Mario Orlando Hardy Hamlet Brenno Benedetti Farrugia, best known as Mario Benedetti, was a Uruguayanjournalist, 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.
Early years
Benedetti was born in Paso de los Toros in the department of Tacuarembó to Brenno Benedetti and Matilde Farrugia, a family of Italian descent. 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. 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.
Exile
For 12 years, from 1973 to 1985, when a civic-military dictatorship ruled Uruguay, Benedetti lived in exile. He first went to Buenos Aires, and then to Lima in Peru where he was detained, deported and then given amnesty. He went to Cuba in 1976 and the following year to Madrid, Spain. His exile was made particularly trying by the fact that his wife had to remain in Uruguay to look after both of their mothers. In 1980 he moved to Palma, Majorca.
In the last ten years of his life he suffered from asthma and spent his winters in Madrid in order to avoid the cold, though as his health deteriorated he eventually remained in Montevideo. In 2006 his wife Luz López died, ending more than six decades of matrimony. He died in Montevideo on 17 May 2009. He had suffered from respiratory and intestinal problems for more than a year. His remains are buried at the National Pantheon in the Central Cemetery of Montevideo. Before dying he dictated to his personal secretary, Ariel Silva, what would become his last poem:
Work
For his poetry and novels Benedetti won numerous international awards. La Tregua, first published in 1960, has since been translated into over 20 languages and inspired the 1974 film The Truce. Each year below links to either the corresponding " in literature" or " in poetry" article:
Poetry
1945:La víspera indeleble, his first published book
