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Diana Elsa Morán Garay, poetess and writer, was born on November 17, 1932, in Cabuya, province of Panama and spent the rest of her childhood and youth in Panama City, before exile in Mexico. She graduated as a Secondary School teacher with a specialization in Spanish, at the University of Panama, in 1954. She went on to teach at the Fermín Naudeau Institute, where she educated many young people in literature and instilled in them a love for Panama. At the same time, she was Secretary of Culture and Educational Affairs of the Panamanian Teachers Association.
Diana Morán was the daughter of rural teachers, from whom she inherited a combative attitude. At a youthful age, she moved to the popular Santa Ana neighborhood and began to live with the marginal reality of the suburbs. She began teaching at the Salomón Ponce Aguilera Institute and had direct contact with poor farmers. She also studied at the National Institute, completing her bachelor’s degree in sciences and Letters.
Rejection of the 1947 Filós-Hines Agreement
Diana participated in several actions and struggles within the student movement, such as in the patriotic mobilization days against the Basic Agreement of the Filós-Hines treaties of 1947, which she intended to sign between the Minister of the Interior and Foreign Affairs of Panama, Francisco Philós and the ambassador of the United States, General Frank T. Hines. The transfer to the United States, for an extendable period of ten years of territories for military bases was agreed. December 12, 1947, is the popular day of rejection of the treaty.
The Panama Student Federation and the Patriotic Youth Front decisively influenced public opinion to reject the agreement. The students demanded freedom as a nation and denounced the Filós-Hines Agreement as an attitude of surrender. There were several days of popular and student unrest throughout the Republic. Due to the enormous pressure of more than twenty thousand people in the streets on the day of its discussion, the military base agreement that was intended to be imposed was rejected. On December 22, the National Assembly unanimously rejected the agreement and in 1948 the US dismantled all bases in Panama except those in the Canal Zone.
Female doctor María Pilar Mandujano Jacono, member of the CEL Center for Literary Studies, describes in one of her writings:
“Diana Elsa Morán Garay, as an intellectual and teacher, dedicated herself to literary and poetic criticism. She was the author of several essays on the narratives of José Emilio Pacheco, Gabriel García Márquez and women's literature in contemporary Mexico. Her poetry is linked to events of a social and political nature. Since her first books, Eva Definida and Presentimiento de la carnal corolla dilatada, one can see the rebellion that is accentuated in her works such as Presencia Soberana de la Patria y Gaviotas con la cruz abierta. These works refer to the North American intervention in Panama and the 1964 youth massacre. In many of her poems, full of irony, nostalgia and eroticism, social facts merge with the everyday and the colloquial.”
Diana Morán took part in groups of men and women who, from their respective trenches, carried out popular resistance against the military rise in the late 1940s. Always dedicated to the fight for human rights, anti-imperialist and revolutionary, her poetry combative was published in Panama, Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, United States, Chile, Spain, among other countries. She published her political articles in Panamanian magazine Tribuna Pública.
Literary life
In 1959, Diana's first anthology of poems entitled Eva Definida (Eve Defined) was published, an edition co-authored with her great friend Ligia Alcázar. An experimental book, in which both reflect the aesthetic and social searches and concerns of the moment, a legacy of avant-garde movements and revolutionary trends that marked the direction of thought and political praxis.
Under the influence of poets of the Spanish generation of 1927 such as César Vallejo, Pablo Neruda, Vladimir Mayakovsky and others, both authors sought to express their existential anguish, on the one hand, and, on the other, their visions of the future, to expose their disagreement with the immediate sociopolitical reality and propose profound transformations of society and the individual.
At the same time, the collective volume ¡Exilio! (Exile!) was published, with a prologue by Gabriel García Márquez and an epilogue by the illustrious Spanish Mexican philosopher Adolfo Sánchez Vásquez, who collected stories from Latin American writers exiled in Mexico. The authors included were Lizandro Chávez Alfaro, from Nicaragua; Poli Délano, from Chile; Miguel Donoso Pareja, from Ecuador; José Luis González, from Puerto Rico; Pedro Orgambide, from Argentina and Dimas Lidio Pitty, from Panama. García Márquez highlighted in the prologue:
“For many Latin Americans, perhaps exile is already their homeland. Survivors of genocide, torture or imprisonment, vagrants in Paris or New York, swallowing workers, political soldiers, internal conspirators, ephemeral companions who find themselves in Sweden or Mexico; workers, writers, students, form – we form – a wandering legion that identifies itself by certain faces of misfortune or fertile fury…”
And, in the epilogue, Sánchez Vásquez (himself exiled from Spain because of the 1939 Civil War and who died in Mexico in 2011) said:
“Exile is a tear that never ends, a wound that never heals, a door that seems to open and never does.”
