Ernesto Cardenal and The Nicaraguan Revolution

ERNESTO CARDENAL AND THE NICARAGUAN REVOLUTION: From Theological Theory to
Revolutionary Praxis
Author(s): RUDOLF J. SIEBERT
Source: CrossCurrents, Vol. 30, No. 3 (FALL 1980), pp. 241-251
Published by: Wiley
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RUDOLF J. SIEBERT
ERNESTO CARDENAL AND THE

NICARAGUAN REVOLUTION
From Theological Theory to Revolutionary Praxis
The ominous signs of a possible Vietnamization of Central America, emphasized by th

rejoicing of right-wing "national-security" regimes throughout Latin America at the election
of Ronald Reagan, make the following article especially topical. The struggling n
government of Nicaragua is increasingly described in hostile terms, and the ruling junta
El Salvador, which could not survive without U.S. military, political, and economic suppor
is given further military aid in the waning moments of the Carter administration even afte
the murder of four U.S. women, three of them nuns, with the apparent connivance
Salvadoran security forces.
It is against this framework that we ought to read Professor Rudolf Siebert's report
Ernesto Cardenal's address on the occasion of receiving the Peace Prize of the Germa
Publisher's Association. Understandably, Cardenal took the opportunity to make a plea f
the support of the Nicaraguan revolution; as a poet, he may be describing the ultimate goals
that revolution as its present fragile and threatened attainments. Professor Siebert,
sympathetic but not uncritical observer of the revolution, wrote in a letter accompanying h
article, "How long can the Messianic aura around the Nicaraguan revolution last? Will no
sobriety return in a not too distant future, making everything once more look gray on gray ? "
Ernesto Cardenal, Minister of Education in the Nicaraguan government, was born i
1925 in Granada, Nicaragua. In 1957 he was a novice at the Trappist monastery
Gethsemane, Kentucky, where Thomas Merton was his spiritual director. Merton convinc
him that his surest communication with God would be through people, not through solita
contemplation. After he was ordained in 1965, Father Cardenal founded t
internationally-known lay monastery of Our Lady of Solentiname on an island in La
Nicaragua, inhabited mainly by poor farmers and fishermen. On Sundays the peopl
gathered for the liturgy, but there was no homily. The Scriptural texts of the day were rea
aloud and the people themselves commented on them; Orbis Press has published two volum
of these dialogues under the title, The GOSPEL IN SOLENTINAME, and they provide
ideal prolongation of the address that Siebert is summarizing.
Professor Rudolf J. Siebert was born in Frankfurt on the Main in 1927, and completed his
studies in theology, philosophy, history and philology at the Johann Gutenberg Universitât
Mainz, Germany. Since 1965 he has been Professor of Religion and Director of the Institu
for Humanities at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan. He has writt
widely in German and English on Hegel's philosophy and the Frankfurt School of Philosophy
and Sociology; some sense of the broader discussion into which he would want to dr
supporters of both political and liberation theology can be gained in reading his two-pa
essay in HORIZONS, "The New Religious Dimension in Western Marxism" (1976,3/2, a
1977, 4/1). Siebert is also director of the international seminar on "The Future of Religio
End or Renewal?" in the Inter-University Centre for Post-Graduate Studies, Dubrovnik,
Yugoslavia.
RUDOLF J. SIEBERT 241
On Sunday, October 12, 1980 in St. Paul's Church in Frankfurt am
Main, the liberation theologian Ernesto Cardenal was the first South
American to receive the famous Peace Prize of the German Publisher's
Association. The political theologian Johannes B. Metz gave the laudatio
for Cardenal — priest, revolutionary, poet, former Trappist novice and
present Minister of Cultural Affairs in Nicaragua. The event suggests that
European political theology and South American liberation theology —
both rooted in the Christianity of the New Testament as well as in
humanistic Marxism — have begun a process of convergence. Traditional
Christian theology, whether Platonic or Aristotelian, was idealistic; politi
cal and liberation theology have begun a materialistic political hermeneu
tics of Christianity. Whereas idealism emphasized God's reasons and will,
materialism spoke primarily of the suffering of the people; Christianity,
however, unites the idealistic and the materialistic element in the dialecti
