Lila Guerrero

Lila Guerrero (born Elizabeth Innokentevna Yakovlev; June 16, 1906 – December 24, 1986) was a Jewish poet, translator, essayist, playwright and literary critic famous for translating numerous Russian and Soviet modern poetry into Spanish.

Biography Guerrero was born Elizabeth Innokentevna Yakovlev, and she used the pseudonym Elsa Betty Iakovleff and Lila Guerrero. She was the daughter of Ida Isakovna Bondareff (1887-1977), a Jewish Russian socialist militant and founder of the Communist Party of Argentina who had to emigrate due to her political activity and settled in Argentina as part of the first Jewish migration to Argentina. Her father, Innokenti Yakovlev who had also emigrated to Argentina, returned to Russia before World War I. Her mother then married engineer and writer Moisés Kantor, who adopted Guerrero as his daughter. Kantor and Isakovna Bondareff had a son in 1922, Karl M. Kantor. Both Kantor and Isakovna Bondareff were active in the Argentine Communist Party, and Guerrero herself also joined. ​

In 1925, Kantor moved to Moscow to become head of the Department of Mineralogy at the Russian State Agrarian University – Moscow Timiryazev Agricultural Academy, followed the next year with the rest of the family. From 1926 - 1937 Guerrero lives in Moscow, Russia. There she interacted with Vladimir Mayakovsky and Lilya Brik, and met and married fellow Argentine Luis Víctor Sommi, who was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Argentina and her husband until her death.

She participated in the Spanish Civil War, for which she was decorated with the Order of the Red Star. She then returned to Argentina, where she graduated with degrees in Philosophy and Philology in Letters from the University of Buenos Aires.

Lila Guerrero died in Buenos Aires on December 24, 1986.

Works She translated numerous Russian and Soviet authors, into Spanish, especially modern poets.