In 1965, she won the Ricardo Miró National Literature Prize thanks to her book Gaviotas de cruz abierta (Open cross gaivots). When asked by a journalist how she felt when she found out that her anthology of poems had won First Prize in the Ricardo Miró Competition, she would say:
“It is a work conceived as children's rounds to be performed by and for children, a work that was never edited for publication. Of course I was immensely moved, but a while later I reflected on the responsibility of receiving the First Prize of the Ricardo Miró Competition, Poetry Section. The fact that I have been successful is a stimulus that forces me to work, more and more, on the task of once again delivering quantitatively and qualitatively worthy work to my fellow citizens, the work that allows me to fulfill, with the debt that, like any other person, I have a contract with the company of which I am a part. Merit creative work does not arise from sudden inspirations or lyrical outbursts from its actors, it is from the daily, permanent, and tenacious effort of those who conceive their profession with great seriousness.”
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Social literature and combative poetry
In the 1950s, during the Cold War, Panama experienced the witch hunt triggered by McCarthyism, inside and outside the United States. An imported and delusional anti-communism saw moors, scarecrows, and demons everywhere. A simple nationalist, vengeful or socially concerned stance was called “red,” “communist” and “subversive;” and its defender was designated as “agent of Moscow” and “propagator of exotic and dissolvable ideas.”
Teachers, students, public employees, union leaders, professors at the University of Panama and even independent professionals have suffered harassment and persecution under these pretexts. Some were even taken to prison. The lives of citizens took place in a climate of fear and distrust.
Diana Morán had to breathe this air, in her beginnings as a writer. From humble origins, she was linked since childhood to the uncertainties, limitations, dreams, hopes, failures, and disappointments of everyday life in the popular neighborhoods of the country's capital. Early on, she understood that, in a world tormented by antagonisms, inequalities and injustices, conformity and resignation were signs of weakness, of renunciation of reason, freedom, justice and existence.
With her involvement in student, civic and union struggles, she went from youthful idealism to class consciousness and grounded political militancy, until she became a prominent leader of the Panama Teachers' Association. Precisely, as the leader of the educators, she was arrested and held incommunicado by the barracks dictatorship established in 1968.
After the military coup d'état led by Omar Torrijos Herrera and Bors Martínez, on October 11, 1968, Diana Morán was harshly persecuted, she was even arrested for being linked to social and left-wing movements, groups such as VAN - Vanguardia de Acción Nacional that he later joined the FRP - Popular Resistance Front to resist the coup and military regime.
The massacre of January 9, 1964, Martyrs' Day
Diana Morán participated in the nationalist struggle in January 1964, denouncing, nationally and internationally, the imperialist massacre and aggression. It was a popular movement that took place in Panama on Thursday, January 9, 1964, with the aim of demanding the presence and raising of the Panamanian flag in the territory of the Canal Zone, a strip of land ceded to the United States in perpetuity by the Treaty from Hay–Bunau Varilla. It became known as Martyrs' Day.
The historic event that took place from January 7th to 10th, 1964, showed the ability of organized people to achieve objectives and assert their patriotic rights when young people lead the fight. The courage to face an armed police force, willing to repress people who only defend their rights and especially their national heritage, such as the Canal Zone.
The absurd idea that the Canal Zone belonged to the United States was the trigger for the Panamanian people to take to the streets. The raising of a flag would mark the beginning of a battle that cost the lives of young Panamanians.
The incident began when the flag that the young people were carrying was broken, either due to mistreatment by the police or the pushing that occurred at that time between the protesters. When news of the torn flag spread throughout the city, the streets were occupied. An estimated 5,000 to 30,000 people expressed support for the young people.
Riots and repression also took place on Calle 4 de julio, today known as Avenida Los Mártires. A pitched battle that lasted two days. The first of the so-called martyrs, Ascanio Arosemena, a 17-year-old student, died from a gunshot that struck him while he was helping to evacuate injured protesters. The fact brought immediate repercussions such as the breaking of relations between Panama and the United States by President Roberto Chiari.
Politically, the Panama Canal remained United States territory until 1977, when the Torrijos-Carter Treaties began the process of transferring territorial control of the Canal Zone to Panama, a process that ended on December 31, 1999.
In 1969, a year after the coup d'état of October 11th, due to several actions of solidarity by her companions and the popular movement that resisted the military coup, she was arrested and, after a month and a half in prison, she left as an exile. to Venezuela and later to Mexico, like many dissidents of the military dictatorship in Panama. She was the only Panamanian poet exiled for her clear and unshakable convictions.
