He became affiliated with the then-Mexico-based American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, and represented them at the headquarters of Augusto César Sandino's guerilla army in Mérida, Yucatán.
[1] Following the overthrow of the dictator Augusto B. Leguía by Luis Miguel Sánchez Cerro in 1930, Pavletich attempted to return to Peru, upon the advice of Peruvian Communist Party leader José Carlos Mariátegui, but was deported by the Sánchez Cerro junta the following year, this time to Ecuador.
Pavletich was able to escape en route to Ecuador, but was quickly recaptured, imprisoned in El Frontón, and then deported once again to Chile.
He became the director of El Peruano, the official daily newspaper of Peru, and his literary works garnered much public and critical acclaim.
Pavletich won the National Novel Award of Peru in 1959 for his novel No se suicidan los muertos (English: The dead do not commit suicide).