Facundo Viera Betancor

Facundo was born in rural Uruguay, two minutes before his brother Juan Cruz. Childhood and early adolescence were shared and intertwined, sheltered by a mother in love with life through her children and the land they lived on. At the age of ten, he moved to the capital with his mother and brother, following his father’s directive for expansion. He went through high school and much of university as an unpredictable person with a strong character. He chose to study economics.

He started reading when he was sad. A devotee of the classics more out of ego than genuine enjoyment, he found in literature a refuge for the mind that he had never known or imagined possible. Over time, he began to shape opinions that inevitably opposed his own field of study, guided by a nihilistic and depoliticized critique that had already set the path.

Disillusionment led him to devote most of his time and energy to reconnecting with the land. The rural landscape reclaimed him in his twenties, forging a poetic bond and smoothing the rough edges that had once been his necessary armor in the city.

Today, he writes from Barcelona when he feels that the revolution leaves him—and what he understands—behind, aiming to illuminate the necessary connection between the rural and the other, the meaning of being, and the freedom to be.

Facundo will be in residence at Can Serrat in May 2025.