Romance for a Caudillo:

How to build the national identity of the Uruguayan people through poetry in 1953 and 1975?

Abstract

In the present paper an approach to the construction of the figure of caudillo Juan Antonio Lavalleja is made through the poets Osiris Rodríguez Castillos and Serafín J. García during 1953 and 1975. His selected literary works, Romances, are a type of "narrative and memorial" poetry, which refer to the national identity of the Uruguayan people in two very specific temporal moments of our history. This involves analyzing the reasons that led both poets to the creation of their works, as a testimony of their own conception of reality, which goes from the local to the national level.