Latin American literature

As the result of a boom in novel writing during the 1960s, Latin American literature finally
captured world attention in the second half of the 20th century. Latin American novels, quickly
translated into the major Western languages, caught the attention of critics and public alike both
for the originality of their topics--all part of the present reality of Latin America--and for their
rich, innovative styles. Despite earlier acknowledgement that Latin America had a substantial
literary output, it took the "novels of the boom" to demonstrate that Latin American works were
more than simply regional products and that many, in fact, altered the course of world literature.
Native and Early Colonial Writings
Except for the romances of chivalry they knew so well, and, to a lesser extent, the Bible, the
Europeans who first came to Latin America in the 15th and 16th centuries had no literary models
on which to base descriptions of what they found. Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci
therefore described Latin America in terms of the literature they were familiar with. The
chronicles of the first conquerors and colonizers likewise contain accounts of feats of courage
and bouts of despair that are half-real, half-imagined in the light of the books they had read at
home. The land and its inhabitants were often described in idealized terms that suggested the
influence of the popular European notion of the noble savage. In practice, however, the natives
were enslaved through excessive labor, and their cultures desecrated.
The degree of civilization represented by the indigenous tribes living in the New World varied
widely. Some examples of the great Maya, Inca, and Aztec civilizations were preserved thanks to
the efforts of sympathetic friars. The Maya sacred book Popol Vuh (Eng. trans., 1950),
containing their philosophy, cosmology, and history, is an example of this extraordinary culture.
The Franciscan Fray Bernardino de Sahagun (c.1500-90) wrote a history of New Spain, as
Mexico was then called, basing his observations on material in Nahuatl, the language of the
Aztecs; and a mestizo from the viceroyalty of Peru, Garcilaso Inca de la Vega, wrote his Royal
Commentaries (1609-17; Eng. trans., 1869-71) to record life in pre-Columbian Peru as well as
the conquest and civil wars that followed.
Most Latin American literature in the 16th and 17th centuries attempted to describe the newly
conquered lands for the European reader. Writers wavered between awestruck amazement and
hyperbolic language when describing the exotic birds, the vibrant hues of tropical plants, the
strange inhabitants, and their rites and temples; at the same time, they recorded and sometimes
enhanced their own major feat, the conquest. Perhaps the most engrossing account of this event
is given by Bernal Diaz del Castillo (c.1492-1584) in his The True Story of the Conquest of
Mexico (1632; Eng. trans., 1956). This amazing chronicle vividly recalls the adventures of the
author as a young soldier in the army of Cortes. The writer's memory is prodigious, his writing
lively and unencumbered by erudite pretentions.
Although the largest number of works dealt with the conquest as a feat of courage and faith,
critics of the enterprise were not lacking. Fray Bartolome de LAS CASAS, the most
distinguished and successful critic, in his Brevisima relacion de la destruccion de las Indias

(1552; trans. 1953 as The Tears of the Indians) indicted the Spanish crown and its representatives
for their maltreatment and eventual decimation of the native population. His advocacy prompted
the king in Madrid to issue ordinances to temper the abuses perpetrated against the Indians.
Once colonization ended, picaresque accounts of travel and adventure, such as that written in
1690 by the Mexican Carlos de SIGUENZA Y GONGORA, began to flourish. At the most
sumptuous viceregal courts, in Mexico and Lima, baroque verse came into fashion, in imitation
of the style then in vogue at the Spanish court.
A Mexican nun, Sor JUANA INES DE LA CRUZ, became well known as the "tenth muse" at the
Mexican court for her dramatic pieces, poetry, and sophisticated scientific and philosophical
writings. She is considered the most important literary figure of the Spanish colonial era.
The Literature of Independence
The 18th century and the beginning of the 19th saw the stirrings of a new pride among Latin
Americans as independence approached. Most men of letters were by now members of the creole
group, that is, descendants of Europeans born in the New World, with an allegiance to and sense
of pride in their native land rather than Spain. In 1810 independence was declared in Venezuela,
Mexico, and Buenos Aires. Not until the 1820s, however, did most of the continent free itself
from Spanish rule. With autonomy a variety of national literatures emerged, and attention was
focused on both the land and the Indian, mulatto, or mestizo as its native inhabitant. Poets,
realizing at this point that they had to establish their cultural identity, set out to do so by
addressing themselves to the battles and heroes of independence, La Victoria de Junin: a Bolivar
(The Victory of Junin: Hymn to Bolivar, 1825) of Jose Joaquin Olmedo (1790-1847) being the
best-known example.
The Indian was the exalted topic of the poem La Cautiva (The Captive, 1837) by Esteban
ECHEVERRIA and of the collection of poems called En el Teocalli de Cholula (On the Pyramid
of Cholula, 1820) by Jose Maria Heredia (1803-39). Andres BELLO and, from a different point
of view, Domingo Faustino SARMIENTO both grappled with the problem of creating a grammar
for the Spanish used in the New World; both also wrote works of description of the land, whereas
Sarmiento alone, in his study of the native leader Juan Facundo Quiroga, attacked caudillismo
(military dictatorship). It is at this point that barbarism and civilization come to be identified as
coexisting and contending forces in Latin American life. To secure the victory of the latter was
the task most writers set themselves; at the same time, they evoked with a certain nostalgia the
life of the gaucho and of the country dweller that was soon to disappear. The greatest work in this
tradition, the epic Martin Fierro (1872) by Jose Hernandez, became the national poem of
Argentina.
Modernism
The last decade of the 19th century saw the emergence of a specifically Latin American literary
movement, modernism. More directly affecting poetry, but involving prose fiction as well, this
literary school was responsible for remarkable poetic innovation in both form and concept. Its

