Andrés L. Mateo

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Andrés Luciano Mateo Martínez, born on November 30, 1946, in Santo Domingo, is a Dominican writer, poet, educator, critic and philosopher. He won the National Literature Prize in 2004.

His parents were Antonio Mateo Peguero and Guadalupe Martínez Reyes. He studied at Colegio San Juan Bosco, where he wrote his first novel, Pisando los dedos de Dios. At Liceo Juan Pablo Duarte he led student groups and worked as an assistant to the philosopher Armando Cordero. While in school, he began publishing poems in El Caribe. In 1965 he helped found the La Isla writers group, a circle of young Dominican authors focused on art and social change.

Mateo earned a BA from the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo. He studied in Cuba in 1971 and, in 1977, earned a degree in American literature from the University of Havana. In 1993 he earned a Ph.D. in philological sciences for his work on the myths and culture of Santo Domingo. He returned to the Dominican Republic in 1978, became a prolific writer for national newspapers, and served as co-director of the Coloquio literary supplement to El Siglo. He also taught literature at the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo.

His work has won several prizes: Pisar los dedos de Dios won the National Novel Prize in 1981; La Balada de Alfonsina Bairán won an award in 1992; and his essay Mito y Cultura en la Era de Trujillo won the National Essay Prize in 1994. In 1999 he received the Dominican Journalistic Excellence Award for his Listín Diario column "Sobre el tiempo presente." He published other novels, including La otra Penélope (1982) and El Violín de la Adúltera (2007), the latter inspired by events in the Don Bosco neighborhood where he grew up. La Balada de Alfonsina Bairán is set in a brothel during the Trujillo era.

Mateo also hosted the TV program “Pería de Tres” with Tony Raful and Pedro Peix. He has reflected on how culture was prominent but controlled under Trujillo, and how politics created a pessimistic view of social progress. He highlighted the terror of 1930–1961 and argued that Trujillism grew bigger than Trujillo, limiting freedom of thought and the press.