Luis Franco (writer)

Luis Franco

Portrait, 1959. By Alejandro Castro.
Born (1898-11-15)November 15, 1898
Belén, Catamarca, Argentina
Died June 1, 1988(1988-06-01) (aged 89)
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Occupation Poet, essayist

Luis (Leopoldo) Franco (November 15, 1898 – June 1, 1988) was an autodidact, a self-made intellectual, essayist, and poet. He was the son of Luis Antonio and Balbina Acosta and lived most of his life in his native province far from the limelights of Buenos Aires and the academic world which he sincerely despised in favor of a bucolic and rural setting of his father's cattle farm in Belén. At age seventeen Franco was awarded a literary prize for his Oda primaveral. Franco traveled a considerable distance to receive the award riding on a mule's back from Catamarca Province to Tucuman. The attitude raised a few eyebrows in Buenos Aires and a relevant article was publish in the prestigious magazine Caras y caretas[1] relating the story of this promising young author. The first literary personality to open the doors to Franco was Horacio Quiroga.[2] Quiroga would eventually introduced Franco to Leopoldo Lugones who recognized his talent and potential. Soon Franco became a recognizable name in the literary world of his time making the acquaintance of Roberto Arlt, Gabriela Mistral and Juana de Ibarbourou amongst others. However, Luis Franco found it difficult to coexist with the cultural apparatus and the bourgeois-style of other intellectuals in Buenos Aires, and soon -after completing his High School degree- returned to his hometown of Belén. In Belén, Franco resided most of his adult life doing what he loved most: working the land, reading and writing. As a result of a personal crisis –coincidental with the military coup of general José Evaristo Uriburu in 1930- Franco dissociates himself from right wing revisionists such as Lugones and begins an audacious journey of introspection in the nature of Argentina’s political past. The result is a copious bibliography of essays where the ghost of saints and devils of Argentina’s turbulent 1800’s comes to life in a unique fashion, one that perhaps Franco only shares with Ezequiel Martínez Estrada.

"Here´s a pagan poet who loves life and sings to life because it finds beauty her delightful expression of love" Leopoldo Lugones, 1923

Soon Franco will emerge as a political writer, one seriously committed to the cause of communism. He was a Marxist of Trotskyite tendencies, co-founder of the political party known as Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) in 1982. Franco also contributed in the 1950s to the Magazine Estrategia next to relevant figures of the local Trotskyite scene such as Perelman, Gallo, Milcíades Peña and Nahuel Moreno. Very much a militant he refused to occupy posts in the university or academic world of the bourgeois which he condemned for its complicity with the system. Luis Franco worked until his very last days in Buenos Aires. Nelson Montes-Bradley recalls meeting the poet at Bar Savoy, a grill in the vicinity of the Congreso: “He was often by himself, writing on a Gloria notebook with his navy blue bic ball-pen”. According to his friend Carlos Penelas, Luis Franco died penniless on June 1, 1988 in a nursing home in Ciudadela, Buenos Aires province.[3][4][5][6]

Poetry

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Essays

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Literary prizes

Notes

  1. ↑ Caras y Caretas, 1918
  2. ↑ Luis Franco by Beatriz Correas. Ediciones Culturales Argentinas, 1962.
  3. ↑ Diccionario de Autores Latinoamericanos. César Aira. Editorial Emecé.
  4. ↑ Spanish American Literature in 1946, Donald Devenish Walsh. Hispania, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Feb., 1947), pp. 20-26. Published by: American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese.
  5. ↑ Olga Mingo de Hoffmann, Reviewed work(s): El general Paz y los dos caudillajes. by Luis Franco. The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Aug., 1948), pp. 434-435. Published by: Duke University Press.
  6. ↑ Penelas, Carlos; Conversaciones con Luis Franco - Buenos Aires, 1991 (2ª edic.) - Encuadernado - 72p -
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