Juan Gelman (3 May 1930 – 14 January 2014) was anArgentine poet. He published more than twenty books of poetry between 1956 and his death in early 2014. He was a naturalized citizen ofMexico,[1] where he arrived as a political exile ofthe Process, the military junta that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983.
In 2007, Gelman was awarded theMiguel de Cervantes Prize, the most important award for Spanish-language literature. His works celebrate life but are also tempered with social and political commentary and reflect his painful experiences with the politics ofArgentina.
Juan Gelman Burichson was born on 3 May 1930 in theVilla Crespo neighborhood ofBuenos Aires toJewish immigrants from Ukraine. As a boy, he read Russian and European literature widely under the tutelage of his brother Boris.[2] His father, José Gelman, was a social revolutionary who participated in theRussian Revolution of 1905; he emigrated to Argentina, went back shortly after theOctober Revolution, and then returned to Argentina for good, disillusioned.[2]
Gelman learned to read when he was three years old and spent much of his childhood reading and playing soccer. He developed an interest in poetry at a very young age, influenced by his brother Boris, who read him several poems in Russian, a language the boy did not know. The experience of readingFyodor Dostoevsky'sInsulted and Humiliated (1861) at age eight made a profound impression on him.
As a young man, he was a member of several notable literary groups and later became an important journalist. He also translated at theUnited Nations. He was always an ardent political activist. In 1975, he became involved with theMontoneros, though he later distanced himself from the group. After the1976 Argentine coup, he was forced intoexile. In 1976, his son Marcelo and his pregnant daughter-in-law, María Claudia, aged 20 and 19, were kidnapped from their home. They became two of the 30,000desaparecidos, the people who were forcibly "disappeared" without a trace during the reign of the military junta. In 1990, Gelman was led to identify his son's remains (he had been executed and buried in a barrel filled with sand and cement). Years later, in 2000, he was able to tracehis granddaughter, born in a backdoor hospital before María Claudia's murder and given to a pro-government family inUruguay. The remains of María Claudia have not yet been recovered.
During his long exile, Gelman lived inEurope until 1988, then in the United States and later in Mexico, with his wife, Argentine psychologist Mara La Madrid.
In 1997, Gelman received the Argentine National Poetry Prize, in recognition of his life's work, and in 2007 the Cervantes Prize, the most important prize for Spanish-language writers. He also had a long and brilliant career as journalist, writing for the Argentine newspaperPagina/12 until his death.
Gelman included Uruguayan police officerHugo Campos Hermida in a legal suit lodged in Spain for the "disappearance" of his daughter-in-law in Uruguay.[3]
At the beginning of the 21st century, Uruguayan presidentJorge Batlle Ibáñez ordered an investigation and Gelman's granddaughter,Macarena Gelman, was found. Macarena, who had lived as an adopted child, took the surnames of her parents and started a career as a human rights activist.
Gelman died at age 83 of complications withpreleukemia at his home in theCondesa neighborhood of Mexico City.[4] His granddaughter, Macarena, flew in from Uruguay to attend the funeral. Three days of national mourning was declared by Argentina's president,Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
Juan Gelman's archive, which includes drafts of writings and a collection of files he kept pertaining to his human rights investigations, is available for research at the Manuscripts Division in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections atPrinceton University in the United States.[5]
^ab"I am the only Argentine in the family. My parents and my two siblings were Ukrainian. Theyimmigrated in 1928."Juan Gelman: SemblanzaArchived 2008-12-24 at theWayback Machine(in Spanish) In the same brief autobiographical text, Gelman states that his mother was a student of medicine and the daughter of a rabbi from a small town. "[My parents] never shut us up in a ghetto, culturally or otherwise. [...] I received no religious education." Gelman would later write poems inLadino, i.e., Judeo-Spanish; he is also known for being sharply critical of Israel.
