Historias y poemas de una lucha de clases / Stories and Poems of a Class Struggle

by Roque Dalton, Jack Hirschman (Translator), Christopher Soto (Foreword by), Tatiana Marroquín (Foreword by), Barbara Paschke (Translator)

Overview

“His prolific artistic production, cut off at the age of forty, remains a monumental artifact . . . illustrating his profound conviction that the poet can and must, in his life as well as in his work, serve as the finely-honed scalpel of change, both in word and deed.” —Claribel Alegría
 
“The most daring and innovative Salvadoran writer and intellectual of the twentieth century.” —Jaime Barba

Poems of revolution by one of Latin America’s most beloved poets

Born in San Salvador in 1935, Roque Dalton dedicated his life to armed struggle while writing fierce, tender poems about his country and its people. In Historias y poemas de una lucha de clases / Stories and Poems of a Class Struggle, Dalton offers a road map for a liberated El Salvador, writing through the lens of five poetic personas, each with their own imagined history and distinct voice. This collection shows a country caught in the crosshairs of American imperialism, where the few rule the many and the many fight to survive—and yet there is love and humor and self-mockery to be found here on every page, in every verse, as well as an abiding faith in humanity. “I believe the world is beautiful,” Dalton writes, “and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781644211762
Publisher:	Seven Stories Press
Publication date:	09/12/2023
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

ROQUE DALTON was born in El Salvador in 1935. As a student at the University of San Salvador, he helped found the University Literary Circle, traveled to Soviet Russia, and joined the Salvadoran Communist Party. He was arrested in 1959 and 1960 for inciting peasant revolts and sentenced to execution by firing squad, but was saved by a coup d’état that overthrew the dictatorship of José María Lemus. In 1961, Roque left for exile in Mexico, and then for post-revolutionary Cuba, where he received guerrilla training and where the majority of his works were published. In 1965, two months after he returned to his native country, Roque was arrested, tortured, and again sentenced for execution, this time saved by an earthquake that crumbled his cell walls.
A poet who brilliantly fused politics and art, Roque’s literary work permanently changed the direction of Central American poetry. The author of eighteen volumes of poetry and prose—among them Un libro rojo para Lenin (written between 1970 and 1973), Las historias prohibidas del Pulgarcito (1974), and Pobrecita poeta que era yo (1976)—his writing combines fierce satirical irony with a humane and exuberant tenderness. His book Taberna y otros lugares, a reflection on his time spent in Prague as a correspondent for The International Review, won the Casa de las Américas prize in 1969. In 1973, Roque clandestinely returned to El Salvador to join the armed struggle. Two years later, the poet-revolutionary was falsely accused of being a CIA agent and assassinated by members of his own faction, the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo, during an internal struggle within the organization.
 
JACK HIRSCHMAN (1933–2021) was a poet, translator, and Poet Laureate of San Francisco. Among his recent collections of poetry is The Arcanes #2 (2019).
 
BARBARA PASCHKE is a translator and member of the Center for the Art of Translation, the Roque Dalton Cultural Brigade, and the Revolutionary Poets Brigade. Her publications include Riverbed of Memory (City Lights Books, 2001), Volcán (City Lights Books, 2001), and New World, New Words (Two Lines Press, 2007).
 
CHRISTOPHER SOTO is a Salvadoran poet. His debut poetry collection, Diaries of a Terrorist (Copper Canyon, 2022), was honored with them’s Now Award in Literature for representing the cutting edge of queer culture.

TATIANA MARROQUÍN is a Salvadoran feminist economist and critic of capitalism. She is a former analyst for the country’s national assembly.
 
JAIME BARBA is a Salvadoran writer and social researcher, based in San Salvador, where he is director-editor of Istmo Editores, a book publisher.
 
MARGARET RANDALL is a poet, scholar, social activist, and recipient of the Poet of Two Hemispheres award from Poesía en Paralelo Cero, among other recognitions.

Read an Excerpt

Roque Dalton: 50 años después

Roque Dalton es indiscutiblemente el poeta de mayor influencia en la historia salvadoreña y una de las voces más importantes de la literatura latinoamericana.
Casi medio siglo ha transcurrido desde la muerte de Roque Dalton en 1975.

