From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Mario Benedetti, was an Uruguayan journalist, novelist, and poet as well as being an integral member of the GeneraciĆ³n del 45. In spite of publishing more than 80 books and being published in twenty languages he was not well known in the English-speaking world, but in the Spanish-speaking world he was considered one of Latin America's most important writers from the latter half of the 20th-century.