Criticism on the work of Salvadoran novelist and poet Manlio Argueta is increasingly focusing on his relationship with the intellectual tradition in El Salvador and the other countries of Central America since the late 1950s. In those years young poets and students began to perceive the impact of a new era, the process of modernization of daily life which was to have dramatic consequences on the future of politics and completely transform the notion of contemporary cultural history.

Manlio Argueta was born on 24 November 1936. After growing up in San Miguel, a city he characterizes as a forgotten and marginal place in the province, Argueta went to the capital of El Salvador, San Salvador, for his university studies. The difference between these two towns was enormous. In order to explain the cultural environment in which he was brought up, Argueta tells the following anecdote in"Autovaloración literaria...