SOURCE: “Roque Dalton,” in Spanish American Authors: The Twentieth Century, edited by Angel Flores, The H.W. Wilson Company, 1992, pp. 238-40.

In the following essay, Arias offers a brief account of Dalton's formative influences and outlines the role of his ideology in the formation of his prose and poetry.

The Salvadoran writer Roque Dalton is one of the greatest figures in Central American letters of this century. His genius is transcendent, both in and outside of our continent, and without doubt will continue to be so, provided that political passions give way to reason, translations multiply, and literary criticism plumbs his complex modernity.

Everything Dalton wrote is a meditation on his country. He is constantly asking himself what it is to be Salvadoran, where “guanacos” (what Salvadorans call themselves) are going, and what is going to become of them. He placed all his literary skills at the service...