Manuel Puig Correspondence

Manuel Puig (1932-1990) was an Argentine novelist and LGBTQ+ activist born in General Villegas on December 28, 1932. As a child, he gained exposure to American film, with his mother and others taking him to the theater often. Puig’s childhood interests quickly became American film, literature, philosophy, and Italian films. He moved to Buenos Aires at 13 to attend high school and begin university.

In 1957, Puig went to Rome to study film at the Experimental Film Center. However, he found fault with the program and instead decided to move around Europe (Paris, London, Stockholm) giving Spanish and Italian lessons while he worked on film scripts. He briefly returned to Argentina in 1960 to work as an assistant director for Argentine films.

Puig’s work on film was receiving mixed reception in Argentina so he decided to move to New York City in the early to mid 1960s, working as an Air France ticket agent. It was here that his interest in Broadway musicals rose and his work on novels began. He completed La traición de Rita Hayworth (1968) in 1965 and he moved back to Buenos Aires ahead of the novel’s publication (it was not published in Argentina until 1968 due to censorship laws). Once published, Puig became recognized as a prominent Latin American author.

Through Puig’s novels, such as Boquitas pintadas (1969), The Buenos Aires Affair: Novela policial (1973), and El beso de la mujer araña (1976), he explored themes of sexual and political repression, oppression of women, alienation, and more. In 1973, he moved to Mexico due to the rise of Peróns’ regime. He continued to publish and visited New York and Brazil frequently in this time.

In 1989, he moved to Cuernavaca, Mexico where he could be close to his mother. He began to fall ill in 1990 and was eventually admitted to the hospital for risk of peritonitis. He died on July 22, 1990 due to a heart attack caused by complications from his gallbladder removal surgery.