Romualdo during his student days in Italy (left) and his ID card from university years in Peru, indicating he was studying literature.
significantly more work to be done. He is now using some of the material for his own writing on Romualdo’s career and influence. “I am privileged to protect and use these papers. No one has seen much of this material,” he says. “It is a big responsibility to be entrusted with all of it. I am very careful whenever someone requests access to it.” Gargurevich doesn’t think he should be the sole interpreter of Romualdo’s art, and he is looking for an institute or museum in Peru willing to house the collection and make it accessible for study. Romualdo’s best-known work is the “Song of Tupac Amaru,” which exalts the revolutionary spirit of the 18th-century leader. The poem glorifies the Peruvian independence movement and won the Peruvian National Prize for Poetry. With the exception of a few poems, Romualdo is less known in countries outside Peru because his poetry has not been translated into English. He is widely known in European countries, especially Spain and Italy, where he studied; in Cuba, where he lived for several years in solidarity with the Cuban revolution; and in Russia and China, due to his socialist and ideological sympathies. Gargurevich believes Romualdo’s years as a student in Europe were a turning point for his thinking and writing. He understands why, reflecting on his own years away from Peru and Concordia’s emphasis on global learning. “I know how true this is, that when seriously assumed, experiences abroad have the ability to teach us the realities of our places of origin much more than books or living where we were born,” he says. “Looking from the vantage point of being away from familiar places, we see them in a new light.”
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Gargurevich says that in post-World War II Europe, Romualdo saw the consequences of war and it caused him to set aside pure, romantic poetry and prompted him to take a political stand in his writings. “He became a demonstrated leftist, and he never gave up,” says Gargurevich. “In Peru he is equally admired as a poet as he is for his political integrity and courage. He used poetry to call for social change.” Gargurevich says Romualdo’s early works call for peace, love and communion among all mortals but, after returning from Europe, Romualdo openly declared himself an instrument of change committed to the struggle for social transformation of an unjust society. “His poetry became the epitome of social poetry, and he actively plunged into radical politics and an affiliation to Marxism-Leninism,” he says. “For many, he was an icon of poetic and political consequence.” Romualdo also gained a reputation as an activist who did not run away from artistic or ideological confrontation, a sort of hard-liner in the arts world. “He liked to argue a lot,” says Gargurevich. “He never shut up. He could be grouchy, and for some he was a scary person who could be really irritating.” Romualdo took to publishing editorial cartoons featuring comments on what was going on in the country through the eyes of a Peruvian Indian and an AfroPeruvian. With this voice, he promoted changes in the Peruvian education system, and supported land reform and government negotiations with labor unions. Unhappy with a change in government and feeling there was no place for him as a public intellectual, Romualdo went back to Havana. There he quickly grew disappointed with the Soviet Union’s control over Cuban