En 1973, Roque Dalton dejó Cuba, donde se había exiliado. A su regreso a El Salvador de manera clandestina, se unió a la lucha armada de la clase trabajadora.
Por esos mismos años apareció una publicación que llevaba por título “Por La Causa Proletaria”, fundada por revolucionarios en El Salvador.
En 1977, dicha publicación imprimió de forma póstuma Historias y poemas de una lucha de clases [bajo el título Poemas clandestinos], en colaboración con el grupo guerrillero Resistencia Nacional.
En Historias y poemas de una lucha de clases abundan poemas en los que encarnan las voces de cinco personajes imaginados, y pueden ser leídos como propaganda política. Un aspecto admirable de este libro es la forma en que es capaz de establecer vínculos poéticos entre la gente común y la inminente guerra civil salvadoreña.

En su poema “Arte poética 1974,” Dalton escribió: “Poesía / Perdóname por haberte ayudado a comprender / que no estás hecha sólo de palabras”.
Dalton era dueño de un humor, una osadía y de una verdad implacable. No pocas veces maldecía a quienes ocupaban puestos en el poder, incluidos burócratas, pacifistas y hasta a la iglesia.
En él habitaba una justa indignación; formaba parte de movimientos literarios y políticos, tal como dan cuenta tantas obras suyas, por ejemplo, “Las rimas en la historia nacional”, donde escribe a propósito del oficio de poeta en El Salvador, “Rimas salvadoreñas después de 1972: // El que fue a Sevilla perdió su silla / guerrilla, guerrilla, guerrilla / guerrilla, guerrilla, guerrilla, guerrilla”.

Desde aquellos días de militancia política en la vida de Roque Dalton, ha aparecido una nueva generación de escritores y activistas nacidos en El Salvador y en la diáspora. A nosotros no nos tocó ver ni escuchar la guerra, pero no hay un solo día que pase sin que familiares y amigos la mencionen: aquí estaba el puente que reventaron para interrumpir el comercio y presionar al gobierno a las negociaciones; más allá, hay una exhibición de arte en la que se muestran videos de cumbia junto con videos de guerra, en el barrio donde ahora vivimos.
Con frecuencia existe en El Salvador el deseo de hablar de algo más aparte de la guerra, sin embargo, nuestra historia está atada, irreversiblemente, con el presente.
Desde la lucha guerrillera en la guerra civil salvadoreña, hasta la esperanza que trajeron consigo los acuerdos de paz, y la corrupción en los posteriores gobiernos de derecha e izquierda, la vida y obra de Roque han acompañado a muchas generaciones.
Sus poemas han sido presencia constante en luchas anticapitalistas y antifascistas a lo largo de los años, no solo en El Salvador sino a nivel internacional.

En 2023, muchos de aquellos miedos autoritarios que los salvadoreños habían dejado atrás parecen haber renacido. En varios rincones del mundo, ideas autoritarias como solución a los problemas de la clase trabajadora, están de vuelta.
Hablar del ethos revolucionario de Dalton en proximidad con cualquier líder autoritario parece peligroso. Esto se debe a que Dalton es un poeta que no vivió la revolución como teoría sino en la violencia de la praxis, como en el poema “Viejos comunistas y guerrilleros”, donde escribió: “Pero la revolución en todas partes necesita personas / que no sólo estén dispuestas a morir / sino también dispuestas a matar por ella”.

Hoy, no solo los autoritarismos han renacido, de igual manera las voces revolucionarias contenidas en este libro renacen una vez más.
En años recientes, el poema de Dalton, “Consejo que ya no es necesario en ninguna parte del mundo pero que en El Salvador . . .” ha sido recitado por activistas en Latinoamérica como una advertencia, una señal, una denuncia. El poema dice: “No olvides nunca / que los menos fascistas / de entre los fascistas / también son / fascistas”.
Muchos de los problemas sobre los que Dalton escribió continúan siendo debatidos.

