Leoncio Bueno, a Peruvian poet who spent more than a century combining social protest with labor activism, died on Friday, July 31. He was 106.
Born in 1920 at Hacienda Constancia in the La Libertad region, Bueno was largely self-taught. He grew up witnessing injustices against workers, an experience that shaped a lifelong combative spirit. He went on to work as a union organizer, journalist and actor alongside his writing career.
His most celebrated poetry collection, Rebuzno propio, was published in 1976. He produced six collections in total and contributed to dozens of hand-crafted books. Though all his poetry was social in content, it drew its staying power from irony and humor rather than its subject matter alone.
Bueno also had a screen career. He appeared in Werner Herzog’s 1982 film Fitzcarraldo and played a taxi driver in the 1984 short film Taxi, directed by Rodolfo Pereira, which adapted the legend of La Gringa de La Herradura. In the story, Bueno’s character picks up a woman being pursued by two men, drives her to the coastal cliffs of La Herradura, and after she vanishes from the cab discovers a newspaper in her bag recounting the suicide of a woman named Sara Rougut at that same location.
In 2016, Bueno received the Premio Casa de la Literatura Peruana. On learning of the honor, he said he had never expected such recognition and that receiving a prize had never figured in his dreams. He described the award as an acknowledgment of his long life devoted to literature and to the dream of becoming a writer, even though he had never stopped being a laborer, a worker with a pickaxe and shovel. He called it the fulfillment of a hope he had never dared to imagine.
Bueno settled in Lurin in 1982. The 2020 documentary short Cien anos con Leoncio Bueno, directed by Javier Corcuera, offers a portrait of the poet surrounded by books.
A viewing will be held at Sala Nazca, the main venue of the Ministry of Culture, on Saturday, August 1, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
