8 Year Olds Singing Reggaeton

la Vega (1924-2010)

Paradoxes of life and death (the passage of time, really), just three months ago I wrote to remind Peter Ballon, I reproduced a picture here that are also Julio de la Vega, who just left the underworld on Thursday November 11 at 86 years of age. It was a simple man, sober and of few words, without any ambition or figurative pose so characteristic in future generations.

"Walk bent, always walked well. Looking at the stones, nothing. Born and reborn, smiling from a distance intangible. That's why everyone loves to July: family, friends, colleagues, students. And established artists and amateurs, "wrote four years ago with great affection his niece, journalist and writer Lupe Cajías, in an article aptly titled "All we love you, Julio."

Julio joined me at least two things: poetry and film. There was a time in early 1970 when the film critic who served in Bolivia could count on the fingers of one hand. Julio was one of the fingers, Luis Espinal other. Both learned a lot since then with just was twenty years old, while they had enough mileage on the job.

Once I came to call the five cats who wrote film criticism for shaping the Bolivian Association of Film Critics (CRIB) was created in February 1979 with the aim to "contribute to the strengthening of a current film debunker, alienated, to help clarify the national situation." The charter, signed by Luis Espinal, Julio de la Vega, Pedro Susz, Carlos Mesa, and Alfonso Gumucio Dagron, states that "the Bolivian public needs guidance to allow them to critique their own instruments to see cinema as a cultural fact and not mere escapism. Besides founding, we never organize any activity as a group, but everyone kept writing about movies.

Over the years I lived in France, we wrote several times. July I spoke with nostalgia of the season he spent in Paris in the early 1950s, where he attended as a pupil free courses from Roland Barthes and went to the iconic film magazine Cahiers du Cinema , as I did after in 1970:

"I discovered the real film critic in Paris, to my twenty-five years. I had the privilege of attending virtually the birth of the magazine Cahiers du Cinema . I remember the number 4, the first thing I knew. That interested me deeply critical precisely because fusing cinema with literature. Casually met André Bazin, who was the mentor and creator of the magazine. Lo Duca also Jacques Doniol Valcroze. I had friends with them, but a contact on the occasion of cinema. "

Julo de la Vega was part of the second generation of poets Barbara Deed (when poetry was still important in Bolivia), a group that published a collective work : Wheat tin and sea. The Grand Prize for Poetry Franz Tamayo 1966 recognized the quality of Poems of exaltation, where as in other works is shown as a modern poet, cutting edge, influenced in its language and themes for movies, music that breathes poet when you feel part of today, not only of the past sealed.

Provocations In my book (published in 1977 and re-edited by Plural in 2006) included a chapter devoted to July, which was called "Poetry with river flow" because that's the impression that his poetry bubbling occurs to me . "His poetry is a poetry revolt, his poems are long poems-river dotted lines-surprise, agile and modern," wrote then.

of the things I said, there is a characteristic of almost every Bolivian writers:

"The only frustration I've met in my work as a writer is related to the inability to devote the entire time of my life to writing. I have written poetry, novels that outline, the plays I have in schema ... I do not think I've written almost nothing that I can write and that's my frustration. Literature is a profession anyway, at least for the time you spend, and I resent having to steal time to take care of other matters that I may live. "

Years later, in the Internet era, in page Web Bolivia made a selection of ten poets Bolivians, which obviously I included Julio de la Vega, his poem "Prophet is needed", which shows these lines: "Who knows how to stand up full / with the whip of fire between the hands / to resurrect hits / no to the big hope / but only the minimum comfort, / a compensation / that where there is no bread / no not hate. "

addition to poetry and theater (since 1991 there is a "theater festival neighborhoods" that bears his name), Julio novelist became so well that Matthias, the Apostle finished integrating alternate 2009 list the "ten foundational Bolivian novels, after a query (highly controversial, all for the conspicuous absence of Augusto Céspedes) organized by the Ministry of Culture and Race in Literature at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, La Paz. Provocations

In I also spoke of the death: "Death has always been another obvious concern in my poetry, but do not pretend to give philosophical importance throughout the poem. I write about death abstractly and in particular about 'deaths' of friends and family as they affect my feelings and that have been vital to my existence. "

write with that same feeling now about Julio de la Vega . The last time I was greeted in February 2009, when we meet at the funeral of Francisco Cajías, his nephew.

From left to right:
Alberto Crespo Rodas, Lupe Cajías, Mario Frias Infante, Beatriz Rossels, Alfonso Gumucio Dagron Julio de la Vega , Carlos
Castanon Barrientos, Armando Soriano Badani, Mariano Baptista Gumucio and Eusebio Gironda
La Paz on April 7, 2001