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Latin American Romanticism: The Movement in the New World

Latin American Romanticism was the literary and cultural movement that gave the newly independent nations of Latin America their first major works of art, literature, and thought. Emerging in the decades after the Latin American wars of independence (1810–1825), Latin American Romanticism drew on the European Romantic tradition — especially the French, English, and German — and adapted it to the distinctive realities of the new American republics. The major writers of the movement gave Latin American literature a powerful voice, helped articulate the new national identities, and laid the groundwork for the modernist explosion of the early twentieth century.

This page offers a structured introduction to Latin American Romanticism — its origins, its major figures, its characteristic themes, and its long influence.

The Origins of Latin American Romanticism

Latin American Romanticism emerged in the 1830s and 1840s, in the decades after the Latin American wars of independence. Several factors contributed to the rise of the movement:

The post-independence period — the newly independent nations of Latin America were struggling to define their new identities, and the Romantic movement provided a powerful vocabulary for the project of national self-definition.
The European Romantic influence — the major European Romantic works, in Spanish, French, and English translation, were widely read in Latin America. The French Romantics (Hugo, Dumas, Lamartine, Musset) were especially influential.
The new politics of the post-independence era — the new Latin American republics were marked by political instability, dictatorship, and the long struggle for democratic institutions. The Romantic vocabulary of freedom, the heroic individual, the betrayed ideal, and the martyred patriot gave the new political struggles a literary voice.
The Spanish and Portuguese literary tradition — the inherited Spanish and Portuguese Romantic traditions, with their long history of lyric and narrative poetry, their religious and mystical traditions, and their rich folk and popular culture, provided an important material for the new movement.

The Major Phases

Latin American Romanticism is usually divided into two main phases:

The first generation (1830s–1850s) — the writers who first gave the new republics a literary voice. The major figures include Esteban Echeverría in Argentina, José María Heredia in Cuba, the Mexican and Venezuelan poets, and the early writers of the independence period.
The second generation (1850s–1880s) — the writers who consolidated the Romantic tradition and gave Latin American literature a major international reputation. The major figures include Jorge Isaacs, José Mármol, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, José Asunción Silva, and many others.

The Major Figures

The major Latin American Romantic writers include:

Esteban Echeverría (1805–1851) — the Argentine poet and political thinker, author of La cautiva (1837), the great Romantic narrative poem, and El matadero (1838–40), the great Romantic prose satire. Echeverría is often considered the founder of Argentine literature.
José María Heredia (1803–1839) — the Cuban poet, author of “En el teocalli de Cholula” (1820) and “Niágara” (1824), two of the most famous Romantic poems in Spanish. Heredia is often considered the founder of Cuban literature.
Andrés Bello (1781–1865) — the Venezuelan poet, philologist, and educator, author of Silvas americanas and a major figure in the cultural independence of Latin America.
Olmedo (José Joaquín de Olmedo) (1780–1847) — the Ecuadorian poet, author of La victoria de Junín: Canto a Bolívar (1825), the great epic of the liberation of South America.
José Mármol (1817–1871) — the Argentine novelist and poet, author of Amalia (1851–55), the great Argentine Romantic novel of the dictatorship of Rosas.
Jorge Isaacs (1837–1895) — the Colombian novelist, author of María (1867), the great Colombian Romantic novel and one of the supreme achievements of Latin American Romanticism.
Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda (1814–1873) — the Cuban-Spanish poet and novelist, author of Sab (1841), the great Romantic novel of slavery and rebellion.
Juan Zorrilla de San Martín (1855–1931) — the Uruguayan poet, author of Tabaré (1888), the great Romantic epic of the Charrúa Indians.
José Asunción Silva (1865–1896) — the Colombian poet, a transitional figure between Romanticism and Modernism, author of the great sonnet sequence Nocturnos and the novel De sobremesa (1925).
Rubén Darío (1867–1916) — the Nicaraguan poet, the founder of Latin American Modernism and the transitional figure between Romanticism and the modern poetry of the twentieth century.

The Themes of Latin American Romanticism

The major themes of Latin American Romanticism include:

The new national identity — the struggle to define the new Latin American nations, their relation to the European past, their distinctive American character.
The indigenous past — the new interest in the pre-Columbian past, the cultures of the Aztecs, the Maya, the Incas, and the other pre-Columbian civilizations.
Nature and the American landscape — the tropical, the mountainous, the riverine, the jungle — the distinctive Latin American landscape as a subject of poetry and fiction.
The dictator and the political hero — the great political theme of the new republics, treated in works as different as Echeverría’s El matadero, Mármol’s Amalia, and the later dictator novel of Asturias, Carpentier, and García Márquez.
The Romantic hero and heroine — the brooding, sensitive, often doomed figure, drawn from the European Romantic tradition but adapted to the new Latin American realities.
The folk and the popular — the new interest in the folklore, the popular songs, the legends, and the traditions of the new American republics.
The black and the mulatto — the new engagement with the African heritage of the Latin American peoples, especially in Cuba, Brazil, and the Caribbean.

The Long Influence

Latin American Romanticism has had a profound influence on the subsequent development of Latin American literature. The Latin American Modernism of the 1890s, the avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century, the great twentieth-century novels of García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, and Julio Cortázar, the magical-realist tradition, the contemporary Latin American novel — all draw, in different ways, on the Romantic inheritance.

The Romantic poets of the new republics, in particular, established a model of the engaged writer, the poet of the nation, the sensitive observer of the new American scene, that has shaped the Latin American literary tradition to the present day.