René Marqués (October 4, 1919 – March 22, 1979) was a Puerto Rican short story writer and playwright.
Early years
Marqués was born, raised and educated in the city of Arecibo. He developed an interest in writing at a young age and was politically keen to support independence for the non-sovereign nation of Puerto Rico.
In the 1940s, Marqués wrote what is considered to be his best play, La Carreta (The Oxcart). In 1953, it opened in New York City. In 1954, it opened in San Juan and helped secure his reputation as a leading literary figure. The drama traces a rural Puerto Rican family as it moved to the slums of San Juan and then to New York in search of a better life, only to be disillusioned and to long for their island. In 1950, together with the other members of the group, Marqués worked for the Division of Community Education of Puerto Rico. Marqués however, did often come into conflict with journalist and politician Luis Muñoz Marín. Believing in the goal of complete Puerto Rican sovereignty, Marques often criticized Muñoz Marín after the latter man became governor of the territory, because he accepted U.S. sovereignty over Puerto Rico.
In 1958 Victoria Espinosa directed Marques' Los soles truncos (The Half-Suns) at the First Puerto Rican Theatre Festival. This collaboration was a success and Espinosa was the only person to direct that play for the following thirty years.
In 1959, Marqués published three plays together in the collection Teatro (Theater). These were La Muerte no entrará en Palacio (Death will not enter the Palace), Un Niño Azul para esa Sombra (A Blue Boy for that Shadow) and Los Soles Truncos. In an essay (1960), which the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party published as a pamphlet, Marqués addressed the problem of the language of instruction in Puerto Rico's colonial situation. He concluded that only the enjoyment of complete national sovereignty will cleanse the pedagogical problem of all extra-pedagogical baggage.