Rafael Bolívar Coronado



Rafael Bolívar Coronado was born in Villa de Cura, (Aragua), Venezuela, on June 6, 1884. He is the author of the lyrics of the popular joropo song "Alma Llanera". He arrived in Caracas in 1912 and began to channel his restlessness towards intellectual works, collaborating with the most important Venezuelan publications of that time: El Cojo Ilustrado, El Nuevo Diario, and El Universal.

He meets Pedro Elías Gutiérrez and wrote the lyrics of the great musical opening of the zarzuela "Alma Llanera" that was released in Caracas in 1914. President Juan Vicente Gómez awarded him with a scholarship for Spain and is there where the originalities of Bolívar Coronado creates a chaos within the literary critic, because he was dedicated to writing and to publishing with pseudonyms, but the pseudonyms that he used were the names of important Venezuelan writers. He wrote and sold to Rufino Blanco Fombona the book Letras Españolas. Historian Rafael Ramón Castellanos, in his book about Bolívar Coronado, says that he used more than six hundred names and among these was the pen name of Daniel Mendoza, who would sign his books "El LLanero". The writer and poet Rafael Bolívar Coronado died in Barcelona, Spain, January 31, 1924, victim of an influenza epidemic. He died when he peculiarly wrote "the Deluge" for the Barcelonian news.