6 poems by Magda Portal, the rebel poet

 

6 poems by Magda Portal, the rebel poet

María Magdalena Julia Portal Moreno, known as Magda Portal, was born on May 27, 1900 in Barranco. She was a Peruvian writer, politician and feminist. She was part of the literary vanguard of our country and is considered one of the most important poets of the 20th century. José Carlos Mariátegui praised her, calling her the "first poetess" of Peru. She passed away in 1989.

Bows

 

Today I think everything is false

 

In this this smoke love

 

From the two ponds

 

Glaze of your eyes

 

Where my pupils are immobilized

 

until reality excited

 

of your two infinite hands

 

 

 

only the anguish of tonight is true

 

palpable between my cold hands

 

and the crying that falls inside me

 

and this desire to ask for forgiveness.

 

 

 

 

Ambiguous emeralds of my laughter!

 

Lavish decoration of my sadness borders

 

like two green eyes that have seen the sea a lot

 

and who feel nostalgic to sleep in her bosom

 

 

 

Bless you Time

 

because you affirm the anguish

 

That this love is just a dream.

Sea of joy

 

I am a sea because I would not have been a river

 

A sea without channels

 

Of green joys

 

I of deep solitudes

 

an encompassing sea

 

of Life and Death

 

From which they depart and to which they converge

 

all the forces of life

 

 

 

I am a sea like that calm sea

 

what do my eyes see

 

and that surrounds the Earth

 

with his superb white kiss

 

 

 

I am a sea

 

twilight pupils

 

i voice of aurora

 

like that blue sea

 

the one I woke up on my first trip

 

that sea of open arms

 

of perennial youth

 

where my hope rests

 

white seagull

 

with pink pupils

 

I am a sea.

Genesis of Life

 

The incoherent pain

 

To Jose Santos Chocano

 

I want to go with outstretched hands over the Void.

I want my

 

hands feel the Shadow and cannot grasp it, blind, impotent

I

 

I don't want the Abyss to answer my question with its terrible voices:

"What

there is?" I want to carry a regret inside, a doubt, a broken wing whose

 

Blood always drips in Space.

 

II

 

My heart beats a mother and drowns me

 

 

 

the voice of her voiceless purrs

 

pushing my bones

 

 

 

coldness of my disconnected hands

 

to feel heat

 

 

 

talk to me a strange root is growing

 

 

 

talk to me but

 

 

 

I do not want it to be reborn.

The parade of looks

 

To seraph of the sea

 

The voyager of all seas

 

I was sad

 

like midnight birds

 

lying in the dark

 

 

 

Like the highlands without trees

 

facing the cold winds of

 

the coast

 

 

 

sad as the strong

 

i like the losers when

 

early death begins

 

indifference

 

 

 

LOVE I was sad

 

My sides were bloodied

 

my goldfish died

 

and perfidy number ONE wobbled

 

my balance

 

to the attraction of the abyss

 

 

 

I the midnight birds

 

They haunted the shipwreck of me

 

Heart in the forsaken sands

 

 

 

BUT YOU ARRIVED

 

YOU for whom my arms

 

They opened in a cross

 

and the dream spiders wove

 

the infinite silk of amnesia

 

 

 

YOU excited conqueror

 

of my wild tribes of sadness

 

 

 

where did you take the religion of a

 

new joy like airplanes

 

over virgin forests

 

 

 

Hoi the suit of our souls

 

is the rainbow of smile

Liberation

One day I’ll be free, even freer than the wind;
my verse will be bright with daredevil liberation
after I’ve freed myself from this secret shame
that plunges its sharp splinter into my heart.
One day I’ll be free with my arms open wide,
with my eyes open and unshielded before the sun,
Fear and Memory won’t be hiding
crouched in ambush, the better to rip me apart.
One day I’ll be free . . . I’ll be free, I know it,
with a huge smile that flowers from the heart,
with a huge smile that I don’t have today.
And then I won’t have the ghost of my shame,
the coward silence that tamps down my Emotion.
Someday I’ll have achieved the truth of my Self!

