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CHAPTER 30
Marcio Veloz Maggiolo:
AWriter of Italian Descent at the Very
Heart of Dominican Literature
By Danilo Manera
Professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Milan,
director of the chair of Dominican studies “Marcio Veloz Maggiolo”
•
arcio Veloz Maggiolo was born in Santo Domingo (then newly baptized Ciudad Trujillo) on Au-
gust 13, 1936. A poet, novelist, historian, archaeologist, social anthropologist, university professor,
journalist, politician, painter, and diplomat, he is unquestionably one of the most prominent and
prestigious intellectual figures of Dominican culture. Unanimously recognized as the most pro-
lific and versatile author of Dominican letters, with a vast list of publications, he is also one of
the most important voices in Latin American literature. With a Bachelor in Philosophy and Letters from the
Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD) and Doctorate in the History of the Americas (with a
specialization in Prehistory) from the University of Madrid, he is a member of the Dominican Academy of
Language, the Dominican Academy of History, and the American Anthropological Association of the United
States. He has held the positions of Undersecretary of State for Culture, Director of the Museo del Hombre
Dominicano, and Director of the Museo de las Casas Reales. As a diplomat he has served as Dominican Am-
bassador to Italy (1963-1964; 1983-1985), Mexico (1965-1966), and Peru (1982-1983).
Of Italian blood in his maternal line, Veloz Maggiolo is the great-grandson of Bartolomeo Maggiolo Pel-
lerano (1825-1878), a native of Genoa and the son of Giovanni Battista Maggiolo and Rosa Pellerano Costa,
natives of Santa Margherita Ligure. Bartolomeo arrived in the country together with his maternal uncle
Giovanni Battista Pellerano Costa (1806-1880) and with his son, his cousin and contemporary, Vincenzo
Benedetto Pellerano Costa (1825-1893), who married María de Belén Alfau Sánchez in Santo Domingo and
was the father of the illustrious Arturo Pellerano Alfau, who founded the largest Dominican newspaper,
El
Listín Diario
, in 1889. The great influx of Ligurians to Hispaniola occurred, in effect, in the nineteenth cen-
tury, when families of shipowners, shipbuilders, and sailors arrived in Santo Domingo. During the time of
the Dominican War of Independence against Haiti, the presence of these Ligurians proved essential. In the
1844 uprisings, two Genoese joined the pro-independence forces: Giovanni Battista Cambiaso and Giovanni
Battista Maggiolo, who contributed their ships and their men to the cause of the Dominicans. Maggiolo lost
the ship María Luisa in the war and, despite his contract with the State, never claimed reimbursement for the
In each of my novels there are characters that were previously part of a pas-
sion or a memory, which little by little went about creating a false memory
within me, a memory that although it was something original, with the pass-
ing of years became something else, and which can no longer be remembered
the way it felt because it had to become transformed into a kind of absurd
story, anomalous and filled with illusion, better than the authentic or more
convincing than the already forgotten original story.
Marcio Veloz Maggiolo