Natalio Botana

Natalio Félix Botana Miralles (Sarandí del Yí, September 8, 1888 – San Salvador de Jujuy, August 7, 1941), was an Uruguayan journalist and entrepreneur who founded the Argentine newspaper Crítica in 1913. Published until 1962, Crítica was the most widely circulated newspaper in Latin America.

Botana was a pioneer of sensationalist media in Argentina, and is considered one of the most influential personalities of the 20th century in that country.

Biography Botana was born into a family of landowners whose commercial activities were often affected by continued political wars that erupted between the country's political parties: White and Colorados.

When Botana arrived in Buenos Aires in 1911, he started to work in different newspapers until he was hired by La Razón, the main evening paper that sold 76,000 copies at the time.

Crìtica became a huge success, reaching its peak in the 1920s and 1930s, where increased its daily circulation from 9,000 to 30,000 copies. The newspaper then added a new edition and two supplements, one covering sports and another covering culture, named Crítica Magazine. Among the contributing writers were Raúl González Tuñón, Roberto Arlt, Jorge Luis Borges, Enrique González Tuñón, Carlos de la Púa, and Bernardo Verbitsky.

The basement of his house in Don Torcuato, a Buenos Aires suburb served in 1933 as the site for Plastic Exercise by exiled Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros. Argentine writer Ariel Magnus in El que mueve las piezas, tells a war novel where Botana lives with his grandfather. Spanish writer Elena Fortún (who had met Botana during her exile in Buenos Aires) inspired on Botana to the character "the doctor" of her book Celia Institutriz en América, published in 1944.