Hugo Wast

Gustavo Adolfo Martínez Zuviría ―also known by his pseudonym Hugo Wast― (Córdoba, October 23, 1883 - Buenos Aires, March 28, 1962) was a Argentine writer and politician. A sympathizer of Spanish Francoism, he achieved notoriety for his novels, some of which were adapted to the cinema, for his public action as a deputy and minister of public instruction, a position from which he introduced the ordinary, although not compulsory, teaching of the Catholic religion in all the country's schools, and for his fervent religious and nationalist militancy, as well as for his anti-Semitism. He was Minister of Education in 1944, during the dictatorship of General Pedro Pablo Ramírez.

Youth and training

Gustavo Martínez Zuviría was born and studied in the city of Córdoba, in a wealthy family with a military tradition. He received primary instruction at the Santo Tomás College, under the direction of the Piarist order; From his childhood he showed a vocation for literature and published some youthful work in the local newspapers, in which he already showed a predilection for the themes of romantic heroism that he would develop later.

In 1902 he began law studies at the University of Santa Fe; meanwhile, he continued his literary production, tackling his first novel, Alegre , which would see the light of day three years later, during the holidays. He also wrote plays, poetry and essays, defending the creationism of the Catholic dogma against the theory of evolution.

He would publish a volume of verses and one of short stories even before graduating as a lawyer in 1907; his doctoral thesis in law, entitled Where is our pantheism of the State leading us?, would nevertheless be rejected that same year for its lack of academic rigor and its "pamphleteering and insolent" writing. to write articles for the conservative newspaper La Nación and the satirical magazine Caras y Caretas while he undertook the writing of a second, more modest thesis, entitled El salario, with which he doctorate at the end of that year. Meanwhile, he published in Madrid another volume of verses and his second novel.

Academic and political activity

In 1908, he married Matilde de Iriondo Iturraspe ―niece of the governors Simón de Iriondo and José Bernardo Iturraspe― and they traveled to Europe for their honeymoon, being received by Pope Pius X in a public audience to receive the blessing of Your marriage. Upon his return, he obtained a teaching position at the Colegio Nacional de Santa Fe; a year later, he would teach the newly created sociology course at the University of Santa Fe.

Fascinated by Scandinavian mythology, he chose for his third novel, Peach Blossom, the pseudonym Hugo Wast, clearly resonating with that origin and anagrammatic of his given name in an invented spelling ― pseudo-Norse― "Ghustawo". The novel, an intense melodrama to the taste of the time, would enjoy great acceptance; its film adaptation by Francisco Defilippis Novoa in 1917 would also be a box office success, and would mark Carlos Gardel's film debut.

During the 1910s he continued an intense literary activity and in 1914 he was one of the founders of the Progressive Democratic Party. The PDP, an unstable alliance between social democratic and conservative tendencies motivated by opposition to the "personalist leadership" of the Civic Union Radical of Hipólito Yrigoyen, nominated him for the vice-government of the province of Santa Fe, in tandem with Lisandro de la Torre, although they were defeated. He would direct the newspaper Nueva Época of Santa Fe briefly, until being elected national deputy in 1916; against radical politics he would publish "A badly administered country" that same year, in addition to the novel The House of Crows .

In 1918 he published Valle Negro, a novel that the Spanish Academy distinguished with its Five-Year Award, Diploma of Honor and Gold Medal. Miguel de Unamuno would say of it:

I read Black Valley with the suspense spirit and I will read it again, because the interest that awakened me is that of a dramatic passions game. This novel can be read in any country and can be read at any time, when Carmen and Colomba, by Merimée, continue to be read. Its precision and condensation will rid it of fashions of taste. Corresponding to this way of feeling and understanding the novel, is the right style. Clean, of course, precise, without metaphorical contours, without stylistic twists that there is now such an amateur.

Disagreements with Progressive Democracy

He combined literature and politics during his tenure; Failing to be re-elected, he returned to Santa Fe to occupy his chair at the University of Santa Fe in 1920. A little later he would resign, along with José Félix Uriburu, Julio Argentino Roca (son) and others, from the PDP (Progressive Democratic Party)., after becoming evident the predominance of the social democrats in it. La Nación published the virulent manifesto in which he explained his resignation from political life. During that decade he dedicated himself almost exclusively to literature, publishing several novels: Los ojos bandaged, The Avenger, The One Who Didn't Forgive, Pata de Zorra, A star in the window, Desierto de piedra (National Literature Award and which would be translated into English, French and German among other languages) and several opinion pieces in the Catholic Culture Courses.

In 1927, he left Argentina to travel with his wife and children for five years through Europe and the United States. In 1928, during his stay in Spain, he was appointed a corresponding member of the Royal Spanish Academy.

The Infamous Decade

He would not return to Argentina until after the 1930 coup, in which General José Félix Uriburu ―with whom he shared his adherence to the Progressive Democratic Party (PDP)― deposed the democratic president Hipólito Yrigoyen, beginning a period of corruption called the Decade Infamous. In 1931, the military dictatorship appointed Martínez Zuviría director of the National Library (in Buenos Aires), a position he held for almost a quarter of a century: when he took office, the Library had 270,000 volumes, a figure that rose to 700,000 when Martínez Zuviría resigned. in 1955 during the government of Juan Domingo Perón. He was one of the founding members of the recently created Argentine Academy of Letters. During those years he wrote the two hagiographic volumes of Don Bosco and his time , renamed years later The Adventures of Don Bosco . In 1933 he chaired the press commission of the XXXII International Eucharistic Congress held in Buenos Aires in 1934, and in 1935 he received the Order of Saint Gregory the Great, granted by Pope Pius XI, as a prize for the religious value of his literary work.

