Donoso Pareja's father was Miguel Donoso Moncayo from Quito and his mother was Leonor Pareja Diezcanseco from Guayaquil. His uncle was the novelist and diplomat Alfredo Pareja Diezcanseco. Beginning in 1951, Donoso Pareja frequented the Guayaquil home of Enrique Gil Gilbert where he engaged with other young poets and writers of the time. In 1962 he joined the Communist Party. In 1963 Donoso Pareja became the head of fundraising of the weekly newspaper El Pueblo, which was the Communist Party's main publication in Guayaquil. In just a few weeks the police raided and ransacked his home, accusing him of being a terrorist. They took pictures of him with small pieces of metal that looked to contain gunpowder, and the newspapers printed these photographs and accused him of possessing grenades. He was released after two days, but great damage had been done to his reputation. A few weeks later, on July 11, 1963, the military junta of Ramon Castro Jijón took control of Ecuador, and Donoso Pareja went into hiding, and the newspapers reported that he "went underground". One afternoon, at a secret meeting in darkness set up with his daughters at the Odeon Cinema, but was followed and arrested by junta agents, amidst a tumultuous display. Donoso Pareja was detained in prison barracks for ten months without trial. He was then expelled to Mexico, given a tourist passport, and released without any money. He had to request assistance from friends in order to afford to travel out of the country. In Mexico, Donoso Pareja worked as a literature and writing teacher in various institutions, including the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the National Institute of Fine Arts. He also worked as a newspaper writer. In 1976, he edited the magazine Cambio along with other famous writers such as Juan Rulfo, Julio Cortázar, José Revueltas, Pedro Orgambide, and Eraclio Zepeda, until the magazine's final publication in 1981. In 1976, Donoso Pareja wrote Día tras día, which is a novel about his exile. In 1981, nearly 18 years after being expelled from Ecuador, he decided to return to his homeland, leaving behind his job and friends in Mexico. That year, he wrote Nunca más el mar, a novel about his own return from exile. In 1985 Donoso Pareja was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship grant of $26,000 to write fiction; he then traveled several months in Spain and other European countries and spent all the money, and so returned to Ecuador, locked himself up in a borrowed apartment, and wrote 22 stories of love, which expressed a deep sense of loneliness and despair. The stories were published in a book titled Lo mismo que el olvido. In 198?, Donoso Pareja was elected president of the Guayas branch of the House of Ecuadorian Culture, and moved permanently to Guayaquil. He died on March 13, 2015, aged 83, after years of suffering from Parkinson's disease.
