Teitelboim, Volodia

▪ 2009

Valentín Teitelboim Volosky 

      Chilean writer and activist

born March 17, 1916, Chillán, Chile

died Jan. 31, 2008, Santiago, Chile

exerted an extraordinary influence on Chilean life as a leading writer, literary critic, and member of the Politburo of the Chilean Communist Party and a founder of the CCP's daily newspaper, El Siglo. When Teitelboim published (with Eduardo Anguita) his first literary offering, Antología de poesía chilena nueva (1935), the anthology came under criticism because it did not include work by Gabriela Mistral, who later won the 1945 Nobel Prize for Literature. During the 1930s Teitelboim and poet Pablo Neruda (1971 Nobel literature laureate), who were fierce literary rivals but friends, persuaded Chilean Pres. Pedro Aguirre Cerda to accept some 2,400 Spanish Civil War refugees fleeing persecution from Gen. Francisco Franco. Teitelboim's activism resulted in numerous arrests during the 1940s and '50s. He was a key figure in the coalition government of Pres. Salvador Allende, who in 1970 became the first Socialist leader of the country. During the 1973 military coup in which Allende was toppled, Teitelboim was overseas, and he spent the next 17 years in exile in the Soviet Union, where he launched the twice-weekly broadcast Escucha, Chile, a radio program in which he derided the censorship and campaign of terror instituted by Chilean leader Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Teitelboim also founded and directed Araucaria de Chile, a vehicle for Chilean intellectuals living abroad. He secretly returned to Chile in 1987, and the following year he was elevated to secretary-general of the CCP, a post he held until 1994. In addition, Teitelboim founded (1954) the literary journal Aurora, and he turned out essays, biographies (of Chilean poets Neruda, Mistral, and Vicente Huidobro and Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges), political books, notably El amanecer del capitalismo y la conquista de América (1943) and En el país prohibido (sin permiso de Pinochet) (1982; revised 1998), and a four-volume autobiography, Antes del olvido (1997–2004). In 2002 Teitelboim was awarded Chile's National Literature Prize.

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