37 Facts About Abel Posse

Abel Parentini Posse was an Argentine novelist, essayist, poet, career diplomat, and politician.

Abel Posse carried out uninterrupted diplomatic duties for the Argentine Foreign Service from 1966 until 2004.

Abel Posse was a regular contributor to the liberal-conservative daily La Nacion in Buenos Aires, as well as other Argentine dailies and Spanish papers.

Abel Posse was editor in-chief of the Revista Argentina de Estudios Estrategicos.

Abel Parentini Posse was born on 7 January 1934, in the Argentine city of Cordoba where he only lived the first two years of his life.

The young Abel Posse grew up in the Argentine capital near Rivadavia street, and given his father's profession was exposed to the artistic and cultural milieu this most sophisticated of the South American capitals had to offer.

Abel Posse was able to mingle with the glamorous stars of Argentine show business, like Chas de Cruz, Pierina Dealessi, Ulises Petit de Murat, Munoz Azpiri, the writer of radio plays which were performed by Eva Duarte, as well as the tango composers Anibal Troilo and Homero Manzi.

The imagination of the young Abel Posse was awakened and nurtured by the father's personal library.

In 1943, at age 13, Abel Posse launched himself into his first literary project, a novel set in imperial Rome.

Abel Posse studied at the Law Faculty in Buenos Aires until 1958.

Abel Posse became close friends with the poets Conrado Nale Roxlo and Carlos Mastronardi, as well as Borges, who opened the doors for him of the SADE and who would later help him to publish his first short stories and poems in the daily El Mundo.

Abel Posse's only son, Ivan, was born in Moscow in January 1967.

Under the pseudonym of Arnaut Daniel, Abel Posse submitted it to the 1968 Planeta Prize.

Abel Posse was posted to Peru in 1969 and appointed cultural secretary of the embassy in Lima.

Also in 1970, he wrote his most ambitious poetical piece, Celebracion del desamparo, which was amongst the finalists of the Maldoror Poetry Prize although Abel Posse decided against publishing it.

Abel Posse researched the life of Argentina's national independence hero, General Jose de San Martin, and in 1971 was admitted to the Instituto Sanmartiniano de Lima.

Abel Posse was named Consul General for Venice in 1973, where he lived for 6 years.

In 1981 Abel Posse was appointed director of the Argentine Cultural Centre in Paris.

Between 1982 and 1985 Posse edited a bilingual collection of 15 Argentine poets titled Nadir, which included: Leopoldo Lugones, Enrique Molina, Hector Antonio Murena, Juan L Ortiza, Ricardo Molinari, Conrado Nale Roxlo, Baldomero Fernandez Moreno, Alejandra Pizarnik, Oliverio Girondo, Manuel J Castilla, Alberto Girri, Raul G Aguirre, Juan Rodolfo Wilcock, Ezequiel Martinez Estrada and Leopoldo Marechal.

Abel Posse returned to writing there, and wrote three novels, quite different to his previous ones.

Abel Posse wrote two novels on Nazism, Los demonios ocultos and El viajero de Agartha.

Los demonios ocultos was a literary project Abel Posse had begun much earlier in 1971, after having met several Nazis in Buenos Aires during his university days.

In 1990 Posse was promoted to Ambassador by President Carlos S Menem and was posted to Prague for six years.

Abel Posse's stay in the Czech capital was quite productive.

On his return to Latin America after his European postings Abel Posse increased his journalistic opinion pieces in El Excelsior, El Nacional, ABC and El Mundo, Linea and La Nacion.

Abel Posse arrived in Peru when there was still a tense relationship with Ecuador over the war of El Condor, and in the aftermath of the kidnapping of hostages at the Japanese embassy by the MRTA.

The protagonist is Felipe Segundo Abel Posse, based on a real-life ancestor of his who was heir to a vast estate of sugar mills in Tucuman province in the late 19th century.

At the time Abel Posse witnessed the deadly terrorist attacks in the Spanish capital on 11 March 2004.

Deeply concerned by the crisis facing Argentina, Abel Posse increased his opinion pieces in La Nacion, defending regional integration, national sovereignty, and appealing to national reconstruction by evoking the memory of national figures such as Sarmiento and Evita.

The president appointed Rafael Bielsa as foreign affairs minister, while Abel Posse continued his appointment at the embassy in Madrid until his retirement in 2004 when he returned to Argentina.

Abel Posse increased his round of conferences on the state of the nation, and he supported the presidential candidacy of Eduardo Duhalde in 2007, when he was a senate candidate for the City of Buenos Aires in Roberto Lavagna's ticket.

Abel Posse published in 2006 a series of political essays under the title, La santa locura de los argentinos, which was a best-seller, where he attempts to map the Argentine question by focusing his analysis from colonial times to the last century in order to make a call for a citizen led national consensus.

Toward the end of 2009 Abel Posse accepted the appointment of Minister of Education of the City of Buenos Aires offered by Mauricio Macri, which had been left vacant by Mariano Narodowski.

Abel Posse rejected the reopening of trials against members of the military regime and reiterated his accusations against Kirchner for his ideological proximity to the 1970s militant left-wing movements.

Abel Posse remained critical of the Kirchner policies and concerned about the future of the country.

Since November 2012, Abel Posse was an elected numbered member of the Argentine Academy of Letters, having taken the place of the late Rafael Obligado.

Abel Posse died on 14 April 2023, at the age of 89.