Juan Garrido Salgado came with his family to Australia from Chile under the Humanitarian Programme in 1990, fleeing from a regime which burned his poetry and imprisoned him for his political activism. He has written (in both Spanish and English) about social justice and human rights, and has published in Chile, Spain and Australia. His Variantes de la Libertad Definitiva was published in Chile in 1987.
Salgado has been a president of the Multicultural Writers Association and has undertaken a variety of voluntary community work, including writing and editing. In 2001 he edited Pregones Hispanoamericanos, a book on the Latin American cultural background which arose from a workshop run by the Federation of Spanish Speaking Communities of South Australia. He contributed to the World Congress of Poets workshop 'Valuing our World Poetic Heritage' in Sydney, 2000, and to the subsequent anthology Many Voices: Poetry for World Peace in the New Millennium (2001). Salgado translated into Spanish M. T. C. Cronin's Talking to Neruda Questions (Respondiendo a las Preguntas de Neruda) which was published in Chile in 2005 by SAfo Ediciones. Juan and Steve Brock are translating indigenous poetry (Mapuche) from Chile, to be published in Australia 2007.