Hoy en día, los grupos feministas en El Salvador se pronuncian sobre la falta de remuneración en las tareas domésticas a las que han sido relegadas las mujeres.
Esta conversación fue señalada décadas atrás en un poema de Dalton, “Sobre la plusvalía o el patrón le roba a dos en cada obrero”, donde escribió, “Los oficios domésticos de la mujer / le crean al hombre el tiempo / para el trabajo socialmente necesario”.
La falta de remuneración para las tareas domésticas es una realidad para las mujeres salvadoreñas.
En El Salvador, el salario mínimo es de aproximadamente $350 mensuales, dependiendo del tipo de trabajo y de si se tiene la fortuna de contar con un patrón dispuesto a respetar ese salario.
Las personas que deciden irse del país y emigrar a los Estados Unidos se endeudan con los coyotes que las acompañan en el viaje. Las dinámicas sociales y económicas de los personajes que Roque representó en sus Historias y poemas siguen siendo la realidad para la mayoría de salvadoreñas.
Pero el perfil de la lucha ha cambiado.

Roque Dalton entendió la lucha por la liberación como algo intergeneracional y con frecuencia tomó a revolucionarios indígenas, como Anastasio Aquino, como fuente de inspiración para sus acciones.
En su poema “Ultraizquierdistas”, escribe, “Los pipiles . . . no quisieron agachar la cabeza frente a la Corona de España / y se alzaron en la sierra / con las armas en la mano / contra el conquistador”. Buscaba aquellas voces marginalizadas en El Salvador para estimular sus luchas de liberación.
Su lucha sin tregua era para construir un futuro mejor.
Su poema “En el futuro” leemos, “Cuando nuestra sociedad sea / básicamente justa / o sea / socialista / en las conversaciones de las cervecerías / a la hora de las confesiones íntimas; / más de alguno dirá con la mirada baja / ‘yo tuve propiedad privada sobre los medios de producción’”.
El anhelo por poner fin a la propiedad privada y encaminarse hacia un estado socialista puede advertirse también en otro poema lleno de esperanza por el futuro, “Podría ser”, en el que leemos, “Para los burgueses / la patria las leyes el honor y Dios / no tienen sentido sin / la propiedad privada y ‘la libre empresa’. // Para los proletarios / la muerte de la propiedad privada / y de la ‘libre empresa’ / daría sentido a la Patria las leyes el honor / y tal vez hasta a Dios”.

En Historias y poemas de una lucha de clases, hay que tener presente siempre la ternura del poeta.
Vale la pena considerar por ejemplo, “Tercer poema de amor” en su totalidad: “A quienes digan que nuestro amor es extraordinario / porque ha nacido de circunstancias extraordinarias / diles que precisamente luchamos / para que un amor como el nuestro / (amor entre compañeros de combate) / llegue a ser en El Salvador / el amor más común y corriente, / casi el único”.
Su ternura se vuelve a repetir en uno de sus más célebres poemas, “Como tú”, en el que el poeta escribió, “Yo, como tú, / amo el amor, la vida, el dulce encanto / de las cosas, el paisaje / celeste de los días de enero”.
Para Dalton, el amor representaba algo extraordinario que se entretejía con su visión llena de esperanza por el mundo. La esperanza es vital para que poetas y revolucionarios sigan adelante. En “El Salvador será”, Dalton se entrelaza con los sueños de un futuro mejor y escribe, “El problema es que hoy El Salvador / tiene como mil puyas y cien mil desniveles / quinimil callos y algunas postemillas / cánceres cáscaras caspas shuquedades / llagas fracturas tembladeras tufos”, antes de proclamar que el país un día estará mejor.
Hoy, depende de la presente generación proteger algunos de los avances por los que él y muchos otros dieron su vida.
Es solo gracias a poetas y activistas como Roque Dalton que futuros mejores son posibles.

tatiana marroquín economista y feminista
San Salvador, El Salvador enero 2023

christopher soto poeta y activista por la abolición de las prisiones
Los Ángeles, California enero 2023

Roque Dalton: 50 Years Later

Roque Dalton is inarguably the most influential poet in Salvadoran history, and one of the most influential voices in literature from Latin America.
It has been almost half a century since Roque Dalton’s death in 1975.

