Luis Vidales

In 1932 he assumed the post of editor-in-chief of the daily Tierra, an official organ of the Communist Party, under the leadership of Guillermo Rodríguez Hernández.

As an editor, Vidales waged a vigorous campaign against the Colombian-Peruvian War, calling on soldiers from both nations to fraternize at the front and 'turn their weapons against their own officers.

After the assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in 1948, Luis Vidales and his family were subject to persecution by the right-wing regime and went into exile in Chile.

In 1979, during the reign of Julio Cesar Turbay Ayala, military units raided his residence, illegally detaining the poet and his wife under the pretext of obtaining a warrant for the arrest of another person and searching for weapons from the M-19 guerrilla group.

This caused outrage in national and international public opinion; among the signatories of the protest notes was the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.