José Coronel Urtecho

José Coronel Urtecho
José Coronel Urtecho
Born	(1906-02-28)February 28, 1906 Granada, Nicaragua.
Died	March 19, 1994(1994-03-19)
Cause of death	cancer
Resting place	Los Chiles, Alajuela. Costa Rica.
Nationality	Nicaragua
Known for	Poet and writer
Spouse(s)	María Kautz Gross
Children	Twins: Manuel and Ricardo, José (disappeared in 1961), Christian († at 7), Luis, Blanca and Carlos
Parent(s)	Manuel Coronel Matus, Blanca Urtecho Avilés
Relatives	Ernesto Cardenal, Edgar Chamorro

José Coronel Urtecho (28 February 1906 – 19 March 1994) was a Nicaraguan poet, translator, essayist, critic, narrator, playwright, diplomat and historian. He has been described as "the most influential Nicaraguan thinker of the twentieth century". After an attraction to fascism in the 1930s, he became a strong supporter of the Sandinista National Liberation Front in 1977.

He was born on 28 February 1906, in Granada, Nicaragua, the son of Manuel Coronel Matus and Blanca Utrecht Avilés. His father, an influential politician, writer and journalist, hold relevant positions under the government of president José Santos Zelaya, among them: Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Governance, and Minister of Culture and Education. He died in 1912 short after the United States forced president Zelaya to exile and invaded militarily the country. The circumstances of his death are not clear. Some theories say he was killed by members of the Conservative party in a political hunt after Zelaya’s fall, while others, less accepted theories, stated he killed himself.

Coronel Urtecho was then 6 years old, and never completely recovered from his fathers unclear death circumstances. With his mother and sister Lola, they moved to San Francisco in 1924, after he graduated from jesuit High School, , where he started his passion for poetry and published his first poems and literary analysis. Jesuit catholic education deeply influenced him. He remained in contact with the Society of Jesus for life. Living in California he discovered North American poetry, and became a great admirer of many of its authors, specially Walt Whitman, Allan Poe and Ezra Pound, which he later translated into Spanish.

He returned to Granada in 1927, and started publishing in the local newspaper Nicaraguan Daily. A fan of the burlesque and a man of a refined sense of humour, at his 20th Coronel published in his most sarcastic tone the poem “Ode to Ruben Dario” in which he publicly establishes a break from Modernism. Rebel in the content, the poem though is still traditional in its lyric. His “position is both rejection and adhesion, is the disciple’s insurrection against the admired teacher”. About a year later, he led with Luis Alberto Cabrales and Joaquín Pasos Argüello the foundation of the Vanguard Literary Movement, with other young Nicaraguan writers, among them Manolo Cuadra y Pablo Antonio Cuadra, the youngest of the group.