MARQUS, REN

born Oct. 4, 1919, Arecibo, Puerto Rico died March 22, 1979, San Juan playwright, short-story writer, critic and Puerto Rican nationalist whose work shows deep social and artistic commitment. Marqus was graduated in 1942 from the College of Agricultural Arts of Mayaguez. He studied at the University of Madrid in 1946 and later studied writing at Columbia University in New York City. His best known play, La Carreta (1956; The Wagon; Eng. trans. The Oxcart, 1966), concerns a rural Puerto Rican family who emigrate to New York City in search of their fortune but fail and subsequently return to Puerto Rico, where they find it hard to adapt. In 1959 he published three plays together in the collection Teatro (Theatre). These were La muerte no entrar en palacio (Death Will Not Enter the Palace), a political allegorical play in which a governor betrays his youthful ideals by succumbing to foreign imperialism, Un nio azul para esa sombra (A Blue Child for That Shadow), and Los soles truncos (Maimed Suns). In Los soles truncos, one of his most successful plays, Marqus re-creates the closed environment and lives of three patrician sisters unable to cope with the onslaught of modernization. In most of his plays, Marqus calls for developing a sense of national identity; an acceptance of foreign values leads only to alienation. This theme is expressed in the short-story collections Otro da nuestro (1955; Another of Our Days), En una ciudad llamada San Juan (1960; In a City Called San Juan), and Inmersos en el silencio (1976; Immersed in Silence), as well as in the novels La vspera del hombre (1959; The Eve of Man) and La mirada (1975; The Glance). A collection of his essays, Ensayos (1966; some included in El puertorriqueo dcil, (1967; The Docile Puerto Rican, 1976), is also concerned with the problem of national identity in relation to the language, literature, and prevailing social conditions of Puerto Rico.