Rafael Barrett was born in Torrelavega, Santander, Spain, on January 10th 1876. Coming from an aristocratic family, in 1903 he came to Buenos Aires where he worked as a journalist, leaving behind the life of privileges offered in Europe. In 1904 he traveled to Paraguay as correspondent of “El Tiempo” magazine. In time, he would adopted this country as his own. Both his professions journalism and surveying helped him to know about the Paraguayan reality. Persecuted by his continuous public complaints about the slavery conditions of workers in the fields and the violent actions of the government , he was imprisoned, tortured and deported to Montevideo, Uruguay in 1908. A desperate attempt to save his life, made him travel to France, where he Rafael Barrett was born in Torrelavega, Santander, Spain, on January 10th 1876. Coming from an aristocratic family, in 1903 he came to Buenos Aires where he worked as a journalist, leaving behind the life of privileges offered in Europe. In 1904 he traveled to Paraguay as correspondent of “El Tiempo” magazine. In time, he would adopted this country as his own. Both his professions journalism and surveying helped him to know about the Paraguayan reality. Persecuted by his continuous public complaints about the slavery conditions of workers in the fields and the violent actions of the government , he was imprisoned, tortured and deported to Montevideo, Uruguay in 1908. A desperate attempt to save his life, made him travel to France, where he finally died of pulmonary tuberculosis, on September 10th 1910. Among his most paradigmatic works, we can find Moralidades actuales (1910), Lo que son los yerbales (1910) y El dolor paraguayo (1911). His only fiction, Cuentos breves, was originally edited in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1911.
“It would be appropriate to put Rafael Barrett in the intersection of the coordinates that put together the left-wing of the Spanish generation of 1898 – with Pío Barroja as a prominent figure – and the great immigration of the last years of the 19th century. Son of an English man and a Madrilenian aristocrat woman, although he was born in Santander, his entire literary works are closely related to the south-american problematics: Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil and Urugay are the settings of his explicit anarchist journalism. El dolor paraguyo (The Paraguayan grief) and El terror argentino (The Argentinian terror) represent the cultural thought opposite to the official that was being published in relation to many of the independencies centenaries that were celebrated in the years close to 1910. In a tangential, rather superficial way is possible to read some influences of Modernismo coming from the prestige of Ruben Darío in the first decade of the 20th century, especially in his short stories and tales. Yet, only his political articles and reports are the ones that preserve the soundness and validity characteristic of his journalism. Above everything, Lo que son los yerbales is the work that the latest critics have seen as the most remarkable antecedent of Horacio Quiroga writings, as well as Alfredo Varela’s El río oscuro (The dark river).” David Viñas
“Now that we are talking about literary issues, I ask you whether you know a writer Rafael Barrett, such a free and courageous spirit. With tears in my eyes and on my knees, whenever you have some money, I beg you to go to Mendesky’s or any other bookshop and ask the store clerk for a copy of Mirando vivir. That is a remarkable book which has comforted me from the fussiness of Giusti, Soiza Reilly and of my cousin Alvarito Melían Lafinur” Jorge Luis Borges
“To bring his works to light and to spread them is not only a rescue task of one of the most splendid and provocative things written in Paraguay, but also a contribution to rethinking both social and cultural basic issues of Latin-american people, altogether from the unavoidable point of view offered by this great writer.” Augusto Roa Bastos
“Barrett was among us only for six years. In this short period of time, he managed to be a revolutionary figure, to write a dozen of books as well as to establish a literary style and an ethic. He died in 1910, at the age of 34, the age which founds many other writers in the beginning of their own careers thinking what are they going to do with their lifes” Abelardo Castillo ...more
“Los pueblos y los siglos, las ciencias y las artes, las estrellas y los hombres han colaborado para engendrar la oscura plumita de acero...”
―
Rafael Barrett,
La pluma
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