Onetti, Juan Carlos

(1909–1994)

   Uruguayan novelist, shortstory writer, and journalist. Born in Montevideo, Onetti has often been described as Uruguay’s literary master of the 20th century. In his early 20s he moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he worked briefly as a movie reviewer for the journal Crítica and began publishing in, among other periodicals, the literary supplement of the newspaper La Nación. On his return to Montevideo, he became editor of the newly founded journal Marcha, a post he held until 1942, and also editor for Reuters News Agency. During a second stay in Buenos Aires, between 1943 and 1955, he continued his work for Reuters and edited the journal Vea y lea. In 1957, after a brief stint in an advertising agency, he was named director of the Municipal Libraries of Montevideo.

   With the publication of his novel El pozo in 1939, Onetti was hailed as a truly original voice in the Latin American literary scene for his fusion of fantasy and realism, though his work attracted little critical attention outside his native Uruguay. Critical acclaim would follow, however, with the publication over the years of his Santa María saga, a series of short stories and novels set in the fictional city of Santa María. The city is a nightmarish composite of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, fraught with the alienation and chaos of the modern urban experience. The series includes La vida breve (1950), El astillero (1961), Juntacadáveres (1964), and La muerte y la niña (1973). Although the political situation of Uruguay is alluded to in many of his works, Onetti made it explicit in the 1978 short story “Presencia,” where a coup imposes a military presence in the city. The cycle was brought to a conclusion by the destruction by fire of Santa María in his 1979 novel Dejemos hablar al viento.

   In 1974 Onetti—then Uruguay’s most prominent writer—was named a jury member for a literary contest organized each year by Marcha, at that time one of the oldest and most highly regarded literary journals in Latin America. The first prize in the short-story category went to “El guardaespaldas,” by Nelson Marra, a work that the military considered “pornographic” and “subversive.” Arrested were Onetti; several members of the jury; Marra; the publisher of the journal, Carlos Quijano; and the editor of the journal, Hugo Alfaro. The journal was confiscated and its publication banned by order of the military. Despite the international outcry that ensued, Onetti was detained in a psychiatric institution for several months. Upon his release, Onetti went into exile in Spain, where he became a citizen in 1975. He was the recipient of several prestigious awards, among them the Uruguayan Premio Nacional de Literatura in 1962, the William Faulkner Foundation Ibero-American Award in 1963, the Casa de las Américas prize in 1965, and the Premio Cervantes, the most prestigious literary award in Spain, in 1980. Onetti died in Madrid in 1994.