Mario Benedetti, Uruguayan journalist, author, and poet (b. 1920)
Mario Orlando Hardy Hamlet Brenno Benedetti Farrugia (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈmaɾjo βeneˈðeti] (listen); 14 September 1920 – 17 May 2009), was a Uruguayan journalist, novelist, and poet and an integral member of the Generación del 45. Despite publishing more than 80 books and being published in twenty languages he was not well known in the English-speaking world. In the Spanish-speaking world he is considered one of Latin America's most important writers of the latter half of the 20th century.Benedetti was born in Paso de los Toros in the department of Tacuarembó to Brenno Benedetti (a pharmaceutical and chemical winemaker) and Matilde Farrugia (a family of Italian descent). Two years later, they moved to Tacuarembó, the capital city of the province, and shortly after that, his father tried to buy a chemist’s but was swindled and went into bankruptcy, so, they moved and settled in Montevideo, the capital city of the country, where they lived in difficult economic conditions. Mario completed six years of primary school at the Deutsche Schule in Montevideo, where he also learned German, which later allowed him to be the first translator of Kafka in Uruguay. His father immediately removed him from the school when Nazi ideology started featuring in the classroom. For two years afterwards he studied at Liceo Miranda, but for the rest of his high school years he did not attend an educational institution. In those years he learned shorthand, which was his livelihood for a long time. At age 14 he began working, first as a stenographer and then as a seller, public officer, accountant, journalist, broadcaster and translator. He trained as a journalist with Carlos Quijano, in the weekly Marcha. Between 1938 and 1941 he lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He worked in different professions on both banks of the Río de la Plata river, for example, as a stenographer. In 1946 he married Luz López Alegre.
He was a member of the 'Generation of 45', a Uruguayan intellectual and literary movement which included Carlos Maggi, Manuel Flores Mora, Ángel Rama, Emir Rodríguez Monegal, Idea Vilariño, Carlos Real de Azúa, José Pedro Díaz, Amanda Berenguer, Ida Vitale, Líber Falco, Juan Carlos Onetti, among others.He also wrote for the famous weekly Uruguayan newspaper Marcha from 1945 until it was forcibly closed by the military government in 1973, and was its literary director from 1954. In 1957 he traveled to Europe and visited nine countries as a correspondent for Marcha weekly magazine and El Diario newspaper.