Roque Dalton

An old killing has come back to haunt the government of President Mauricio Funes, scarcely a year after he took office as El Salvador's first leftist leader. Roque Dalton, the nation's most famous poet, was killed 35 years ago by comrades in the leftist guerrilla movement that fought in the long civil war. Now the slaying has emerged as a thorny problem for Funes just as his government prepared a calendar full of official ceremonies commemorating Dalton, who would have turned 75 this month.

The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry An Anthology Edited by Ilan Stavans Farrar, Straus & Giroux: 729 pp., $50 Here's the answer to a hypothetical "Jeopardy" query: "Who are Pablo Neruda and, um…?" And now, the question: "Which modern Latin American poets could an average U.S. reader likely name without using Google?" No fair if you're counting Ricky Martin, by the way. Until fairly recently, that would've been my own blushing response. For five years I lived in Mexico City and worked in an office near a beautiful, leafy street named for Rubén Darío, the great Nicaraguan journalist, cultural diplomat and poet.

There are no 'mysteries' in History. Only suppressions, the lies of those who write History. -- from poem titled "Reflection" from "The Banned History of Tom Thumb" by Roque Dalton * As one of this country's best-known poets and an unabashed revolutionary, Roque Dalton escaped many brushes with death. Right-wing Salvadoran dictatorships captured him time and again, but he always got away. It was at the hands of his own leftist guerrilla comrades that Dalton's luck ran out.

An old killing has come back to haunt the government of President Mauricio Funes, scarcely a year after he took office as El Salvador's first leftist leader. Roque Dalton, the nation's most famous poet, was killed 35 years ago by comrades in the leftist guerrilla movement that fought in the long civil war. Now the slaying has emerged as a thorny problem for Funes just as his government prepared a calendar full of official ceremonies commemorating Dalton, who would have turned 75 this month.

FICTION INTERNATIONAL, 16.2: CENTRAL AMERICAN WRITING, edited by Harold Jaffee and Larry McCafferty (San Diego State University: $8, paperback; 224 pp. illustrated).

More than two decades after his death, Roque Dalton, one of El Salvador's best-known poets and revolutionaries, is once again calling his countrymen's attention to the violence and poverty that caused a 12-year civil war--and which still exist.

The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry An Anthology Edited by Ilan Stavans Farrar, Straus & Giroux: 729 pp., $50 Here's the answer to a hypothetical "Jeopardy" query: "Who are Pablo Neruda and, um…?" And now, the question: "Which modern Latin American poets could an average U.S. reader likely name without using Google?" No fair if you're counting Ricky Martin, by the way. Until fairly recently, that would've been my own blushing response. For five years I lived in Mexico City and worked in an office near a beautiful, leafy street named for Rubén Darío, the great Nicaraguan journalist, cultural diplomat and poet.

Collective memory in El Salvador has long been a fragile commodity. An infamous 1932 government massacre of mainly Indian peasants was officially purged from history books for decades afterward. The country's brutal 12-year civil war of 1980-92 not only claimed tens of thousands of lives and razed entire villages. It also ravaged the country's heritage, fostering widespread amnesia about Salvadoran literature, music, indigenous culture and the performing arts. Over the next week, an ambitious multimedia happening with the umbrella title "Preservación de la Memoria Histórica Salvadoreña" (Salvadoran Preservation of Historic Memory)

For nearly a decade, guerrilla commander Joaquin Villalobos operated out of a remote mountain base in northeastern El Salvador, earning himself a reputation as the rebels' best and meanest military strategist. He was a communist wolf to the country's right-wing elite and an enigma to the rest of El Salvador. Villalobos let years go by without talking to the press and often refused to leave his post even to meet with his own civilian allies on the left.

Tiny Curbstone Press of Willimantic, Conn., has a well-deserved reputation as a serious publishing house, issuing difficult but important works by such writers as Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton, Mexican novelist Elena Garro and Nicaraguan intellectuals Ernesto Cardenal, Gioconda Belli and Sergio Ramirez. It's a remarkable track record for a nonprofit publisher in a time of decreasing government support for the arts, and one that leaves little room for frivolous projects.

More than two decades after his death, Roque Dalton, one of El Salvador's best-known poets and revolutionaries, is once again calling his countrymen's attention to the violence and poverty that caused a 12-year civil war--and which still exist.

There are no 'mysteries' in History. Only suppressions, the lies of those who write History. -- from poem titled "Reflection" from "The Banned History of Tom Thumb" by Roque Dalton * As one of this country's best-known poets and an unabashed revolutionary, Roque Dalton escaped many brushes with death. Right-wing Salvadoran dictatorships captured him time and again, but he always got away. It was at the hands of his own leftist guerrilla comrades that Dalton's luck ran out.

FICTION INTERNATIONAL, 16.2: CENTRAL AMERICAN WRITING, edited by Harold Jaffee and Larry McCafferty (San Diego State University: $8, paperback; 224 pp. illustrated).

They are large. They are black and white. And, with one or two exceptions, they are easily recognizable works of art. They are the 21 pencil, collage and pen-and-ink pieces by three contemporary Costa Rican artists who prefer a traditional figurative style over abstraction. Titled "Clima Natal," the exhibit opened Friday at Southwestern College Art Gallery. It will run through Oct. 28.

Somewhere up in poet heaven, Roque Dalton is a happy man. Just across the street from MacArthur Park, the town square of Central American immigrants in Los Angeles, a tiny storefront has an entire shelf dedicated to the works of the Salvadoran writer, who died in 1975. Dalton's poems celebrate the tenacity of Salvadorans and their diaspora across the Americas. If his books had eyes, they could look through the store's glass window and see his countrymen hawking snow cones and tacos outside.