cal image of the Crucified. The new theologies want to do justice to the
Christianity of the New Testament by seeking once again to respond to
the suffering of the people and the will of the Father at the same time.
Political theology, seriously committed to critical theory, has begun to
connect itself with revolutionary praxis; liberation theology, deeply en
gaged in political praxis, confesses to its theoretical framework. Both
theologies have entered the dialectic of theory and praxis which must
never be arrested again.
In his laudatio, Metz tried to make comprehensible to Germans and
other people living in advanced capitalistic societies, Christians and
Humanists alike, how the outrageous scandal of the revolutionary priest
Cardenal, who contributed substantially to the downfall of the dictatorial
Somoza regime in Nicaragua a year ago, was highly productive and
creative. Metz is as aware as Daniel Berrigan and other radical pacifists
that Christian love raises serious objections against the use of revolu
tionary force. There indeed lies an abyss between Christian love and the
use of automatic weapons, not only in the hands of oppressors but also in
the hands of liberating revolutionaries. At the same time, Metz argues,
Christian love of neighbor must not keep silent and inactive in the face of
the oppression of right-wing dictatorial regimes; we cannot, no matter
how reluctantly, acquiesce in suffering inflicted by a Somoza. Here lies the
specifically Christian dilemma in the present world-historical kairos: that
Christians sometimes, in cases of extreme and otherwise unresolvable
injustices, must — like Marxists — use revolutionary force out of love and
for love's sake, just as a doctor who must operate on a cancer patient.
According to Metz, Christian love can, at such moments, show the dark
face of violence as the expression of its utter desperation. Of course, love
knows always how much it is necessarily violated by any use of force.
These thoughts on Christian love and political praxis as expressed by
political and liberation theology are very new to Christians, who for many
centuries had a seven-point theory of just wars but had no developed
242 CROSS CURRENTS I FALL 1980
doctrine of a just revolution. Certainly no traditional scholasticism can
comprehend the scandal, paradox, and dialectic of Christian love of
neighbor and revolutionary praxis. This can only be the task of an ex
tremely dialectical liberation or political theology.
Metz explains that genuine revolution, as Cardenal comprehends it,
aims at a peace society and a peace culture in which contradictions char
acteristic of organized capitalistic society — i.e., between religious and
secular, communal and individual, producers and consumers, owners
and workers, luxury and misery, and rich and poor classes, are overcome
and reconciled. Only the reconciled peace society is a free society. The
goal of genuine revolution is the life of those living now and in the future,
not the death of earlier enemies. The real revolution intends to protect
unprotected, innocent victims, not bolster aggression against former
murderers. What forever binds together not only political and liberation
theology, but also the Christianity of the New Testament and humanistic
Marxism, is their passionate longing for the murderer to never triumph
over the innocent victim. In Nicaragua, after its revolution a year ago, the
murderer has ceased to triumph over innocent victims; the revolution was
indeed real and extremely effective.
Metz, well informed by his recent trip to the new Nicaragua, argues that
Cardenal has learned from three sources: Karl Marx, the fiery anger of
the prophets, and the tenderness of the Indios. All three of these elements
are beautifully reflected in Cardenal's great poetry, in the Epigrams, "La
H or a 0", the Psalms of Struggle and Liberation, and the Homage to the American
Indians.
In Metz's view, the 59-year-old revolutionary priest Cardenal was able
in his lifework to revive the peace dialogue of the Indian people with
nature, which Europeans had broken off with the rise of capitalism and
bourgeois civilization. Thus, Cardenal's work now makes possible the
basic development of communities and a basic culture through which
Nicaragua can find its way to what Western Civilization has long since lost:
a new unity of personal, social and religious identity. Modernity begins
with the breakdown of this unity of identities. The free Nicaragua is not
only post-European and post-bourgeois, but also post-modern.
Peace and Justice

