Queer Places:
Suardi, Santa Fe, Argentina
Alberto
Teodoro Antonino Augusto Nin Frías (9 November 1878 – 27
March 1937) was a Uruguayan writer, teacher and journalist. As a
diplomat of his country he resided in the
United States, Brazil, Chile and Argentina,where he settled in the province of
Santa Fe until his death. He was the great-grandson of the wealthy
Spanish merchant seaman Antonio Nin y Soler. In the 1920s writers more openly
homosexual were not able to deal with the topic in their works. These include
the conservative dramatist Jacinto Benavente, the chronicler of Madrid life
Pedro de Répide, the short
story writer Antonio de Hoyos
y Vinent, and the music critic and historian
Adolfo Salazar. Many
Spaniards escaped to Paris, among them
Gregorio Martinez Sierra and Marta
Martinez Sierra and the composer Manuel de Falla. Little magazines, such as
Grecia of Adriano del
Valle, Mediodia of
Joaquin Romero Murube, and
Renacimiento of Martinez
Sierra, remain incompletely studied. Even into the 1920's the situation for
homosexuals was oppressive, as can be seen from the reticence of the
Espasa-Calpe encyclopedia and the comments of Gregorio Maranon. It was
foreigners living in Spain, the Uruguayan
Alberto Nin Frías, the Chilean
Augusto
d'Halmar, and the Cuban Alfonso Hernández Catá, who published the first books on the topic.
Alberto Nin Frías was born on November 9, 1878 in the city of Montevideo,
capital of the Eastern Republic of Uruguay. His parents were Dr. Alberto Nin y
Nin (1853 – 1919) who was a lawyer member of the Supreme Court of Justice
of the same country, founder of the Chair of Criminal Law and diplomat
in Europe, and his wife and second cousin Mati Fríaldes Nin (born 1855). The
paternal grandparents were Juan Nin y González (born ca. 1813) and his cousin
and spouse Silveria Nin y Alagón (born ca. 1820), and the maternal
grandparents were Matilde Nin Reyes (born ca. 1830) and Manuel Frias Avila
(born ca. 1818). Therefore, the paternal great-grandparents were the two
Spanish-Catalan merchant marine brothers, the older Juan Nin y Soler who
married María Joaquina González Tejera, and the youngest, Esteban Nin y Soler,
who married Juana Eusebia Alagón. His maternal great-grandfather was the other
merchant marine brother Antonio Nin y Soler, who was an intellectual, wealthy
businessman and owner of the ship El Federico who had settled in
the Rioplatense Banda Oriental of the Buenos Aires, mayor by 1810, having met
the Creole Benita Reyes del Villar, whom he married in 1813, specifically in
the still Spanish governorate of Montevideo. In the already liberated city of
the same name, capital of the new Eastern Province, they had their two sons
and when they returned to Europe in 1825, two of their daughters would be born
in Marseille. Upon definite return to Montevideo they had the youngest they
would call Leopoldina (b. 1832). Due to his father's profession, he lived
part of his childhood and adolescence in various cities around the world,
including London, where he settled at eight years old, and
later Brussels and Bern. He returned to Montevideo around 1898, a city in
which he worked as a writer, teacher, librarian, journalist, and where it
would be linked to the cultural environment of those years, in which figures
such as Julio Herrera and Reissig, María Eugenia Vaz Ferreira, Carlos Vaz
Ferreira, José Enrique Rodó, among others, were highlighted. Years later, he
left his homeland again serving as a diplomat and alternated his life in
different cities such as Washington, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago de Chile, where
he befriended Gabriela Mistral,
and Buenos Aires. His literary work deals with topics as varied as English
literature, the tree, religion, Greece, customs and eroticism. His book
Created Homosexualism and Alexis or the meaning of the homosexual
temperament (the actual title of the book is Alexis or the meaning of the
temperament Uranus, 1932, Madrid: Morata) are his most widespread works. He
died in poverty in the city of Suardi, located in the Argentine province
of Santa Fe, under the protection of the Spanish-born priest,
Pedro Badanelli.
After almost six decades since his death, his life and his literary work,
particularly related to homoerotism, has begun to be the subject of study and
analysis, being referenced in works such as Historias de la vida privada in
Uruguay by Hugo Achugar edited in 1998, Amor y transgression by José Pedro
Barrán edited in 2001, Carla Giaudrone's 900 degeneration edit in
2005, Fernando Loustaunau's play Diary of a Dying Democrat edited in 2006, and
a study of his friendship and correspondence with Gabriela Mistral, published
in 2017 by Elizabeth Horan.
In 2007 the commune of Suardi gave him a tribute in which a plaque was
discovered that reads: Captivate by sweetness. Always grow in truth and
beautiful. To attract by the noble example, the splendor of thought, the
purity of a faith and the magnet of goodness.
My published books:
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