Dual Identity: Perceiving Roque Dalton’s Struggle as a Revolutionary

abstract

Roque Dalton was a figure torn between his unwavering vision for revolution and poetic life. He
wrote with a dialectical fascination on Salvadoran identity and the promise of communism for
ushering in an egalitarian society. The nation he observed contrasted with his utopian vision.
State-driven repression and income inequality were rampant, with the nation teetering towards
civil unrest. Such challenges were not new to El Salvadoran political and economic life. Instead
of pursuing moderation, Dalton used an ironic literary voice to suggest that working-class
Salvadorans would inevitably need to overthrow the state. Within his political party, however,
some resented the approach of melding astute literary discourse with ideology. This effort to fuse
them may have contributed to their decision to assassinate him. This essay examines how Roque
Dalton set out to highlight the troubles in his country and his attempt to espouse the need for
communist revolution to liberate El Salvador from its struggles.

Mentors: Susana Marcelo, Department of Central American and Transborder Studies, College of
Humanities, CSUN; Claude Willey, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, College of
Social and Behavioral Sciences, CSUN; Karen Sonksen, Department of Geography and
Environmental Studies, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, CSUN. 

Ethan Skopp

Ethan Skopp is a first-year student majoring in Urban Studies and Planning. He is committed to promoting positive social change and contributing to environmental justice. Ethan aspires to helping build durable and resilient communities that can withstand a world increasingly challenged with inequities and climate change. His essay takes inspiration from Roque Dalton’s persistence to realize a better world despite considerable adversity.

What is known about Roque Dalton's loyalties? Where did Dalton ultimately place his allegiance during his absence from El Salvador: with his brethren back in his homeland or with communist movements worldwide? His published poetry, such as “Love Poem,” “I’m Telling You,” Las historias prohibidas del pulgarcito, and Un libro Rojo para Lenin, suggests he did not lose sight of his fellow Salvadorans' plight.

Despite his socially progressive views, his works often feature malcontented personas. These implicit characters often advocated for violent, drastic measures to effectuate a broad-based revolt. Their views, which may be a reflection of Dalton’s, promoted violence that originated with the conquest of Latin America and clashed with Dalton’s mission of freeing Salvadorans from violence and domination.

The very language Dalton used to inspire egalitarian social change could arguably be seen as an outgrowth of the linguistic playbook conquerors turned to for support. Yet through Dalton’s narrative voice, he spoke about his fellow Salvadorans with a dry knowing sense of humor, helping to plant the seeds of liberation with his pen.

In Roque Dalton's poetry, his choice to speak through an ironic persona created a perspective on El Salvador that expressed his dissent with and connection to the country’s situation while distancing himself from the absurdity of it; therefore, this allows his readers to view his unresolved, conflicting feelings toward his role in Salvadoran society and his political affiliations, which may have ultimately contributed to his demise.

Dalton's relocation from El Salvador to Eastern Europe established some degree of detachment from his homeland. He had taken residence in Czechoslovakia for several years, a country friendly to his political worldview. Besides his geographic isolation, he also distanced himself from the insanity of state-sanctioned violence by using ironic statements woven into his verses.

The article, "The Dialectics of Irrelevance and Commemoration in Roque Dalton's ‘Un libro rojo para Lenin’" by Yansi Perez, encapsulates what irony does for the reader: "Irony imposes a break, a hiatus between the work and its audience, and word and praxis" (159). This interpretation raises interesting notions about Dalton's perspective on El Salvador and his role in needing to "break with the past," a phenomenon that, for him, meant taking inspiration from communist ideologies to upend, at last, the procession of authoritarian governments in his country. Rather than detaching himself from his country and the history of communism, as his use of irony may suggest, he helped transform how Salvadoran citizens fought back against the nation's authoritarian regime. His ironic rhetoric shaped how they perceived it.

This type of ironic tone is visible in the “Love Poem.” The speaker traces the dehumanizing undertakings his people have gone through but presents such people in unflattering terms. The poem’s speaker unloads a string of derogatory labels that include “the kings of the crime section” and “the ones who cried drunk for the national anthem,” which suggests disdain for his nation’s people” (Serrano 5).

This perception that logically emerges is subverted when the poet deems these people his brothers, suggesting that he intends to clarify his feelings. He may have anticipated criticisms of not caring for his country's people, hoping to circumvent this by taking such a position to its logical extreme. He could then show the absurdity of these accusations if they were to be wielded against him or his work. Still, his perspectives on El Salvadorian life were not uniform.

The poem “I’m Telling You” was functionally a foil to the “Love Poem.” Despite the speaker’s concern for El Salvador’s fate, it presented a condescending perspective on the nation’s state. An illustration of this sentiment is in Luis Gonzalez Serrano’s collection of Dalton’s poetry, including lines that read “You need to be slapped/given electric shocks/psychoanalyzed to return to your true self” (Serrano 5). These forceful scenes, in the name of restoring El Salvador, recirculated the same violence it was seeking to undermine. Such an employment of violent rhetoric may seem hypocritical, but this language arose from convictions about his country’s governmental oppression.

