Francisco "Paco" Urondo, (born January 10, 1930 in Santa Fe

Santa Fe, Argentina

Santa Fe is the capital city of province of Santa Fe, Argentina. It sits in northeastern Argentina, near the junction of the Paraná and Salado rivers. It lies opposite the city of Paraná, to which it is linked by the Hernandarias Subfluvial Tunnel. The city is also connected by canal with the...

, died June 17, 1976 in Mendoza

Mendoza, Argentina

Mendoza is the capital city of Mendoza Province, in Argentina. It is located in the northern-central part of the province, in a region of foothills and high plains, on the eastern side of the Andes. As of the , Mendoza's population was 110,993...

) was an Argentine

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

 writer, and member of the Montoneros

Montoneros

Montoneros was an Argentine Peronist urban guerrilla group, active during the 1960s and 1970s. The name is an allusion to 19th century Argentinian history. After Juan Perón's return from 18 years of exile and the 1973 Ezeiza massacre, which marked the definitive split between left and right-wing...

 guerrilla organization.

Urondo collaborated in the writing of movie scripts such as Pajarito Gómez

Pajarito Gómez

Pajarito Gómez is a 1965 Argentine comedy film directed by Rodolfo Kuhn. It was entered into the 15th Berlin International Film Festival. It was also selected as the Argentine entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 38th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee...

 and Noche terrible, and adapted for television Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert was a French writer who is counted among the greatest Western novelists. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary , and for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style.-Early life and education:Flaubert was born on December 12, 1821, in Rouen,...

's Madame Bovary

Madame Bovary

Madame Bovary is Gustave Flaubert's first published novel and is considered his masterpiece. The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life...

, Stendhal

Stendhal

Marie-Henri Beyle , better known by his pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Known for his acute analysis of his characters' psychology, he is considered one of the earliest and foremost practitioners of realism in his two novels Le Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de Parme...

's Le Rouge et le Noir

The Red and the Black

Le Rouge et le Noir , 1830, by Stendhal, is a historical psychological novel in two volumes, chronicling a provincial young man’s attempts to socially rise beyond his plebeian upbringing with a combination of talent and hard work, deception and hypocrisy — yet who ultimately allows his passions to...

and Eça de Queiroz's Os Maias

Os Maias

Os Maias: episódios da vida romântica is a naturalist novel by Portuguese author José Maria de Eça de Queiroz, also known under the modernized spelling Eça de Queirós.As early as 1878, while serving in the Portuguese...

.

In 1968 he was named General Culture Director for the Santa Fe Province

Santa Fe Province

The Invincible Province of Santa Fe, in Spanish Provincia Invencible de Santa Fe , is a province of Argentina, located in the center-east of the country. Neighboring provinces are from the north clockwise Chaco , Corrientes, Entre Ríos, Buenos Aires, Córdoba, and Santiago del Estero...

, and in 1973 Director of the Literature Department of the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the University of Buenos Aires

University of Buenos Aires

The University of Buenos Aires is the largest university in Argentina and the largest university by enrollment in Latin America. Founded on August 12, 1821 in the city of Buenos Aires, it consists of 13 faculties, 6 hospitals, 10 museums and is linked to 4 high schools: Colegio Nacional de Buenos...

.

As a journalist, he collaborated in several national and international media, among them Primera Plana, Panorama, Crisis, La Opiníon and Noticias.

Intellectualism and Militancy

At 18 Urondo left home to study chemistry, then law, and then philosophy and letters, but none of these satisfied him. He abandoned academics and went to Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...

, where he led a thriving social life and was known among his friends for his lively and intellectual personality.

His writing life developed and intertwined along with his militancy (in the Argentine guerrilla organizations FAR

Far

Far or FAR may refer to:- Organizations :* Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias, part of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces* Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias , a guerrilla group in Argentina...

 and Montoneros

Montoneros

Montoneros was an Argentine Peronist urban guerrilla group, active during the 1960s and 1970s. The name is an allusion to 19th century Argentinian history. After Juan Perón's return from 18 years of exile and the 1973 Ezeiza massacre, which marked the definitive split between left and right-wing...

) despite the mistrust of intellectualism among the popular groups. For him, the two were inseparable. Juan Gelman

Juan Gelman

Juan Gelman is an Argentine poet. He has published more than twenty books of poetry since 1956. He won the Cervantes Prize in 2007, the most important in Spanish literature...

, a fellow poet and friend, remembers Urondo as saying once that he “took up arms because he was looking for the right word.”

Along with Gelman and poets Roque Dalton

Roque Dalton

Roque Dalton García was a Salvadoran poet and journalist. He is considered one of Latin America's most compelling poets...

 and Mario Benedetti

Mario Benedetti

Mario Benedetti was an Uruguayan journalist, novelist, and poet....

, Urondo developed a conversational style of writing in the 60s and 70s simultaneous with the increasingly strained dynamic between the corrupt state and the people. They wrote with frankness and accusation, resisting collective silence by exposing difficult social and political truths—though devoting their words to art and lyricism above all else.

Urondo was imprisoned in 1973 but released; that same year, he published La Patria Fusilada which recounts through interview the stories of the three survivors of the Trelew massacre

Trelew massacre

The Trelew Massacre was the retaliatory government killing of 16 militants of different Peronist and left organizations held as political prisoners in Rawson Penitentiary. The prisoners were recaptured after an escape attempt and subsequently shot down by marines led by Lieutenant Commander Luis...

.

Due to his militancy Urondo had to enter into a clandestine life, taking great pains to disguise himself in public and adopting a pseudonym. He was aware of the danger he was in and had obtained cyanide pills for himself so that, in the event of a compromise, he would not be taken and tortured and forced to betray his friends.

Holding a position of responsibility within the montoneros, in 1976 Urondo found himself demoted for internal political reasons and had to be transferred. He asked to not be sent to Santa Fe or to Mendoza because he was well known in both places, but nevertheless they placed him as head of the Mendoza column. Out of options, Urondo left in the beginning of May 1976 with his then-companion Alicia Raboy and their one-year-old child Angela.

His Death

On his death, Argentine writer Rodolfo Walsh

Rodolfo Walsh

Rodolfo Jorge Walsh was an Argentine writer, considered the founder of investigative journalism. He is most famous for his Open Letter from a Writer to the Military Junta which he wrote the day before his murder, protesting that their economic policies were having an even greater effect on...

 wrote:

Work

• Historia Antigua, poetry, 1956.
• Breves, poetry, 1959.
• Lugares, poetry, 1961.
• Nombres, poetry, 1963.
• Todo eso, short-stories, 1966.
• Veraneando y sainete con variaciones, play, 1966.
• Al tacto, short-stories, 1967.
• Del otro lado, poetry, 1967.
• Adolecer, poetry, 1968.
• Veinte años de poesía argentina, essay, 1968.
• Larga distancia, poetry, Madrid, 1971.
• Los pasos previos, novel, 1972.
• La patria fusilada, interviews, 1973.
• Cuentos de batalla, poetry, 1998.
• Poemas, poetry, Visor.
• Obra poética, poetry, Hidalgo, 2006.