In 1973, Roque Dalton left Cuba, where he lived in exile. He returned clandestinely to El Salvador where he was part of an armed struggle for the working class.
Around that time, a publication called “Por La Causa Proletaria” had just been founded by revolutionaries in El Salvador.
In 1977, this publication posthumously printed Stories and Poems of a Class Struggle [under the title Poemas clandestinos] in collaboration with the guerrilla faction Resistencia Nacional. Stories and Poems of a Class Struggle is filled with embodiment poems that reflect the voices of five different imagined characters and it can be read as political propaganda. One fascinating thing about this book is how it builds a poetic connection between everyday people and the looming Salvadoran Civil War.

In his poem “Poetic Art 1974,” Dalton writes, “Poetry / Forgive me for having helped you understand / you’re not made of words alone.”
Dalton was a poet of humor and crass and unrepentant truth. He would often publicly curse by name those in positions of power—bureaucrats, pacificists, and even the church.
He was filled with righteous anger and was embedded in both literary and political movements, as noted in so many of his works, including “Rhymes on National History,” where he notes, writing of the poetic craft in El Salvador, “Salvadoran rhymes after 1972: // He lost his seat on the way to Sevilla / guerrilla, guerrilla, guerrilla / guerrilla, guerrilla, guerrilla, guerrilla.”

Since the period of militant activism that filled Roque Dalton’s years, there has been a whole generation of new writers and activists born in El Salvador and in the diaspora. We have never heard or seen the war, but our days are filled with mention of it by family members and friends—here was the bridge that was blown up in order to disrupt the flow of commerce and bend the government into negotiations; here is an art exhibit depicting cumbia music videos mixed with war videos in the neighborhood where we live now.
There is often a desire in El Salvador to talk about more than the war, but our history is so impossibly tied to the present.
From the guerrilla struggle in the Salvadoran Civil War, to the hope brought to the country by the signing of the peace accords, to the corruption from both right and left-wing governments that followed—Roque’s life and work has accompanied many people over generations.
His poems have remained a constant in anti-capitalist and antifascist struggles over the years, not only in El Salvador but internationally.

In 2023, many of the authoritarian fears that Salvadorans had left behind seem to have been reborn. In various parts of the world, authoritarian ideas, as a way out of working-class problems, are making a comeback.
To speak of Dalton’s revolutionary ethos in proximity to any authoritarian leader feels dangerous. This is because Dalton is a poet who did not live the revolution in theory but in violent praxis, as noted in the poem “Old Communists and Guerillas,” where he writes, “But everywhere the revolution needs people / not only willing to die / but also willing to kill for it.”

In the present day, not only has authoritarianism been revived, but the revolutionary voices in this book are being revived as well.
In recent years, Dalton’s poem “Advice That Is No Longer Necessary Anywhere in the World but Here in El Salvador . . .” has been recited among activists in Latin America as a warning, as a signal, and as a condemnation. This poem reads, “Don’t ever forget / that the least fascist / among fascists / also are / fascists.”
So many of the issues that Dalton wrote about are still being struggled with.

In present-day El Salvador, feminists speak about the lack of pay that surrounds the domesticated chores relegated to them.
This conversation was noted decades earlier in the Dalton poem “On the Profit Margin or the Boss Robs Every Worker Twice Over,” where he writes, “The woman’s domestic functions / create time for the man / for socially necessary work.”
Lack of pay for domestic work is a reality for women in El Salvador.
The minimum wage for working people is approximately $350 a month in El Salvador, depending on your work sector and if you are lucky enough to find employers that honor this wage.
People who want to leave the country and migrate to the United States incur debt to coyotes who travel with them.
The social and economic dynamics of the characters that Roque depicted in Stories and Poems are still the reality for a majority of Salvadorans today.
Though the shape of the struggle has shifted.

