Poet, born on July 12, 1904 in Parral, Chile, He became his country's most celebrated literary and political figure. Winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize in literature, he was not just Latin America's greatest living poet, but an ardent political activist who used his celebrity to call attention to social injustice. As a diplomat, senator, and leading citizen, he denounced leaders of his and other South American countries whose policies helped maintain a sense of colonialism well into the twentieth century. 

From his youth, He was also interested in the plight of Chile's poorer classes.

He made a name for himself in 1921 when he won Santiago's Spring Festival poetry prize that year. His first volume was published as a result, La cancion de la fiesta, and he was heralded as a gifted young poet.

He knew Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, and continued to denounce American meddling in Chile, which reached its apogee in early September of 1973, when a military coup ousted Allende; Senate hearings in Washington later revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency had played a large part in the overthrow of the world's first freely elected Marxist government. Allende died under suspicious circumstances during the battle. He was already ailing from prostate cancer, and died of heart failure after an operation at a Santiago hospital on September 23, 1973.