EL SALVADOR

ART AND ACTION
Meléndez was named, once again, head of
Protección Civil.
Meléndez has consistently refused to
reveal what his precise role was in Dalton’s
“execution,” largely making the argument
that this sort of thing is to be expected,
more or less, in the type of conflict that
was emerging in the early seventies, and
also invoking the exculpatory notion that
our author was “tried” by a revolutionary
military tribunal and found guilty on the
basis of the “evidence” then available.
For someone who studies and teaches
Dalton (in my own case, for more than
thirty years now), this lingering state of
affairs presents an array of vexing obstacles.
Whenever I tell people that I am
writing a book about Dalton, the first
thing that comes out of their mouth is:
“So who exactly killed him?” If the person
is coming from the right, there is always
a grimly self-congratulatory air that suffuses
the way the question is posed (“You
see! The left kills its own!”). If the person
belongs to the left, the question is inspired
by honest curiosity, tinged with immense
sadness and almost a kind of guilt (“How
could our comrades have done something
like that?”).
Mixed with the never-ending “Whodunit,”
we have the near legendary air that
surrounds Dalton, one that often threatens
to turn him into a “pop celebrity” of
sorts. Dalton developed a (well-earned)
reputation as a drinker of epic capacity
as well as an incorrigible womanizer. This
has led many to fashion him as a scintillating
bohemian writer and “dreamer”
who stumbled, essentially by accident,
into the revolutionary politics that got
him killed. With this image as a point of
departure, many scholars have striven to
craft a “Roque-for-the-academy”—that is,
a Roque Dalton whose poetic brilliance,
fueled by his flamboyant life-style, justifies
jettisoning, for the most part, any evidence
of his hard-line Marxism-Leninism.
This, in turn, facilitates circulation of his
work in seminars, academic journals and
other venues.
The “Dalton phenomenon” can only
be fully understood if one looks at the
entirety of his production: all of his poetry
(including Un libro rojo para Lenin [A
Red Book for Lenin]), not just the more
lyrical variety, his historical works and
theoretical writings about revolutionary
struggle, and yes, his very “nuts-and-bolts”
texts on guerrilla warfare. Quite frankly, I
do not think that there is a comparable figure
anywhere in Latin America, nor perhaps
in the rest of the world. Studying all
of his writings is really the only way to do
justice to the rich complexity of his work
and his life.
And when I say this, I do so not as
a critic interested in presenting “new,
improved” Roque-for-the-academy; rather,
as someone who believes that the
problems of Latin America, and much of
the rest of the world, can only be solved
from the left. And since the collapse of
existing socialism in the early 90s, the left
has been searching for a new language,
for new ways to mobilize the people who
need to be mobilized. I am convinced that
Dalton has something to say to us at this
moment in history, especially as the left
makes inroads in much of Latin America
(albeit with ups-and-downs). He believed
that armed struggle was the only way out
of the never-ending nightmare of Latin
American history, particularly in the wake
of the overthrow of democratically elected
Socialist President Salvador Allende in
Chile. However, he was by no means tied
to armed struggle as universal “cure-all.”
The very vibrancy of his thought, which is
connected to that of his poetry, would have
him thinking of new paths forward, particularly
at a moment in Salvadoran history
when a former FMLN guerrilla commander
is the country’s president.
It speaks well of those who planned the
presidential inauguration on June 1, 2014,
that they included Dalton in the exhibition
of photos of Salvadoran heroes and
martyrs—such as Farabundo Martí and
Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero— held
up by “living statues” along the walkway
leading to the auditorium. And when Sánchez
Cerén invoked Dalton in part of his
speech, it sparked one of the loudest and
most sustained applauses of the entire
proceedings. It is clear that the FMLN
wants to maintain Dalton as part of its
pantheon of heroes, particularly given
his continuing appeal to young Salvadorans.
And it cannot be anything but galling
to its leadership and militants to witness
how the Dalton case continues to be
used as a stick with which to hit them. The
ongoing “mystery,” and the fact that one
of its protagonists continues to occupy
an important government post, still provides
fodder for the Salvadoran right in its
unceasing battle to thwart the FMLN at
every turn.
It is worth remembering that it was
under ARENA governments of the midnineties
that Dalton was officially brought
to the center stage of Salvadoran culture.
Among other things, a governmental
publishing organ was responsible for the
appearance of the first major anthology
of Dalton’s poetry in the country after the
ban in effect during the war. Under ARE-
NA, a postage stamp dedicated to Dalton
was issued; he was bestowed a posthumous
honor that essentially recognized
him as the national poet of El Salvador.
Had the right caught him when he was
still alive, they would have killed him (as
they were very close to doing on a number
of occasions). But once the the left itself
did them the favor of getting rid of Dalton,
he provided them substantial ammunition
for the electoral dynamics of the post-war
period.
Dalton’s stature will most likely continue
to grow in future years as more
and more critical studies of his work con-
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