María Angelina Acuña Sagastume de Castañeda was a Guatemalan writer of prose and poetry. A major poetry figure in her country, she was especially known for her rigor in managing classical verse within the sonnet. The writer Margarita Carrera called Acuña the "sister in spirit of Gabriela Mistral".
Biography
María Angelina Acuña Sagastume de Castañeda was born on 31 January 1905 to Francisco Acuña and Adela Sagastume de Acuña in Jutiapa, Guatemala. She moved to Guatemala City where she studied to become a teacher of Primary Education. She earned a Bachelor of Science and Letters at Instituto Normal Central para Señoritas Belén. After graduating, she worked in teaching institutes such as Instituto Normal Central para Señoritas Belén and the Instituto Nacional Centroamérica. She taught as a visiting professor at Florida Southern College. Acuña began publishing poetry in the 1930s and was one of the most prolific women poets in Guatemala, publishing in the newspaper El Imparcial, the leading woman's magazine Nosotras, as well as in bound collections. She participated in many poetry contests, winning numerous awards, as a means to open the door to publishing and her skillful use of language helped her succeed and gain recognition a society which still mostly believed that men's intelligence was superior to women's. Unlike some of her fellow Guatemalan female writers, like Elisa Hall de Asturias who gave up writing due to the then-prevalent misogyny, or Magdalena Spínola who faced ostracism during the dictatorship of Jorge Ubico Castañeda, Acuña was able to manipulate language and use poetic forms to address the culture without appearing to be a threat. Rather than promoting the heroic fatherland united under "Father God", Acuña celebrated her nationalism by employing imagery of mother earth's fertility to evoke both pride in her homeland and address the patriarchy of her times without explicit confrontation. In 1938, Acuña participated in an anthology called Colección lila with Olga Violeta Luna de Marroquín, María del Pilar de Garcia, and Magdalena Spínola, which was Central America's first women's poetry collection, both written and published by women. She founded and directed for several literary journals throughout her career and was a member of the Academia Guatemalteca de la Lengua. Acuña died at the age of 101 in her home next to the parish church of Jutiapa, Guatemala.
