Roberto Armijo

He passed away on March 23, 1997, as a result of cancer. His work includes poetry (The book of sonnets, When the lamps are lit, The blind night to the heart that sings), theater (Playing blind man's chicken) and novel (Leviathan's asthma), although the genre for which he was most recognized is the essay (Rubén Darío and his intuition of the world, Francisco Gavidia and the odyssey of his genius, or T. S. Eliot, the loneliest poet of the world).

Armijo excelled in the narrative, essay, theater, and criticism. He belonged to the Círculo Literario Universitario of the Universidad de El Salvador. As a result of the political conflicts that developed in the middle of the 20th century, Roberto Armijo had to go into exile in Paris until 1992, the same year in which the Peace Accords were signed and the Civil War finalized.

Like many of his generation colleagues, Armijo was repeatedly exiled by military governments. In 1972, he was in Paris enjoying a scholarship granted by the University of El Salvador, the entity in which he was working, when the military coup occurred that year. He was not able to return to his country until twenty years later when the FMLN and the government of Alfredo Cristiani signed the peace accords. During those two decades, Armijo was linked to the French academic world, thanks to his friend, the Guatemalan writer Miguel Ángel Asturias. In France, he carried out important intellectual and political activities, especially in the 1980s, when he served as a representative of the FMLN in France.

He published from 1956; his work is marked by an intimate lyricism; in other disciplines of thought, it is complicated by immediate reality. There are his essays his literary works, such as one he wrote about Rubén Darío and another that he wrote together with Napoleón Rodríguez Ruiz about Francisco Gavidia. He also wrote theater. He appeared in "De aquí en adelante" (poetic sample of five Salvadoran poets). He was a professor at the University of Paris in Latin American literature.

Roberto Armijo (December 13, 1937 in Chalatenango, El Salvador; † March 23, 1997 in Paris, France) was a Salvadoran poet. Armijo was the lyrical voice of his generation, dubbed the "Committed Generation" by Ítalo López Vallecillos. Living relatives and close ones were important to his life.