Wikipedia

Blanca Luz Brum

Blanca Luz Brum (31 May 1905, Pan de Azúcar, Maldonado - 7 August 1985, Santiago, Chile) was a writer, journalist, poet and artist from Uruguay.

Blanca Luz Brum
Born31 May 1905
Died7 August 1985
CitizenshipUruguay
Occupation(s)Poet, painter, editor

Biography

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Brum was born on 31 May 1905 in Pan de Azúcar. Her family included her uncle, Balthazar Brum, a former president of Uruguay.[1]

Family and relationships

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Blanca Luz Brum y David Alfaro Siqueiros

Much of Brum's reputation as a writer and artist was over-shadowed by her relationships.[2] She was married several times: her first husband was the Peruvian poet, es:Juan Parra del Riego.[3] Riego kidnapped her from a convent and they married when she was 17; he died of tuberculosis three years later, leaving her with a young son.[3]

She married the Mexican painter, David Alfaro Siqueiros, who she met in May 1929.[4] The couple lived in Los Angeles for a time.[5] They married in 1932, but separated in 1933, whilst living in Montevideo.[6] Whilst Siqueiros was imprisoned in 1930, she kept him supplied with artists materials.[4] During this period, Brum wrote him many letters which were later published as Penitenciaría-Niño Perdido.[1] Pablo Neruda claimed to have been her lover during this time.[3]

In 1935, divorced from Siqueiros, she lived in northern Chile and married to Jorge Béeche, a mining engineer and radical.[7] At the end of 1938 their daughter María Eugenia was born.[7]

Brum had two sons: the first with Riego, the second with her fourth husband Nils Brunson.[7] They both died in car accidents, separately.[7]

Literature and art

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Brum wrote vanguard poetry in the 1920s, contributed fiery articles to Amauta [es] and edited her own journal: Guerrilla: Atalaya de la Revolucion.[8] She was also a painter, inspired by her poetry and politics.[9] In the 1930s she was a role model for women in revolutionary art and politics.[2] Some of her work, such as the poem Himno, is now viewed as very early ecofeminism.[10]

Politics

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During the earlier part of her life, Brum was a supporter of left-wing militancy.[11] During her time in Peru, she became a Marxist,[12] influenced by José Carlos Mariátegui.[13] In 1927 she was deported from Lima back to Uruguay, for her involvement in a communist plot involving other intellectuals, such as Magda Portal.[14]

In the 1930's she was in Chile and as a APRA militant. When Chilean nazis murdered writer and storyteller Hector Bareto in 1936, who was in the same writers' club as a then young Miguel Serrano, she joined the funeral marches and there she had comforted the saddened Serrano, squeezed his hand and told him "cheer up, comrade", not knowing that Serrano would later become infamously closer to the Nazi politics of the murderers.[15]

From 1943 on, she was related to the union sectors that gave rise to Peronism in Argentina, she served as press officer for the Ministry of Labour and Social Security under Juan Domingo Perón.[7] She played a leading role as an organiser and agitator in the workers' mobilisation of 17 October 1945, which freed Perón from his arrest ordered by a military coup d'état and opened the way to his electoral victory the following year.[7]

She was exiled during the Uruguayan dictatorship (1973–1985).[13] She actively participated in politics in her country and in other Latin American countries where she lived, such as Chile or Mexico.[13]

Life on Juan Fernandez Island

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Brum became extremely interested with life on the remote Juan Fernandez Island and was eventually secluded there, due to her role in helping the escape from prison of the Argentine politician Guillermo Patricio Kelly.[16] She wrote poetry about life there.[7]

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    Panorama - Isla Juan Fernandez
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    Juan Fernandez, 1922
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In 1981 she became a Chilean citizen and died there four years later.[3]

Legacy

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Works

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  • Las llaves ardientes (1925)[17]
  • Levante (Lima 1928)[18]
  • Penitenciaría-Niño Perdido (Mexico, 1931)[19]
  • es:Atmósfera arriba. Veinte poemas (Buenos Aires, 1933)[20]
  • Blanca Luz contra la corriente (Chile, 1935)[21]
  • Cantos de América del Sur (Chile, 1939)
  • Del cancionero de Frutos Rivera (1943)
  • El último Robinson (Chile, 1953)[22]

In the media

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  • I will not travel hidden is a documentary film by Pablo Zubizarreta about Brum and she is played by Mercedes Morán.[23]
  • The novel Falsas memorias: Blanca Luz Brum by Hugo Achugar re-tells Brum's life through fiction.[24]

