Biography
Fiona Schmidt
Horacio Castellanos Moya is born in Tegucigalpa, Honduras on 21st of November 1957, his father, Crescencio „Chencho“ Castellanos Rivas, an author and newsreader, comes from a left-wing Salvadoran family, his mother, Ruth Moya, from a Honduran family of conservative right-wingers.
He spends the first four years of his life in Honduras and then, in 1962, his family moves to El Salvador.
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1975: takes his school-leaving exam
Starts the course of studies at the University of El Salvador
For eight months he is editor-in-chief of the Revista de espectáculos TV-guía
February 1979: Castellanos Moya leaves his country, drops out of university and sets off for Canada: in Toronto he studies history at York University
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Towards the end of the year 1979 Castellanos Moya returns to El Salvador
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Castellanos Moya participates in the war on the part of the Labour movement by managing journalistic work. He continues this job for three years for the FMLN (Frente Farabundo Martí de Liberación Nacional- left-wing guerrilla), direct support of the FMLN
March until July 1980: studies at the Universidad Nacional in Tegucigalpa.
August 1980 until September 1981: Costa Rica, San José: work in publishing; proofreader for EDUCA (Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana)
Disillusioned and disappointed with the change of ideology and the growing use of violence in their ranks, Castellanos Moya dissociates himself ideologically and in practice from the guerrilla-fighters.
1981-1991: resident in Mexico City: editor of the Salvadoran press agency (Salpress), at the same time correspondent for the Brazilian periodical Cuadernos del tercer Mundo, political observer for the private firm ANAFAC.
Between September 1986 and January 1987 he writes his first novel La diáspora during a stay in the village of Tlayacapa, Cuernavaca.
In 1988 he is awarded the National Novel Prize of the University of El Salvador (Premio Nacional de Novela) for La diáspora.
1986-88: editor of the English-language periodical Voices of Mexico of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
1988-1990: Castellanos Moya edits the political category for the Latin-American agency for special information service (Alesei), headquarters in Mexico.
In 1991 he returns to San Salvador to found the magazine Tendencias.
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1992: Foundation of and cooperation in the first post-war weekly paper, Primera Plana, which runs from 1994 to 95. In this period of time HCM did a lot of journalistic work: editor and director of several magazines and newspapers in Mexico City and San Salvador, correspondent. His journalistic publications in many Spanish-language print media are found all over the American continent.
The publication of El asco in 1997 is followed by death threats and he has to leave the country immediately.
1999: Castellanos Moya lives in Madrid for some time but commutes from Europe to Central-America.
2000/2001: editor-in-chief for the magazine Milenio Semanal in Mexico.
March 2003: starts to work in Guatemala for El Periódico de Guatemala.
August 2004: departure to Frankfurt am Main, Germany, for the purpose of a scholarship of the programme “Cities of Asylum”.
1st and 2nd of July, 2006: visit to Gantikow
Sources:
Castellanos Moya, Horacio (2004): La guerra: un largo paréntesis. Revista Letras Libres. No. 36, septiembre de 2004, España.
http://www.sololiteratura.com/hor/horsemblanza.htm (20. Jun. 2006)
http://www.escritores.org/horaciocastellanos.htm (20. Jun. 2006)
http://www.letraslibres.com/index.php?sec=22&autor=Horacio%20Castellanos%20Moya (20. Jun. 2006)
http://www.denison.edu/collaborations/istmo/n09/foro/breves.html (20. Jun. 2006)