Exile in Mexico
Diana arrived in Mexico in 1969 and found, in the same conditions, her companion Jorge Turner. Later, other Panamanian patriots arrived, such as the poets Ramón Oviero and José Manuel Bayard Lerma, and the political fighters Federico Britton, Evaristo Vásquez (later a veteran of the Sandinista struggle, who fell in defense of the people of Nicaragua), Bolívar Crespo, Ubaldino Lezcano (man simple and honest, who was demoted and expelled from the police for having a civic conscience.
In that dark moment in Latin America, marked by the dictatorships of so-called dependency fascism, Mexico provided hospitality and shelter to exiles and persecuted people from across the continent. In the Aztec capital, Argentines, Chileans, Bolivians, Uruguayans, Ecuadorians, Brazilians, Nicaraguans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Dominicans, Panamanians, and Haitians gathered daily, forced to leave their lands. They were citizens of Gran Patria (Great Homeland), homeland of the people, as Manuel Ugarte and other Latin Americanists preached at the beginning of the 20th century.
The Latin American Solidarity Committee was created, in which political and intellectual leaders and personalities from exile and Mexico united concerns and criteria to strengthen the struggles and efforts of the people. Diana and the Panamanians were linked to the activities of the Solidarity Committee, of which Turner was one of the leaders.
Each one, in their own way, in their own perspective and in their tone, sought, as they say, to express their world and their time, their being and their being in each moment of each day. In 1971, the book Poesía Joven de Panama (Young Poetry from Panama) was published, published by Siglo XXI Editores, with works by Diana Morán, Ramón Oviero, Dimas Lidio Pitty, Bertalicia Peralta and Agustín del Rosario.
Literary life in Mexico
In Mexico, she held positions as researcher and professor at the Center for Linguistic and Literary Studies at the Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM), Iztapalapa Unit, always maintaining levels of coordination, meetings and organization with other Panamanian combatants who were also exiled. She published her political articles in Panamanian magazine Tribuna Pública.
Literary and poetic criticism
Diana was the author of several essays on the narratives of José Emilio Pacheco, Gabriel García Márquez and women's literature in contemporary Mexico. Her poetry was linked to events of a social and political nature. From her first books, Eva Definida and Presentimiento de la carnal corolla dilatada, we can see the rebellion that is accentuated in her works Presencia Soberana de la Patria y Gaviotas con la cruz abierta.
These works refer to the North American intervention in Panama and the 1964 youth massacre. In many of her poems, full of irony, nostalgia and eroticism, social facts merge with the everyday and the colloquial.
Her poetic vocation comes from her adolescence, in contact with the student concerns of her colleagues at Nido de Águilas (Eagles' Nest). In an interview she would highlight about poetry:
“This desire was reaffirmed during my university studies. My production has been enriching since I solved the mystery of my time on earth, as I had to realize that my own pains, anxieties and hopes germinate from the same pains, anxieties and hopes of the Panamanian people, from whose humblest roots I come... and because I was able to assimilate anonymous metaphors and something from the inexhaustible source of popular imagination, especially when I was a teacher in Antón.”
“The artist is a thinking and committed human being, forced to face his historical-social circumstances. I condemn the writer who presents himself as a little God, with no responsibilities towards his fellow men. The poetic work is a social fact. In my case, I reflect, through maturation within my inner self, different positive aspects of the world from which I come and in which I live.”
In 1979, living in Mexico, she obtained her Doctorate in Hispanic Literature at the Colegio de México with the thesis Cien Años de Soledad: novela de la desmitificación (One Hundred Years of Solitude: Novel of demystification).
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Death in exile
Diana died in Mexico in 1987. As per her request, years later her ashes were scattered in the waters of the Panama Canal, due to the historical symbolism, inspiration in her poems and the sense of struggle it was for her. This desire is printed in a poem called Quando yo morir (When I die):
“When I die return me to the tongue of the first flame I brought, and there across the waters that ships divide, throw this pollen into the mouth of the air.”
With the support of popular and trade union organizations in the country, the event was held seventeen years after his death, in 2004, when the forty anniversary of the events that occurred in the patriotic feat of January 1964. It was attended by teachers, politicians, groups of students, writers, idealists, and figures from national life.
Her brother Humberto Morán said that Diana turned her exile into a cultural career. He declared that he felt happy with the tribute from those who loved and admired her, who did not forget her:
“For the new generations, Diana Elsa left excellent documentation for those educated, present and past, in literary initiation.”
Panamanian writer Dimas Lidio Pitty, in his speech, highlighted:
“This ceremony is not an ordinary funeral rite, more than separation or farewell. It represented a tribute of love, homage, understanding and solidarity to a great poet, an extraordinary woman, and a patriot without weaknesses.”
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