Cesar Vallejo was born in Santiago de Chuco, Peru, in 1892. He studied law and literature in Trujillo and in 1917 moved to Lima. In 1921 he spent three months in prison where he wrote some of the poems in Trilce. In 1923 he left for Paris, where he co-founded a cell of the Peruvian Communist Party. From Paris, he traveled to Russia and to Spain, during the Spanish Civil War. He died in Paris, in absolute poverty, devastated by the fall of the Spanish Republic, in 1938.

Besides novels, short stories, dramas, and several journalistic and political collections, Vallejo left five books of poetry. Of these only Los heralds negros (The Black Heralds, 1918) and Trilce (1922) were published during his lifetime. Nomina de huesos (Payroll of Bones, 1923-1936), Sermon de la barbarie (Sermon on Barbarism, 1936-1938) and Espana, aparta de mi este caliz (Spain, Take This Cup from Me, 1937-1938), were published posthumously. Trilce was published in.

The same year as The Waste Land and is, like the Eliot poem, a masterpiece of early modernism, a ground-breaking work which has had an indelible effect on all subsequent poetry in its language. The book contains seventy-seven poems that are considered Vallejo's most complex and radical work.