Acceso usuarios
Javier Mocarquer
This article examines the intellectual friendships developed among three renowned Latin American writers and public intellectuals: the Chilean Gabriela Mistral, the Argentine Victoria Ocampo, and the Brazilian Cecília Meireles, during the first half of the twentieth century. Through the analysis of their personal, historical, and political contexts, I also study the intellectual networks that these three feminist writers established with other intellectuals at a transnational level, especially with the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore; Mexican writer Alfonso Reyes, and French Roger Caillois. Thus, I discuss the geopolitical situation, analyzing the reactions that Mistral, Ocampo, and Meireles faced during the historical period bookend by the Spanish Civil War and WWII. In addition, I investigate the role of Revista Sur, a literary magazine founded and edited by Victoria Ocampo in Argentina, which played an important role in the cultural sphere and literary production in Latin America. However, Sur was often criticized for its “excessive elitism,” and Victoria Ocampo was an object of controversy for her upper class and Eurocentric backgrounds. These controversies were exacerbated during the government of Juan Domingo Perón, with the result of Ocampo’s imprisonment. Gabriela Mistral, while living in the United States, strategically intervened in order to ask for her liberation. Finally, I discuss other aspects related to the intellectual projects of these three writers, especially the americanismo in Mistral; the Brazilian modernismo influences in Meireles; and Ocampo’s cosmopolitanism.
