Narvaez. (This 30-day detainment formed the basis of his novel, Hombres sin tiempo). In 1944 Pareja was appointed as Ecuador's chargé d'affaires in Mexico. In 1945 he became a special representative for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in Washington D.C. He later served in Montevideo and Buenos Aires, coordinating for the governments of México, Central American nations, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay. Between August 1979 and July 1980, during the government of President Jaime Roldós Aguilera, Pareja was appointed to the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs. During the rule of Roldós's successor, President Osvaldo Hurtado, he served as Permanent Delegate to UNESCO and Ambassador to Paris (1983–84). After retirement, Pareja dedicated his time to historical research. He died in Quito on 1 May 1993. Literary works and political stance Pareja was born into a conservative family but became part of a “socialist generation” in Ecuador. He lived through considerable political turmoil in the 1920s and concluded that his country's salvation lay on the left side of the political spectrum. He denied, however, being a “left-winger”. He insisted that he did not want to use his fiction as an instrument of propaganda. Rather, he sought to simply and directly depict social conditions that called for redress, while denouncing those in power who were guilty of corruption and injustice. His first novel, La casa de los locos (1929), satirized Ecuadorian politics. He attacked so many living people that publication was considerably delayed. Pareja attested to the strong influence of the Mexican writer and politician José Vasconcelos. Other major literary influences included the Greek classics, Balzac, Dostoievski, Thomas Mann, Will Durant and Arnold Toynbee. Some critics have also detected the influence of Freud, Ehrenburg, Gide and Proust. Pareja's cycle of narrative fiction was marked by realism and a strong connection with the history of his country (El muelle [“The Pier”], 1933; Hombres sin tiempo [“Men Without Time”], 1941; Las tres ratas [The Three Rats], 1944). Having established a reputation as a writer both inside and outside of Ecuador, in 1944 he published an important biographical novel, The Barbaric Bonfire, about the actions and historical circumstances surrounding the life and death of General Eloy Alfaro. He started a new cycle of novels n 1956 with La advertencia (“The Warning") and continued with El aire y los recuerdos (“Air and Memories”; 1959) and Los poderes omnímodos (“All-embracing Powers”; 1964). He was writing