 

 Liberation

One day I’ll be free, even freer than the wind;
my verse will be bright with daredevil liberation
after I’ve freed myself from this secret shame
that plunges its sharp splinter into my heart.
One day I’ll be free with my arms open wide,
with my eyes open and unshielded before the sun,
Fear and Memory won’t be hiding
crouched in ambush, the better to rip me apart.
One day I’ll be free . . . I’ll be free, I know it,
with a huge smile that flowers from the heart,
with a huge smile that I don’t have today.
And then I won’t have the ghost of my shame,
the coward silence that tamps down my Emotion.
Someday I’ll have achieved the truth of my Self!

 

Source: Magda Portal. Complete poetic work. Daniel R. Reedy | Fund of Economic Culture.

With affection,

Ruben

 

 

Magda Portal

 

Magda Portal

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia

Magda Portal (May 27, 1900 – 1989) was a Peruvian poet, feminist, author, and political activist and leader. She was recognized in the vanguardia poetry literary movement in Peru and Latin America, and she was one of the founders of the APRA (American Popular Revolutionary Alliance) political party.

Biography 

With brothers Peralta

Early life

Magda Portal was born on May 27, 1900, in Barranco, near Lima, Peru.[1] As a young woman, she worked during the day, and attended classes at the University of San Marcos during the evening. These classes broadened her views on philosophical and political ideals.[2] During this stage of her life as a young woman, she began her literary career by writing poetry and reporting for magazines. In 1923, Portal was recognized by the prestigious Juegos Florales poetry competition. However, Portal refused to accept the prize when she heard Augusto Leguia, the Peruvian president was to announce and award the prize to her.[3] This was a definitive move in her career, and perhaps marked the beginning of Portal's political career.

 

Political career

Portal continued to write extensively after this poetry competition in 1923. On November 11, 1923, she gave birth to her daughter, Gloria.[4] When Portal returned to Peru after a trip to Bolivia, she became actively involved in progressive politics and the active literary scene in Lima, Peru.[5] In June 1927, her role in progressive politics made her one of the many people the regime of Augusto Leguía exiled for allegedly participating in communist organizations.[6] After she was exiled, she traveled first to Cuba and then to Mexico. While in Mexico, she met Haya de la Torre, the Peruvian founder of the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA) movement, who recruited her to the Aprista movement. She then became the cofounder, along with many others, of the Aprista party in 1931.[7] At this time Portal began to focus more on politics than poetry and she became a committed anti-imperialist.[8] Portal traveled all over Latin America promoting these anti-imperialist and Aprista ideals, proving herself as a political leader.[9]

 

In 1930 Portal traveled to Chile, but was imprisoned and placed into solitary confinement. Later that year after President Leguía's regime fell, Portal finally returned to Peru where she was appointed to the task of organizing women's Aprista groups throughout Peru by the Aprista party's national executive committee, which Portal was a member of.[10] She continued in her work by assisting with the party magazine, Apra, and by publishing and editing various propaganda pamphlets. The government of Luis Miguel Sánchez Cerro followed Leguía's regime, whose goal was to eliminate the Aprista movement and his administration persistently persecuted them. This persecution forced Portal and many other Apra members to live clandestinely and continue with Apra work illegally.[11]

 

In 1933, Sánchez Cerro was assassinated by an Aprista militant. With Sanchez Cerro out of power, Oscar Benavides stepped into power.[12] The same year, Portal was named the National Secretary of Women's Affair for the Aprista party.[11] In this leadership position Portal traveled around Peru and eventually was imprisoned once again. When she finally received her freedom in 1936, Portal travelled to Bolivia, then to Argentina, and onwards to Chile.[13] In 1945, Portal returned to Peru. Her opinions on the Aprista party's ideals began to differ from the others, and felt betrayed by the party. In 1949, [This break came in 1950] she publicly broke from the Aprista party, after feeling that the part had strayed from its original and anti-imperialist goals. She continued her activist role, however, and continued to advocate strongly for women's rights throughout the 1970s.

