Francisco "Paco" Urondo, (born January 10, 1930 in Santa Fe, died June 17, 1976 in Mendoza) was an Argentine writer, and member of the Montoneros guerrilla organization.
Urondo collaborated in the writing of movie scripts such as Pajarito Gómez (which includes a cameo appearance) and Noche terrible, and adapted for television Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir and Eça de Queiroz's Os Maias.
In 1968 he was named General Culture Director for the Santa Fe Province, and in 1973 Director of the Literature Department of the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the University of Buenos Aires.
As a journalist, he collaborated in several national and international media, among them Primera Plana, Panorama, Crisis, La Opiníon and Noticias.
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At 18 Urondo left home to study chemistry, then law, and then philosophy and letters, but none of these satisfied him. He abandoned academics and went to Buenos Aires, where he led a thriving social life and was known among his friends for his lively and intellectual personality.[1]
His writing life developed and intertwined along with his militancy (in the Argentine guerrilla organizations FAR and Montoneros) despite the mistrust of intellectualism among the popular groups. For him, the two were inseparable. Juan Gelman, a fellow poet and friend, remembers Urondo as saying once that he “took up arms because he was looking for the right word.” [2]
Along with Gelman and poets Roque Dalton and Mario Benedetti, Urondo developed a conversational style of writing in the 60s and 70s simultaneous with the increasingly strained dynamic between the corrupt state and the people. They wrote with frankness and accusation, resisting collective silence by exposing difficult social and political truths—though devoting their words to art and lyricism above all else.
Urondo was imprisoned in 1973 but released; that same year, he published La Patria Fusilada which recounts through interview the stories of the three survivors of the Trelew massacre.
Due to his militancy Urondo had to enter into a clandestine life, taking great pains to disguise himself in public and adopting a pseudonym. He was aware of the danger he was in and had obtained cyanide pills for himself so that, in the event of a compromise, he would not be taken and tortured and forced to betray his friends.[3]
Holding a position of responsibility within the montoneros, in 1976 Urondo found himself demoted for internal political reasons and had to be transferred. He asked to not be sent to Santa Fe or to Mendoza because he was well known in both places, but nevertheless they placed him as head of the Mendoza column. Out of options, Urondo left in the beginning of May 1976 with his then-companion Alicia Raboy and their one-year-old child Angela.[4]
On his death, Argentine writer Rodolfo Walsh wrote:
Transferring Paco to Mendoza was a mistake. Cuyo had been a bloodbath since 1975, with no hope for stability. Paco lasted only a few weeks...fearing what would finally happen. There was an encounter with an enemy vehicle, a chase, and a shootout between both cars. Inside were Paco, Lucía (Alicia Raboy) with their daughter, and a female comrade (René Ahualli)....They couldn't break loose. Finally Paco stopped the car...and said, "I took the pill (cyanide) and I already feel sick." [Ahualli] remembers that Lucía said, "But papi, why did you do that?" [Ahualli] escaped between the bullets and arrived wounded to Buenos Aires, days later. Paco was shot in the head twice, though he was probably already dead.
— Rodolfo Walsh, text of December 29, 1976 reproduced by El Porteño on April 1986