I found an early South American evaluation of Lovecraft, in Chile’s newspaper La Nacion (‘The Nation’) for 8th July 1956, titled ‘Science-Fiction — a new form of literature’.

[Introduction, a little history, the early H.G. Wells, noting of Ray Bradbury’s then-recent work].

It is difficult to set limits between the literature of anticipation [of the future] or ‘scientific fiction’, and the traditional fantasy. For instance we cannot consider Lovecraft to be simply ‘science-fiction’ or fantasy literature. His central explanation of a universe of ‘n’ dimensions is of a scientific order, yet he has at the same time created a mythological universe, within which there can be human talk of demonology and teratology. A powerful visionary, Lovecraft moves in horror with astonishing force and is the creator of monsters, a great many monsters, that take us back to the era of primitive magic. He also gives us the keys to many other enchantments. Therefore, we do not have to resort to the arbitrariness of estimating and assigning [literary critical] values ​​because his work is in ‘this’ or ‘that’ genre — he is without borders.

We must all stop to appreciate, apart from those with a strict literary mind, this new literature which allows us to penetrate more deeply into the inner universe of man, where realities and myths, logical ideas and eccentric ideas coexist and attack each other. Where we encounter ancestral fears, dreams and traumas, passions and illusions, the angel and the beast. It seems there is everything in this new ‘science-fiction’.

In November 1957, the same newspaper published a translation of “The Terrible Old Man”. Possibly there are more to be found in the late 1950s, but Archive.org has just ingested a run of La Nacion and no others suggest themselves after a keyword search.