 

Literary accomplishments

By the 1970s and 1980s, Portal's literary accomplishments began receiving increased critical attention. Portal had begun her writing in the 1920s. She was a recognized leader in the vanguardia literary movement. She wrote and published poetry, books, and newspaper and magazine articles all over South America, many of which conveyed her progressive views on women's rights. In 1980 Portal was elected the president of the Asociación Nacional de Escritores y Artistas and is still remembered as a literary leader in Latin America.[14] Portal died in 1989.[15]

 

Portal's personal and literary archive was purchased by the Benson Latin American Collection in 1986.[16]

 

Selected works

Una Esperanza y El Mar. 1927

Flora Tristan, Precursora. 1944

Costa Sur. 1945

Constancia del Ser. 1955

La Trampa. 1957

References

 Daniel R. Reedy. Spanish American Women Writers: A Bio-Biographical Source Book, Diane E. Marting, ed., (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1990), 483.

 Wallace Fuentes, Becoming Magda Portal, 91-93.

 Flores, Spanish American Authors, 697-698.

 Wallace Fuentes, Becoming Magda Portal, 209.

 Reedy. Spanish American Women Writers: A Bio-Biographical Source Book, 484.

 Wallace Fuentes, “Becoming Magda Portal”, 328.

 Weaver, Peruvian Rebel.

 Wallace Fuentes, “Becoming Magda Portal”, 338.

 Flores. Spanish American Authors. 698.

 Weaver, Peruvian Rebel.

 Flores, Spanish American Authors, 698.

 Klarén, Peru: Society and Nationhood in the Andes, 276

 Reedy, Spanish American Women Writers, 485.

 Flores, Spanish American Authors, 698-699

 Reedy, Spanish American Women Writers, 483.

 "Magda Portal Papers". Magda Portal Papers. Texas Archival Resources Online. Retrieved February 20, 2020.

With affection,

Ruben

National Stadium of Lima Peru

 

National Stadium of Lima Peru

 

59 years of the tragedy, that left more than 300 dead

Source: The Chronicle Viva Lima Peru

 

This May 24 marks the 59th anniversary of one of the greatest tragedies in world football, which occurred when 320 fans died in the packed National Stadium in Lima during a match between Peru and Argentina, qualifying for the Tokyo 1964 Olympic Games.

 

The tragedy occurred on May 24, 1964, when a fan, Víctor Vásquez, known as "Negro Bomba", entered the field of play to rebuke the referee, who had cancelled a goal scored by Peru, who was playing against Argentina in the qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics.

 

The policemen threw the trained dogs on the man and, after having neutralized him, they beat him, which enervated the spirits of a group of fans who began to destroy the seats in the stands.

 

The agents threw tear gas canisters towards the stands, which produced a stampede of thousands of people who found themselves with the doors closed when trying to leave the Nacional.

 

This caused 320 fans to die crushed and suffocated, in what has been considered the greatest tragedy produced in a soccer stadium in the world.

 

Former Peruvian international soccer player Héctor Chumpitaz, who was playing for the national team on the day of the tragedy, once said that those events were “the saddest part” of his sports career.

 

"The angry crowd turned and burned the bus that transported the Argentine team, the stadium doors were swollen as if it were a pregnant woman (due to the amount of accumulated corpses)," recalled Chumpitaz.

 

“Remembering it is a bit hard. People go to the stadium to enjoy and have fun, but that time there were many victims, ”he commented.

 

Recognition of corpses in the Morgue of Lima.

 

The fans despair in the stands. The police prepare to attack.

A tear gas bomb thrown by the Police at the stands, is returned by the fans to the field of play, over the players of the Argentina team.

The Police have fired the gases towards the stands. The fans run desperately towards the exit. Tragedy: The doors were closed, more than 300 people died of suffocation.

Futile efforts in the stands to make the victims of the tragedy react.

 

 

Víctor Melesio Vásquez Campos, alias “Negro Bomba”, jumps from the East stand to attack the referee.

 

The Police detain a second spectator who entered the playing field to attack the referee.

 

The Police remove the second spectator who entered the playing field to attack the referee.

 

The Uruguayan referee Ángel Eduardo Pazos cancels the goal of the Peruvian

“Kilo” Lobatón, which unleashes the anger of the fans and ignites the spark that starts the tragedy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Infographic of the tragedy made by the press of the time.

Documentation: Walter Sosa Vivanco

With affection,

Ruben