main exponent was the Nicaraguan Ruben DARIO. Steeped in the French poetic tradition and in
traditional Spanish verse as well, Dario managed to bring to Spanish verse a flexibility that was
based on new combinations of sounds, kinesthesia, and evocation of moods, rather than on a
direct expression of feelings. He also popularized the idea of Latin America as constituting one
homeland, having himself lived in several sister nations as well as in Paris and Spain. Dario thus
embodied both a universalization of formal innovations and a passion for the realities of Latin
America's past and future. His predecessor, the Cuban Jose MARTI, had introduced these two
concerns while actively participating in the struggle to liberate his native land.
Literature of the Land and of the Mexican Revolution
At the start of the 20th century the so-called novel of the land emerged; this undertook to
describe without any romantic idealization the land and its peoples and the ways of life that were
specific to the geographic conditions in which they lived. The gaucho in the pampas, the peon on
the rubber plantation or in the sugarcane fields, the rancher of the Venezuelan plains, the Indian
in his Andean hut--each was the subject of novels that appeared in the first decades of the 20th
century: Raza de bronce (A Race of Bronze, 1919) by Alcides ARGUEDAS of Bolivia; Don
Segundo Sombra (1926; trans. as Shadows on the Pampas, 1935) by Ricardo GUIRALDES of
Argentina; Dona Barbara (1929; Eng. trans., 1931) by Romulo GALLEGOS of Venezuela; The
Vortex (1924; Eng. trans., 1935) by Jose Eustasio Rivera of Colombia; Huasipungo (1934; Eng.
trans., 1962) by Jorge ICAZA of Ecuador; and stories of the jungle by Horacio Quiroga of
Argentina.
At the same time, the Mexican Revolution received its own treatment both in poetry and in a
series of novels that appeared during and after the conflict. The most famous novel was The
Underdogs (1915; Eng. trans., 1929) by Mariano AZUELA. The author had fought in support of
Madero, and his fictional work records the rise and fall of a peasant fighter for whom the
Mexican Revolution (1910-20) brings only suffering and devastation. Unlike the romantic
writers, the novelists of the land no longer stood in awe of the Latin American landscape. They
began to perceive that injustice was the prevailing order, that it had not disappeared with the
coming of political independence. Their not-so-new social institutions, combined with what had
been accepted unquestioningly in the previous century as the beneficent influence of European
thought, began to seem inadequate to the American reality--so different, varied, untamed, and
underdeveloped. These novelists, while at times despairing of ever improving the lot of the
downtrodden--even by violent, revolutionary means--ultimately stressed the innate purity of the
people of the land, as revealed, for instance, by the peasant fighter in The Underdogs and by the
Indian characters in Icaza's works. Even Shadows on the Pampas, produced by a writer refined in
the Parisian manner, suggests that spiritual renewal is to be found in the land rather than in the
salons.
The Brazilian Modernists
At the start of the 20th century the Brazilian modernist movement, centered on Sao Paulo, also
began to achieve a similar cultural independence through different means. Brazil had gone
through the same stages of development as the rest of Latin America, but its political and cultural

