Maids, ruminants and pincushions: Carlos Maggi’s essays on the state of Uruguay

Abstract

Carlos Maggi, born in 1922, is one of Uruguay's most prominent intellec-tual figures. Though trained as a lawyer, his writing career has been his main interest. While still a student at pre-university level, he wrote (with Manuel Flores Mora, who was to be a Colorado senator, ajournalist of note and one of Maggi's life-long friends and colleagues) a prize-winning historical essayl and followed this by founding in 1942 a short-lived review, Apex, Latin Americanist in ideology and avantgardist in its aesthetics. He worked extensively as both writer and editor on Acci6n, a newspaper put out by the militantly pro-Batllista faction2 of the Colorado party3,just as much later he would collaborate in Jaque, a weekly review of cultural and current affairs edited by Flores Mora, which began publication in early 1984 towards the close of the military dictatorship and voiced the perspective of the more progressive elements within the same party.