Roque Dalton was a poet, essayist, storyteller, dramatist, journalist and Salvadoran revolutionary who was born on May 14, 1935 in Quezaltepeque, San Salvador.
Dalton began his studies in some religious schools then joined the Externado San José, where in 1953 he obtained the degree of Bachelor. He completed his higher studies in Mexico and Chile, but it would end up returning to El Salvador to conclude them.
From a very young was devoted to journalism and literature, participating in national and Central American competitions where he earned honors. His first poems published in the journal sheet and Diario Latino. He was one of the participants of the renovation of Latin American poetry of the 1960’s.
He was member of the circle literary University together with Otto René Castillo, Manlio Argueta, Roberto Armijo and Alfonso Quijada, among others, got three times the Central American Prize for poetry and the Casa de las Américas Prize by Tavern and other places, considered to be his best book of poems.
Roque Dalton joined the Salvadoran Communist Party at the age of 22. Interestingly his literary activity runs parallel to revolutionary militancy and at the same time the recognition of their worth as a writer matches first imprisonment and exiles in Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Korea and Viet Nam in the North and elsewhere.
He later became the founder of the army revolutionary del Pueblo (ERP), an important base for what would later become the Salvadoran guerrillas.
He was murdered on 10 May 1975, by his own comrades of that organization had been founded.
Works of Roque Dalton
- Mía junto a los pájaros (poesía, 1957)
- La ventana en el rostro (poesía, 1962)
- El turno del ofendido (poésía, 1962)
El mar. Variaciones (poesía, 1962) - El Salvador (monografía, 1963)
- César Vallejo (1963)
- Los testimonios (poesía, 1964)
- Taberna y otros lugares (1969)
- Miguel Mármol. Los sucesos de 1932 en El Salvador (testimonio, 1972)
- Pobrecito poeta que era yo… (novela, 1975)
- Poemas clandestinos, El Salvador, 1975 (poesía, 1980)
- Las historias prohibidas del Pulgarcito (1974)
- Un libro levemente odioso (1988)
- Un libro rojo para Lenin (1986)
- Últimos poemas (2005)
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