"I left the books and I became a fighter. I could not do distinction between the word and gesture fighting for the idea without a shadow of interest ... "
Manzione Homer lived only forty-three years, but it was enough to leave a lasting impression among us that the passage of the gigantic time. For some it was, first of all, a militant committed to the struggles of his time. For all, the great poet of the tango, telling some of his lyrics as the most sublime of gender. For your friends, Arturo Jauretche, the inspiration for many of his journeys, the guy who opened the head with his anti-imperialist and yrigoyenista look for popular causes. Will be hard, so, summarize in a few lines his overwhelming and timely life.
I left the books and I became a fighter.
I could not do distinction between the word and gesture
He is fighting for the idea without a shadow of interest ...
I went back to living in the neighborhood.
I let lose the glory of my great destination.
I took the narrow street and sang to the moon.
And people from the neighborhood stopped to listen
Homero Manzi, Thirty years
Manzi was born in Añatuya, a small city of Santiago de Estero, November 1 1907. His parents, Luis Manzione and Angela Prestera, They had moved to the province to try his luck in rural activities. In a few years they returned to the neighborhood of Boedo in the Capital, but Homer would always be present, in his art and his political writings, home province.
Already in Buenos Aires, Manzi attended primary school in Boedo and, later, as a pupil at the Colegio Luppi, of Esquiú and Centenera, in the Pompei. Years neighborhood, between Pompei and boedo, in organized boxing matches, befriends of Catullus Castillo and inserted, hand of the father of this, in the tango tradition.
militant popular
Political militancy begins in the secondary, as commander of the 8th parish in the capital and later as a university militant yrigoyenista at the Faculty of Law which entered into 1926. In the years of the electoral campaign 1928, He is carrying a second time Hipolito Yrigoyen for president, Manzi takes part in the Center Left Reformist Party and the founding of the Radical group Vanguardia. By these years begins a close friendship with Arturo Jauretche who always acknowledged that Manzi was that made him realize the "revolutionary fund" that one saw in force in the thinking of the old caudillo.
With the overthrow of Yrigoyen and the beginning of the fascist dictatorship of Jose Felix Uriburu, college is operated. A few months later, students take the powers. Manzi is among the leaders of the revolt. The 11 February 1931 He is detained by police and expelled from higher education.
Arturo José Constantino Barro Jauretche and Youth organized the South to resist the dictatorship, They are participating in the campaign for elections in the province of Buenos Aires, which are canceled- and face the reorganization of the party by Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear because he wanted the reinstatement of the radical antipersonalistas. says Jauretche: "We were reluctant to merge with antipersonalism for primacy that would have the liberal spirit of national and social definitions that had represented the yrigoyenismo".
During these early years many radical activists up in arms producing a series of insurrections with whom Manzi and his friends are connected. In 1933, Arturo Jauretche decides to fight with the forces organized by Gregorio Pomar Lieutenant Colonel in Brazil and participate in the attempt to take the correntina city of Paso de los Libres where they are severely beaten. Jauretche is arrested and imprisoned. Disillusioned roads taking the direction Alvear radicalism, Manzi, Jauretche, Manuel Ortiz Pereyra and other young yrigoyenistas organize Radical Force Guidance of Joven Argentina (FORGING) which it becomes a platform to denounce the domination of the British Empire and Argentina subordination to their interests.
Manzi is one of the most important thinkers and ideologues of the group. In support of this, Aníbal Ford rescues three of his speeches. In What's Forge? He stated: "... the same Argentina rebellion is favorable to rights plans. Because until now it has not understood that the way to cure the evil is taking the problem comprehensively as uncompromising and without yielding to the instigation of those who seek parcializar the fight or find points of contact between Argentina betrayal and justice ".
The second is a conference that Manzi issued and published several articles on the living conditions of the humble man from northern Argentina. a ellos, analyzes his native Santiago de Estero, the destruction of its economy by the policy of the British railway and exploitation of quebracho: "That jungle, that treasure ... was in the hands of his real punishment progress. His wealth attracted the exploiters capital, willing to obliterate not only against the forest, but health and soul of a noble people ". Finally, the conference on the situation in the Chaco in defending against the settler monopoly Bunge y Born, Dreyfus y Anderson-Clayton, and journeyman against both: "Therefore it is necessary to create the opposite mentality and nationalist […] say simply this: that will be the bitch that gave birth to these shareholders " (Ford, 1971).
At the end of 1937, Manzi radical militant requests that the affiliate because the party was "at odds with all the principles that inspired the Radical Civic Union" (island, 2001: 188)
To begin the World War II, FORGING opted for a neutralist position with the argument that "... more painful than the current tragedy in Europe, It is the agony of colonial peoples or subject, condemned to slow death by imperialist exploitation, consciousness imposed on us as the first duty the struggle for the redemption of our own people " (Jauretche, 1962). This definition provoked debate within the grouping and removal of some of its members. Homero Manzi is going away slowly to pursue tango lyrics, cinema and journalism. A Jauretche Arturo saying "it was gulping night".
