Jose Gonzalez Castillo was born on January 25, 1885 in the province of Rosario in Argentina. His father, a Galician hunter, and his mother, a seamstress, died when he was young thus he was left orphaned from an early age. Due to their parting, Gonzalez Castillo moved to Buenos Aires to study how to be a priest, but quickly became disillusioned with the Church and left it to become a Journalist. In Buenos Aires, Gonzalez Castillo started publishing articles, and soon after began writing plays, screenplays, and tangos as he saw the wealth that contemporary authors were accumulating. His most famous work is Los Invertidos (1915), a play about homosexuality within the upper class in Buenos Aires. Los Invertidos was extremely controversial at the time, and was banned upon its release, but the fanfare it caused brought popularity to Gonzalez Castillo and contributed to the success of plays like Gracia Plena which was published five years later. Gonzalez Castillo collaborated with other playwrights to write, most famously working with the Uruguayan Alberto T. Weisbach to write Los Dientes del Perro.
Gonzalez Castillo became very politically involved during his time in Buenos Aires. He became introduced to the anarchist ideas that Spanish and Italian immigrants were bringing into Buenos Aires from their native Europe. Argentinian Anarchism was the mixing of European anarchist ideas with the reality of life for workers of Argentina. The movement was primarily aimed at improving rights for workers, but many anarchists also believed in the need to improve the quality of life for all people, including women, under the existing repressive structure. Anarchists pushed for organized labor, women’s rights, and social class restructuring. Being from poor origins, the idea of anarchism appealed to Castillo as it provided a solution to class inequality and the poverty that stemmed from it. Castillo was also a supporter of women’s rights, and as a journalist wrote pro-anarchist and feminist columns.
Castillo published his first play in 1905, and from then on moved to publish plays that provided social commentary on life in Buenos Aires. His two plays El hijo de Agar and La mujer de Ulises were both written in support of the pro-women movement, and although Gracia Plena was aimed at attracting a larger audience, it provides clear criticism to gender roles in society. His pro union play Los Rebeldes landed Castillo in jail along with the actors of the crew, and his most famous play Los Invertidos was banned because it addressed homosexuality. Gonzalez Castillo often included aspects of his personal life into his plays particularly when writing about the lower middle class, the class he was born into. Unwanted pregnancies, illegal abortions, prostitution and cabarets are prominent in his plays, and they would all have been things he encountered in his daily life.In addition, includes a series of stores and locations in his plays that existed in Buenos Aires, making his characters and stories even more realistic. By the time of his death in 1937, Gonzalez Castillo was known around Argentina as one of the most popular and controversial playwrights of his era.
