Roque Dalton was a Salvadoran poet and revolutionary activist who became one of the most influential voices in the continent during the great upheavals of the 1960s and 70s. Born in 1932, Roque Dalton became involved in literary work and activism while attending the University of San Salvador.
In 1956, Dalton joined the Communist Party of El Salvador during one of the country’s successive military dictatorships. He was arrested several times and barely escaped death when the regime of Colonel José MarÃa Lemus was overthrown on the eve of Dalton’s slated execution.
From 1961 to 1965, Dalton was in exile in Mexico and Cuba where he wrote poetry and was introduced to a number of exiled Latin American and Cuban writers. After returning to El Salvador in 1965, Dalton was again arrested, tortured, and slated once again for execution. Miraculously, he escaped prison when an earthquake destroyed the wall to his cell. He returned to Cuba and eventually to assignment in Prague, Czechoslovakia, as a correspondent for World Marxist Review: Problems of Peace & Socialism.
Dalton wrote eighteen volumes of poetry and prose and many political essays. His book Taberna y Otros Lugares (Tavern and Other Places), written during his years in Prague, won the Casa de Las Americas poetry prize in 1969 and garnered Dalton acclaim and respect throughout Latin America and the world. Other collections include La Ventana En El Rostro (The Window in My Face) and El Mar (The Sea). Ernesto Cardenal, the Nicaraguan poet and former minister of culture during the Sandinista revolution, called Roque Dalton “One of the greatest poets of Latin America. And one of the most original.� One of his most deeply political poetry collections is the posthumously published Poemas Clandestinas (Clandestine Poems), in which Dalton takes on the identity of five fictional poets to paint a picture of Salvadoran politics.
As a political activist, Dalton drifted away from the Communist Party and went on to found the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (People’s Revolutionary Army) (ERP) in 1972. The ERP was one of the five organizations that united to form the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) in 1980. The FMLN was the leading organization of political and armed resistance to the brutal fascist dictatorship in El Salvador during the 1980s. Today the FMLN is a single unified political party.
Roque Dalton never lived to see the formation of the FMLN. In 1975, a military faction of the ERP executed Dalton on false charges. He was 39 years old. However, his literary and political legacy lives on.
Como Tú (1975)
Por Roque Dalton
Yo como tú
amo el amor,
la vida,
el dulce encanto de las cosas
el paisaje celeste de los dÃas de enero.
También mi sangre bulle
y rÃo por los ojos
que han conocido el brote de las lágrimas.
Creo que el mundo es bello,
que la poesÃa es como el pan,
de todos.
Y que mis venas no terminan en mÃ,
sino en la sangre unánime
de los que luchan por la vida,
el amor,
las cosas,
el paisaje y el pan,
la poesÃa de todos.
Like You
By Roque Dalton
(Translated by Jack Hirschman)
Like you I
love love, life, the sweet smell
of things, the sky-blue
landscape of January days.
And my blood boils up
and I laugh through eyes
that have known the buds of tears.
I believe the world is beautiful
and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.
And that my veins don’t end in me
but in the unanimous blood
of those who struggle for life,
love,
little things,
landscape and bread,
the poetry of everyone.
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