Manuel Ortiz Guerrero

• Name — Manuel Ortiz Guerrero • Birth Name — Manuel Ortiz Guerrero • Born — 16 July 1894 • Birthplace — Villarrica del Espíritu Santo, Paraguay • Died — 8 May 1933 • Place of death — Asunción, Paraguay • Occupation — Poet

Guerrero was born in Ybaroty, a neighbourhood in the city of Villarrica del Espíritu Santo, Paraguay. His parents were Vicente Ortiz and Susana Guerrero, who died after giving birth. He was raised by his grandmother, Florencia Ortiz. He completed his first studies in a school in Villarrica, and stood out for his interest in scholarly works. He was shy and not very social. While he was studying at the National College in Villarrica he wrote his first verses; during this time he acquired the "Manú" nickname. He arrived in Asunción in 1914, where he studied in the Colegio Nacional de la Capital. He published his first poems in the Revista del Centro Estudiantil. Soon, local papers started to show interest in him. One of his most famous pieces, "Loca", was published in the magazine Letras. He lived with his friend and also poet Guillermo Molinas Rolón. In the 1920s he published poems such as "Surgente", "Pepitas" and "Nubes del este" and plays like "Eireté", "La Conquista" and "El crimen de Tintalila". He also wrote the lyrics in Guarani for some of his friend, José Asunción Flores's songs. Pieces like "India" and "Buenos Aires" were written in Spanish. Guerrero was exiled from his country and went to Brazil. He died in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1933, due to leprosy. His ashes rest in the city where he was born, and in a plaza of Asunción called "Manuel Ortiz Guerrero y José Asunción Flores". Posthumous publications of his works include Obras completas (1952) and Arenillas de mi tierra (1969).

A solidly modernist poem, "Loca" was followed by other poems that have a rather romantic tang: "Raída poty", "Guarán-i", "La sortija", "Diana de gloria". He wrote indistinctively in Spanish and Guaraní, succeeding admirably with poems in the second language, most of all, beautiful poems that serve as lyrics for the most important guaranias of José Asunción Flores: "Panambí verá", "Nde rendape aju", "Kerasy"y"Paraguaype". In his book La poesía paraguaya – Historia de una incógnita, the Brazilian critic Walter Wey writes: "Ortiz Guerrero represented the great courage of being an intellectual in a country without editors, even that of living exclusively from art, since writing poems and playing the guitar were the only things he was good at". He would print his poems in his own typing machine and sell them from door to door. He managed to get them to the people in a way such that they were untouched by leprosy. Towards the end of his existence, Manú received his last visitors and friends in the darkest corner of his miserable room, placing the chairs strategically distant from the bed so that they didn't see him. The scars of this struggle with life and for life are reborn in some of his verses and in brochures titled "Cantimplora", which testify to the painful path of the Guarani poet.