Echeverría, Esteban [key], 1805–51, Argentine romantic poet, prose writer, and revolutionary propagandist. After five years in Europe he introduced romanticism in Argentina in his poem Elvira (1832). Although he excelled as a prose writer, it was as a poet that he deeply influenced later writers, particularly through his poetic depiction of the South American landscape. His most successful poem, “La Cautiva,” which extols the pampas, appeared in Rimas (1837). Echeverría was the leading spirit in the Asociación de Mayo, a secret society founded to combat the dictator Jean Manuel de Rosas. He spent the last years of his life in exile in Montevideo, where he attacked the dictator in his short novel El matadero [the slaughterhouse] (1837).
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