independence came more gradually. The first emperor of Brazil, Pedro I, was a legitimate
member of the royal Portuguese dynasty. Although he declared Brazil's independence from
Portugal in 1822, the country remained under imperial rule and the dominance of the court in Rio
de Janeiro until 1889.
With Brazil thus tied to Portuguese culture, Brazilian writers only little by little assumed
responsibility for giving expression to their own landscape and ethnic mix of peoples. The
presence of large numbers of former slaves added a distinctive African character to the culture;
and subsequent infusions of immigrants of non-Portuguese origin helped the new nation to find
its own voice and to use it.
Early in the century the novels of Joaquim Maria MACHADO DE ASSIS, such as Dom
Casmurro (1899; Eng. trans., 1953), of Graca Aranna (1868-1931), and of Euclydes da Cunha
(1866-1909) took stock of both urban and rural Brazilian life. About 1922 the modernist group
(unrelated to the Spanish-language modernists of the 1890s) broke totally with this past,
declaring themselves representatives of a new vanguard, and in numerous magazines and small
publications experimented with verse and prose. A great deal of editorial and dramatic activity
spread to areas remote from the coast, thus helping to upgrade the cultural validity of regions
other than the largest urban centers. In the past the states of both Bahia and Minas Gerais had
fostered active but relatively short-lived literary movements. Mario de ANDRADE was the
foremost exponent of the modernist group.
Recent Latin American Literature
Brazil has given birth to a number of avant-garde schools since modernism, the best known of
which is CONCRETE POETRY, and both poetry and prose fiction have continued to develop
under local and European influence. Some of the best-known Brazilian authors of recent decades
include Jorge AMADO, Erico VERISSIMO, Oswald de Andrade (1890-1954), Clarice Lispector
(1925-77), Joao Guimares Rosa (1908-67), and Raquel de Queiros in prose; and Carlos
Drummond de Andrade, Joao Cabral de Melo Neto, Vinicius de Moraes (1913-80), and Jorge de
Lima (1893-1953) in poetry.
Puerto Rican literature, particularly in response to nationalist and racial concerns, has come into
its own only within recent decades. A vibrant indigenous theater movement has been
distinguished by the work of Emilio Belaval, Manuel Mendez Ballester, Francisco Arrivi, and
Rene Marques (1919-79)--the last known especially for his play The Oxcart (1951; Eng. trans.,
1960). Enrique Laguerre and Pedro Juan Soto have dominated the field of fiction. In poetry, Luis
Pales Matos (1898-1959) pioneered with the theme of "primitivism" versus the cultural
imperialism of "civilization."
In the rest of Latin America it is safe to say that contemporary prose ranks ahead of poetry in its
general quality, particularly in view of the success many authors have had in experimenting with
techniques introduced by French novelists and literary critics, such as the "new novel," and with
the innovations of such U.S. writers as Faulkner--while retaining a very personal style and a
distinctly Latin American voice. Novelists or short-story writers in this vein include Carlos

