César Vallejo: The discovery of two photographs and a file reveals the political ideologies of the universal poet

Historical finding. On April 16, the researcher Valentino Gianuzzi presented at the Lima Art Museum (Mali) Two unpublished photographs of the Peruvian poet César Vallejo. The images, until now unknown, were taken by the Paris Police in 1930.

In them you can see Vallejo Looking at the camera with a tense expression, both with a hat and without him. The photographs were taken after a police intervention that occurred on December 17 of that year. The action was carried out before the suspicion that Vallejo and his group of friends allegedly belonged to a communist organization.

In the Prefecture of Paris, the researcher personally reviewed a file and also found the photographic material in the Digitized Documents System of the Ministry of Interior of France.

This was César Vallejo’s police intervention

Gianuzzi recounts, according to the testimonies collected, which César Vallejo He was arrested by the police during an exit with his friends through the streets of Paris. The agents accused him based on the presumption that he belonged to a communist group. Vallejo He expressed his outrage and faced the troops, which caused an altercation that ended with his transfer to a police agency.

According to the researcher, the purpose of the photographic registration was to distribute the portrait of the poet among the local police stations to facilitate its identification. Although he was released and subsequently cited to the Paris Prefecture, César Vallejo He was expelled from the city a few weeks later.

At that time, the poet was 38 years old. Eight years later, he would die in that same city. Gianuzzi He stressed that these images constitute one of the few study shots that are preserved from Vallejo.

César Vallejo and his ideology present in his works

César Vallejo was one of the most representative figures of Peruvian and Latin American literature of the twentieth century. The so -called “universal poet” not only left a deeply human and existential poetic legacy, but also a marked political position, aligned with the ideas of the left. His sensitivity and concern against social injustice and exclusion were reflected both in his work and in his public life.

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