José Hernandez

This Argentine poet and journalist was born in San Martín, Province of Buenos Aires 10-11-1834. In his youth he embraced the Federal cause, he took part in the civil confrontations from 1859-1861 on the side of Urquiza and against Mitre. In his journalistic articles he denounced the abuses and injustices in the recruitment of gauchos for the campaigns against the Indian. From this atmosphere would arise his most famous work, the gauchesco poem "The Gaucho Martín Fierro" (1872) composed of 13 chapters.

He was the editor of the newspaper "The Argentine" and the founder of the "Río de la Plata". He lived exiliated in Brazil, but back in Argentina, he entered in the Autonomist Party, by which he got elected in 1879-1881. The immediate success of Martín Fierro impelled to him to the publication of the second part, "The Return of the Martín Fierro" (1879) composed of 33 chapters, which that in later editions has been published jointly with the first. As much in his journalistic work as in his poetic, tie to the gauchesca tradition, he took part in the defense of "the people from the inland" against "the people of the city".

Works in prose: Life of the Chacho; biographical characteristics of General Angel Vicente Peñaloza (1863), Instruction of the farmer (1882). He passed away in the city of Buenos Aires 21-10-1886.

Miguel Cané

This Argentine writer was born in Montevideo in 1851. He was a political journalist, and studied Law and specialized in human rights.

He carried out different public positions and, as a diplomat (Minister of Outer Subjects), he was in Europe in several occasions. He was dean of the faculty of Philosophy of Buenos Aires. Among his works, which are fragmented and testimonial, we can distinguish Juvenilia (1884), a novel in which he evokes childhood and youth memories.

"In a trip 1881-1882" (1884), "Printings of Venezuela and Colombia", "Light Prose" (1903), "Literary conversations", among others were posthumously summarized and printed in his "Speeches and Conferences" (1909). He is one of the figures of a group of writers called "men of the 80", which were influenced by the naturalism. He died in Buenos Aires in 1905.