Homero Manzi: born on November 1, 1907

Homero Nicolás Manzione - the real Homero Manzi - was born on November 1, 1907 in the town of Añatuya, in the province of Santiago de Chile. Fifth among eight siblings, son of a modest rural businessman, Manzi moved with his mother to Buenos Aires when he was nine years old. Pompeya was the world of his childhood, the one that inspired his love for the neighborhood. As a young boy, he began to write poems and theatrical scenes and, very soon, his first tangos.
By then, he had already entered the world of politics in a radical committee. The 1930 coup found him as a literature teacher in national schools and defending the Yrigoyenist cause. After a brief stay in jail, Manzi returned to the neighborhood and unleashed his passion for tango. Habitué of cafés and milongas, he established relationships with Enrique Santos Discépolo, Leónidas Barletta, Nicolás Olivari, Roberto Arlt, Aníbal Troilo, Lucio Demare, Cátulo Castillo and Sebastián Piana, among many others, with whom he shared long conversations or for whom he wrote numerous lyrics. He soon became one of the most renowned poets, lyricists and rhymers in the country, immortalizing tangos such as "Sur", "Malena", "Che, bandoneón" and "Milonga sentimental", among others. Composer of tangos, waltzes, candombes and milongas, music was not the only field in which he explored national feelings. Manzi was also a journalist, film director and screenwriter, especially his adaptation of Leopoldo Lugones' novel La guerra gaucha (The Gaucho War).
But at the same time that he expressed in tango the poetry of the humble class, Manzi continued his political militancy. Founder of FORJA, in the mid 30's, together with Arturo Jauretche and Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz, he moved away from politics years later and remained distant and even opposed to the emerging Peronism. However, by 1947, he was already looking at President Juan Perón with different eyes and, at the end of that year, in a radio message, he compared him to his late leader, Hipólito Yrigoyen, as a forger of the national cause. But then he fell ill with cancer. He died some time later, at the age of 43, on May 3, 1951. We remember him with a poem he wrote a few days before his death.
Sources: "Yo era Homero Manzi", article produced and written by Horacio Ferrer and Alejandro Saenz Germain; in Revista Gente, No. 198, August 8, 1969, p. 54.
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