The first poems by Enrique López Albújar were published in El Comercio in 1895

“Lopez Albujar, read and applauded inside and outside the country, I couldn’t say if more as a storyteller or as a poet, he arrived in Lima with his education and primary school certificates. He militated very soon in the vanguard of that Guadalupana legion of the year 1890, famous for its virility and Creole genius ”.

“It was easy for me to treat him and appreciate the singular gifts of manliness and talent that made him stand out among the students. So I had the honor of considering myself a fellow student of his”, says Carrera Vergara.

In parallel to his first literary and poetic creations, López Albújar began as a journalist at the end of the government of Nicolás de Piérola (1885-1889), in a newspaper called “La República”, founded by Auguste Durand. Then in 1892 he directed the weekly “La Cachiporra”, in collaboration with Mariano H. Cornejo and jose santos chocano.

After the short existence of this weekly, it was sheltered in another called “the Tunda”, where one of his stinging poems hurt the susceptibility of the Government, which ordered him to be jailed for 50 days. He was followed by the Press trial in accordance with the law of the matter, having to defend himself before a grand jury in the Municipality of Lima. The sentence, happily, was acquittal.

Upon obtaining a bachelor’s degree in jurisprudence, he traveled to Piura, where he gave life to the weekly “El amigo del Pueblo”, from whose journalistic trenches he fought against gamonalism and the administrative and judicial abuses of the time. He returned to Lima in 1895 and for the next four years he wrote in multiple magazines and newspapers until he began publishing in Trade some of his poems.

In its edition of Saturday, January 26, 1895, we find a six-paragraph poem entitled ‘To Juan de Arona‘, which starts like this: Today I stand up… My song, wrapped in the crepe of the elegy, to disturb that king of irony, who only lacked the mantle. Piura, January 12, 1895.

In November of that same year he published ‘To Joan of Arc‘, which is born with these verses: It was not always grim and fierce courage, nor manly effort that gave glory: virtue wresting victory, it is Judith in the warrior’s tent. This also bore the poet’s signature.

We also discover this heartfelt poetic prose: “What feeling, what need, what conscience has led him there to show off his misery? An intimate voice tells me: The homeland The homeland! Beautiful and perhaps immortal wordan exclamation that is part of an extensive text published on July 30, 1900, on the occasion of national holidays.

His friend and admirer Augusto Durand had not stopped tempting him to direct “The Press”. López Albújar accepted the position, but after a short time he felt that it did not meet his expectations, while he felt the intricacies of politics increasingly distant. He soon left the direction of that newspaper to accept the position of Judge of Huánuco offered to him by José Pardo, President of the Republic (1915-1919).

In 1962, upon turning 90, the storyteller and inspired poet received from the Government the Culture Medal, granted for the first time and, in addition, he was declared Doctor Honoris Causa by the San Marcos University. López Albújar was born on November 23, 1872 and died on March 6, 1966.

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