Mario Benedetti was born in Uruguay and is not well known in the English-speaking world, but he is considered one of Latin America’s most important living writers. He lived in Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba and Spain from 1973 to 1985, during a military dictatorship in Uruguay. Nowadays he divides his time between Montevideo and Madrid.
Benedetti has always been politically-oriented and, in January 2006, he joined other renowned figures such as Gabriel García Márquez, Ernesto Sábato, Thiago de Mello, Eduardo Galeano, Carlos Monsiváis, Pablo Armando Fernández, Jorge Enrique Adoum, Pablo Milanés, Luis Rafael Sánchez, Mayra Montero and Ana Lydia Vega, to demand sovereignty for Puerto Rico and join the Latin American and Caribbean Congress for the Independence of Puerto Rico, which approved a resolution favoring the island-nation’s right to assert its independence.

If you want to read some more about Mario Benedetti’s life and work, check out the following website.

Palabras Verdaderas
His profile on the Cervantes Virtual Library
(http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/bib_autor/mbenedetti/)
Some of his short stories, in Spanish

Nos vemos prontito!