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Tomas Eloy Martinez, journalist and writer, has died at age 75 in Buenos Aires. He was born in Tucuman, in the country’s far northwest, and took up journalism there as a proof reader, then moved to Buenos Aires. In the early 1970s, the country’s politics became increasingly radicalized. Eloy Martinez investigated a massacre of leftists in 1972 on a military base in Trelew, south of Buenos Aires, and wrote a book about it. This earned him the attention of the Triple A right-wing death squad. He fled Buenos Aires and settled in Caracas, Venezuela where he founded El Diario de Caracas.

In 1985 he moved to the USA and headed the Spanish studies department at Rutgers University in New Jersey. His most famous book, Santa Evita, about the life and times of Eva Perón, has been translated into over 30 languages. His latest novel, Purgatory, was published in 2008. He wrote for Argentina’s La Nación, Spain’s El Pais, and the New York Times op-ed pages. He was awarded the Ortega y Gasset lifetime achievement in journalism prize in 2009.

Links to other sites: El Pais, La Nación, New York Times