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Jose Santos Chocano
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Jose Santos Chocano Gastanodi was a Peruvian poet who is also known as "The Singer of Americas", because the first line of one of his most celebrated poems: "I am the singer of the America, Autochthonous and Savage"" . In the early twentieth century his fame stretched through the continent and even to Madrid and Paris. One of his best-known collections is the 1906 Alma America, which opened with a dedicatory poem addressed to Alfonso XIII of Spain that cast the collection as the rediscovery of Latin America through verse; elsewhere in the collection.
After the coup which deposed Estrada Cabrera in 1920, Chocano was briefly imprisoned, and subsequently returned to Peru, where he became associated with President Augusto B. Leguia. On November 5, 1922, Chocano was recognized by the government of Peru as a most notable poet of Peru, he was laureated as "The Poet of America" in a ceremony featuring Leguia himself, various ministers, delegates from all the provinces of Peru, and a number of young and established writers.
Three years later, Chocano became embroiled in a dispute with Mexican intellectual Jose Vasconcelos; when Peruvian students sided with Vasconcelos, Chocano phoned the journalist Edwin Elmore to complain about his recent article on the polemic; insults and threats quickly followed. Elmore dashed off an article detailing Chocano's attack on him, and hurried to his office at the newspaper "El Comercio" to insert it. Unfortunately, as Elmore left the building, Chocano arrived at it, and after Elmore slapped Chocano, the latter pulled a gun and shot the young journalist in the stomach. Elmore died soon after.
Related websites
Official Web site "UNMSM-Sanmarquinos Ilustres del XX-fechaarchivo=2007-08-07"
Telephonic Foundation-Art Collections, Biographies :Jose Victoriano Gonzalez Perez, known as Juan Gris,
Caretas Magazine Article
biography, bibliography, and poetry
brief biography
A page of Chocano's poetry
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Jose Santos Chocano