Cardenal accepted the prestigious Peace Prize in Frankfurt not for
himself, but for his great and courageous people at home. At the begin
ning of his acceptance speech, he recognized that the paradox of the
situation, a man who defended and praised the armed struggle of his
people receiving the famous Peace Prize, was extremely significant. He
argued that the Nicaraguan people searched for peace with their bloody
struggle. This peace, which has now been achieved, means more than
merely the absence of war. Cardenal thinks of peace as described by the
old Hebrew prophets, Shalom, a peace which is also justice. Shalom means
the peaceful living together of one with the other; all harvest their wine in
peace. This peace is the reconciliation of the one with the other, and all are
brothers and sisters together. According to Cardenal, in the Old Testa
ment, people could have this kind of peace even in the midst of war; it was
possible for war to be waged for Shalom. This is also the peace of Jesus,
who greeted his disciples with Shalom — peace be with you! But, Cardenal
reminded his audience, Jesus also said that he came to bring the sword
and the fire, and that the nature of fire is to burn. The peace of the
prophets and of Jesus cannot be without justice. There is a psalm which
says: "Justice and peace kiss each other." Justice and peace are insepara
ble; they produce each other. This dialectic of peace and justice is con
stitutive for liberation and political theologies.
Cardenal insisted it was entirely evil for certain officials in the Church to
have shamelessly blessed weapons of oppressors in the past, both in South
America and elsewhere. Pius XII blessed the weapons of the Italian fascist
army when it set out to conquer Albania (and today, churches in Albania
are closed); Cardinal Spellman blessed the weapons in the unjust Vietnam
War. In their actions Pius XII and Cardinal Spellman followed a very old
tradition of Constantinian Christendom.
For Cardenal, it is something completely different when the Church
blesses the weapons of oppressed victims who try to defend themselves
against their despotic murderers. The weapons of oppressors, which the
Constantinian Church blessed only too often, served to attack innocent
victims. For example, in 1525, the weapons of the armies of Charles V,
blessed by the Church, murdered 100,000 farmers who fought for Chris
tian freedom and justice, people like the peasants of Nicaragua in this
century. Among the victims of the farmer revolution of 1525 was one of its
leaders, the priest Thomas Miinzer, many of whose ideas are incorpo
rated today in liberation and political theology. On the other hand, the
weapons of oppressed, innocent victims serve their self-defense, freedom
and peace. Furthermore, the blessing of the weapons of the masters is
completely different from the blessing of the oppressed victims since the
weapons are so unequal; it is not the same for the Church to bless the
sword of Goliath and the stone of David. Cardenal recalled that when the
dictator Somoza allowed the rebellious city of Leon to be bombarded with
white napalm from the U.S.A., the local bishop screamed over the tele
phone to international journalists: "This is as unequal a struggle as be
tween David and Goliath." But for Cardenal, in Nicaragua as in the Bible,
David conquered Goliath. It is the deep conviction of liberation and
political theology that there is strength in weakness; innocent victims can
indeed triumph over their oppressors.
Cardenal has friends among radical pacifists all over the world, particu
larly in the U.S.A. and especially in the circle around the Berrigans (who
once again are in prison on account of their protest against production of
a new, most murderous cruise missile). Cardenal's and Daniel Berrigan's
poetry is very similar. Both Cardenal's Psalms of Struggle and Liberation and
Berrigan's Uncommon Prayer show concern with human suffering as well as
with God's often scandalous will and behavior; both show the same
prophetic and Messianic intensity. But, Cardenal does not think that the
attitude of extreme pacifists agrees with the Bible. After all, the Bible
blesses the sword of Holophernes only in the very moment in which
Judith uses it in order to kill him, the despot. Even the medieval Church
allowed tyrannicide in self defense. On the basis of permission by the
Church, Colonel Staufenberg made his assassination attempt against Hit
ler in the Wolsschanze, East Prussia, in 1944.
During the revolution in Nicaragua, the Jesuit Berrigan wrote an open
letter to Cardenal in which he condemned Cardenal's defense of the
violent Sandinista movement and struggle. Not even the highest princi
ple, so Berrigan argued, can outweigh the life of one single child. In his
acceptance speech, Cardenal answered Berrigan by saying that he agrees
completely: The Sandinistas fought for the life of thousands of men and
women, old people and children, who were murdered day after day; the
highest principle, even that of radical pacifism, cannot weigh as much as a
single one of these children.
Cardenal described the great joy with which the Nicaraguan people
greeted the Sandinista fighters as they marched victoriously into Man
agua. There was jubilation in every village and town through which the
very young Sandinistas came. Many of the Sandinistas were only 15 years
old, some younger, and among them were many girls. "Muchachos", the
