A decade before the Chilean Nicanor Parra died in the summer of 2018, at the age of 103, he granted a power of attorney by public deed to his daughter Colombina Parra Tuca, a musical composer, the fifth of his six heirs, to establish a foundation dedicated to preserve his legacy once he is dead. With that idea in mind, the poet wrote his will in 2017, in which he named the youngest of his daughters as executor and beneficiary of 58.3% of the inheritance. Just a few months after the death of one of the most important writers in Latin America in the 20th century, the Nicanor Parra Foundation was established. The two children who live outside Chile, Alberto and Catalina Parra Troncoso, however, opposed its creation and began a legal battle against their four brothers to annul their father’s will, accusing that his faculties were diminished when he wrote his last willpower.
In 1969, the year Parra won the National Literature Prize, he published the compendium Rough Work (Editorial Universitaria), which included a poem entitled Latest Instructions. The work, as its name indicates, is a list of orders to be carried out at the author’s funeral. “The will of the dead is to be fulfilled,” read one verse. And that was a bit of what the six years of demands, litigation and complex negotiations of the Parra clan were like. Alberto and Catalina, represented by Andrés Cabello, wanted to resolve the succession in a common and ordinary way. The other children –Francisca Parra Troncoso, Juan de Dios Barrack Parra Tuca, Nicanor Chamaco Parra Muñoz, and Colombina–, advised by lawyer Luis Valentín Ferrada, sought to make the division considering the cultural and patrimonial legacy of the artist.
In question were the poet’s five properties: the house in Isla Negra and Las Cruces, in the Valparaíso Region, and those in Huechuraba, Peñalolén and La Reina, in the Chilean capital. That, added to the bank values, amounted to an asset of 3.4 billion pesos (about 3.5 million dollars). Colombina served as executor for a year and, in March 2019, the 24th Civil Court of Santiago appointed a provisional administrator to manage her inheritance, the lawyer José Alfredo Rojas.
At the end of May, the dispute over the will was settled. The Nicanor Parra Foundation will be the owner of the assets with cultural and heritage significance, such as the house in Las Cruces, where Parra lived the last stage of his life and where he is buried. It will also own the house in La Reina, which will eventually serve as the foundation’s offices, plus a surrounding site of up to 2,000 meters on indefinite loan.
One of the poet’s concerns before dying was to recover his personal notebooks that had been sold in a bad way by one of his relatives. After several years of searching, the team close to Parra managed to rescue a dozen unpublished libertas and another dozen artifacts. Like the copyright, it will go to the foundation.
A series of paintings by Violeta, at the foundation of Nicanor
The foundation, which Colombina will preside over, is the first winner. Then come the children. The Chilean lawyer and rector of the Diego Portales University, Carlos Peña, one of the directors of the foundation, acted as mediator in the dispute. Now, in the distribution of the assets in particular, which will be by common agreement, he will decide, at the request of both parties, when there is no consensus. In parallel to this process, the reform of the statutes will be carried out, so that the entire family participates in the issue of the foundation. Peña explains to EL PAIS that each heir receives the same inheritance quota or portion and that the properties “will be destined for museums or places of public access.” The formula had the unanimity of the heirs, he points out, who finally agreed to safeguard Parra’s work and equal distribution.
When the poet’s sister, the iconic singer-songwriter Violeta Parra, died in 1967, Nicanor acquired a series of paintings, most of them in oil. The Violeta Parra Foundation requested its restitution after the death of the 2012 Cervantes Prize, arguing that they were given to Nicanor for security reasons after the military coup of 1973. The agreement between the brothers stipulates that they remain for the Nicanor Parra Foundation, chaired by Colombina . The political scientist and friend of the poet, Carmen Fariña, will serve as secretary, and Francisca Panchita Parra, the second daughter of the author of Poems and Antipoems, will serve as treasurer. Those who know her describe her as the living portrait of the Parra spirit: intelligent and distant.
Since the agreement was reached, Nicanor’s children have remained completely silent. Rector Peña is acting as spokesman, although it is expected that in the coming weeks the different branches of the Parra family will make a public statement after years of conflict over one of the most important cultural legacies of Chile, a country of poets.
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