Roque Dalton

Roque Dalton
Roque Dalton (1969)
Born	Roque Antonio Dalton García May 14, 1935 San Salvador, El Salvador
Died	May 10, 1975 San Salvador, El Salvador
Language	Spanish
Nationality	El Salvador
Notable awards	Casa de las Américas (1969) Central American Prize of Poetry (1956, 1958, 1959, 1964) Hijo Meritísimo de El Salvador
Spouse	Aída Cañas
Children	Roque Antonio, Juan José, and Jorge

Roque Antonio Dalton García (San Salvador, El Salvador, 14 May 1935 – Quezaltepeque, El Salvador, 10 May 1975), born Roque Antonio García, better known as Roque Dalton, was a Salvadoran poet, essayist, journalist, political activist, and intellectual. He is considered one of Latin America's most compelling poets. He wrote emotionally strong, sometimes sarcastic, and image-loaded works dealing with life, death, love, and politics.

Even though he never received an academic degree, he took part in higher education at the University of Chile and the University of El Salvador, where he studied law. He also visited the National Autonomous University of Mexico. While in Chile, he began to study Marxism and on returning to El Salvador, he became a significant player in local politics. He began working with poetry after helping found the University Literary Circle. He joined the Communist Party of El Salvador. He was imprisoned in 1959 and 1960 for inciting revolt during the presidency of José María Lemus.

In 1961, he was exiled from El Salvador, spending 1961 in Mexico, then moving to Cuba, where most of his poetry was published., where he completed his development as an author, but also in México and Czechoslovakia. In Cuba, he became involved in the culture and received military training after the Bay of Pigs Invasion. After returning to El Salvador in 1965, he was arrested and interrogated by an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency. In 1969, he returned to Cuba and then Prague, Czechoslovakia to work as correspondent for The International Review: Problems of Peace and Socialism. In the same year, he won the Poetry Prize Casa de las Américas for his book Taberna y otros lugares.

After leaving Cuba, Dalton became involved in El Salvador's civil war, joining the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP) in 1973. In the ERP, he found himself in a serious internal dispute with leader Alejandro Rivas Mira, who was becoming an influential leader of the armed group. As a consequence, the leadership of the ERP decided to execute him alongside.