people called them tenderly. A real children's crusade — and this time a
successful one! The people embraced their young fighters. During the
liberation war, walls of houses often carried the almost biblical sentence:
Blessed be the womb which gave life to a Sandinista fighter. For Cardenal,
these soldiers were the liberation, the builders of peace and justice.
Cardenal quotes the Spanish writer Queredo, who once said that there
is nothing more terrible for a nation than tyranny; it is more horrible even
than civil war. Despotism is nothing but civil war elevated into a perma
nent power position. The people of Nicaragua experienced and suffered
such a tyrannical civil war for fifty years. For Cardenal and his friends, the
war in which the Nicaraguan people freed themselves from the Somoza
regime was not a civil war, as the capitalistic press often argued, but a war
of liberation.
Sandinistas who took part in the war of liberation wanted the death of
Somoza's followers less than the life of the Nicaraguan people. Cardenal
knew many of the Sandinista fighters personally; some had lived with him
for a long time at his commune at Solentiname. He testifies from his
experience that these Sandinistas took up their weapons out of love. They
wanted a country full of schools, hospitals and kindergartens; a land
without illiterates, without beggars and without exploitation. In the rebel
lious cities of Nicaragua, Cardenal experienced how a whole nation put
the Gospel, and particularly the Sermon on the Mount, into political and
revolutionary praxis. People sacrificed their lives willingly and freely for
others.
According to Cardenal, the whole Nicaraguan nation was ready to die,
for only through total commitment could the nation liberate itself from
Somoza's despotism. Many Sandinistas fell in the furious battle, but only
through their deaths is Nicaragua free today. The flag of the Sandinistas
is black and red. Sandino, leader of the movement, explained that black
means death and red the free fatherland; he also once said that black
means death and red signifies the resurrection. Cardenal seems con
vinced that the young Sandinistas who gave their blood in the liberation
war did so out of love. They did not die in order to die; they have been
resurrected! In other words, liberation and political theology is historical
materialism with God, with freedom and with immortality.
Today, Cardenal finds his people in Nicaragua happy with their revolu
tionary army. It is a people's army, the people themselves carrying
weapons. In Nicaragua now no one is afraid of the green uniforms which
used to spread so much fear and terror and meant real trauma for adults
and children alike, for they were uniforms of genocide. The young men
and women who today take military posts in Nicaragua or keep order in
the streets are youngsters with open faces.
Cardenal seems unafraid of a counter-revolution such as that which
took place in Chile. The Nicaraguan army may give him confidence, but
— to paraphrase Walter Benjamin — the Messiah comes not only as the
redeemer but also as the subduer of the anti-Christ. Only that revolu
tionary who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from
the victorious enemy will, in the long run, be successful in fanning the
spark of hope among the people. After all, the enemy has not ceased to be
victorious in this century, in spite of such setbacks as in Nicaragua. One
suspects that the Nicaraguan people will need their army as once the
Chileans did — and hopes they will make better use of it.
According to Cardenal, the recent Nicaraguan revolution was the most
generous that ever took place. In contrast to the Iranian revolution, for
example, there were no revengeful shootings of former enemies. Much
has been forgiven. Cardenal believes that in the Nicaraguan revolution
the difficult evangelical command of love of the enemy has been fulfilled.
The Minister of the Interior in Nicaragua, Comandante Tomas Borge,
only repeated what Carlos Fonseca, the founder of the Sandinista front,
said previously: "When a soldier of the Guardia Nacional falls as prisoner
into the hands of the Sandinistas, it is not enough that we respect his life
and human dignity. We must also treat him as our own brother." A
famous motto of the Sandinista front was: "Uncompromising in battle,
but generous in victory." These words were not only theory, but were
practiced and fulfilled in reality. Captured former national guardsmen of
Somoza have learned to read and write, taught by members of the San
dinistâ police. Even in prisons there are cultural delegates.
Cardenal stressed that the spirit of community and solidarity is domi
nant in Nicaragua today. Nicaraguans, he said, are in the process of
creating a truly brotherly society. One can only hope that this process will
not be disturbed and may even be supported from abroad.
Before the revolution, Cardenal had a Christian commune in
Solentiname, which was destroyed by the army because of its revolu
tionary spirit in faithfulness to the Gospel. The only significance which
the commune had was as a place where Cardenal and his friends could
preach revolution as a Christian demand. Enlightened by the Gospel, they
prophesied what has now become reality through the war of liberation,
and some young men from Cardenal's commune gave their lives for the
dream of a free and brotherly Nicaragua.
Metanoia
For Cardenal, revolution is a qualitative social change, what New Tes

