Tomás Carrasquilla Naranjo (1858 – 1940) was a Colombian writer who lived in the Antioquia region. He dedicated himself to very simple jobs: tailor, secretary of a judge, storekeeper in a mine, and worker at the Ministry of Public Works. He was an avid reader, and one of the most original Colombian literary writers, greatly influencing the younger generation of his time and later generations. Carrasquilla was little known in his time, according to Federico de Onís, a scholar of Carrasquilla's works. It was only after 1936, when he was already 78 years old, when he was awarded with the National Prize of Literature, that Carrasquilla got a national recognition. Tomás Carrasquilla Library Park is named in his honor.
The Colombian civil wars of the second part of the 19th century prevented young Carrasquilla from continuing his studies at the University of Antioquia. A committed intellectual, Carrasquilla organized tertulias—social gatherings to read books and discuss them—in his Medellín house. Many young writers and intellectuals of his time joined those tertulias; from that time he was called "Maestro Tomás Carrasquilla." Among Carrasquilla's admirers was Colombian philosopher Fernando González Ochoa.
De Onís argues that Carrasquilla's work passed unknown in Colombia and abroad at the time because he lived during two different periods of Latin American literature: Costumbrismo and Romanticism, that had representatives like José Asunción Silva in Colombia, and the coming of Modernism as a reaction against Costumbrismo. As many classify the work of Carrasquilla as Costumbrist, so De Onís classifies him.
Carrasquilla's life straddled two centuries, becoming a link between two epochs in Colombia's history. When he was born in 1858, the country was called the Republic of New Granada, newly independent of Spain. In his work La Marqueza de Yolombó, Carrasquilla described how the most simple people of the end of the 18th century saw the events that broke the Colombia's political dependence on Spain.
He was also a citizen of the once-called United States of Colombia (1863–1886), a time when the Paisa Region saw the colonization of the current coffee areas. He also saw the Colombian Industrial Revolution at the beginning of the 20th century, the Thousand Days War, and many other changes in his country.
The Colombian civil wars of the 19th century were the reason why Carrasquilla could not finish his studies of law at the University of Antioquia.
One of those civil wars was reflected in his works Luterito and El Padre Casafús (in English, "The Reverend Casafús"). Those books were set in the context of the civil war of 1876, started by the Conservative partisans of Antioquia, Cauca and Tolima against the Liberal government of president Aquileo Parra, who intended to secularize the education. The story develops in the town of Cañasgordas, where a group of fighters prepare themselves to "defend the Faith." In this case, Carrasquilla's work is an approach to the deepest feelings of people during historical events.
Carrasquilla was born in Santo Domingo, an Andean town north-east of Medellín, on the Antioquean Mountain. He was the son of Isaza Carrasquilla and Ecilda Naranjo Moreno. His family owned some gold mines, and this allowed him to live well enough and dedicate himself to writing. One of his friends, also born in Santo Domingo, was the writer Francisco de Paula Rendón.
At the age of 15, he moved to Medellín to finish his secondary education at the University of Antioquia; he continued his study of law there. He had to abandon his law studies in 1877 because of the start of the civil war.
He returned to Santo Domingo, where he worked as a tailor and did some jobs in the municipality. Carlos Eugenio Restrepo invited him to the Café Literario ("literary café"), where he had to write a story in order to be admitted. He wrote Simón el Mago ("Simon the Mage"), one of his most popular stories. Simón was published in 1890, and brought to the cinema by Colombian director Víctor Gaviria in 1993.
In 1896, Carrasquilla traveled to Bogotá for the publication of his first novel, Frutos de Mi Tierra ("Fruits of my Land"), written to demonstrate that any subject can be the matter of a story, which was very well received by critics. On that trip, he came to know José Asunción Silva, to whom he would some years later dedicate the essay "For the Poet."
He returned to Antioquia and had an accident, falling from a horse, which made him stay in Medellín for a time. When he returned to Santo Domingo, he dedicated himself to writing, until 1904, when he lost his fortune due to the Banco Popular bankruptcy. He then gained work as a storekeeper in a Sonsón gold mine until 1909.
After Carrasquilla returned to Medellín, he had a lively social and cultural life, associating with young intellectuals like Fernando González Ochoa, who became one of his best friends for the rest of his life. González was one of Carrasquilla's biggest admirers. Carrasquilla also knew of the cartoonist Ricardo Rendón, and the skeptic group Los Panidas (whom he supported, but never joined).
In 1914, Carrasquilla did some work for Colombia's oldest newspaper, El Espectador, when that publication was edited in Medellín. But soon thereafter, he moved to Bogotá, where he worked for the Ministry of Public Works until 1919.
Returning to Medellín, he continued studying literature, and in 1928 published La Marqueza de Yolombó ("The Marchioness of Yolombó"), one of the best-known works of Colombian literature.
The writer stayed in Medellín when his health began to decay and he started to go blind. In 1934, surgery gave him back limited vision; his blindness was not an obstacle to his writing, however, as he began to dictate his works.
In 1935, Carrasquilla was decorated with the Cross of Boyacá, an award that gives the recipient the same privileges as the president or ex-president of Colombia.
He wrote Hace Tiempos ("Long Time Ago") by dictation between 1936 and 1937; that work won him the José María Vergara y Vergara National Prize of Literature and Science from the Colombian Academy of Language. This recognition gave him national fame, and attracted international critics, who admired his work and rescued his name from near-anonymity.