Catholic Action, the Second Vatican Council, and the Emergence of the New Left in El Salvador (1950–1975)
In 1958, Roque Dalton, a young poet affiliated with the Communist Party of El Salvador (PCS), won the first prize in a poetry contest at the University of El Salvador. A few days later, members of Salvadoran Catholic University Action, a student organization known as ACUS or simply Catholic Action, published a demolishing but carelessly written critique of Dalton. The anonymous writer of an article titled “Under the Empire of Vulgarity” turned his disgust with the poem written by Dalton into a diatribe against Dalton's political persona. Dalton's raw allusions to double standards in the sexual morality of priests and his remarks about the Catholic practice of fasting seem to have especially upset the leaders of ACUS. A month later, ACUS published a rejoinder written by Dalton, along with excerpts of the controversial poem. In his retort, Dalton stated that ACUS dodged debates on substantial political and aesthetic issues by engaging in “insults, quick and facile judgments, and rude pigeon-holing that closes all means of intellectual comprehension. ”