Otto Rene Castillo

(1934-1967)



Guatemalan communist poet. Went into exile in 1954 after a CIA-orchestrated coup and returned clandestinely in 1966 to join the guerrilla struggle against the regime. In March 1967 he was captured by government forces, taken to their barracks where he was tortured for four days, and then burned alive. His poems are filled with his strong belief in a better future, and his principled opposition to oppression and exploitation in all of their forms. The beauty and consciousness of his poems is a tribute to a great revolutionary who died too young.