Blood Will Out

How Jorge Barón Biza put his family—and his fears—on the page.

- Alejandro Chacoff

The Argentine writer Jorge Barón Biza once said that his parents didn’t have a marriage so much as a “passionate, infinite divorce.” His father, Raúl Barón Biza, once chased his mother, Rosa Clotilde Sabattini, with a gun and thirty-two bullets; later, Raúl ran, still armed, into his in-laws’ house. (He told police that he had wished only to commit suicide.) Raúl was born in 1899, the scion of wealthy landowners in Argentina. After spending his twenties partying, he began publishing novels. He also got involved in politics, which is how he met Clotilde. She was the daughter of Amadeo Sabattini, a famous politician whose party, the Radical Civic Union (U.C.R.), controlled Argentina’s government throughout the twenties; it was removed from power, in 1930, in a military coup. By 1936, Raúl had married Clotilde and been accused of financing the leftist resistance. He invested in olive oil and mining while editing papers that supported the nationalization of all means of production. Clotilde became a prominent feminist and academic, specializing in pedagogy. When a U.C.R. faction regained the Presidency, in 1958, she was appointed president of the National Council for Education.