Letter from José Roberto Cea to López Vallecillos, 27 May 1973
Dublin Core
Title
Letter from José Roberto Cea to López Vallecillos, 27 May 1973
Description
Cea, one of the poets of La Pájara Pinta, is visiting Chile and offers a vivid description of life under the Salvador Allende government in this letter written a few months before the Pinochet coup.
Creator
José Roberto Cea
Source
López Vallecillos family archive.
Format
Paper
Language
Spanish
Type
Personal letter
Text Item Type Metadata
Text
Translation:
Santiago de Chile, 27 May 1973
Dear Poet Italo,
Cordial greetings from this chaotic city, where the U.P. [Unidad Popular, the coalition led by Salvador Allende] is in the government and others in power. The enemies of Chile have been hoarding all the most necessary products and thereby make life more costly. There's a bus drivers' strike that left me stranded for four days in Arica. Here I still haven't been able to get around, and not until today, Sunday, have there been a few buses apart from those owned by the state. The situation here is tense, one feels the violence, the dominant power of the right and the weakness of the U.P., which I have mentioned to some of the comrades I have met. Civil war seems to be what the right and the U.P. are heading towards. And their parties are in campaigns against that war. Something like this happened with José Manuel Balmaceda [Chilean president in 1891], according to the historian Hernán Ramírez Necochea, facts for your historiography. If I can find a newspaper cutting, I'll send it to you.
[…]
Santiago de Chile, 27 May 1973
Dear Poet Italo,
Cordial greetings from this chaotic city, where the U.P. [Unidad Popular, the coalition led by Salvador Allende] is in the government and others in power. The enemies of Chile have been hoarding all the most necessary products and thereby make life more costly. There's a bus drivers' strike that left me stranded for four days in Arica. Here I still haven't been able to get around, and not until today, Sunday, have there been a few buses apart from those owned by the state. The situation here is tense, one feels the violence, the dominant power of the right and the weakness of the U.P., which I have mentioned to some of the comrades I have met. Civil war seems to be what the right and the U.P. are heading towards. And their parties are in campaigns against that war. Something like this happened with José Manuel Balmaceda [Chilean president in 1891], according to the historian Hernán Ramírez Necochea, facts for your historiography. If I can find a newspaper cutting, I'll send it to you.
[…]
Files
Collection
Citation
José Roberto Cea, “Letter from José Roberto Cea to López Vallecillos, 27 May 1973,” Italo López Vallecillos, Editor to the Revolution, accessed December 1, 2023, https://rogeratwood.georgetown.domains/items/show/3.