FUENTES and Juan Rulfo of Mexico; Alejo CARPENTIER of Cuba; Jorge Luis BORGES, Julio
CORTAZAR, and Manuel Puig of Argentina; Juan Carlos Onetti of Uruguay; Gabriel GARCIA
MARQUEZ of Colombia; Mario VARGAS LLOSA and Jose Maria Arguedas (1911-69) of Peru;
and Jose DONOSO of Chile. These writers, who are responsible for the boom of the 1960s, have
finally managed to fuse the persistent need for self-definition with the need for modernity and
universality. Although they have relinquished none of their Latin American specificity, they have
expressed themselves in terms that were equally accessible to the much wider audience that is
drawn from contemporary Europe and North America.
Many of their novels incorporate painful reassessments of the nation's immediate past as well as
suggestions for new courses of action. These range from the creation of a new Latin-Americanwide consciousness, which would thus obviate the need for European models, to a return to an
almost apocryphal native past. At every turn of history, with every successful choice or error,
Latin Americans have evolved their own particular sense of history, and writers have assumed an
especially active role in forming this consciousness. The famous Canto General (1950) of Pablo
NERUDA, for instance, is a summa of all Latin America: its land, its history, and its peoples.
Cesar VALLEJO in his poetry grieves for all the Christs of the continent; Nicanor Parra mocks
the banality of ordinary experience; and Ernesto Cardenal exhorts Latin Americans to union and
activism in the original Christian sense of setting all people free. Nicolas GUILLEN is the poet
who most successfully celebrates the infusion of African blood into the Hispanic cultural
mainstream. Octavio PAZ, who has written lyric, surrealist, and even concrete poetry, remains
the best-known exemplar of the cosmopolitan tradition.
Persecution and Exile
If Latin American writers have never been far from the historical events that shaped their lives
and have borne witness to these in print, they have also had to bear the brunt of political
persecution. From colonial times--when many Brazilian poets were banished to Angola--through
independence--when many writers had to flee their countries--the price for writing about Latin
American reality, as they saw it, has often been exile. Again today many younger Latin American
writers are far from the source of their language and of their concerns, yet busily writing about
both.
Marta Morello-Frosch
Bibliography: Arceniegas, G., Latin America: A Cultural History (1966); Bacarisse, S.,
Contemporary Latin American Fiction (1980); Bhalla, A., ed., Latin American Literature: A
Bibliography (1987); Correa, R., and Reginald, R., eds., Quetzalcoatl and Co.: Essays on the
Latin-American Magic Realists (1992); Foster, D. W., Handbook of Latin American Literature
(1987); Fuentes, C., et al., Latin American Fiction Today: A Symposium (1980); Kadir, Djelal,
Questing Fictions: Latin America's Family Romance (1986); Lewis, M. A., Afro-Hispanic Poetry,
1940-1980 (1984); Lindstrom, N., Woman's Voice in Latin American Literature (1987); Luby, B.
J., and Finke, W. H., eds., Anthology of Contemporary Latin American Literature, 1960-84
(1986); Manguel, A., ed., Other Fires: Short Stories by Latin American Women (1986); Martin,
G., Journeys Through the Labyrinth: Latin-American Fiction in the 20th Century (1989);

Monegal, Emir R., ed., The Borzoi Anthology of Latin American Literature, 2 vols. (1977);
Preuss, M. H., ed., Past, Present, and Future: Selected Papers on Latin-American Indian
Literature (1991); Taylor, Diana, Theatre of Crisis: Drama and Politics in Latin America (1991);
Torres-Rioseco, Arturo, New World Literature: Tradition and Revolt in Latin America (1949;
repr. 1983).
Carpentier, Alejo
{kar-pen-tee-ayr', ah-lay'-hoh}
Alejo Carpentier, b. Havana, Cuba, Dec. 26, 1904, d. Apr. 24, 1980, was a writer whose work
explores the nature of Latin American culture and reality. After editing several magazines, he
founded the review Revista de Avance (1927), which led to his imprisonment as an alleged
Communist and, from 1928 to 1939, to his self-imposed exile from Cuba. Most of Carpentier's
novels were published abroad. They include The Kingdom of This World (1949; Eng. trans.,
1957), The Lost Steps (1953; Eng. trans., 1956), The War of Time (1958; Eng. trans., 1970),
Explosion in a Cathedral (1962; Eng. trans., 1963), and Reasons of State (1974; Eng. trans.,
1976).
Carpentier lived (1945-59) in Venezuela and Mexico. After the Cuban Revolution he returned to
Havana and became assistant director of the new Office of Culture. From 1966 to 1974 he was
cultural attache to the Cuban embassy in Paris. His novels twice won French literary awards.
Bibliography: Gonzalez Echevarria, Roberto, Alejo Carpentier: The Pilgrim at Home (1977);
Janny, F., Alejo Carpentier and His Early Works (1981); Shaw, D. L., Alejo Carpentier (1985).
Borges, Jorge Luis
{bohr'-hays, hor'-hay loo'-ees}
Jorge Luis Borges, b. Aug. 24, 1899, d. June 14, 1986, was an important figure in Argentine
literature and one of the major contemporary writers in world fiction. In 1961 he shared with
Samuel Beckett the Formentor Prize (International Publishers Prize), and after that became an
influential force in European and American letters.
Borges' ancestors fought in the Argentine wars for independence, and his grandmother was
British. He grew up speaking and reading both Spanish and English. In 1914 his family moved to
Europe, and until 1919, Borges went to school in Geneva, where he learned French, German, and
Latin. Before returning to Argentina in 1921, he spent two years in Spain and began writing his
highly experimental first poems.
Back in Argentina Borges and a group of friends interested in avant-garde poetry initiated a
literary movement known as Ultraismo and began publishing the journal Proa. His first book of

