José Esteban Antonio Echeverría (2 September 1805 – 19 January 1851) was an Argentine poet, fiction writer, cultural promoter, and
liberal activist who played a significant role in the development of
Argentine literature, not only through his own writings but also through his organizational efforts. He was one of Latin America's most important Romantic authors. Echeverría's romantic liberalism was influenced by both the democratic nationalism of
Giuseppe Mazzini and the utopian socialist doctrines of
Henri de Saint-Simon.
Life
Echeverría spent five decisive years in Paris (1825 to 1830), where he absorbed the spirit of the Romantic Movement, then in its heyday in France. He became one of the movement's promoters once he returned to Argentina. Once he returned to
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...
, he wrote "Los Consuelos" in 1834 and "Las rimas" in 1837. He was a member of the group of young Argentine intellectuals who in 1840 organized the ''Asociación de Mayo'' ("May Association", after the
May Revolution that initiated Argentina's move towards
independence
Independence is a condition of a nation, country, or state, in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the status of ...
). This institution aspired to develop a national literature responsive to the country's social and physical reality. Echeverría also devoted himself to the overthrow of the ''
caudillo
A ''caudillo'' ( , ; , from Latin language, Latin , diminutive of ''caput'' "head") is a type of Personalist dictatorship, personalist leader wielding military and political power. There is no precise English translation for the term, though it ...
'' of
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...
,
Juan Manuel de Rosas
Juan Manuel José Domingo Ortiz de Rozas y López de Osornio (30 March 1793 – 14 March 1877), nicknamed "Restorer of the Laws", was an Argentine politician and army officer who ruled Buenos Aires Province and briefly the Argentine Confedera ...
. In 1840 he was forced to go into
exile
Exile or banishment is primarily penal expulsion from one's native country, and secondarily expatriation or prolonged absence from one's homeland under either the compulsion of circumstance or the rigors of some high purpose. Usually persons ...
in nearby
Uruguay
Uruguay, officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast, while bordering the Río de la Plata to the south and the A ...
, where he wrote ''La Insurrección del Sur'' and ''
El Matadero''.
He remained in Uruguay until his death in 1851. His remains are said to be buried at
Buceo Cemetery.
Work
Echeverría's renown as a writer rests largely on his powerful short story ''El matadero'' ("The Slaughter Yard", often mistranslated as "The Slaughterhouse"), written in sometime during 1838-1840 but not published until 1871), a landmark in the history of Latin American literature. It is mostly significant because it displays the perceived clash between "civilization and barbarism", that is, between the European and the "primitive and violent" American ways.
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, another great Argentine writer and thinker, saw this clash as the core of Latin American culture. Read in this light, "The Slaughter Yard" is a political allegory. Its more specific intention was to accuse Rosas of protecting the kind of thugs who murder the cultivated young protagonist at the Buenos Aires slaughterhouse. Rosas and his henchmen stand for barbarism, the slain young man for civilization.
Echeverría's ''La cautiva'' ("The Captive"), a long narrative poem about a white woman abducted by
Mapuche
The Mapuche ( , ) also known as Araucanians are a group of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Indigenous inhabitants of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina, including parts of Patagonia. The collective term refers to a wide-ranging e ...
Indians, is also among the better-known works of 19th-century Latin American literature.
Esteban Echeverría Partido
*
Esteban Echeverría Partido is a district in
Gran Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was founded on April 9, 1913 and named in honor of Echeverría.
Works
* Elvira o la novia del Plata (1832)
* Don Juan (1833)
* Carlos
* Mangora
* La Pola o el amor y el patriotismo
* Himno del dolor (1834)
* Los consuelos (1834)
* Al corazón (1835)
* Rimas (1837, en GB)
* La cautiva
* El matadero (between 1838 y 1840)
* Canciones
* Peregrinaje de Gualpo
* El Dogma Socialista
* Cartas a un amigo
* El ángel caído
* Ilusiones
* La guitarra
* Avellaneda
* Mefistófeles
* Apología del matambre (1837)
* La noche
* La diamela
References
William H. Katra, The Argentine Generation of 1837: Echeverría, Alberdi, Sarmiento, Mitre (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996)
External links
*
*
"El matadero"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Echeverria, Esteban
1805 births
1851 deaths
Writers from Buenos Aires
Unitarianists (Argentina)
19th-century Argentine poets
Argentine male poets
Argentine exiles
Esteban Echeverría Partido
Burials at Cementerio del Buceo, Montevideo
19th-century Argentine male writers
sr:Естебан Ечеверија