Tomás Eloy Martínez (July 16, 1934 – January 31, 2010) was anArgentine journalist and writer.
He was born on July 16, 1934[1] inSan Miguel de Tucumán and is generally considered an influential and innovative figure in Latin America both as journalist and a novelist. Eloy Martínez obtained a degree inSpanish andLatin American literature from theUniversity of Tucumán, and a Masters of Art at theUniversity of Paris.
From 1957 to 1961 he was a film critic inBuenos Aires for theLa Nación newspaper, and he then was editor in chief of the magazinePrimera Plana between 1962 and 1969.[2]
From 1969 to 1970 he worked as a reporter inParis. In 1969 Eloy Martínez interviewed former Argentine PresidentJuan Domingo Perón, who was exiled inMadrid. These interviews were the basis for two of his more celebrated novels:La Novela de Perón (1985) andSanta Evita (1995).[3] In these as in many of his books he combined historical true facts with fictional content in a way unparalleled by any other Latin American writer.
In 1970 he and many former writers ofPrimera Plana worked at the magazinePanorama, where Eloy Martínez was the director. He also collaborated in the newspaperLa Opinion, founded byJacobo Timmerman. He is credited as helping Latin American writings be know around the world, including theGabriel García Márquez staple novelOne Hundred Years of Solitude.[4]
On August 15, 1972 he learned of the uprising of political prisoners in the jail atRawson,Chubut Province.Panorama was the only publication in Buenos Aires that reported the correct story of the affair in Rawson, which differed significantly from the official version of thede facto Argentine government. On 22 August he was fired at the behest of the government, whereupon he went to Rawson and the neighboring city ofTrelew and from there he reported theMassacre of Trelew in his bookThe Passion According to Trelew. The book was banned by the Argentine dictatorship.
For three years (1972–1975) Eloy Martínez was in charge of the cultural supplement ofLa Nación.La Opinión was shut down by the military authorities who seized power in 1976. After this, he was forced to live in exile (1975–1983) and moved toCaracas,Venezuela, where he remained active as a journalist, co-founding the newspaperEl Diario de Caracas. In his bookThe Memoirs of the General he recounts that he was threatened by the "Triple A", theAlianza Anticomunista Argentina, and on one occasion, gunmen held a pistol to the head of his three-year-old son because they were witnesses to a crime Eloy Martínez believed to be an operation led by the far-right paramilitary group. Around 1979, he met the intellectualSusana Rotker, with whom he had a daughter Sol Ana in 1986.
During the year 1984 he moved to the United States to theWashington, D.C., area and was a professor at theUniversity of Maryland.
In 1991, he participated in the creation and launch of the daily newspaperSiglo 21 (November 8, 1991), owned by businessman Alfonso Dau and published by Jorge Zepeda Patterson inGuadalajara,Mexico, which ran for seven years, until December 1998. Also, he created the literary supplementPrimer Plano for the newspaperPágina/12 in Buenos Aires.
The end of the 1990s saw him back in the United States, being entrusted as professor and director of the Latin American studies program atRutgers University in New Jersey, although he maintained his collaboration with Latin American newspapers throughout this period, which was the inspiration as well for his last bookPurgatory where he dealt with the sadness and melancholy of exile and the dire impact on the lives of the families of the "desaparecidos" (people that were kidnapped and presumed dead by the dictatorship known as "El Proceso").
Eloy Martínez was also a teacher and lecturer. He wrote columns forLa Nación and theNew York Times syndicate, and his articles have appeared in many newspapers and journals in Latin America. He was awarded theGuggenheim andWoodrow Wilson fellowships, and won the 2002Premio Alfaguara de Novela for the novelFlight of the Queen. His works deal primarily (but not exclusively) with Argentina during and after the rule of Juan Domingo Perón and his wife,Eva Duarte de Perón (Evita).[5]
Tomás Eloy Martínez died in Buenos Aires on January 31, 2010,[6] from cancer.
An exhaustive list of his works may be found inThe Other Reality—Anthology with a prologue by Cristine Mattos, Buenos Aires, Fondo de Cultura Económica de Argentina, S.A., 2006.
