The Castellanos Moya Paper Sphere, on the way to Tokyo
Roque Dalton was a tenacious man, committed to poetry and to the communism of the 60s and 70s that was so powerful in Latin America.
Roque Dalton (El Salvador, 1935-1975) was also
the body shot by his companions on charges of collaborating with the CIA
, which provoked a tide of indignation and protests.
Was the indictment known to be false?
“The one who gave the order was the then head of the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP),
Alejandro Rivas Mire
, he did know that they were false.
But it is said that Rivas was a triple agent, of the Castroites, the CIA and the Salvadoran army, you see the complexity.
If the material murderers knew that it was a betrayal, I do not know ", says Horacio Castellanos Moya, author of the legendary
Disgust: Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador
.
Now, the Salvadoran author releases
Roque Dalton: clandestine correspondence and other essays
(Random House Literature), the book that traces the trajectory of the revolutionary poet after discovering
16 of his letters written shortly before his death
.
“Officially they accused him of being a CIA agent, as he had already foreseen that it would happen.
He tells it in his posthumous novel,
Poor Poet That Was Me
(Ediciones Baile del Sol).
In 1964,
Dalton was kidnapped in San Salvador by the Army in a CIA-mounted operation
to make him a double agent.
Harold Swanson, then director of counterintelligence for the CIA's Office for the Western Hemisphere, traveled from Washington to San Salvador to personally question Dalton;
he could not convince him to collaborate and then
warned him that he would be defamed as a traitor
.
But Dalton escaped from jail.
That is what he narrates in his novel, "adds Castellanos Moya, who is a professor at the University of Iowa (USA).
The book in question provides fragments of letters that Horacio Castellanos Moya
found "by chance in the archives of the Dalton family
.
"
He was actually looking for the first version and notebooks of the last chapter of Pobrecito, which was published 16 months after his murder.
That chapter,
José.
The light of the tunnel
, tells (with that humor that sometimes arises from the tragedy) the 51 days of captivity in the hands of the Salvadoran army in 1964. Castellanos Moya did not find what he wanted but he did find a folder with 16 letters, some original and others carbon paper copies.
Dated between 1973 and 1975. They were addressed to his ex-wife Aída Cañas, his mother María García and Frank, Aída's new partner.
The author of
El asco
believes that, in light of the letters, Dalton (
with his face modified by the surgery performed by the same doctor who altered Che Guevara's face
) entered El Salvador clandestinely in early December 1973, and not later as believed.
The letters are in code and most are directed by Miguel (Dalton) to Ana (Aída Cañas, who lives in Cuba with the three children they had) and Mónica (actress Miriam Lezcano, with whom he had started a relationship).
In them he recounted the reasons for his separation
and how his already ex-wife continued to help him with his "editorial needs", among other issues.
"Don't forget to call the attic who owes us money," Dalton writes to Cañas.
«I asked you to copy the couple of materials that were left there:
My father
and
Miriam
.
Take a copy and have my lady bring it.
These are excerpts from the last letter he sent on January 5 (he was shot on May 10) indicating his desire to continue writing.
This literary interest, Castellanos Moya suspects, "means that
something was grating in his total dedication to political work
."
Castellanos also traces Dalton's relationship with his murderer, Rivas Mira.
«In all his letters
he refers to the head of the organization with respect and sympathy
;
It does not seem that there has been tension between them, but camaraderie.
On January 5, 1975, five months before Rivas Mira ordered his assassination, Dalton instructs Aída so that her mother, María, when she arrives in Havana, visits the chief's parents, with the latter's authorization: Luis R [Rivas Mira] sends you many greetings and tells you that you can take my wife to see her parents.
Castellanos Moya says of Dalton that he was a "
bohemian poet, radical polemicist, provocative drunk, womanizer, and torrential writer
."
But that man, prior to 1973, is left behind to become the companion nicknamed Julio, a man who decides to fight from underground.
His life had been marked by exiles (Mexico, Cuba), jails, escapes (Prague) and jobs as a journalist.
And with a curious origin: he was the only and illegitimate child of María García Medrano and the American Winnall Agustín Dalton, a native of Tucson (Arizona),
«who arrived in Central America after a risky journey through Mexico, after he and his brother the $ 25,000 that Pancho Villa would have given them for the purchase of weapons would be stolen
,
"
according to Castellanos Moya.
Roque Dalton bothered because he did not bend, because he
had a sense of humor that he dropped into the poem like a stone in a deep well
.
An uncomfortable humor that not only "appeals to irony, but to the mere joy of living", as Mario Benedetti wrote in the prologue to his Anthology (Visor).
Heretics are always annoying.
And he was always a heretic: first within communism and then within the guerrilla.
He was also a satirical poet, he knew how to ridicule the world around him.
He had a streak of Quevedo
, although he never recognized it.
He wrote some verses that portray him: I could never contain laughter. / I even think that the summary of my life could be that: / I could never contain laughter.
Or as he says in another part of his work: National glories are only useful to glorious countries.
In small countries they bother ”, says Castellanos Moya.
And he adds: «Those who knew him say that he was brilliant, audacious, ironic even mocking and a great polemicist.
In his obituary article, Julio Cortázar remembers him one night in Havana
arguing with Fidel Castro about the use of a machine gun.
Cortázar says that it was impressive how the imaginary machine gun was passed around in the heat of the discussion
».
Roque Dalton was very anchored in El Salvador, "one of the countries in America where the poor are poorer" and he lived "always besieged by violence" (according to Mario Benedetti).
He believed that life and literature were inseparable
.
The same man who received the Central American Poetry Prize in 1956, 1958 and 1959 and the Casa de las Américas in 1969 for Tabernas and other places and who could never imagine being shot by his co-religionists.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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