Abel Acácio de Almeida Botelho
1855–1917
Biography
Abel Acácio de Almeida Botelho (1855–1917) was a Portuguese army officer, diplomat, politician and writer. He was born on 23 September in Tabuaço, in northern Portugal; sources give the year as 1854, 1855 or 1856. He rose to the rank of colonel on the army's general staff, later served as a diplomat, and died in Buenos Aires in 1917. In 1911 he took part in the commission that chose and approved the draft of the flag Portugal uses today.
Botelho is remembered as a leading representative of Naturalism in Portugal, the late nineteenth-century movement that examined society in the manner of a case study, looking at heredity, environment and social pressure in unsparing detail. His series Patologia Social, or Social Pathology, whose title says plainly what he was doing, opens with O Barão de Lavos and O Livro de Alda. The series treated social ills as conditions to be diagnosed, much as a physician studies an illness.
Amor Crioulo: vida argentina is among the books listed on this site under his name. Its subtitle, which means Argentine life, points to Argentina, the country where, according to the Portuguese Wikipedia article, he died. The book is a useful reminder that his interests reached well beyond Portugal.
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Books
Amor Crioulo: vida argentina
by Abel Acácio de Almeida Botelho
A novel of Argentine life by the Portuguese naturalist Abel Botelho, written while he served as a diplomat in Buenos Aires. It follows a love affair in the creole society of the city, whose manners, money and passions it observes closely.
Summary written by Claude Opus 5.5.