Armonía Somers

Armonía Liropeya Etchepare Locino (7 October 1914 – 1 March 1994) was a Uruguayan feminist, pedagogue, novelist and short story writer. She was sometimes referred to as Armonía Etchepare de Henestrosa or, by her pseudonym, Armonía Somer (sometimes spelled Armonía Sommers). A member of the literary movement Generación del 45, Somers wrote in a transgressive style. Her contemporaries included Silvina Ocampo, Griselda Gambaro, Luisa Valenzuela, Elena Garro, and Peri Rossi.

It was thought impossible that her first novel, La mujer desnuda (The Naked Woman, 1950), could have been written by a woman because of the shocking erotic content. After her second novel De miedo en miedo was published, Somers moved to her new house in the summer resort Pinamar, about 30 kilometres (19 mi) from Montevideo. When not there, she lived on the 16th floor of the skyscraper Palacio Salvo.

Born in Pando, Somers was the eldest of three daughters of anarchist businessman Pedro Etchepare and the deeply Catholic mother María Judith Locino. Her basic studies occurred in a Spanish primary school in Pando, being her the only girl admitted there. After that, she continued her studies at the Normal school of Montevideo.

In 1933, she finished her university studies in pedagogy at the University of the Republic, where she became interested in the teaching of young people. She taught in different schools after that and so became aware of the problems facing different social environments, which eventually led her to publishing essays such as Educación en la adolescencia (1957), winner of the Departmental Council of Montevideo. Other works related to the topic were El adolescente de novela y su valor de testimonio and Ann Sullivan Macy, la forja en noche plena.

In 1950, she was sent as a delegate of the Pedagogical Museum of Montevideo to attend the Inter-American Seminar on Primary Education. Later, she was invited by the government of France to collaborate with the organization of the prison system in that country. After her "scandalous" debut with the erotic novel La mujer desnuda (1950), she became a delegate of the Biblioteca y Museo Pedagógico del Uruguay in 1957 to the Inter-American Seminar on primary education to the Organization of American States (OAS) and UNESCO, being appointed Deputy Director of the Museum a few years later. In 1953, when she took the manuscript of El derrumbamiento (1948) to the print shop for a second edition, she came to meet the publisher Rodolfo A. Henestrosa, whom she married two years later.

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