poetry, Fervor of Buenos Aires (1923; Eng. trans., 1972), has as its central theme the rediscovery
of his own city, Buenos Aires. Other collections of poems followed, including Luna de enfrente
(1925). Borges gradually abandoned his early experiments and cultivated more traditional forms,
notably the sonnet, which he polished to perfection. His poems about his country, his city, his
ancestors, and his favorite books and authors achieve an intense lyricism and a rare intimacy.
In 1938, Borges began working as a librarian in a modest library in suburban Buenos Aires. In
1955 he was appointed director of the National Library in the same city. He made his first trip to
the United States in 1961, at the invitation of the University of Texas, where he lectured and gave
courses on Argentine literature. In 1967, Harvard University invited him to return to the United
States as Norton Professor of Poetry.
Despite his great accomplishments as a poet, the international reputation Borges enjoys today
rests on his short stories. In his first collection, A Universal History of Infamy (1935; Eng. trans.,
1972), he reworked old plots and developed some of the main features of his concise style. With
FICCIONES (1944; Eng. trans., 1962) he established himself as a skilled artist of the genre. His
next collection, The Aleph (1949; Eng. trans., 1970), further developed the themes and stylistic
traits of the first two. With Dreamtigers (1960; Eng. trans., 1962) and The Book of Imaginary
Beings (1957, 1967; Eng. trans., 1969), he further developed the terseness and transparency of
his prose. Borges believed that philosophy and theology are no less fantastic than fiction itself.
Sometimes he centered his plots on philosophical and theological arguments, shedding new light
on the limitations of human culture.
After Borges became blind in the late 1950s, he composed his poems by memorizing and then
dictating them. His subsequent short stories lost the powerful quality of the first collections and
became more straightforward, as in Doctor Brodie's Report (1970; Eng. trans., 1972) and The
Book of Sand (1975; Eng. trans., 1977). Translated stories and other selected writings appear in
Labyrinths (1962; rev. ed., 1970). Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi (1942; Eng. trans., 1981),
is a collection of detective-story parodies written by Borges and his long-time collaborator
Adolfo Bioy-Cesares.
Jaime Alazraki
Bibliography: Alazraki, Jaime, Jorge Luis Borges (1971); Barnstone, Willis, ed., Borges at 80:
Conversations (1982); Bell-Villada, Gene H., Borges and His Fiction (1981); Borges, Jorge Luis,
"An Autobiographical Essay," in The Aleph and Other Stories (1970); Christ, Ronald J., The
Narrow Act: Borges' Art of Illusion (1969); Dunham, Lowell, and Ivask, Ivar, The Cardinal
Points of Borges (1972); Newman, Charles, ed., Prose for Borges (1974).
Ficciones
{feek-see-oh'-nes}
Ficciones (1944; Eng. trans., 1962) is, with The Aleph (1949; Eng. trans., 1970), the most
important collection of short stories by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis BORGES. Because

Borges believes that philosophy and theology are superior forms of fiction, his major themes are
often derived from metaphysical arguments. Sometimes Borges rewrites old stories, but they are
always given a masterly twist that transform them into new and highly original pieces. In the
frequently used image of the labyrinth, he expresses the idea that, for humans, the world is chaos
and that all attempts to solve God's maze are therefore bound to fail.
Jaime Alazraki
Bibliography: Lusky-Friedman, M., The Emperor's Kites (1987); Shaw, Donald Leslie, Borges:
"Ficciones" (1976).
Cortazar, Julio
{kohr-tah'-zar, hool'-ee-oh}
The Argentine writer Julio Cortazar, b. Aug. 26, 1914, d. Feb. 12, 1984, was a leading figure in
Latin American letters, known for short stories that are tinged with irony and border on the
fantastic. Rayuela (1963; Hopscotch, in English translation, 1966) has been described as one of
the most important novels of this century. Cortazar grew up in Buenos Aires and taught French
literature at the University of Cuyo. He was jailed briefly for political activities under the Peron
regime and in 1952 left Argentina for Paris, where he worked as a free-lance interpreter for
UNESCO.
Most of Cortazar's novels are concerned with the intangibles of human life and the problems of
humanity in contemporary times. An equally superb short-story writer, he often used fantasy and
surrealism to depict the realities buried under the habits of daily life. Cortazar's first collection
of short stories, Bestiario (1951), established him as an unusually talented writer. His other
collections of short fiction include End of the Game (1956; Eng. trans. 1967), Chronopios and
Famas (1962; Eng. trans. 1969), We Love Glenda So Much (1981; Eng. trans. 1983), and All
Fires the Fire (1966; Eng. trans. 1988). In addition to Rayuela, Cortazar's other novels include
The Winners (1960; Eng. trans. 1965), 62: A Model Kit (1968; Eng. trans. 1972), and A
Certain Lucas (1979; Eng. trans. 1984).
Jaime Alazraki
Bibliography: Alazraki, Jaime, and Ivask, Ivar, eds., The Final Island: The Fiction of Julio
Cortazar (1978).
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel
{gahr-see'-ah mahr'-kays, gah-bree-el'}
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, b. Mar. 6, 1928, is a major Colombian novelist and short-story writer
who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982. His masterpiece, One Hundred Years of
Solitude (1967; Eng. trans., 1970), is a family saga that mirrors the history of Colombia. Like

