Otoniel Guevara, Salvadoran Poet And Ex-Guerrilla, To Speak At WestConn 

DANBURY — Salvadoran writer Otoniel Guevara, a onetime guerrilla now recognized as one of Central America’s leading contemporary poets, will discuss current political and immigration issues in El Salvador and read from his literary works in a bilingual presentation at 4:30 pm on Wednesday, December 6, at Western Connecticut State University.

Mr Guevara’s lecture and poetry reading, delivered in English and Spanish, will be in Alumni Hall on WestConn’s Midtown campus, 181 White Street. The presentation will be free and the public is invited.

Mr Guevara will discuss “War, Violence and Immigration in El Salvador,” drawing upon his own extraordinary political experiences in the 1980s as a former member of the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation (FMLN) movement. He has parted ways with the FMLN since the signing in 1992 of a United Nations-sponsored peace accord between guerrilla forces and the Salvadoran government.

Over the past two decades, the 39-year-old Guevara has earned international acclaim as an author whose poetry spans a broad range of subjects, ranging from intimate themes of love and betrayal to political themes of revolution and poverty. A founding member of the pioneering poets’ organizations Xibalba in El Salvador and Imagen in Nicaragua, he has published five books of poetry in Spanish and participated in prestigious poetry events throughout the Americas and Europe. His works have earned numerous Latin American literary prizes and have been translated into English, French, German and four other European languages.  

Mr Guevara has served as director of several Central American literary reviews and organized annual international poetry festivals in his native El Salvador, recruiting foreign poets to lecture at college, cultural and public events in his native country. He pursued journalism studies at universities in El Salvador and Nicaragua and currently directs the cultural supplement Tres Mil, published by the Salvadoran newspaper Diario CoLatino.

Eunice Shade, writing in the newspaper El Nuevo Diario of Managua, Nicaragua, described Mr Guevara as a poet who “searches for his individuality within the confines of the written word. He immerses himself in the organic nature of the language. No matter whether it is love, hatred, eroticism, madness, revolution, corruption, resentment or friendship, Guevara comes face to face with the precious literary currency that he melds and adapts to the forms that his very being dictates.”

For more information, call Assistant Professor of World Languages and Literature Dr Alba Skar at 837-8485.