Juana Manuela Gorriti

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Juana Manuela Gorriti (1818-1892) was an Argentine writer with extensive political and literary links to Bolivia and Peru.

Born in Salta near the Bolivian border, Gorriti came from a wealthy upper class family - her father, José Ignacio de Gorriti, was a politician and soldier, and signed the Argentine Declaration of Independence. Her family supported the Unitarians and, for political reasons, much of her family and Gorriti herself went into exile during the government of Juan Manuel de Rosas. Thus at an early age, she moved from her home in Argentina to Bolivia, where she met her future husband, Manuel Isidro Belzu. She was fifteen when she married.

In 1878, Gorriti returned to Argentina, after having lived with her husband in Peru for nine years. Numerous scandals in her life such as divorce and having a child out of wedlock did nothing to change her social status as an exceptional woman. Her life was a success and she was hailed as a famous, instructive, influential journalist in her day.

Gorriti wrote a number of novels and short stories, including "La hija del mazorquero" and "El lucero de manantial." Both of these stories are melodramic tales with a strong anti-Rosista political message. She also wrote a number of other novels and short stories. Among these is another melodramatic novel, "La oasis de la vida" written in the 1880s as an advertisement for the insurance company "La Buenos Aires": the plot is the standard "poor orphan boy can't marry his true love," but all is resolved when he finally discovers his parents had a life insurance policy with company, and so he isn't quite so poor after all. This novel was indicative of the new, more expansive literary climate in Argentina at the time.

Of interest, but not often noted, was her on-again, off-again, three-year stay in Lima where she served as a mentor for a whole generation of women writers, as many as twenty of them. This resulted from her publication of a short but influential novel “La Quena” in the prestigious newspaper El Comercio. Later as Peruvian politics began to stabilize she contributed to the institutionalization of Peruvian literature by collaborating in the Revista de Lima with stories like “El Angel Caido”, “Si haces mal no esperes bien” and others. Continuing to publishing in the Peruvian press she began to organize tertulias, literary soirees in which the great literary figures mingled with budding female writers. There figures like Ricardo Palma and Manuel Gonzalez Prada met authors like Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera, Clorinda Matto de Turner and Teresa González de Fanning who later went on to from an enlightened women’s movement.

Although perhaps not as well-known as she should be, Juana Manuela Gorriti is an author not to be overlooked. Her stories are finely crafted, and not only bear witness to trends in South American literature of the 19th century, but are enjoyable reading in their own right.