tament Greek calls metanoia. It is a total change of attitude toward life, a
turn-about. According to Cardenal, the Nicaraguan revolution was pre
cisely this: a great qualitative change, a turning about toward love.
Cardenal knows that for most people living in advanced capitalistic
societies the word revolution has a poor connotation, but for him it has
almost the same meaning as evolution. Social revolutions are nothing but
a continuation of the evolution of the earth and the whole universe.
Evolution sometimes makes jumps, and the Nicaraguan revolution was
such a jump in the evolution of the human species.
At present, Cardenal is not focusing on the possibility of a counter
revolution but on the revolution itself and its goal, love of neighbor. Great
works of love have been accomplished in the new Nicaragua since the end
of the war of liberation one year ago. Formerly sinful structures have been
overthrown by works of love. What are these works of love? They are the
relentless struggle against the inner enemy of ignorance and illiteracy; the
conquering of unemployment and inflation; the nationalization of banks
and foreign trade; the care of widows and orphans left behind by the war
of liberation; the reform of health care, education and the state; land
reform; cultural revolution; and protection of nature.
Cardenal is fascinated by a new war in Nicaragua, against ignorance
and illiteracy. Recently, Nicaraguan newspapers have begun to publish
new "war reports" concerned with tactics and planning to be employed
against ignorance, and the people have thrown themselves into the strug
gle against illiteracy. Boys and girls who have entered this struggle teach
farmers to read and also learn from them. For Cardenal, it is most
important that these young people and the farmers have become brothers
and sisters. The literacy workers are called son or daughter by the farmers
in whose houses they live; the youngsters call the farmers father and
mother. When the youngsters leave the farmers, they know that they have
found a new home, a new family — simple, poor and rustic. According to
Cardenal, the whole country has become one large family since this great
crusade for literacy.
Cardenal knows, of course, that for most people in advanced capitalistic
societies, the word revolution means the same as terrorism and therefore
sounds bad. For the Nicaraguan people, however, revolution is a very
beautiful word which they enjoy using; it is a synonym for love. In
Nicaragua, a revolution has just been victorious, and with it, peace has
been victorious. People can sleep well. Whoever comes to Nicaragua
today, Cardenal promises, will see a people who smile. Faces are bright
from the light of a new sun. Once the young Marx spoke of this new
humanistic sun. Along with literacy, land reform was one of the most
pressing tasks of the revolution, since the country consists mainly of
farmland. In the past, the largest part of the land belonged to the Somoza
family and its followers; now it belongs to the people. Today, the cost of
land rental has been drastically reduced for farmers who still rent. The
harvests are larger this year than in earlier times. Land reform was just,
since farmers had suffered most from Somoza's oppression, and made the
largest contribution to the war of liberation.
According to Cardenal, another work of love of the Nicaraguan revolu
tion is the building of hospitals and the foundation of health centers
throughout the country. In spite of the great poverty in Nicaragua,
medical care is now guaranteed for rural areas in which previously there
had been no professional health care whatsoever. Today, all citizens are
inoculated, and doctors are in the process of eliminating epidemics which
have plagued the people for years. In the new Nicaragua, medicine is
something completely different from what it was under the Somoza
regime. It used to be mainly a means of making money, as is still the case in
advanced capitalist societies. Today, Nicaragua's medical personnel think
first of health care for simple people, particularly for the poorest of the
poor, for they need care the most.
Cardenal reports that, like health care, the whole educational system
has drastically changed in the revolutionary Nicaragua. Today, education
is open to everyone and is free of cost; it is no longer designed to produce
egoistic bourgeois characters who only learn how best to exploit others.
For the bourgeois of earlier days the other person was either nothing at all
or merely a means for his own egoistic interests. The new education
attempts to create a new human being, with a sense of human solidarity.
The social revolution has turned into what Metz calls an anthropological
revolution, without which the social revolution would ultimately fail. The
new education is liberating since it does not want to turn a man into a
servile peon in a system of exploitation. Rather, it would like to emanci
pate the spirit and consciousness from exploitation. The number of
students and teachers has increased enormously in Nicaragua during the
past year. Everywhere, new schools are being built, which Cardenal sees as
another work of love.
In Cardenal's view, Nicaragua has a new state now, democratic and
supported by the people. The population participates daily in public life
and discourse. The people freely express their opinions, making their
demands through many associations and through every means of public
communication, in public gatherings or in elections of representatives in
open city councils. There are radio programs in which representatives of
the government, like Cardenal himself, answer questions or grievances
which the people present via telephone. Through their different organi
zations, the people have influence in determining which is the best way to
go about necessary economic planning. Nicaragua has a government of
national unity, constituted by an alliance between workers, farmers,
members of the middle class, and capitalistic owners. Whereas previously,
during the Somoza regime, foreign policy was made in Washington, the
new foreign policy of Nicaragua aims at friendship with all nations and