Roque Dalton understood struggles for liberation to be intergenerational and he often looked at Indigenous revolutionaries like Anastasio Aquino for inspiration in his actions.
In the poem “Ultraleftists,” he writes, “The Pipiles / . . . didn’t want to bow down before the Crown of Spain / and rose up in the mountains / with weapons in their hands / against the conquistador.”
He was looking at marginalized voices in El Salvador and uplifting their struggles for liberation. He was fighting endlessly to build a better future.
His poem “In the Future” reads, “When our society is / basically just / that is / socialist / in the conversations in saloons / at the moment of intimate confession / more than a few will say with down-cast eyes, / ‘I held private property based on the means of production.’”
A desire to end private property and move toward a socialist state can also be noted in another poem of hopeful futurism called “It Could Be,” which reads, “For the bourgeoisie / country, laws, honor and God / have no meaning without / private property and ‘free enterprise.’ // For the proletarians / the death of private property / and ‘free enterprise’ / would give meaning to country, laws, honor / and perhaps even to God.”

In Stories and Poems of a Class Struggle, it is worth noting the tenderness of this poet.
It is worth saying “Third Poem of Love” in its entirety, “Whoever tells you our love is extraordinary / because it was born of extraordinary circumstances / tell them we’re struggling precisely / so that a love like ours / (a love among comrades in combat) / becomes / the most ordinary and common / almost the only / love in El Salvador.”
This tenderness is also echoed in one of his most widely circulated poems, “Like You,” where the poet writes: “Like you I / love love, life, the sweet smell / of things, the sky-blue / landscape of January days.” For Dalton, love was extraordinary and also intertwined with his hopeful worldview. Hope is necessary for poets and revolutionaries to continue. In “El Salvador Will Be,” Dalton is tied to dreams for a better future and he writes, “The problem is that today El Salvador / has a thousand rough edges and a hundred thousand pitfalls / about five hundred thousand calluses and some blisters / cancers rashes dandruff filthiness / ulcers fractures fevers bad odors,” before stating that the country one day can do better. Now, it is up to this next generation to protect some of the advances that he and so many people died for. It is only because of poets and activists like Roque Dalton that better futures become possible.

—tatiana marroquín
Economist and Feminist
San Salvador, El Salvador January 2023

—christopher soto
Poet and Prison Abolitionist
Los Angeles, California January 2023

Table of Contents

Índice

Prólogo de Christopher Soto y Tatiana Marroquín
Introducción de Jaime Barba
Introducción de Margaret Randall

Como declaración de principios

TODOS SON POEMAS DE AMOR—Vilma Flores
Sobre nuestra moral poética
Poeticus eficaccie
Sobre la plusvalía o el patrón le roba a dos en cada obrero
Tercer poema de amor
Estadísticas sobre la libertad
Para un mejor amor
Los policías y los guardias

POEMAS SENCILLOS—Timoteo Lúe
A la poesía
Recuerdo y preguntas
Arte poética 1974
Como la siempreviva
Como tú
Vida, oficios

POEMAS PARA SALVAR A CRISTO—Jorge Cruz
Atalaya
Sobre el negocio bíblico
Credo del Che
Variaciones sobre una frase de Cristo
Dos religiones
Victoria divina
Un obrero salvadoreño piensa sobre el famoso caso del Externado de San José
Algunas de las primeras proposiciones para el epitafio . . .

HISTORIAS Y POEMAS CONTRA EL REVISIONISMO SALVADOREÑO—Juan Zapata
Maneras de morir
Moraleja sobre el instrumento
Viejos comunistas y guerrilleros
Epigrama en imitación de Marcial
Consejo que ya no es necesario en ninguna parte del mundo pero que en El Salvador . . .
Cantos para civiles
Lógica revi
Entre el puñal y el machete
Y los sueños, sueños son . . .
Parábola a partir de la vulcanología revisionista
Ultraizquierdistas

POEMAS PARA VIVIR PENSÁNDOLO BIEN—Luis Luna
Cartita
La jauría
Dos poemas sobre buses urbanos
Sobre modernas ciencias aplicadas
El Salvador, país con corazón
Las nuevas escuelas
Las rimas en la historia nacional
Sólo el inicio
La certeza (Sobre una idea de V. G.)
Hitler Mazzini: comparación entre Chile en 1974 y El Salvador en 1932
La violencia aquí
Sobre el poema anterior
Proposición
Reparto de cosa ajena en el mercado de los ladrones
Usted y el oro y lo que les espera
Profecía sobre los profetas
Acta
Podría ser
En el futuro
Encuentro con un viejo poeta
Pasa un camión
La pequeña burguesía (Sobre una de sus manifestaciones)
La gran burguesía
Historia de una poética
El Salvador será