The rise of the Juan Domingo Peron among the putschists 1943, divided the activists FORGING including considered Colonel performed unfinished and ideals of the radical which the radical returned rows. Manzi remains intransigent party lines with the idea that radicalism should support Peron. In 1947, because of an interview of the Radical Revolutionary Movement with President, of participating, It is expelled from the party. Manzi counters with a speech on Radio Belgrano known as Tablas blood radicalism: "Perón is the reconductor of the unfinished work of Hipólito Yrigoyen […] coreligionists, after hearing us, They can judge our conduct […] when they see us give our assent to the policy of social justice, economic and financial claim, national sovereignty […] Opponents who branded us, they are wrong. Tildan us who officialist, as well. we are not ruling are not, nor opponents. We are revolutionaries " (Ford, 1971: 92).
In 1948 wins election to lead the Argentina Society of Authors and Composers (SADAIC) and it is reelected in 1950. Death surprises him while in office.
Poet of national and popular culture
Between 1922 Y 1930 -Aníbal scores Ford-, Manzi wrote the lyrics of some tangos, waltzes and poems published in literary magazines looking "without seeing it clearly still in the most precarious line: of a national and popular culture. In the Boedo [González] Castillo, Piana, of Sureda, Coffee in San Juan and Loria […] It is inserted into the popular " (Ford, 1971). From this period will last tango old blind:
The day turn off your complainers tangos
crape smoke will light the alley
and will be in a mysterious seal dirty cards
and there will be in the simple souls a little excitement.
Characters and places, street music and people from the neighborhood, nostalgic and evocative poetry, in line Evaristo Carriego.
Eliminated the possibility of being lawman and leaving behind being a man of letters, Manzi is definitely turns to the popular genres and start working systematically with Sebastián Piana. Since 1931 until 1934 recorded sixteen tracks. Among them, valscorners Porteñas, the tangodavit, milonga Sentimental YMilonga of the 900:
I name her guitars
When they say their song.
The narrow streets of the neighborhood
And the edge of my facón.
I name it the stars
And the wind of the shantytown;
I do not know 'what I name it pa
If I can not forget.
Between 1935 Y 1940 Homero Manzi issues transiting the sentimental abandonment and regret, the feeling of the own error, of choosing a path that leaves behind "a love enlarged by the shadows of remembrance" (island, 2001: 178). As an example, tangosAbandonment OCanto absence:
The echo of your voice again a hundred times,
your hand on my website lied a return.
Shining for me dreamed your eyes
vision of loneliness and pain.
His friendship with Anibal Troilo takes hold to 1941. In the following year his orchestra recorded four songs from Manzi, Malena, dad Baltasar, Fueye YBarrio de tango:
A piece of neighborhood there in Pompeii,
falling asleep at the side of the embankment.
A lantern swinging in the barrier
and the mystery of who sows the train goodbye.
A dog barking at the moon.
Love hiding in a doorway.
And toads redoubling in the lagoon
and in the distance the voice of the bandoneon.
Total, were twenty subjects which Troilo recorded with letters Manzi. Also ventures into film as director and, especially, as a prominent writer. co-directed, con Ralph Pappier, Poor dear mother Y The last payador, both with Hugo of the Rail protagonist. And as a writer, the list is as extensive as prolific: He wrote the screenplays for films eighteen, between them The Gaucha War, Released in 1942 and considered the best film of the time. The script was an adaptation of Manzi and Ulises Petit de Murat of the book by Leopoldo Lugones.
The 17 from December to 1946 She learned she had cancer. It was amidst these conditions that writes Sure. Among the eighty-six songs recorded at this time they highlight many of the most notable as Malena, Nanoblnc, A ship sets sail tomorrow, Perhaps it will be your voice Y Discepolín:
People you snuggles with plenty of penalties
and thou caress almost trembling;
it hurts like scar own alien;
that had no luck; and she did not love.
The track has been populated to the sound of the orchestra;
They embrace under the focus of sawdust dolls.
-Do not you see are dancing?…
-Do not you see are celebrating?... Let everything hurts, Ole Discepolín!
At the same time journalism, radio skits and even playArena girlfriend con Ulises Petit de Murat. He died of cancer 3 May 1951 to the 43 years. At the cemetery he was fired his friends in the words of Catullus Castillo:
"To make a story, my brother, begin well: He came with his stuff that had the great simplicity of the people themselves. A transcript of orilleras streets, wooded and old as the elf transited his tangos, and he lived in his eyes that were black and sad and deep ".
Bibliography:
Aníbal Ford (1971), Homero Manzi, Publishing Center of Latin America.
Arturo Jauretche (1962), FORGING the infamous decade, Corregidor
Horacio Salas (2001), Homero Manzi and his time, Vergara.
About the author Ernesto Salas
Degree in History, Buenos Aires' University. Director of the Center for Political Studies at the University Nacional Arturo Jauretche. Argentina investigator recent history in the field of social and political conflicts in the decades of the fifties, sixties and seventies of the twentieth century. He is the author of the books: Peronist Resistance: Making the refrigerator Lisandro de la Torre (1990), Uturuncos. The origin of the Peronist guerrilla (2003); Norberto Habegger. Cristiano, shirtless, montonero (2011, Flora with Castro), Resistance and armed struggle (2014) Y Viva Yrigoyen! Long live the revolution! (2017, with Charo Lopez Marsano).
Source: Ernesto Salas – https://revistamestiza.unaj.edu.ar/
