, of indigenous languages, primarily Quechua (the language of the Incas). In its turn toward native subjects as well as in its use of a formal battery of traditional forms, such as the ballad and the sonnet, his extensive body of poetry has been compared with that of Mexico's preeminent man of letters Alfonso Reyes.

Caceres Romero, Adolfo, Diccionario de la Literatura Boliviana, Second Edition, La Paz, 1997

Along with Víctor Paz Estenssoro and others, del Granado formed the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario. The MNR was at the forefront of the Bolivian Revolution of 1952, which radically changed the country, bringing about land redistribution, universal suffrage, and nationalization of the major tin mines.

Don Francisco Javier del Granado y Granado (27 February 1913 – 15 May 1996), was a poet laureate and favorite son of Bolivia.