Italo López Vallecillos (1932-1986) was a Salvadoran poet, essayist, critic, and journalist. But his greatest impact was as editor and publisher to Central America’s most important writers in the 1960s and 1970s.

López Vallecillos was co-founder of two of Central America’s most important university publishers, the UCA Editores in El Salvador and EDUCA in Costa Rica. He published such vital Central American voices as Roque Dalton, Ernesto Cardenal, Sergio Ramírez Mercado, Claribel Alegría, and Otto René Castillo.

Facilitated, encouraged, and befriended by López Vallecillos, these writers articulated the demands for change that were sweeping Central America. Many later joined the guerrilla movements that challenged the region's conservative order. 

López Vallecillos also founded, with the novelist Manlio Argueta, the influential Salvadoran journal La Pájara Pinta. From 1966 to 1972, La Pájara Pinta was a key space for Salvadoran left-leaning writers to publish poetry and essays that widened the country's political and cultural frontiers. They included Dalton, Alegría, Eduardo Sancho, José Roberto Cea, and Ricardo Castrorrivas. Many later joined guerrilla movements. La Pájara Pinta was shut down in a military invasion on the campus of the University of El Salvador, where it was published, in 1972.  

This website features letters and documents drawn from López Vallecillos's private correspondence, as well as the covers of  some of his own publications.