Julio Carreras (h)

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Julio Carreras (h) (born August 19, 1949) is an Argentine writer (author of 12 books) and former guerrilla fighter.

Born in San Pedro de Guasayán, Santiago del Estero, he studied piano, guitar and the plastic arts from the age of 4 to 14. At 14 he began playing the electric guitar in rock bands.

In 1972 he founded the artists' movement SER, which brought about the Primer Recital de Rock Nacional del Noroeste Argentino (July 1, 1972). His fiancée, Clara Ledesma Medina, was the soul of this important movement. With this group, they published a magazine and with their many young adherents they turned to literacy work in poor neighborhoods.

January 6, 1973 Clara died. The young writer, on the verge of suicide, went to Córdoba where he began to work as a journalist for the magazines Posición, Patria Nueva, and as correspondent for the daily El Mundo of Buenos Aires. Together with his fiancée, he became a militant in the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP, "People's Revolutionary Army, associated with the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores — PRT, "Workers' Revolutionary Party") in 1972.

At this time he was already a fugitive from the police, who were seeking him for the assault of the military barracks of Villa Maria. That same year married with Gloria Gallegos, also militant of PRT-ERP. In August 1975 his first daughter Anahí was born. At about this time, the writer became political leader of the PRT and military leader of the ERP in the zone Este de Córdoba (Department of San Justo). In January 1976 he fell into the hands of the police; his wife, detained while looking for a lawyer, was also imprisoned.

During this period the Argentine government was undertaking the systematic massacre of guerrillas, unionists, university leaders, and political militants known as the Dirty War. Carreras and his wife were miraculously saved by having been arrested just before the military coup, but were brutally tortured. They also survived eight months of internment in a concentration camp.

In 1981 Gloria was freed; Carreras was freed in 1982. Shortly afterwards he was summoned by the bishopric of Mailín to paint 31 gigantic murals in a sanctuary constructed in the middle of the desert. This commission gave him the money to buy his first home. The couple had three more daughters and raising them became, for a time, their main focus in life. It proved to be a loveless marriage, although both continued to behave responsibly toward their children. Around 1988, he began an affair with a 23-year old German woman, Ulla Herb, who had come to the country through a foundation, to work as a kindergarten teacher for the poor. He broke up with her in 1994.

Carreras worked as director of the cultural section of the daily El Liberal in Santiago del Estero, and contributed pieces to several magazines in Argentina and abroad. In 1998 he and Gloria formally separated, but they continued to share the large home in which they were now living, each with their own section of the house, so that both could continue to help raise their daughters. At the end of 2004 they continued their slow separation, as Carreras moved out to a separate new house in the country. They maintain, however, a good relationship of mutual solidarity.

Julio Carreras (h) also founded the Asociación de Periodistas de Internet (2000). He is a member of the Grupo de Reflexión Rural (GRR) and of INIsmo (an international avant-garde artistic current founded in Paris in 1980. Some of his principal books are: El Jinete Oscuro, Abelardo, El Malamor, cueRtos, Ciclo de Anton Tapia, Vidas de Cain, El misterio del mal, Bertozzi, Fulgor de los damascos, Un largo adiós.

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