The "Edgar Allen Poe of Latin American short story writers" is Horacio Quiroga (1878-1937), a Uruguayan.   He was greatly influenced by Poe, as can be seen in one of Quiroga's most famous works, Cuentos de amor, de locura y de muerte (1917) -Stories of Love, Madness, and Death .   Out of Quiroga's many years spent in the Argentinian jungles came his famous story, Anaconda, published in 1921.   He was also influenced by Rudyard Kipling, as may be seen in a collection of lovely stories Quiroga wrote  for children, Cuentos de la selva para niños (1918) - Jungle Stories for Children.  Quiroga's themes were madness, the abnormal, and death---pitiless, inevitable death.  His story, El hombre muerto (The Dead Man) is illustrative.     Quiroga's tales were translated into English and published under the title The Decapitated Chicken and other stories.      

If this hombre is  half as good as Poe I'm going to check him out!

Quiroga's books are impossible to get here at PBS.  I have wish listed Decapitated Chicken.

Interestingly, Jungle Stories  sells at Amazon for as much as $210 dollars.\

At any rate, I look forward to getting my hands on Quiroga's work............eventually.

I'm going to live in Uruguay in the Spring, and I'll be there for about a year. Thanks for the info, and if I can find his works there, I'll be sure to bring them back to share here.

That is very kind of you, Nicole.   Maybe you will be able to find some of the works I wrote about,  in English translations.  But maybe not----wonder if Tome Trader can read in Spanish?   Uruguay is 'next door' to Argentina, so you might hear about writers such as Borges, Cortázar, etc., and the two dictators----the mid-19th century one Juan Manuel Rosas, and the 20th century one, Juan Peron.  The first thing General Rosas did, after he took charge in the 1840s in Buenos Aires, was to get rid of the writers and intellectuals.  They got out, but they only went over to Montevideo, and managed to print their anti-Rosas pamphlets there and smuggle 'em back into Argentina.  It was one BLOODY dictatorship, while it lasted.  A famous film, entitled "Camilla" is about the tragic love story of an upper-class young woman (a "Porteña") and a handsome Catholic priest, who were among the resisters of Rosas.  Ask almost any older person you meet down there, and they will tell you about it. 

No puedo leo espanol muy bien.  Yo puedo digo y leo las phrases basicas solamente

I can't read Spanish very well.  I can say and read the basic phrases only.

But after typing this out and checking a translater I am thinking maybe I should sign up for some Spanish classes as I discovered I know more than I thought.