In the same year, he won the Poetry Prize Casa de las Américas for his book Taberna y otros lugares.

After leaving Cuba, Dalton became involved in El Salvador's civil war, joining the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP) in 1973.

[1] He is remembered for his bohemian lifestyle and the jovial, irreverent personality reflected in his literary work, as well as his commitment to social causes in El Salvador.

Winnall Dalton married Aida Ulloa, and gaining control of his wife's large farm dedicated his life to agriculture.

In 1961 he travelled to Havana, where he was welcomed by Casa de las Américas, a gathering place for many exiled leftist Latin American writers.

Roque Dalton (1937–75) was the major literary figure and an important political architect of the revolutionary movement in El Salvador.

Dalton represents a new type of Latin American writer: no longer the genial 'fellow traveler' of the revolution, like Pablo Neruda, but rather the rank and file revolutionary activist for whom the intricate cabbala of clandestine struggle-pass- words, safe houses, escape routes, forged documents, sectarian squabbles- was as familiar as Parisian surrealism.

[4]: [74] When he felt properly trained as a soldier, he sought admission to the Salvadoran Marxist-Leninist, political-military organization Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front.

However, the organization's leader, Commander "Marcial" (whose real name was Salvador Cayetano Carpio), rejected his application, arguing that Roque's role in the revolution was as a poet, and not as a foot-soldier.

Roque Dalton's military career also included cooperation with Guatemalan revolutionaries in creating EGP - Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres (Guerrilla Army of the Poor in English).

Therefore, Dalton's literary production stopped when a group of commandos, whose members were Villalobos and Jorge Meléndez (nom de guerre 'Jonas') ended his life.

There were possibly others involved in his execution, but these are the ones still alive today: Villalobos settled in Great Britain; Meléndez was an MP for San Salvador for the FMLN, and Rivas Mira hides behind plastic surgeries, which were paid with money obtained from the kidnapping and murder of the multi-millionaire Roberto Poma.

The most commonly accepted version of facts suggests that Dalton was "mistakenly accused" of operating as an agent for the CIA, the reason for which he was executed.

What is clear is that Roque Dalton would have not been displeased if anyone had then said that even now, the murderers are afraid of him, and that the accusations of CIA collaboration were then and now a simple after the fact excuse of a group of terrorists fully aware of the hideous nature of their acts.

[6] On January 7, 2012, the Fiscalía Nacional, prosecuting agency for the FMLN lead Salvadoran government, decree that the statute of limitations for the murder of Roque Dalton had expired.

Dalton's writing includes almost 15 poetry collections, a novel, a personal testimony, and a play, as well as short stories, critiques, and essays on both literature and politics.