Amalia

José Mármol was born in Buenos Aires on December 2, 1817. He began his academic training in Law at the University of Buenos Aires, but discovered politics and decided to abandon his studies.
In 1839, during the government of Juan Manuel de Rosas, he spent several days imprisoned and then, fearing for his life, went to Montevideo, a city where many Argentines had gone into exile. Mármol turned his literary work into his best weapon to fight for his ideals and seek the fall of the Rosista government.
José Mármol wrote Amalia almost entirely in exile. The first edition of Amalia was published in Montevideo, in 1851, and the second, in Buenos Aires, in 1855. The novel recounts the love between a man and a young woman, marred by political violence.
The theme is innovative because using the history of romance aspires to portray a historical reality. This novel focuses on the “year of terror” between May 4 and October 5, 1840, in which Juan Manuel de Rosas carries out the fiercest persecution of his opponents.
Considered the first novel from Rio de la Plata, it had all kinds of condiments to make the public feel attracted.
Amalia is in the year 1840. It tells the story of a widow from Tucumán who lives in Buenos Aires and gives shelter to Eduardo Belgrano. This is a young man wounded while trying to leave the province to join the troops fighting Rosas.

On May 4, 1840, at half past ten at night, six men crossed the courtyard of a small house on Belgrano Street, in the city of Buenos Aires.
Arrived at the hallway, dark like all the rest of the house, one of them stops, and says to the others:
“Still one more precaution.
“And in that way we shall not finish taking precautions all night,” replies another, apparently the youngest of them all, and from whose waist hung a long sword, half covered by the folds of a cloak of blue cloth hanging from his shoulders.
“No matter how many we take, they will always be few,” replied the first one who had spoken. It is necessary that we do not all go out at once. There are six of us; We will leave first three, we will take the opposite sidewalk; a moment later the remaining three will leave, they will follow this path, and our meeting point will be Balcarce Street, where it crosses with the one we carry.
“Well thought out.
“Be it, I will go out ahead with Merlo, and the lord,” said the young man with the sword at his waist, pointing to the one who had just made the indication. And saying this, he threw the pin of the door, opened it, embodied himself in his cloak, and crossing the opposite sidewalk with the characters he had determined, headed the street of Belgrano, in the direction of the river.
The three remaining men left two minutes later, and after having closed the door, they took the same direction as those, along the determined path.

Fragment of the work