Abelardo Delgado

Abelardo Barrientos "Lalo" Delgado (November 27, 1931 – July 23, 2004) was a Mexican-born American writer, community organizer, and poet.^[1] His work was important in establishing the Chicano poetry movement.^[2]

He was a major contributor to the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 1970s.^[3] A professor in Metropolitan State University of Denver's Chicano/a Studies Department for 17 years, he was honored by the city of Denver posthumously in 2005 with the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Lifetime Achievement Award.^[4] In 2004, he was posthumously named Denver's first Poet Laureate.^[5] Metropolitan State University hosts the annual Lalo Delgado Poetry Festival; which celebrates Delgado as a social justice poet and "the grandfather of Chicano and Chicana poetry in this country."^[6][7][8]

Delgado was awarded the Tonatiuh-Quinto Sol Award for literature in 1977.^[1]

Personal life

Born in Boquilla de Conchos, Chihuahua, Mexico, Delgado moved to El Paso, Texas in 1943.^[1] He grew up in a tenement occupied by 23 families sharing three bathrooms, learning English from a boys club after school.^[9] Delgado organized his first protest while in school, refusing to sing the National Anthem and eventually convincing his classmates to sing in Spanish instead.^[10]

Delgado graduated from high school in 1950, and he was vice president of the honor society. He spent time after high school working with youths at a community center in El Paso. In 1962, he earned a bachelor's degree in Spanish from the University of Texas at El Paso, which was notable for the time due to discrimination against Chicanos and Spanish-speakers.^[11]

Delgado was 21 years old when he met Lola Estrada. They married in 1953, moved to Colorado, and had eight children.^[11][12]