During the 1970s, he held professorships at numerous universities in the Americas and served as literary adviser to the Ayacucho Library in Caracas.

The coup d'état of the Uruguayan government surprised him on June 27, 1973, while residing in Venezuela, so he lived in exile for the remainder of his life.

Rama went into exile to Caracas, Venezuela, where in addition to collaborating with the press and teaching courses, he worked as the Literary Director of the recently formed Ayacucho Library.

Three of his seminal works are Transculturacion narrativa en America Latina, La ciudad letrada and Las mascaras democraticas del modernismo.

The couple moved to Paris, where they were living in early 1983 when Traba was granted Colombian citizenship by President Belisario Betancur.