Dalton rejected appeasing El Salvador’s regime. In his view, such an approach would signify weakness, and submitting to the government would do nothing to bring freedom to Salvadoran society. Thus, Dalton chose imagery that could motivate the citizenry to rebellion. Using themes in his work -- Las historias prohibidas del pulgarcito -- of heroic militancy and the unending cycle of rebellion in Latin America, Dalton suggested that citizen warfare would be necessary to destabilize state abuse and domination.

In the University of Liverpool’s Jim Knight’s critical perspective on Dalton's perpetuation of violent norms, Knight argued that Dalton portrayed Salvadoran identity as a continual rebellion against subjugating forces. He suggests that Dalton conceived of Salvadoran identity in the "ferocity of Salvadoran resistance to imperialism" (Knight 691). In contrast, those who resisted the government's systems through more peaceable means were dismissed, in crass rhetoric, as non-patriotic, contemptible figures (Knight 692-93).

These views imply that Dalton revealed his disdain for an intellectual, negotiable stance, which he saw as undermining Salvadoran identity by conceding authoritarians. This antipathy to compromise, in turn, is reflective of his machismo outlook on revolutionary power.

This machismo attitude informed Dalton’s perception of indigenous identity as well. He carved a through line from the contemporary conflict to the conquest, using the example of the indigenous fighter Anastasio Aquino as a model. Dalton is quoted in the University of Liverpool paper as bestowing the title of "padre de la patria," or father of the nation, onto Aquino for his actions (Knight 697).

Additionally, Dalton referenced the anecdote of a Pipil community that launched a successful opposition to Alvarado (Knight 689), which seemed to suggest that the struggles of Salvadoran people were resisting entrenched, colonial power dynamics. In his view, Aquino, as well as the Pipil community, both stood for the same type of popular resistance against injustice that Dalton sought to direct at the government. Dalton’s ideological guidance for confrontation with the government stemmed from communist thought.

Dalton particularly took inspiration from the Leninist strain of communism for his opposition campaigns. While he may not have considered how his words mirrored the government's appeals to violence, he did grapple with his conflicting views of communism. Despite his strong support for the communist movements worldwide, seeking to unseat corrupt governments, he had to navigate his admiration of Lenin's socially egalitarian vision versus the "Lenin who came to power during the Revolution of 1917…." (Perez 152).

He hoped to apply the lessons from Lenin to the complex social realities of modern El Salvador. His model would be the idealistic Lenin before the October Revolution as he sought to decontextualize the information of Lenin's works from Lenin's tarnished reputation.
Dalton's challenge had been reconciling his revolutionary views with his efforts to convey them through art. His approach to adapting communist sensibilities into an art form placed him in conflict with the ERP leaders, the left-wing Salvadoran political party to which he belonged during his return.

In the end, Dalton's party charged him with espionage and executed him. Some observers have argued that the actual source of resentment and mistrust lay in "his attempt to fuse revolutionary praxis with literary creation…" (Knight 695). Such an approach ran counter to their philosophy. By implication, his fellow party members considered him subversive to their ideology of uncompromising militancy, which he ironically promoted in literature until his death.

Roque Dalton held complicated views on his homeland and communism, particularly evident when he became uncomfortable with his political party's shift towards pure militancy. In his view, they were embracing the same type of domination the detested government deployed. While he later detested the brand of militancy his party adopted as their platform, he advocated a forceful approach to granting power to the relatively powerless citizens. Despite his role in laying the conditions for his demise, his vocalization of social ills through an ironic narrative tone allowed him to establish a distance from the particular way he advocated for his revolutionary ideals. The distance ultimately cost him severely from the ensuing mistrust.

His poetry showed a vacillation between moderation and radicalism, which may have contributed to the mistrust his compatriots held of him.

Yet, his parallelisms drawn between the words of government officials in closed-door planning meetings and their colonial predecessors charting their methods for domination intimately committed him to his nation’s long-term revolution for socioeconomic and political equity.

It is this dual identity, of seeking to straddle the line between revolutionary and artist, which continues to fascinate readers.


Works Cited
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Knight, Jim. "Mas alla de las palabras’: Violence, Masculinity, and National Identity in Roque Dalton’s Las historias prohibidas del pulgarcito.”

The Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, vol. 87, no. 6, 2010, pp. 685-703. Project Muse. muse.jhu.edu/article/393619.
Perez, Yansi. "The dialectics of irreverence and commemoration in Roque Dalton’s Un libro rojo para Lenin.” Revista Hispanica Moderna, vol. 68, no. 2, Dec. 2015, pp. 147-63. Project Muse. muse.jhu.edu/article/622712.

Serrano, Luis Gonzalez. “El Salvador Tragic: 10 Roque Dalton Poems from 3 Books.” Cordite Poetry Review, 1 Feb. 2013, cordite.org.au/translations/serrano-dalton/. ​