Augusto Roa Bastos, 88; Novelist Explored Paraguay’s Social, Political Ills

Augusto Roa Bastos, one of South America’s most celebrated novelists, whose fictional writings often examined Paraguay’s social and political struggles, has died. He was 88.

Roa Bastos, the 1989 winner of the prestigious Cervantes Prize for Literature in Spanish, died Tuesday of complications from surgery after a recent fall in his Asuncion home.

A former journalist, poet and writer of short stories, Roa Bastos is best known for “I, The Supreme,” a novelized version of the career of Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia, who ruled Paraguay with an iron fist from 1814 to 1840.

Hailed as Paraguay’s most important contemporary writer, Roa Bastos lived in exile for 42 years, voluntarily leaving his homeland during political upheaval before returning for good in the mid-1990s.

He had returned briefly in 1982, only to be expelled by the government of former dictator Alfredo Stroessner, who had labeled Roa Bastos a subversive for his candid writings on Paraguay’s political scene. Stroessner’s 35-year rule ended in 1989.

An oft-mentioned candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature, Roa Bastos published more than 20 works, including books, poems, plays and screenplays, many of them translated into dozens of languages.

Among them were “El Hijo de Hombre” or “Son of Man,” a collection of short stories published in 1960, and “El Baldio” or “Vagabond,” a narrative chronicling the social and political problems plaguing his homeland, one of South America’s poorest countries, published in 1966.

In 1992, to mark the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of the Americas, Roa Bastos wrote “Vigilia del Almirante,” a novel about the explorer.

The work typified the Paraguayan writer’s style of adding fictional elements to historical accounts to enrich his stories.

Roa Bastos was born in Asuncion on June 13, 1917.

His father was a clerk on a sugar plantation, and Roa Bastos grew up in the provincial city of Iturbe.

As a boy, he spoke both Spanish and Guarani, the popular language of Paraguay, which he later used in his writings. Encouraged by his mother, he began to write short stories while in his early teens.

Roa Bastos is survived by five children.