14 Facts About Mario Benedetti

Mario Benedetti completed six years of primary school at the Deutsche Schule Montevideo, where he learned German, which later allowed him to be the first translator of Franz Kafka in Uruguay.

Mario Benedetti worked in different professions on both banks of the Rio de la Plata river, for example, as a stenographer.

Mario Benedetti was a member of the "Generation of 45", an Uruguayan intellectual and literary movement that included Carlos Maggi, Manuel Flores Mora, Angel Rama, Emir Rodriguez Monegal, Idea Vilarino, Carlos Real de Azua, Jose Pedro Diaz, Amanda Berenguer, Ida Vitale, Liber Falco, Juan Carlos Onetti, among others.

Mario Benedetti wrote for the weekly Uruguayan newspaper Marcha from 1945 until it was forcibly closed by the military government in 1973, and was its literary director from 1954.

For 12 years, from 1973 to 1985, when a civic-military dictatorship ruled Uruguay, Mario Benedetti lived in exile.

Mario Benedetti first went to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and then to Lima, Peru, where he was detained, deported and then given amnesty.

Mario Benedetti went to Cuba in 1976 and the following year to Madrid, Spain.

Mario Benedetti's exile was made particularly trying by the fact that his wife had to remain in Uruguay to look after both of their mothers.

Mario Benedetti returned to Uruguay in March 1985, following the restoration of democracy, and thereafter divided his time between Montevideo and Madrid.

Mario Benedetti was granted Honoris Causa doctorates by the Universidad de la Republica, Uruguay, the Universidad de Alicante, Spain and the Universidad de Valladolid, Spain.

Mario Benedetti's poetry was used in the 1992 Argentine movie The Dark Side of the Heart, in which he read some of his poems in German.

In 2006, Mario Benedetti signed a petition in support of the independence of Puerto Rico from the United States.

Mario Benedetti had suffered from respiratory and intestinal problems for more than a year.

Mario Benedetti's remains are buried at the National Pantheon in the Central Cemetery of Montevideo.