• Luis Franco

Luis Franco was an autodidact; a self-made intellectual a poet and an essayist born in Belen, Catamarca, Argentina in 1898. Franco lived most of his life in his native province far from the limelights of Buenos Aires and the academic world which he most sincerely despised. At age seventeen Franco was awarded a literary prize for his Oda primaveral. He traveled a considerable distance to receive the award riding on a mule's back from Catamarca to Tucuman. The attitude raised a few eyebrows. Soon Franco became a recognizable name in the literary world of his time making the acquaintance of celebrated authors such as Leopoldo Lugones, Roberto Arlt, Gabriela Mistral and Juana de Ibarburu.

During the nineteen-thirties Franco’s work became more political and the man, himself, identified with the Marxist ideas of the time. He was one of the original founders of the political party known as Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS). Luis Franco died penniless on July 1, 1988 in Buenos Aires. 

Published Works

Poetry

  • Oda primaveral

  • La Flauta de caña (1920)

  • Coplas del pueblo ( 1921)

  • Los trabajos (1928)

  • Nuevo mundo (1927)

  • América inicial (1931)

  • Guitarra adentro

  • Coplas

  • Insurreción de poema

Essay / Non Fiction

  • Hudson a caballo

  • El arca de Noe en el Río de la Plata

  • Biografía de animales

  • Nuestro padre el árbol

  • El general Paz y los dos caudillajes

  • El otro Rosas (1945)

Bibliography

  1. Diccionario de Autores Latinoamericanos. César Aira. Editorial Emecé.

  2. Spanish American Literature in 1946, Donald Devenish Walsh. Hispania, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Feb., 1947), pp. 20-26. Published by: American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese.

  3. Olga Mingo de Hoffmann, Reviewed work(s): El general Paz y los dos caudillajes. by Luis Franco.

  4. The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Aug., 1948), pp. 434-435. Published by: Duke University Press

  5. Penelas, Carlos; Conversaciones con Luis Franco - Buenos Aires, 1991 (2ª edic.) - Encuadernado - 72p - 

por Eduardo Montes-Bradley