Peru is one of the Latin American countries that has the largest number of references in the literary world, especially in poetry. César Vallejo, Blanca Varela, José Watanabe, among others. The list could go on; They are authors whose works are awarded and recognized worldwide. But there is a centenary liberteño man who deserves to be honored in the same way. That is why, Javier Corcuera, premieres the documentary «100 years with Leoncio Bueno» one day after his birthday.
Biography
Leoncio Bueno was born on January 2 of a century ago at the La Constancia ranch, located in the department of La Libertad. A man who never expected anything from anyone, much less get the Casa de la Literatura Peruana Award in 2016. But his intellectual career, quality of literary work and impetus for giving a voice to migrant communities made him worthy of it.
He began working at age 9 as a pawn at La Hacienda Casa Blanca, where he had his first encounter with APRA and anarcho-syndicalism. He studied until third grade but his lifestyle made him get the idea of becoming an intellectual.
At age 19 he migrated to the capital, was a construction worker, textile operator, union leader, and journalist. He moved in the circle of poets of the proletariat and founded along with Rafael Méndez Rodrich and Emilio Adolfo Westphalen the Marxist Workers Group (1948), in addition to the May First Intellectual Group (1956).
Author of works such as At the foot of the anvil (1966), Shepherd of thunder (1968), Invasion powerful (1970), Rebuzno own. The happiness of the dynamiters (1976), the war of the runes (1980) and Cantos al sol de Cieneguilla (2014), in addition to unpublished hand-drawn poems; where he sought to raise the claim of migrants as true owners of the nation and the authenticity of the man of the Andes.
Documentary film
The documentary begins with the poet reading «The Astronauts», a poem that speaks of the foreign man (or stranger), the Lima man, the owner of the hacienda, the man outside the Andean world, and his contact (or semi contact) with the natives, the cholos, the blacks, to be their «comrades» or the laborers who later worked their lands. He recounts his beginnings as a pawn in the farm of Facalá and his desire to reach Lima to become a journalist or writer, as in the books he had read at school.
In addition, he tells about his experience as a collaborator in the bank’s expropriation plan to return the money to the farmworkers and how it was to write from the cell. In the documentary by Corcuero, reference is also made to «El Túngar», Bueno’s battery workshop, which was the meeting point for several poets from the 60s to the 80s. Currently, the poet is dedicated to writing handmade poems, many of which have no record.
You can watch the documentary in the following link.