 Venezuelan writer Arturo Uslar-Pietri, who had known Bontempelli, wrote influential magic realist short stories in the 1930s and 40s that focused on the mystery and reality of how we live.Luis Leal attests that Pietri seemed to have been the first to adopt the term "realismo mágico" in Hispanic America in 1948.There is evidence that Mexican writer Elena Garro used the same term to describe the works of E. T. A. Hoffmann but dismissed her own work as a part of the genre.