![]() ![]() Yet Gallegos, of urban Caracas origins, never lived in the llano, the rural grassland plains, himself. ![]() A precursor to the magical realism that would soon make the continent’s literature famous, it’s simultaneously also a rural regionalist novel, a Latin American equivalent to Twain, Eudora Welty, etc. He returned to his homeland after his second exile in 1958 to international acclaim and a Nobel Prize nomination.ĭoña Bárbara, first published in 1929, became an instant cultural touchstone, both in Venezuela and throughout Latin America. Ousted by a coup after nine months in power, Gallegos took refuge in Cuba and Mexico, where he worked on human rights affairs. He returned to his homeland seven years later, became politically active, and, in 1947, was voted in as Venezuela’s first democratically elected president. Due to veiled allegorical criticisms in the novel of the then-ruling regime, Gallegos was forced to flee Venezuela for Spain after its publication. ![]() “If Señor Gallegos is one-half as good a President as he is a novelist,” reads the original New York Times review of Doña Bárbara, “Venezuela is a lucky land.” From humble origins, Rómulo Gallegos was working as a teacher and a journalist when he published Doña Bárbara. ![]()
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