many of his works, it is set in the fictional town of Macondo, a place much like Garcia
Marquez's native Aracataca. Mixing realism and fantasy, the novel is both the story of the decay
of the town and an ironic epic of human experience.
Garcia Marquez began his career as a reporter for El Espectador, for which he wrote (1955) a
series of articles exposing the facts behind a Colombian naval disaster. These articles won him
fame and were published in book form as Relato de un naufrago (The Account of a Shipwrecked
Person, 1970).
Garcia Marquez's novel The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975; Eng. trans., 1976) again explores the
theme of decay, this time by depicting with typical exaggeration and ironic humor the barbarism,
squalor, and corruption that prevail during the reign of a Latin American military dictator. Other
works include three collections of short stories (No One Writes to the Colonel, Eng. trans., 1968;
Leaf Storm, Eng. trans., 1972; and Innocent Erendira, Eng. trans., 1978), the novel In Evil
Hour (1968; Eng. trans., 1979), the novella Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981; Eng. trans.,
1983), and the novel Love in the Time of Cholera (Eng. trans. 1988).
Bibliography: Janes, R., Gabriel Garcia Marquez:
McMurray, G. R., Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1977).

Revolutions in Wonderland (1981);

Vargas Llosa, Mario

{vahr'-gahs yoh'-sah}
The novels of the major Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, b. Mar. 28, 1936, contain a
mercilessly penetrating view of Peruvian society. Vargas's first collection of short stories, Los
jefes (The Chiefs, 1958), won the Leopoldo Alas prize, but it was such novels as The Time of the
Hero (1962; Eng. trans., 1966), Conversation in the Cathedral (1969; Eng. trans., 1975), Captain
Pantoja and the Special Service (1973; Eng. trans., 1978), The War of the End of the World
(1981; Eng. trans., 1984), set in Brazil, and The Storyteller (1987; Eng. trans., 1989) that brought
international recognition. In 1990, Vargas Llosa ran unsuccessfully for president of Peru. He
discusses his craft in A Writer's Reality (1991).
Keith Ellis
Bibliography: Castro-Klaren, S., Understanding Mario Vargas Llosa (1990); Williams, R. L.,
Mario Vargas Llosa (1987).
Neruda, Pablo
{nay-roo'-dah}
Pablo Neruda, b. Parral, Chile, July 12, 1904, d. Sept. 23, 1973, is one of the greatest SpanishAmerican poets of this century and one of the few to achieve worldwide recognition. His works

