José Coronel Urtecho

At 88 years old, José Coronel Urtecho physical status not available right now. We will update José Coronel Urtecho's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

José Coronel Urtecho (28 February 1906 – 19 March 1994) was a Nicaraguan poet, translator, essayist, narrator, playwright, and historian.

He has been described as "the most influential Nicaraguan thinker of the twentieth century."

He became a vocal promoter of the Sandinista National Liberation Front in 1977 after an attraction to fascism in the 1930s.

Early life

Coronel Urtecho was born in Granada, Nicaragua, the son of Manuel Coronel Matus and Blanca Urtecho Avilés. His father, a well-known politician, writer, and journalist, served in Cabinet positions under president José Santos Zelaya, including Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Finance, and Minister of Culture and Education. Matus died in 1910 under oblique circumstances just after the United States exiled Zelaya and invaded Nicaragua. Matus was killed by members of the Conservative Party in a political hunt after Zelaya's demise, according to some, although other, less accepted theories, he committed suicide. Coronel Urtecho was six years old at the time of his father's death, and he hasn't recovered fully from his loss.

Coronel Urtecho attended Jesuit High School, Colegio Centro América, where he published his first poems and literary analysis. Jesuit Catholic education influenced him greatly, and he stayed in touch with the Society of Jesus for life. Following his graduation from high school, Coronel Urtecho, his mother, and his sister moved to San Francisco. While living in California, he discovered North American poetry and became an avid admirer of many of the country's writers, including Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, and Ezra Pound, who would eventually translate into Spanish.

Source

Political and diplomatic career

Coronel Urtecho was a man of swings in politics. He started far from his father's political path and support to the Liberal Revolution, led by José Santos Zelaya. On the contrary, growing under the influence of a conservative family, on his mother side, he started as an ultra-conservative and pro-fascist politician. He later changed his ideology completely and shared his father's passionate engagement to a revolution.

In 1934, at 28, he launched the Reactionary Movement and the newspaper La Reacción, in which he and the Vanguardist Movement advanced pro-fascist ideas and supported the eternal presidency of Anastasio Somoza García, father and founder of the infamous Somoza's dictatorship. Furthermore, he provided philosophical and intellectual foundation to the idea of Somoza ruling Nicaragua for ever, in a public letter that, years later, he himself regretted and felt ashamed of. "They (the Vanguardists) claimed the need to create a new culture for the nation, where a mix of colonial and indigenous heritage were the foundation" therefore and "influenced by fascist ideas, they proposed a radical solution to the political crisis: the suppression of political parties and of all forms of popular election, and advocating one president for life".

In 1935 he was elected Congressman, appointed Sub Secretary of Education (Instrucción Pública) in 1938, and Cultural Attache in New York and Spain, in 1948, by president Roman Reyes, Somoza's uncle.

In Spain, he contacted and become close friend to Spanish writer Luis Rosales, and part of Rosales′ Vanguardists circle of friends. Among these friends and through his sons and daughter expressed political opposition to Somoza and a growing political opposition to Somoza in Nicaragua, changed Coronel initial affiliation and beliefs.

In 1959 he retired from politics and diplomacy and move back to live in the tropical forests of the San Juan River, in the border of Nicaragua and Costa Rica, where his wife grew up and where they both lived for the rest of their lives and were buried. That same year Coronel Urtecho started to write about the history of Nicaragua,[2] and became a strong critic of the Somoza administrations, which had ruled Nicaragua since 1934 with his own, and his Vanguardists friends´ support.

He remained retired and writing, only linked to intellectual activities with sporadic visits to the capital cities of Managua, Nicaragua, and San Jose, Costa Rica.

In July 1960, he was part of the intellectuals and notables who supported the Society of Jesus in founding the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA), as the first private catholic university in Central America. Years later, after his death, the University named its new library after him. Most of the books of Coronel's personal library, manuscripts and other related personal belongings were donated to the library and exhibited in there.

“Las Brisas”, his wife's farm (as he used to point out remarking he had no material wealth), was located out of a smaller stream of San Juan River, and become a popular place for intellectuals and journalists meetings and visits. The area”s popularity increased when his nephew, catholic priest Ernesto Cardenal, himself an influential poet and figure of the liberation theology founded in 1965 a religious and cultural community in the nearby Solentiname archipelago. Cardenal was also key in Coronel Urtecho new political beliefs. In 1976 many intellectuals met in Las Brisas for Coronel's 70th birthday, among them Argentinian writer Julio Cortazar, who was visiting Cardenal in Solentiname. After the 1979 Nicaraguan Revolution, Cortazar visited Nicaragua many times.

In 1974, during one of Coronel's sporadic stays in Managua, preparing by the time his lectures "Three conferences to the Private Sector", he was kidnapped by the founder and leader of the Sandinista movement, Carlos Fonseca Amador. For about 12 hours he stayed in a secret house where Fonseca spoke about Nicaragua's political crisis and reminded him of his responsibility for the intellectual validation and support to Somoza's political regime, and the need to now support the end of Somoza's era. That conversation had a deep impact on him and kept in secret until later published in 1986.

After the Sandinista National Liberation Front led Nicaragua's 1979 Revolution, which ended more than 40 years of Somoza's family control over Nicaragua, Coronel Urtecho become a passionate supporter of the new revolutionary government and its political agenda.

Source