That same year he published El Kahal, a novel in which the private life of Jews is regulated in all its details by a court, the Kahal, directed by all its activities and imposes sanctions on those who do not obey its secret mandates to infiltrate, enrich and control Gentile organizations. Centered on Argentina, Martínez Zuviría's novel nevertheless postulated a supreme Kahal, based in New York, who would direct the world Jewish conspiracy. The work was a success among Argentina's growing anti-Semitic and nationalist circles; although the local Jewish community resorted to legal means to protect his reputation, the work enjoyed numerous reprints and increased the popularity of Martínez Zuviría.

Martínez Zuviría collaborated at that time with the magazine Clarinada (anti-communist and anti-Jewish magazine) published by Carlos M. Silveyra, which disseminated information about a supposed global Jewish-communist conspiracy. The publication of the magazine deserved praise in Der Stürmer ('the attacker') ―the press organ of Nazism in Germany―. In 1937 he also signed a manifesto in support of the insurrection of Francisco Franco in Spain, sympathizing with the "heroic vindication of nationality, religion and the traditional glories of his homeland." The novel 666, published a few years later, would recover these themes from an apocalyptic perspective, equating the expansion of communism and Zionism with the advent of the Antichrist.

Ministry

In 1937 he was appointed president of the National Commission for Culture by President Agustín Pedro Justo. In 1941, after the intervention of the province of Catamarca by the federal government, he was named inspector of the same. In 1943, in the convulsed political climate after the overthrow of Ramón Castillo, the dictator Pedro Pablo Ramírez appointed him Minister of Justice and Public Instruction. One of his first measures was to establish the teaching of the Catholic religion in all public schools in the country through a decree of the dictatorship that in 1946, already under the government of Perón, was converted into law.

The prestige of Martínez Zuviría was at its peak at that time; Most of his collaborations with the cinema date from this period, adaptations of his novels La que no perdonó (1938), The House of Crows (1941), The Path of Flames (1942) and Black Valley (1943). In 1944, however, he received a blow when the German consul in Argentina was caught spying for the Axis; the nationalist publication El Pampero revealed the intervention of Martínez Zuviría in the matter, and he had to resign from his position. ^{[citation needed ]} A little later, the dictator Ramírez was forced to resign as president of the nation. Given the evidence of the defeat of the Axis in World War II, Clarinada ceased publication in 1945.

Last years

Detail of his grave in the Recoleta cemetery.

Martínez Zuviría viewed the government of Juan Domingo Perón with good eyes while maintaining good relations with the Catholic Church. However, the measures favorable to the Jews of his government - which allowed Jewish conscripts to celebrate their religious holidays for the first time, recognized the legitimacy of the State of Israel and established diplomatic relations with it, among other measures - led him to distance himself., this time definitely, of political action.

The wealthy situation of Martínez Zuviría, who had added to the family fortune the bulky income from copyrights of his literary work and retirement as a national deputy ―equivalent―, allowed him to dedicate himself exclusively to writing in recent years, about all about religious themes. In 1954 he received the decoration of the Grand Cross of Alfonso X el Sabio from the Franco government. Towards the end of that decade, his health began to visibly decline due to a lung infection. On March 28, 1962, he died in his house, and was buried in the family pantheon in the Recoleta cemetery. By the time he died, more than three million copies of his books had been sold.

Controversy over his figure

In 2010, INADI proposed changing the name of a street in the city of Córdoba that bears his name (in the Cerro de las Rosas neighborhood). The proposal consisted of replacing it with the name of one of the representatives of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, Sonia Torres, but it did not prosper. Among the arguments used by INADI, the alleged anti-Semitic nature of some of Wast's works, especially book 666, was underlined.

Works

• 1905: Cheers..
• 1907: Holiday bride.
• 1911: Peach Flower.
• 1914: Sealed source.
• 1916: The house of the ravens.
• 1918: Black Valley.
• 1919: City turbulent, cheerful city.
• 1920: The celestial tie.
• 1921: Eyes blindfolded.
• 1922: The avenger.
• 1923: The one that didn't forgive.
• 1924: Fucking bitch.
• 1924: A star in the window.
• 1925: Stone Desert.
• 1926: Ruth's ears.
• 1926: Myriam the conspirator.
• 1926: The fire rider.
• 1927: Land of jaguars.
• 1927: Blood on the threshold.
• 1929: Lucía Miranda.
• 1930: 15 sacristan days.
• 1930: The way of flames.
• 1931: Voice of writer.
• 1931: Don Bosco under Pius IX.
• 1931: Don Bosco under Carlos Alberto.
• 1935: The Kahal.
• 1935: Gold.
• 1936: Naves, Gold, Dreams.
• 1941: The sixth seal.
• 1942: Juana Tabor.
• 1942: 666.
• 1944: Waiting against all hope.
• 1945: What God has united.
• 1948: Adventures of Father Vespignani.
• 1952: Die with boots set.
• 1955: Star of the afternoon.
• 1955: Would you throw the first stone.
• 1960: Year X.
• 1961: Autobiography of the child who was not born (postuma).