Fray mocho
Encyclopedia
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...
for the Argentine writer and journalist José Ciriaco Alvarez (also known as José Sixto Alvarez). He was born in the remote village of Gualeguaychú in the Entre Ríos Province
Entre Ríos Province
Entre Ríos is a northeastern province of Argentina, located in the Mesopotamia region. It borders the provinces of Buenos Aires , Corrientes and Santa Fe , and Uruguay in the east....
of Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
on August 26, 1858. He came to Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
first in 1876 and then again (to stay) in 1879 at the age of 21. He was known to his friends as “Mocho” (blunt) and later added the title “Fray” (brother, as in a Friar
Friar
A friar is a member of one of the mendicant orders.-Friars and monks:...
in the Catholic Church). He wrote for several newspapers including El Nacional
El Nacional
El Nacional is a Venezuelan publishing company under the name C.A. Editorial El Nacional, most widely known for its El Nacional newspaper. It, along with Últimas Noticias and El Universal, are the most widely read and circulated daily national newspapers in the country, and it has an average of...
, La Pampa, La Patria Argentina, and La Razón
La Razón
La Razón is used as a name for newspapers in the Spanish-speaking world including:*La Razón , Argentina*La Razón , Bolivia*La Razón , Ecuador*La Razón , Peru...
. He also wrote for magazines such as the short-lived Fray Gerundio, El Ateneo and La Colmena Artística. He wrote essays about life in Buenos Aires in the latter part of the 19th century, including Esmeraldas (polished), Cuentos Mundanos (Ordinary Stories), La vida de los ladrones célebres de Buenos Aires y sus maneras de robar (“The life of celebrated robbers of Buenos Aires and their manner of robbing") and Memorias de un Vigilante (Memoirs of a policeman). In 1898 he wrote the book En el Mar Austral (“In the Southern Sea").
Literary Achievements
The period in which he flourished was a heady time in Buenos Aires. The nation of Argentina had finally come together with the uniting of the city of Buenos Aires with the rest of the country, the great SarmientoDomingo Faustino Sarmiento
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento was an Argentine activist, intellectual, writer, statesman and the seventh President of Argentina. His writing spanned a wide range of genres and topics, from journalism to autobiography, to political philosophy and history...
and Mitre
Bartolomé Mitre
Bartolomé Mitre Martínez was an Argentine statesman, military figure, and author. He was the President of Argentina from 1862 to 1868.-Life and times:...
were still alive, and Buenos Aires was striving to become the “Queen City” of South America.
He was the founder and first editor of the Argentine Magazine Caras y Caretas (Faces and Masks). The magazine featured a mixture of cartoons and illustrations along with national and foreign subjects taken from social news, notes of general interest and fashion. The magazine also published literary and rural literature. Its contributors include some of the leading lights of Argentine letters: Roberto Payró
Roberto Payró
Roberto Jorge Payró was an Argentine writer and journalist.Payró founded the newspaper La Tribuna in the city of Bahía Blanca, where he published his first newspaper articles. He then moved to the city of Buenos Aires where he worked as an editor at the newspaper La Nación...
, Horacio Quiroga
Horacio Quiroga
Horacio Silvestre Quiroga Forteza was an Uruguayan playwright, poet, and short story writer....
, and José Ingenieros
José Ingenieros
José Ingenieros was an Argentine physician, pharmaceutic, positivist philosopher and essayist.He was born Giuseppe Ingegneri in Palermo , and graduated from the University of Buenos Aires School of Medicine in 1900...
, among others. He was the first professional writer of Argentina. In his descriptions of regional customs, the narrator is a watching observer. He wrote at times in the different modes of Buenos Aires speech including the “lunfardo
Lunfardo
Lunfardo is a dialect originated and developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the lower classes in Buenos Aires and the surrounding Gran Buenos Aires, and from there spread to other cities nearby, such as Rosario and Montevideo, cities with similar socio-cultural situations...
” (the argot or slang of Buenos Aires which still exists). His writing was part of a movement of “modernism” which was a reaction against the prevailing romanticism and the rigidity of the Castilian Spanish language
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
and literature before his time, and which had a counterpart in the Paris of the same period.
One of his most interesting works was the book En El Mar Austral (On the Southern Sea). This is a tale of a year spent traveling on a whaling boat around the southern tip of Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
and Argentina (Tierra del Fuego
Tierra del Fuego
Tierra del Fuego is an archipelago off the southernmost tip of the South American mainland, across the Strait of Magellan. The archipelago consists of a main island Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego divided between Chile and Argentina with an area of , and a group of smaller islands including Cape...
) beginning in the town of Punta Arenas
Punta Arenas, Chile
Punta Arenas is a commune and the capital city of Chile's southernmost region, Magallanes and Antartica Chilena. The city was officially renamed Magallanes in 1927, but in 1938 it was changed back to Punta Arenas...
in Chile. It describes in great and loving detail the scenery and life in the southernmost tip of South America. It does not appear that Fray Mocho ever got within 500 miles of Tierra del Fuego and yet his descriptions are extremetly accurate, and the source of his information is still not known.
Death
Fray Mocho died on 23 August 1903, just 3 days short of his 45th birthday; an illness that had troubled him for years eventually causing his death. It is said that "he feared no one and nothing because he had damaged no one and had a pure heart” (as is stated in an edition of En El Mar Austral published in 1960 by The University of Buenos AiresUniversity of Buenos Aires
The University of Buenos Aires is the largest university in Argentina and the largest university by enrollment in Latin America. Founded on August 12, 1821 in the city of Buenos Aires, it consists of 13 faculties, 6 hospitals, 10 museums and is linked to 4 high schools: Colegio Nacional de Buenos...
). His last words were “I die fighting”. His magazine lived on until 1941.
Works
- 1887 : Galería de ladrones de la capital,
- 1897 : Memorias de un vigilante
- 1899 : Caras y Caretas
- 1897 : Viaje al país de los matreros
- 1898 : En el mar austral
- 1906 : Cuentos de Fray Mocho