Cesar Vallejo in Gustavo Gutierrez as a Precursor of Liberation Theology

Cesar Vallejo was a writer very concerned with the spiritual aspect of man. This was influenced by his deep religious formation, as well as the desire for infinity since his crisis in adolescence. Added to all this was the tension between spirituality and acceptance of the materialist presuppositions of Marxism from the end of the twenties. With a need for transcendence and a unique commitment to the most disadvantaged, he tried to combine the Marxist creed of his mature stage with the Christian tradition that accepts the certainty of a superior being and a destiny for the human being, appropriate to his dignity as a spiritual creature. In this sense, his poetry constituted a precedent for Liberation Theology, since Gustavo Gutierrez, a Peruvian theologian who promoted this spiritualist current, expressed on many occasions the enormous imprint left on his cultural formation by the poetry of his compatriot.