Vamos Patria a Caminar / Otto Rene Castillo / 1965

Vamos Patria a Caminar / Otto Rene Castillo / 1965

I’ve been searching for a book by Otto Rene Castillo for years, so I was thrilled when I found a copy of Vamos Patria a Caminar en La Teca during my trip to Guate. This collection is full of love and heartbreak poems, as well as patriotic, revolutionary leftist poetry. The love here blends and blurs nationalism and romantic love, a tradition familiar to anyone who has read the kundimans of the Phillipines (via Patrick Rosal esp). There’s very many 10/10 poems in this collection. Occasionally, the collection lapses into the typical snares of masculinist love poetry. The patriotic nationalism and idealism hasn’t aged well either, as the revolutionary potential of postcolonial nation-states has slowly faded into a dystopia in Africa, South Asia, and Latin America.  Still, it’s easy to see why Otto was so beloved by the revolutionary left in Central America with these passionate, pulsating poems dreaming of a better future in Guate and TLC. 4/5