His articles were reprinted in others elsewhere in the Spanish-speaking world, as well as in weekly and monthly magazines. Plus, on occasion Darío worked as an editor himself for a periodical. This effort needs to be seen in context. Latin America was swept by a spirit of independence that had begun in 1810. Throughout the century, the nations of the continent strove to break away from Spain as an imperial power and to establish autonomous, self-sufficient nation-states all across the hemisphere. By the conclusion of the nineteenth century, a new bourgeoisie was on the rise in major urban centers on this side of the Atlantic, from Mexico to Peru to Argentina. This was also the period in which positivistic thinking penetrated the region, encouraging the educated classes to endorse science and technology as approaches that needed to replace the awkwardness of religion, which had prevailed as a system of thought throughout the colonial age. Modernity, then, arrived just as open markets and free thinking made inroads among the educated.

In substantial ways, the Modernista revolution was an intellectual modality that needs to be seen as intimately related to the consolidation of capitalism in Latin America. I hinted at this in the brief discussion of Darío’s short story “The Bourgeois King,” but in fact this socioeconomic aspect might be found in numerous places in his work, from Azul . . . through Los raros to El canto errante (The Wandering Song). Angel Rama, in his book Rubén Darío y el modernismo, disagrees with scholars who suggest that Modernismo was a reaction to capitalism. Instead, he suggests that it is a by-product of it. Rama analyzes Darío’s self-awareness as a dilettante, his view of the poet as a conduit expressing dissatisfaction with contemporary life, his faith in Catholicism as a way to satisfy humans’ ancient desire to communicate with the supernatural, and so on. One should also add to this Darío’s role as a journalist, the only way a Nicaraguan of humble means or background could support both his career as a poet and also his role as a diplomat, which enabled him to travel far and wide and gain exposure to aspects of Western civilization he would otherwise not have had access to. Indeed, at the time the average middle-class citizen of a Central American country never even dreamed of traveling within the region, let alone abroad. In that sense, Darío, thus, is a rara avis: year by year, most of his life was spent overseas. Guatemala, Chile, Spain, and France were important destinations, and for a while became homes, too; and Darío also traveled to Gibraltar and Morocco, Italy, Cuba, and Mexico, where, by the way, he participated, in 1910, in the hundredth anniversary commemoration of El Grito de Dolores, the battle-cry for independence.

Did Darío ever consider his roles as journalist and diplomat as important as that of poet? No, he never did. He was a poet first and foremost. None of his diplomatic work left any imprint. Actually, he often convinced friends and acquaintances to name him to a post for no other reason than to be far away from Nicaragua. As a journalist, on the other hand, he was unquestionably prolific as well as influential. Darío was active at a time when the perceptions of journalism were already being differentiated between the European model and its counterpart in the United States. In the Old Continent the view was that newspapers offered the facts with little embellishment: the duty of reporters was to be succinct in conveying the news. But on this side of the Atlantic, and especially in Latin America, the approach was to mix journalism and literature, to entertain as well as to inform. It is easy to see where Darío’s sympathies fell. He wrote: “Today, and always, ‘journalists’ and ‘writers’ must of necessity be confused with one another. Most essayists are journalists. Montaigne and de Maistre are journalists in the broad sense of the word.