have been translated into most modern languages, and he has received numerous honors and
awards, including the Lenin Prize for Peace (1953) and the Nobel Prize for literature (1971).
Born Ricardo Eliezer Neftali Reyes y Basoalto, he grew up in Temuco, a southern region whose
wilderness he would evoke constantly in his poetry. While in high school, he became interested
in anarchism and began using the pen name of Pablo Neruda, for the 19th-century Czech poet
Jan Neruda. The name was legalized in 1946.
In 1921, Neruda went to Santiago, the capital, to study French at the Pedagogical Institute of the
University of Chile. There he led a bohemian life and dedicated himself to poetry at the expense
of his studies, which he never finished. He won first prize in a literary contest in 1921, and 3
years later published Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924; Eng. trans., 1969), a
romantically tormented book that was to remain his most popular work.
Following a long-standing Latin American tradition, the promising young poet was rewarded
with consular positions, first in southern Asia (1927-32) and later in Latin America and Europe.
While in Asia, he wrote his powerful if enigmatic Residence on Earth (1933; Eng. trans., 1946),
in which, under the influence of surrealism, he sang of anguish and solitude in an intensely
personal style.
During the Spanish Civil War, Neruda sided with the Republican cause, to which he devoted
considerable effort. Thenceforth, Neruda was no longer the hermetic poet of solitude but--as he
put it--the accessible "poet of enslaved humanity." His socialist beliefs are reflected in Tercera
residencia (Third Residence, 1947) and Canto general (General Song, 1950), a great epic poem
of the Americas. His political involvement led him to a seat in the Chilean Senate (1945-48) and
also to exile (1948-52).
Neruda told the rich story of his life in five volumes of verse (Memorial de Isla Negra, 1964) and
in a volume of prose, published posthumously, Confieso que he vivedo (I Confess that I Have
Lived, 1974). He was a prolific writer and continued to work almost up until the time of his
death. He died only a few days after the death of his friend, President Salvador Allende, during
the 1973 military takeover of the Chilean government.
Gerardo Luzuriaga
Bibliography: Agosin, Marjorie, Pablo Neruda (1986); Bizzaro, Salvatore, Pablo Neruda
(1979); DeCosta, Rene, The Poetry of Pablo Neruda (1979); Neruda, Pablo, Memoirs, trans. by
Hardie St. Martin (1977); Riess, Frank, The Word and the Stone (1972).
Vallejo, Cesar
The Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo, b. Mar. 16, 1892, d. Apr. 15, 1938, focused on the theme of
human suffering in the modernist poems of his first book, Los heraldos negros (The Black
Heralds, 1918). In the more daring poems of Trilce (1922), with their unconventional grammar,

dislocated syntax, and interior monologue, he related the impotence and isolation of people
victimized by inexplicable forces. Born of Indian and white parentage in a rural section of Peru,
Vallejo knew firsthand the plight of the underprivileged. In November 1920 he was imprisoned
for 3 months for allegedly provoking a riot. After moving to Paris in 1923, he devoted much of
his energy to supporting Marxism and, later, the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War.
Vallejo's Human Poems (1939; Eng. trans., 1968), his last book of poetry, expresses in more
direct language than that of Trilce his solidarity with all victims of injustice.
Keith Ellis
Bibliography: Franco, Jean, Cesar Vallejo: The Dialectics of Poetry and Silence (1976).
Guillen, Nicolas
Nicolas Guillen, b. July 10, 1902, d. July 16, 1989, was known as Cuba's national poet. His
first published book of poems, Motivos de son (Motifs of Sound, 1930), revealed his concern
over the difficult conditions endured by Cuba's black population and his ability to incorporate
elements of Cuban popular culture into his poetry. Subsequent books of poetry showed a
broadening sociopolitical vision. Guillen served as a deputy in the People's Assembly and in
1961 became president of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba. His complete
poetry, the two-volume Obra Poetica 1920-1972, appeared in 1974. In 1972, Man-Making
Words was published in English. Other major works in translation include Tengo (1964; Eng.
trans., 1974), El gran zoo (1967); Patria o Muerte: The Great Zoo and Other Poems, 1972), and
The Daily Daily (1972; Eng. trans., 1989), a cultural and literary history of Cuba.
Keith Ellis
Bibliography: Guillen, Nicholas, Man-Making Words: Selected Poems of Nicholas Guillen,
trans. by R. Marquez and D. A. McMurray (1972).
Paz, Octavio
{pahs}
Winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for literature, Mexican poet, essayist, and literary critic Octavio
Paz, b. Mar. 31, 1914, has also served as a diplomat. Although his earliest collection of verse,
Luna silvestre (Wild Moon, 1933) is characterized by lyric simplicity, his mature poetry, which
shows the influence of the French surrealists in its emphasis on unusual juxtapositions and
frequent use of taut metaphors, explores the themes of erotic love, solitude, and the essence of
poetic expression. Important verse collections include Early Poems, 1935-55 (1973), Sun Stone
(1957; Eng. trans., 1963), and Collected Poems, 1957-87 (1987). Paz is particularly known for
his essays on the Mexican character in the Labyrinth of Solitude (1950; Eng. trans., 1962).
Other essays are in Conjunctions and Disjunctions (1982) and Convergences (1987).
Edward Mullen

Bibliography: Chiles, Frances, Octavio Paz (1987); Fein, John M., Toward Octavio Paz: A
Reading of His Major Poems (1986); Chandikian, K., ed., Octavio Paz (1981); Wilson, J.,
Octavio Paz (1979).