Mario Beneditti was born September 14, 1920, en Paso de los Toros, Uruguay. Before his death on May 17, 2009, Mario Beneditti was famous for his short stories and his poems. Mario came from a prosperous family, receiving a superior education at private schools.  He completed six years of primary school at the Deutshe Schule in Montevideo, but once Nazism became present in the classrooms, Mario was removed from the institution. For the rest of his high school years, he did not attend and instead got a job at the age of 14, first as a stenographer and then as a seller, public officer, accountant, journalist, broadcaster and translator. His love for literature began by publishing poetry, and soon enough he turned to writing short stories and publishing novels. Mario became part of the Generation ’45, a group of writers, mainly from Uruguay, who had an influence of literary and cultural life of their country and region. Mario Beneditti began writing in the famous weekly Uruguayan newspaper  Marcha from 1945 until it was closed by the military government in 1973.

 

Between the years of 1973 and 1985, a civic-military dictatorship ruled Uruguay. Many people were accused of politically motivated crimes and as such, were sent to jail, tortured or just happened to disappear. The regime restricted freedom of the press. When the military took power, it caused economic stagnation, high inflation and increased social unrest. Beneditti lived in exile, traveling to Argentina first, and then being detained in Peru, where he was deported and then given an amnesty. In the year of 1976, he traveled to Cuba and then made his way to Spain. During all of Mario’s travels, his wife had to remain in Uruguay to look after both of their mothers.

Mario’s absence from his wife may have had a big impact on the poetry that he was writing at the time. On March 1983, Uruguay was restored as a democracy, and Mario was reunited with his wife and his family members. Free to do as he wished, he divided his time between Montevideo and Madrid.