Ricardo Jaimes Freyre, together with Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío, is regarded as one of the best Spanish American modernist poets. Best known for his first book of poems, Castalia bárbara (Savage Castalia, 1899), and his Leyes de la versificación castellana (Rules of Spanish Versification, 1912), he was also a journalist, historian, short-story writer, playwright, and one of Bolivia's foremost diplomats.

Though the fact is unconfirmed, Freyre was said to be born on 12 May 1866 in Tacna, Peru, in the Bolivian Consulate, where his father, Julio Lucas Jaimes, served as Bolivian consul. His mother, Carolina Freyre, a Tacna native, was recognized as a talented writer. Jaimes Freyre's family moved to Lima, where he attended primary and secondary schools, albeit without receiving his diploma because of his family's unexplained return to Tacna in 1883. After a short stay the family returned to Bolivia, where in 1886 Jaimes...