Los Angeles County
Biographies
DON
RAFAEL MARIA GALLEGOS
GALLEGOS, DON RAFAEL MARIA, Founder and Director of the Gallegos School of Languages, and of the Latin-American Information Bureau, Los Angeles, California: was born at Riobamba, Ecuador, South America, December 22, 1885. He is of noble lineage, descended of men strong in the history of Latin-America. His father was Lieutenant-Colonel Don Manuel Maria Gallegos, late veteran Commander of the Ecuadorean Army, and his mother Senora Dona Agueda (de Castro) Gallegos. He married Miss Ella Blanche Lininger at San Francisco, California, April 11, 1908.
Professor Gallegos received his grammar and high school education in the “Escuelas de los Hermanos Cristianos,” at Riobamba. He then entered the Government School of Liberal Arts at Quito, Ecuador, and following the completion of his course there he attended the National Institute. He next spent two years in the Government Military College of Ecuador.
Immediately after leaving the latter institution, Professor Gallegos began his career as an educator, writer and journalist, having in his charge, at various times, departments in the principal institutions of learning of Ecuador. Later, with the desire of broadening his education, he set to traveling and lecturing as a source of both pleasure and study. Having visited most of the South American countries, he halted in Lima, Peru, where he made higher studies in History, Philology, Literature, Philosophy and Languages, and was later appointed Superintendent and Instructor in the National Institute.
He was the youngest man who had ever filled this important post, and when he resigned, after two years of brilliant success there, it was with regret that he was permitted to leave. He left South America in 1905, bound for the United States, visiting all the Central American Republics on this journey, familiarizing himself with their educational and political system. He arrived at San Francisco in September of the same year, and went directly to Los Angeles, California, where he became connected with several of the leading educational institutions, and contributed to various well-known journals of Los Angeles and San Francisco. In the same year he founded the Gallegos School of Languages, which he has been conducting ever since.
A most clever linguist and brilliant scholar, Professor Gallegos soon won a wide reputation as an eloquent public speaker, forceful and correct writer and excellent instructor. Endowed with inherited culture, which, coupled with his extraordinary intellectual faculties, gave him immediately a place of honor in the social, literary and educational circles of Los Angeles and Southern California. His own popularity brought success to his school from the outset, and the professor has numbered among his students not only the youth of Los Angeles’ best families, but also the heads of these families, men prominent in the public, professional and business life of the city.
The thoroughness of his own knowledge of languages has caused Professor Gallegos to be consulted on frequent occasions by some of the principal institutions of learning in the United States upon difficult and intricate points concerning the Spanish and English languages and their literature; and many of his decisions in such cases have been placed among the best authorities on these subjects.
With the desire to devote himself to the field of diplomacy, Prof. Gallegos, who is making a great success of his life through his own efforts, unaided by any outside influences, entered the University of Southern California College of Law in 1909, as a student and instructor, and has since devoted a large part of his time to these duties. It is his intention, following graduation in 1914, to take a post in the diplomatic service of the United States or his native land. This seems a splendid choice, for, in addition to an unusually cultivated talent, and his mastery of the languages, the Professor has the dignified and distinguished bearing, culture and politeness of his noble forebears, practical political, business and military knowledge, and all other attributes which are indispensable to make a successful diplomatist.
In accord with his plans, he was offered and accepted appointment, in May, 1912, as Chancellor of the Peruvian Consulate at Los Angeles, and is now serving in that official capacity.
Some few years ago he founded in Los Angeles, impulsed by purely patriotic motives, the Latin-American Information Bureau, a unique institution where correct and educational information is imparted to the people of this country, about the wonderful history, progress, culture and development of the South and Central American nations.
In that manner he has been rendering an invaluable service to all the American Republics, and has thus most efficiently co-operated with the Pan-American Union of Washington. He is regarded as an authority in all matters pertaining to these countries, and has written much and spoken many times before numerous official bodies of California.
He is essentially a student and devotes a great part of his time to study, and he takes pride in his excellent private library which comprises nearly five thousand volumes of works on Art, History, Literature, Philosophy, Science, Biography, etc; many of them being rare and of inestimable value.
Transcribed
by Joyce Rugeroni.
Source: Press
Reference Library, Western Edition Notables of the West, Vol. I, Page 583,
International News Service, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles,
Boston, Atlanta. 1913.
© 2011 Joyce
Rugeroni.
GOLDEN NUGGET'S LOS ANGELES
BIOGRAPIES