friendly relations with all governments on the basis of mutual respect.
As a poet and Minister of Cultural Affairs, Cardenal is especially inter
ested in the new cultural awakening which has accompanied the general
social revolution. He wants to achieve a condition under which the culture
no longer belongs to a small elite, as was indeed the case under Somoza,
but to the people as a whole. Everywhere in Nicaragua, "houses of cul
ture" have come into existence, almost always through spontaneous action
of the people themselves. Nicaraguan folklore, which was half-forgotten
under the Somoza regime, has awakened to new life in an extraordinary
way. Cardenal's own poetry, e.g., in Homage to the American Indian, has
made a great contribution to this process, but the production of new
poetry in Nicaragua is astonishing. Various workshops have been held at
which carpenters and masons gradually found their own ways to write
good modern poetry. According to Cardenal, these poems by workers of
all types are of excellent quality — as good as those of the country's literary
elite in earlier times. These poetry workshops take place in the poor areas
of the cities, in factories, in the army, and even in police stations.
Nicaragua may be the one country in which the police publish poems.
Throughout Nicaragua, people's theaters have been founded, whose
members are mainly workers and farmers. A comparable development
has occurred in the area of song and music in general, and in many
communities, wall paintings and other beautiful artifacts of high quality
have been created. Land, culture, and a sense of their own historical
destiny belong once again to the people.
According to Cardenal, the new revolutionary government has been
able to stabilize prices for basic foodstuffs and lower the number of
unemployed workers. The long-range aim is to eliminate unemployment
completely. A new dignity has been given to work. Demands of workers
have been quickly fulfilled; for example, more labor unions have come
into existence in the past few months than during the whole fifty years of
Somoza's regime, and minimum wages have been raised without creating
inflation.
Cardenal said that banking has been nationalized, transforming it from
an exercise in usury, which it had been under capitalistic domination, into
an arrangement that serves the common good of the Nicaraguan nation.
The government has also nationalized foreign trade in order to make it be
useful for everyone, not only for a small elite. The new government's tax
reform has led from regressive taxation, instituted in the U.S.A., to
progressive taxation in terms of which the main burden is now carried by
those who have the largest incomes. In earlier times in Nicaragua, as in
advanced capitalistic societies, the simple people had to pay most of the
taxes while the rich contributed little or nothing. The new government cut
apartment rents in half, and is gradually upgrading the slums of the
Somoza regime; new urban areas are being developed.
Cardenal and his friends believe that a new type of man can arise in this
world. Like Metz, they trust in the possibility of human transformation.
The new government programs and the revolutionary "works of love" are
being carried out precisely in order to create this new man. The freedom
Nicaraguans now enjoy is the fruit of tremendous human suffering and of
many heroic deeds. Cardenal applies the words of the New Testament —
"If the wheat seed does not fall into the earth and does not die, it remains
alone, but when it dies, it will bring forth much fruit" — to those who died
in the war of liberation. For many Nicaraguan Christians the recent
history of their country recalls the Easter story of death and resurrection.
For them, participation in the revolution meant nothing less than faith
fulness to Jesus Christ.
According to Cardenal, social change often tends to bring human
beings closer to each other. Our planet has become continuously smaller
while mankind has grown always larger. Managua, Frankfurt, Washing
ton, Toronto, Moscow, etc. are continually getting closer to each other.
Like Teilhard de Chardin, Cardenal believes that this unification of
mankind will, in time, create a supra-organism consisting of conscious
organisms, just as the individual organism consists of cells. Cardenal
predicts a supra-consciousness consisting of innumerable units of con
sciousness. The human individual will not lose his or her identity in this
supra-organism, just as cells do not lose their identity in spite of the fact
that they are part of a larger whole. Cardenal quotes Isaac Asimov: Just as
amoebae can perceive waves of water but not a symphony, as human
organisms can, so there are unimaginable symphonies which the human
organism cannot now hear; the symphony heard by the human organism,
if we compare it to the unimaginable symphonies which a society of
human organisms united into one supra-organism may hear, is as small as
the water wave movements perceived by a one-cell being.
Kingdom of Heaven
Cardenal believes in the kingdom of Heaven, which includes the earth
and the cosmos, the society of the inhabited planets. He believes in the
resurrection of the dead in this kingdom of Heaven.
Cardenal came to Frankfurt to accept the Peace Prize and to tell Ger
many and the whole world what is happening in Nicaragua. Cardenal
knows only too well that in many advanced capitalistic countries a propa
ganda campaign of misinformation and a boycott of silence is in progress
against the new revolutionary Nicaragua. He also asked for solidarity with
and help for the people of El Salvador, for those who are sacrificing their
lives for justice in imitatio Christi, just as in Nicaragua. Cardenal asked the
world to contribute to the liberation of the people of El Salvador and those
in other liberation movements which will come in the future. These
movements will occur with inner necessity, since they obey the same laws
which guide the stars — the law of gravity, the law of attraction, the law of
love itself.
Fidel Castro recently remarked, à propos the situation in Nicaragua

