Background
Manuel González Prada was born on 5 January 1884 in Lima into an aristocratic and conservative family.
Manuel González Prada was born on 5 January 1884 in Lima into an aristocratic and conservative family.
He received his education in schools in Valparaiso, Chile, and San Marcos University.
In the war with Chile (1879-1883), he was an officer in the reserves.
In 1885 he became president of the Círculo Literario, a club of liberal writers.
During the seven years he spent in Europe, González Prada attended lectures by famous professors of the Collège de France, and went to theaters, museums, and libraries. His first book was published in 1894. When it was distributed in Peru, copies wre burned publicly to protest its liberal ideas.
He wrote radical articles and speeches to criticize social and economic conditions, defend the Indians, and attack the aristocracy, the army, and the church, the three pillars of oligarchic Peru. When the Círculo Literario became the Unión Nacional in 1891, González Parada drafted its Declaration of Principles and then departed for Europe.
He returned to Peru in 1898 to resume leadership of Unión Nacional and continue publishing articles critical of socioeconomic conditions. As the government and the conservative forces closed down newspapers where his writing appeared, González Prada radicalized his political thinking and defended more and more openly anarchist philosophy and anticlericalism. During the political maneuvering prior to the 1904 elections, González Prada was proposed as presidential candidate of the Unión Nacional and the Liberal Party, but he declined. In 1912 he was finally persuaded to accept the directorship of the National Library, which he held until he resigned in protest for the overthrow of Guillermo Billinghurst, the constitutional president. In 1915 a new constitutional president reappointed González Prada director of the National Library, which he remained until his death.