Club 7 or Club Siete (1951-1962) was a group of poets formed in Guayaquil, made up of David Ledesma Vázquez (1934-1961), Gastón Hidalgo Ortega (1929-1973), Carlos Benavides Vega (1931-1999), Ileana Espinel Cedeño (1934-2001), Sergio Román Armendáriz (1934), Carlos Abadíe Silva (?-?), and Miguel Donoso Pareja (1931-2015). After learning of Ledesma and Benavides’s homosexuality, Donoso and Abadíe left the group. In 1954, the remaining 5 members published a poetry anthology titled “Club 7.” In 1960, three members, Ledesma, Román, and Espinel, published a new collection titled “Triángulo.”
Members
- David Ledesma Vázquez (1934-1961)
- Gastón Hidalgo Ortega (1929-1973)
- Carlos Benavides Vega (1931-1999)
- Ileana Espinel Cedeño (1934-2001)
- Sergio Román Armendáriz (1934)
- Carlos Abadíe Silva (?-?)
- Miguel Donoso Pareja (1931-2015)
Political views
Club 7 was never a political organization but its members all shared democratic progressive views.
Why did Carlos Abadíe Silva and Miguel Donoso Pareja really leave Club 7?
While little is known about Carlos Abadíe Silva, Miguel Donoso Pareja became one of Ecuador’s most notable writers, achieving the Eugenio Espejo Prize in 2006, Ecuador’s highest literary honor. By most accounts, both writers left the group after finding out that David Ledesma Vázquez and Carlos Benavides Vega were homosexuals.
In a 2010 interview Sergio Román Armendáriz said: “But, before launching the anthology [“Club 7″], two friends decided to separate [from our group], one, Miguel Donoso Pareja, to prioritize his narrative, and the other, Carlos Abadie Silva, to prioritize his music.”
However, Donoso himself explains in his 1994 memoir that he and Abadíe Silva decided, at the last minute, to remove their poems from the book [“Club 7”] because they had found out that two of the group’s members [Ledesma and Benavides] were homosexual. Donoso apologizes and expresses regret for his attitude at the time, which was influenced by “environmental pressure and stupidity, lack of personality, and caveman primitivism.”
Books
- Club 7 (1954)
- Triángulo (1960)