SOURCE: Lindstrom, Naomi. “The Spanish American Short Story from Echeverria to Quiroga.” In The Latin American Short Story: A Critical History, Margaret Sayers Peden, pp. 35-70. Boston: Twayne, 1983.

In the following excerpt, Lindstrom surveys the major nineteenth-century Latin American short-story writers, from the Argentinean Romantic Esteban Echeverria to the Cuban Modernist José Marti.

Early History

Spanish American writing may be said to begin with the letters of Christopher Columbus; yet the first piece that can be considered a short story is Esteban Echeverría's 1838(?) “El matadero” (The Slaughtering Grounds). Looking at the year in which the Argentine author is believed to have composed this famous work, one may well wonder how Latin American literature could have developed for over three centuries without producing any brief narrative fiction suitable for consideration in an overview of the continent's short story.

The most obvious of possible answers to this question is...