María Mercedes Carranza (24 May 1945 – 11 July 2003) was a poet and

journalist A journalist is a person who gathers information in the form of text, audio or pictures, processes it into a newsworthy form and disseminates it to the public. This is called journalism. Roles Journalists can work in broadcast, print, advertis ...

from

Bogotá Bogotá (, also , , ), officially Bogotá, Distrito Capital, abbreviated Bogotá, D.C., and formerly known as Santa Fe de Bogotá (; ) during the Spanish Imperial period and between 1991 and 2000, is the capital city, capital and largest city ...

Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...

, who spent most of her childhood in

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Biography

Early life

Carranza was the second child of Rosa Coronado and poet . She was one of four children in the family. Her father was also a poet, he moved to Spain as cultural attache at the Colombian embassy in

Madrid Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...

. María lived there from ages six to thirteen, with periods in

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, and under the intellectual influence of her father and her maternal aunt, the poet Elisa Mújica who was also living in Spain during those years. "The fable of my childhood was woven by their legends and stories; with her I discovered the power of the word," Carranza said in an interview with Carlos Jáuregui. The family returned to Bogota, Colombia in 1958, where the young Maria Mercedes lived a difficult period of re-adaptation to her native country. "When I came back, I still played with dolls and didn't know how babies were born. I had left Spain and my childhood, and I felt a terrible cultural nostalgia that I faced with the decision to belong to Colombia".

Adulthood

She finished her secondary studies to become a bilingual secretary in Colombia. She would later study philosophy and literature, first in Madrid and intermittently between 1965 and 1978, in the

University of Los Andes (Colombia) The University of the Andes (), also commonly self-styled as Uniandes, is a private research university located in the city centre of Bogotá, Colombia. Founded in 1948 by a group of Colombian intellectuals led by Mario Laserna Pinzón, it was ...

in Bogotá, where she graduated with a thesis on her father's work. This thesis later became one of the most authorized studies about Eduardo Carranza. She promoted the writing of

José Asunción Silva José Asunción Silva (27 November 1865 in Bogotá – 23 May 1896 in Bogotá) was a Colombian poet. He is considered one of the founders of Latin American Modernismo. Life Born to a wealthy and educated Bogotá family, Asunción Silva led a c ...

. Her work was sometimes referred to as "feminist", as it ridiculed giving women secondary roles, but Carranza rejected the feminist label as "imported" and not fitting her concern on class differences. She had political involvements, joining the

19th of April Movement The 19th of April Movement (), or M-19, was a Colombian urban guerrilla movement active in the late 1970s and 1980s. After its demobilization in 1990 it became a political party, the M-19 Democratic Alliance (), or AD/M-19. The M-19 tra ...

when it became the M-19 Democratic Alliance. Juan Luis Panero was her second husband. She committed suicide on July 11, 2003, ingesting an overdose of antidepressants. Two of her closest friends had recently died and her brother Ramiro Carranza had been kidnapped by leftist guerilla group FARC.

Career

Carranza published her first book of poetry, ''Vainas y otros poemas,'' in 1972. The final collection published during her lifetime, 1997's ''El canto de las moscas'' is an overtly political reflection on violence in contemporary Colombia through the sites of massacres.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Carranza, Maria Mercedes 1945 births 2003 suicides 2003 deaths Writers from Bogotá 20th-century Colombian poets Colombian women journalists Colombian women poets Drug-related suicides in Colombia University of Los Andes (Colombia) alumni 20th-century women writers Colombian expatriates in Spain Colombian expatriates in France