Ezequiel Martínez Estrada

Ezequiel Martínez Estrada (September 14, 1895 – November 4, 1964) was an Argentine writer, poet, essayist, and literary critic. An admired biographer and critic, he was often political in his writings, and was a confirmed anti-Peronist. While in his middle years he was identified with the ideas of Nietzsche or Kafka, in his last years he was closely identified with the Cuban revolution and Fidel Castro.

Originally from rural Argentina, Martínez Estrada was born in San José de la Esquina, in Santa Fe Province and grew up until the age of twelve there and in Goyena, a village in the southern reaches of Buenos Aires province. (In 1937, he would buy a farm in Goyena). In 1907, his parents separated, and he went to live with his aunt Elisa in Buenos Aires, and to study at the Colegio Avellanda. It appears that his formal studies were cut short due to poverty. By 1914 he was working at the central post office in Buenos Aires; he would remain in Buenos Aires until retiring in 1946.

Within a few years, he began to establish a reputation as a poet; he also published a few short essays. In 1921 he married the Italian-born artist Agustina Morriconi, who definitely subordinated her career and unquestioned talents to his; she was, by all accounts, the muse of much of his poetry.

Beginning in 1924, Martínez Estrada taught literature at the Colegio Nacional of the Universidad Nacional de La Plata. He would continue this for decades, losing the job only when Juan Domingo Perón rose to power in 1945 (and returning briefly after Perón fell from power in 1956).

In 1933, responding to the 1930 Argentinian coup by José Félix Uriburu, Martínez Estrada published Radiografía de la pampa, the first of a series of rather pessimistic sociological-psychological-historical essays that would make his reputation. That year, Martínez Estrada received the first of what were to be a series of national literary prizes. It is also about that time that he began travelling abroad; his generally favorable impressions during a U.S.-government-sponsored 1942 visit to the United States are recounted in his posthumously published Panorama de los Estados Unidos; his impressions on this visit apparently contrasted sharply with his earlier and later anti-Americanism.

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