References

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  1. ^ a b Stein, Philip. (1994). Siqueiros : his life and works (1st ed.). New York: International Publishers. p. 66. ISBN 0-7178-0709-6. OCLC 30474926.
  2. ^ a b Sapriza, Graciela (2000-10-01). "Blanca Luz Brum". La Ilustración Liberal (in European Spanish). Retrieved 2020-03-27.
  3. ^ a b c d Feinstein, Adam (8 December 2008). Pablo Neruda : a passion for life. New York, NY. p. 101. ISBN 978-1-59691-781-1. OCLC 878071615.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  4. ^ a b "Philadelphia Museum of Art - Collections Object : Reclining Nude (Blanca Luz Brum)". www.philamuseum.org. Retrieved 2020-03-26.
  5. ^ Stein, Philip. (1994). Siqueiros : his life and works (1st ed.). New York: International Publishers. p. 77. ISBN 0-7178-0709-6. OCLC 30474926.
  6. ^ Stein, Philip. (1994). Siqueiros : his life and works (1st ed.). New York: International Publishers. p. 84. ISBN 0-7178-0709-6. OCLC 30474926.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g Sapriza, Graciela (October 2000). "Blanca Luz Brum". www.ilustracionliberal.com%2F6-7%2Fblanca-luz-brum-graciela-sapriza.html. Archived from the original on April 11, 2013. Retrieved 2020-03-27.
  8. ^ Guardiola-Rivera, Óscar (January 2013). Story of a death foretold : the coup against Salvador Allende, 11 September 1973. London. p. 29. ISBN 978-1-4088-3008-6. OCLC 852807034.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  9. ^ Piñeyro, Alberto (2011). BLANCA LUZ BRUM Una vida sin fronteras (PDF). p. 184.
  10. ^ Finzer, Erin S. (2015). "Trees, Seas, and Ecofeminist Imaginary in the Vanguard Poetry of Magda Portal (Peru, 1900-1989)". Hispanófila. 173 (1): 319–332. doi:10.1353/hsf.2015.0003. ISSN 2165-6185. S2CID 147665792.
  11. ^ Belej, Cecilia (2014). "Revolución y escritura: Blanca Luz Brum en las dos orillas del Plata en 1933". Mora (in Spanish) (20): 35–46. doi:10.34096/mora.n20.2331 (inactive 1 November 2024). ISSN 1853-001X.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link)
  12. ^ Brum, Blanca Luz. (2004). Mi vida : cartas de amor a Siqueiros. Siqueiros, David Alfaro. (1. ed.). Santiago, Chile: Mare Nostrum. ISBN 956-8089-00-4. OCLC 58430748.
  13. ^ a b c "Blanca Luz Brum". 2004-12-26. Archived from the original on 2004-12-26. Retrieved 2020-03-27.
  14. ^ Peruvian Rebel: The World of Magda Portal, with a Selection of Her Poems Kathleen Weaver Penn State Press, 2010 pp.36
  15. ^ Moraga Valle, Fabio (2009). "EL ASESINATO DE HÉCTOR BARRETO Y LA CULTURA POLÍTICA DE LA IZQUIERDA CHILENA EN LA DÉCADA DE 1930". Universum (Talca). 24 (2). doi:10.4067/S0718-23762009000200007.
  16. ^ Gender, nation, text : exploring constructs of identity. Kelly, Lorraine, 1976-, Pusse, Tina-Karen, 1973-, Wood, Jennifer (Jennifer Irene), 1971-. Wien. 2017. p. 124. ISBN 978-3-643-90940-4. OCLC 1004252296.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)
  17. ^ Brum, Blanca Luz (1925). Las llaves ardientes: poemas (in Spanish). Imprenta y Editorial Renacimiento.
  18. ^ "OBRAS COMPLETAS DE JOSE CARLOS MARIATEGUI". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 2020-03-27.
  19. ^ Brum, Blanca Luz (1933). Penitenciaría-Niño Perdido. Un documento humano ... Segunda edición corregida. Impresora Uruguaya.
  20. ^ Brum, Blanca Luz (1934). Atmósfera arriba: 20 poemas (in Spanish). Ed. Tor.
  21. ^ "Blanca Luz contra la corriente". Buenos Aires Poetry (in European Spanish). 6 September 2019. Retrieved 2020-03-27.
  22. ^ Brum, Blanca Luz (1953). El último Robinson (in Spanish). Zig-Zag.
  23. ^ No Viajaré Escondida (2018) - IMDb, retrieved 2020-03-26
  24. ^ Redmond, Erin Hilda (2008). "Square pegs : the political function of ambiguous gender and sexuality in three novels from the Southern Cone". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
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