Alberto Masferrer

During his public career at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of El Salvador, he served as an ambassador of El Salvador in Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, and Belgium, and served as a professor in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Chile, and Argentina. Having served in the government of President Arturo Araujo, he was sent into exile in Honduras by the dictatorship of General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez following the uprising of 1932 known as La Matanza, dying that same year on 8 September in the city of Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Masferrer was well respected throughout his life, having earned the praise of such major Salvadoran figures as Arturo Ambrogi, Miguel Ángel Espino, Claudia Lars, and Salarrué.

• Name — Alberto Masferrer • Office — Deputy of the Legislative Assembly of ElSalvador from Usulután • Term Start — 1 March 1931 • Term End — 14 August 1931 • Birth Name — Vicente Alberto Mónico Masferrer • Born — 24 July 1868 • Birthplace — Alegría, El Salvador • Died — 15 May 1949 • Place of death — San Francisco, United States • Party — Salvadoran Laborist Party • Occupation — Author, editor, diplomat, professor, deputy president, teacher, journalist, publicist, politician

Vicente Alberto Mónico Masferrer was born on 24 July 1868 in Tecapa (now Alegría), a municipality in the Usulután Department of El Salvador. He was born out of wedlock to Enrique Masferrer, an agriculturalist and former Salvadoran legislator, and Leonor Mónico. He began his primary education at a rural school of a French woman by the name of Agustina Charvín. Masferrer was later transferred to a different institute run by a Cuban, Hildebrando Martí. There, he openly criticized the usage of corporal punishment by his teachers, stating that the methods were "outdated" and part of a "Eurocentric curriculum" which, according to him, were far removed from life in El Salvador. Following his continuous rebellious behavior at Martí's school, Masferrer's father moved both him and his younger half-brothers Eduardo and Enrique Masferrer Crespo to a boarding school in Guatemala. Masferrer ran away from the school shortly after arrival. Following his departure from the school, Masferrer spent the rest of his teenage years travelling through Honduras and Nicaragua, and later Guatemala and Costa Rica. He worked a number of jobs during this time, from selling bottled water in Chinandega, Nicaragua with his uncle Miguel Mónico, working as a stint at a prison at Ometepe, and of course, teaching. The home in which he was born was owned by the Mejia family and is now a small museum. His education involved a mixture of both self-teaching and formal education. His love for reading led him to choose teaching as a career later on in life. Salvadoran writer and journalist Arturo Ambrogi once stated that "I have rarely seen a lecturer as tremendous as Alberto."

Alberto Masferrer began working as Director of the School for Boys in San Rafael del Sur in the Nicaraguan department of Rivas. Noting the poverty of the area in which he found himself in, in addition to the economic situation at the time, he began to raise pigs in order to feed the poor and frequently gave away his own earnings to any unfortunate person who crossed his path. Alberto Masferrer taught throughout Latin America in countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Chile and Argentina, having been named "teacher and director of Crowds" by Salvadoran poet Claudia Lars. Alberto Masferrer taught at the Salvadoran Language Academy in San Salvador • Illustration — Portrait of Masferrer in the national library in San Salvador. • Illustration — Masferrer at the Salvadoran Consulate General in Belgium.

He began his political career as Consul of El Salvador in Argentina (1901) and later in Chile (1902), Costa Rica (1907) and Belgium (1910). Following his consulate work, he was employed at the International Court of Justice in the year 1912. Secretary of the National Institute (1890) and Advisor to the Ministry of Education (1916). Under the basic premise of the peaceful struggle for the rights of each individual, Masferrer became the ideologue and political campaign manager for the future president, the engineer Arturo Araujo in 1930. Masferrer was elected as a deputy to the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador from Usulutánjust a year later in 1931. He became a member of Araujo's Salvadoran Laborist Party, but soon resigned from office on 14 August 1931 due to his dissatisfaction with Araujo's presidency. Despite his opposition to the arrival to the presidency of Brigadier General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, the military takeover was inevitable. Since then, Masferrer tried to contain the violence unleashed months later at the hands of Martínez, in La Matanza, which resulted in the deaths of thousands of natives and peasants, resulting in Masferrer's exile to Honduras. His relationship with the Communist Party of El Salvador is unclear, although there are references about the pacifistic influence that he as a writer, tried, although failed.

Vital Minimum or Vitalismo was a philosophical theory developed by Masferrer in several of his essays, particularly "El Mínimum Vital." This philosophy espouses the idea that all individuals, regardless of sex, race or class have the right to a basic standard of life, through equal access to education, employment, food, and shelter. Through this philosophy, Masferrer also argued for pacifism, influenced by the efforts of Mahatma Gandhi. The ideas of vital minimum echoes through many of Masferrer's essays, as well as in his novella Una Vida en el Cine(1922).

Masferrer died on 15 May 1949 in San Salvador, El Salvador.