Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (Pablo Neruda)

Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (1904–1973), who adopted the pen name Pablo Neruda to conceal his verses from his strict railroad worker father, published Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair) at nineteen, which became the most beloved volume of love poetry in the Spanish language.

Serving as Chilean consul in Rangoon, Colombo, and Madrid, Neruda was radicalized by the Spanish Civil War and the murder of his close friend Federico García Lorca. In 1950, while in political underground exile from the Videla dictatorship, he completed Canto General, a titanic 15-canto epic chanting the geological, botanical, and indigenous history of the entire American continent (featuring The Heights of Macchu Picchu). Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971, Neruda died in Santiago twelve days after Augusto Pinochet's bloody military coup against his friend Salvador Allende.