Fernando Alegría

Fernando Alegría (Santiago de Chile, 26 September 1918 – Walnut Creek, California, October 29, 2005) was a Chilean poet, writer, literary critic and scholar.

Biography He grew up in the Independencia barrio of the city. Poets from this barrio include Pablo Neruda, Violeta Parra and Volodia Teitelboim.

Alegría studied al Instituto Nacional General José Miguel Carrera of Santiago and Universidad de Chile. He received a Master of Arts (M.A.) from Bowling Green State University in 1941 and a Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley in 1947.

From 1964 to 1967, Alegría was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. From 1967 to 1998 he was a professor at Stanford University and for many years he was Chair of the Spanish and Portuguese Language Departments there. He sat on the Board of Trustees at the Western Institute for Social Research(WISR) for about twenty years beginning with its inception in 1975.

Alegría served as cultural attaché from the government of Salvador Allende to the United States from 1970 to 1973. He was the representative of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language in the United States for many years. Among the many awards he received is the Latin American Prize of Literature.

Alegría's "Viva Chile Mierda", the most recited poem of the Allende era, was written in the 1960s.