Jorge Montealegre

Jorge Montealegre Iturra studied social communication and holds a PhD in American Studies (Universidad de Santiago de Chile). His research areas are cultural studies, memory and graphic humor; at the same time he worked as a professor at the Faculty of History and at the School of Journalism at the University of Santiago de Chile.

At the age of 19, he began writing poetry in the Chacabuco prison camp in the Atacama Desert, after having been with hundreds of comrades in the National Stadium and in the hold of the ship Andalién. From this ship, the prisoners continued their journey to the prison camp in trains and trucks. In exile, he published his testimony “Chacabuco” (Rome, 1974), and returned to Chile in 1979. In 2003, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the coup, he published the first edition of “Frazadas del Estadio Nacional”.
As a poet of the so-called “Generación NN” – the eighties – his poems have been included in the most important anthologies of contemporary Chilean poetry.

He received his first award as a political prisoner at the Chacabuco Poetry and Song Festival in 1974. Later, his poems were recognized by the University Cultural Group, the Arrau Corporation, and the Chilean Human Rights Commission. He has also received the Municipal Literature Award (Santiago, 1996), the National Council of Books and Reading for the Best Literary Objects Award (1996, 2011, and 2014), and the Altazor Award (Essay 2004 and Poetry 2008).

In 1989 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship, which enabled him to write the “Historia del Humor Gráfico de Chile” (Spain, 2008). In this field, he has published, among other things, the book “Von Pilsener, primer personaje de la historieta chilena”, about the humorous representation of German in Chile.

In the field of memory and human rights, he is also the author of the books “Memorias eclipsadas. Duelo y resiliencia comunitaria en la prisión política” (2013), “Carne de estatua. Salvador Allende, Caricature and Monument” (2014); "Countdown. Antología de poemas 1978-2010” (2017), “Derecho a fuga. “Una extraña felicidad compratida” (2018), “Wurlitzer.Cantantes en la memoria de la poesía chilena” (2018), and other books.

Montealegre lives in Santiago, Chile, and is a member of the Corporación de ex-prisoneros políticos de Chacabuco, the board of the Fundación Victor Jara, the Sociedad de Derechos de las Letras (SADEL) and the Unión Nacional de Artistas. He is currently working on the publication of another autobiographical essay, the sequel to “Frazadas del Estadio Nacional”. He is also responsible for curating the exhibition for the 50th anniversary of the military coup at the National Library.