Contents

Foreword by Christopher Soto and Tatiana Marroquín
Introduction by Jaime Barba
Introduction by Margaret Randall

Declaration of Principles

ALL ARE POEMS OF LOVE—Vilma Flores
On Our Poetic Moral
Poeticus Eficaccie
On the Profit Margin or the Boss Robs Every Worker Twice Over
Third Poem of Love
Statistics on Freedom
Toward a Better Love
The Cops and the Guards

SIMPLE POEMS—Timoteo Lúe
To Poetry
Memory and Questions
Poetic Art 1974
Like the Everlasting
Like You
Life, Works

POEMS TO SAVE CHRIST—Jorge Cruz
Watchtower
On Biblical Business
Credo of Che
Variations on a Phrase by Christ
Two Religions
Divine Victory
A Salvadoran Worker Thinks about the Famous Case of San Jose College
Some of the First Proposals for the Epitaph . . .

STORIES AND POEMS AGAINST SALVADORAN REVISIONISM—Juan Zapata
Ways of Dying
Moral on the Tool
Old Communists and Guerrillas
Epigram in Imitation of Marcial
Advice That Is No Longer Necessary Anywhere in the World but Here in El Salvador . . .
Songs for Civilians
Revi(sionist) Logic
Between Dagger and Machete
And Dreams, Are Just Dreams . . .
Parable Beginning with Revisionist Volcanology
Ultraleftists

POEMS TO LIVE THINKING CAREFULLY ABOUT—Luis Luna
Little Letter
The Pack of Hounds
Two Poems on Urban Buses
On Modern Applied Sciences
El Salvador, Country with a Heart
The New Schools
Rhymes on National History
Only the Beginning
The Certainty (On an idea of V.G.)
Hitler Mazzini: Comparison Between Chile in 1974 and El Salvador in 1932
The Violence Here
On the Previous Poem
Proposition
Distribution of People’s Property in the Thieves’ Market
You and Gold and What Awaits You
Prophecy on Prophets
Act
It Could Be
In the Future
Meeting with an Old Poet
Passing Truck
The Petite Bourgeoisie
(About one of its manifestations)
The Bourgeoisie
Story of a Poet
El Salvador Will Be

Editorial Reviews

A poet of humor and crass and unrepentant truth . . . his poems have remained a constant in anti-capitalist and anti-fascist struggles over the years, not only in El Salvador but internationally.” —Christopher Soto & Tatiana Marroquín

“Roque Dalton’s commitment to the Revolution was like a marriage contract . . . It was his destiny not only to sing it but also to give his life for the Revolution.” —Ernesto Cardenal

“This collection comprises five diverse personalities, all poets and each an aspect of the intricate consciousness of one man, Roque Dalton, a Salvadoran writer who sought justice through verse as well as action and whose work is timeless. Dalton became an avid participant in the guerrilla army called the People’s Revolutionary Army and at the same time began publishing poetry with political and sarcastic undertones that make his work so identifiable. . . . A great addition to any collection; recommended for all students and lovers of poetry.” —Criticas

“For those who aren’t sure where El Salvador is, this book will locate it for them . . . in the heart of blood and bravery.”—Lawrence Ferlinghetti
  
“Roque had a sense of life and struggle that enabled him to laugh at himself, dig beneath the surface and bring up the most difficult areas of human experience... touching them deeply, exploring them, and projecting them in a way both useful and beautiful.” —Margaret Randall

“Roque Dalton’s Historias y poemas de una lucha de clases (Stories and Poems of a Class Struggle) dates back to 1975, and remains as timely as ever. . . [this] is a book filled with courageous testimony, the poet’s typical dry humor, and bone-chilling depictions of state violence. Here, Dalton is hyperaware of the pain and plight of his compatriots, but in addition to his typical grittiness and social critique, we also find tenderness, softness, beauty, and frailty; Dalton’s acute perception is both a rifle and a compass, manifesting in words of both rebuke and encouragement.” —José García Escobar, Asymptote

From the Publisher