and El Salvador, that Christians no longer merely dialogue with Marxists
but also participate in practical and effective revolutions. In Nicaragua
the Christian-Marxist dialogue, as analyzed in political and liberation
theology, has shown one of its first fruits. Political and liberation theology
and the Christian-Marxist dialogue are to be known by their fruits — i.e.,
by their revolutionary works of love. Marxist-Christian discourse in the
framework of liberation and political theology is future-oriented remem
brance of the pain, suffering and death of innocent victims, with the
practical intent of liberation and redemption. In Nicaragua, El Salvador,
and elsewhere, this practical intent is in the process of being realized.
Cardenal and his courageous people are indeed proving that the
human history of freedom has not yet come to its end, as the bourgeois
press would sometimes like to make us believe. New revolutionary jumps
do occur in world history. Also, the history of the Gospel, the Sermon on
the Mount, remains open. What Metz calls the dangerous memory of
Christian freedom can never be entirely repressed. It always returns. The
dangerous memoria vitae, passionis et resurrectionis Christi retains its motivat
ing power in the historical process. The critical theory and revolutionary
praxis of political and liberation theologians are a new qualitative jump in
the history of the Christianity of the New Testament. In Nicaragua, El
Salvador and other places, Christianity as the dangerous memoria libertatis
Chnsti merges once more with the world-history of a painful and joyful
liberation of men, women, children and nature. There are Christians alive
again for whom — in Walter Benjamin's words — every second in the
future can be a little door through which the Messiah enters.

Ernesto Cardenal and The Nicaraguan Revolution

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Ernesto Cardenal and The Nicaraguan Revolution

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ERNESTO CARDENAL AND THE NICARAGUAN REVOLUTION: From Theological Theory to

ERNESTO CARDENAL AND THE

The ominous signs of a possible Vietnamization of Central America, emphasized by th

RUDOLF J. SIEBERT 241

242 CROSS CURRENTS I FALL 1980

Peace and Justice

RUDOLF J. SIEBERT 243

244 CROSS CURRENTS I FALL 1980

RUDOLF J. SIEBERT 245

246 CROSS CURRENTS I FALL 1980

For Cardenal, revolution is a qualitative social change, what New Tes

RUDOLF J. SIEBERT 247

248 CROSS CURRENTS I FALL 1980

RUDOLF J. SIEBERT 249

250 CROSS CURRENTS I FALL 1980

Fidel Castro recently remarked, à propos the situation in Nicaragua

RUDOLF J. SIEBERT 251

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