Sur (Argentine magazine)
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| Sur (Argentine magazine) | |
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| Title | Sur |
| Editor | Victoria Ocampo |
| Editor title | Founder |
| Frequency | Monthly |
| Category | Literary magazine |
| Firstdate | 1931 |
| Finaldate | 1992 |
| Country | Argentina |
| Language | Spanish |
Sur (Argentine magazine) was a prominent Argentine literary and cultural magazine founded in 1931 by Victoria Ocampo that shaped Latin American letters. It published fiction, criticism, and essays by leading figures across Latin America and Europe, bridging intellectual debates among Argentina, Spain, France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Mexico. Through editorial direction, international correspondence, and contributions, the magazine connected writers associated with Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, Alejo Carpentier, José Ortega y Gasset, André Malraux, T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Antonin Artaud, Paul Valéry, Romain Rolland, Marcel Proust, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Ernst Cassirer, José Martí, José Enrique Rodó, José Lezama Lima, Luis Buñuel, Federico García Lorca, Joaquín Torres García, Rafael Alberti, Vicente Huidobro, César Vallejo, Rubén Darío, Manuel Gálvez, Ricardo Rojas, Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Arnold Zweig, Thomas Mann, Arthur Rimbaud, Gustave Flaubert, Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Verne, Émile Zola, Isadora Duncan, Le Corbusier, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mahatma Gandhi, Simón Bolívar, José de San Martín, Mariano Moreno, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento and other public intellectuals.
History
Victoria Ocampo launched the magazine in Buenos Aires in 1931, amid cultural currents linked to Generation of '98, Modernismo, Ultraísmo, Surrealism, Vanguardismo, and debates following World War I, World War II, and the Spanish Civil War. Early editorial boards included figures connected to institutions such as the University of Buenos Aires, the Biblioteca Nacional de la República Argentina, the Argentine Academy of Letters, and international presses linked to Gallimard, Faber and Faber, Editorial Losada, New York Review of Books networks. During the 1930s and 1940s Sur mediated exchanges between protagonists of Latin American Boom, European émigrés fleeing Nazism, and intellectuals responding to the Great Depression, consolidating its reputation across Buenos Aires, Madrid, Paris, and Mexico City. The magazine's production was affected by political shifts involving Juan Domingo Perón, Arturo Frondizi, Raúl Alfonsín, and cultural policies of successive Argentine administrations.
Editorial profile and contributors
Sur cultivated a cosmopolitan editorial profile, printing works in Spanish with translations from French literature, English literature, German literature, Italian literature, Portuguese literature, and indigenous American traditions. Contributors included poets, novelists, critics, and essayists such as Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Silvina Ocampo, María Elena Walsh, Alejandra Pizarnik, César Aira, Vicente Aleixandre, Octavio Paz, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Julio Cortázar, Manuel Puig, José Lezama Lima, Ruben Dario, César Vallejo, Pablo Neruda, Rafael Alberti, and translators linked to George Steiner and Harold Bloom. Editorial policy fostered dialogues with institutions like Instituto de Cultura Hispánica, Casa de las Américas, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and cultural salons connected to Galerie Maeght, Tate Gallery, Museum of Modern Art, and Instituto Cervantes. The magazine featured criticism on works by Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, André Breton, Luis Buñuel, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Le Corbusier.
Political and cultural influence
Sur functioned as a node in transatlantic intellectual networks engaging debates over fascism, communism, liberalism, and anti-colonial movements linked to figures such as José Martí, Simón Bolívar, Mahatma Gandhi, Ho Chi Minh, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, and critics of authoritarianism including Alejo Carpentier and Carlos Raúl Villanueva. Through essays and polemics, the magazine influenced cultural policy discussions in Buenos Aires, Madrid, Mexico City, and Paris, intersecting with artistic movements like Surrealism, Constructivism, Expressionism, Cubism, and literary currents tied to the Latin American Boom and postwar reconstruction. Intellectuals associated with Sur engaged with international events such as the Nuremberg Trials, the Yalta Conference, the United Nations General Assembly, and debates surrounding decolonization and the Non-Aligned Movement.
Notable issues and publications
Sur published landmark essays, first appearances, translations, and dossiers on authors and artists including extensive pieces on Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, Alejo Carpentier, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Thomas Mann, André Breton, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Luis Buñuel, Federico García Lorca, Rafael Alberti, José Lezama Lima, César Vallejo, Rubén Darío, and interviews with intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Bourdieu. Special issues addressed movements and events: dossiers on Surrealism, tributes to Federico García Lorca, coverage of the Spanish Civil War, analyses of World War II cultural aftermath, and surveys of the Latin American Boom that helped launch careers now associated with major prizes like the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize.
Decline, closure, and legacy
Financial pressures, shifting readership patterns, and political crises in Argentina reduced Sur's circulation in the late 20th century, coinciding with censorship episodes during the National Reorganization Process and subsequent cultural reconfigurations under Raúl Alfonsín and Carlos Menem. The magazine ceased regular publication in the early 1990s, but its archives influenced scholarship at institutions such as the Biblioteca Nacional de la República Argentina, the University of Buenos Aires, Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, and research centers tied to Casa de las Américas and Instituto Cervantes. The journal's legacy persists in anthologies, critical studies, museum exhibitions at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes and Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, and in the continued study of contributors linked to major literary movements and awards including the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Cervantes Prize, and the Prince of Asturias Awards.
Category:Magazines published in Argentina Category:Literary magazines Category:Spanish-language magazines