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Miguel Otero Silva
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Miguel Otero Silva , was a Venezuelan writer, journalist, humorist and politician. Remaining a figure of great reference in Venezuelan literature, his literary and journalistic works were strictly related to the social and political history of Venezuela.
Born in Barcelona, Anzoategui State, moved to Caracas at very young age, to study in the Liceo Caracas. He applied to the Universidad Central de Venezuela for studies in civil engineering. During this time, takes place his early literary activity, writing for magazines and newspapers, such as Elite and Fantoches, and other university publications, besides incursing in journalism. During the Students Week of the year 1928, Otero Silva formed part of a series of protests against the rule of then-president Juan Vicente Gomez (see Generation of 1928); in addition to this, he also became involved in a military plot to overthrow the government. Due to this, Otero Silva was forced to get into exile, in Curacao. There, along with Gustavo Machado, Rafael Urbina Lopez and other Venezuelan expatriates, began preparing an invasion of the mainland across Falcon State, an operation that was unsuccessfully carried out in June 1929. During this time, Otero Silva worked on his first novel, Fiebre (Fever), later published in 1939.
By 1930 he had become affiliated to the Comintern, having plenty of interest for Marxist thinking. He was able to return to Venezuela at the death of Gomez in 1935. Taking advantage of the freedom of speech allowed by Gomezs successor in office, Eleazar Lopez Contreras, Otero Silva began writing humorous poetry in newspapers, with certain political content. Tagged soon as a communist, the government expelled him once again from the country in 1937. In these years, he went on traveling through Mexico, United States and Colombia. Otero was permitted to return after three years of exile. Then, in 1941, he co-founded the humoristic weekly newspaper El Morrocoy Azul (The Blue Tortoise), along with Francisco Jose Delgado and Claudio Cedeno, besides a leftist weekly, Aqui Esta (Here It Is).
Related websites
Biography of Miguel Otero Silva
Casas Muertas (Dead Houses)
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Miguel Otero Silva
