Ernesto Cardenal. Peace, Poetry and Popular Culture

Peace, Poetry, and Popular Culture: Ernesto Cardenal and the Nicaraguan Revolution
Author(s): Claudia Schaefer-Rodriguez

Source: Latin American Literary Review, Vol. 13, No. 26 (Jul. - Dec., 1985), pp. 7-18
Published by: Latin American Literary Review
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PEACE, POETRY, AND POPULAR CULTURE:
ERNESTO CARDENAL AND THE NICARAGUAN
REVOLUTION
CLAUDIA SCHAEFER-RODRIGUEZ
The events occurring in Nicaragua in the decade of the 1970's, par

ticularly the revolution which finally ousted the government of Anastasio
Somoza in July of 1979, attracted the attention of many, from multiple
points of view. Among the various aspects which stimulated interest was
that of what the response?literary and otherwise?would be of the writer
and priest Ernesto Cardenal to these changes in which he himself had par
ticipated. When most readers last left Cardenal, on the eve of the revolu
tion, the question was left open-ended1 or speculative. The crucial task
now, five years later, is to pick up the historical thread and examine what
has taken place since that moment and what has been Cardenal's role.
I. The historical moment

?qui?n sabe
Si s?lo los muertos no son
hombres de transici?n?
[who knows
If only the dead are not
men of transition]
Roberto Fern?ndez Retmar
Cardenal's critical consciousness of the problems and contradictions in

Nicaraguan society as having identifiable historical sources2 permitted him
to view the confrontation of two worlds in the Nicaraguan revolution (First
World /Third World, colonialism /independence) as a moment of human
social crisis filled with both ?tremendous danger and incipient possibility.?3
This dynamic ?possibility? to commence a new society lay, for him, with
the people (masses) of Nicaragua. With the removal from the country of the
cultural and economic domination of imperialism (and the National Guard
to maintain its structure), it was apparent that a constructive phase of real
social alternatives could begin, as reflected inthe concrete reforms proposed
by the new Sandinista government: the establishment of political rights for
all, the expropriation of landed estates, the distribution of natural
resources, the development of a national culture, the abolition of illiteracy,
8 Latin American Literary Review
the extension of electric and sanitary services to rural areas, the incorpora
tion of women as a national force, and so on.4 The optimistic protests of
CardenaPs poems had always expressed his idea of the organic relationship
between the poet and the history of his country (?Zero Hour,? ?National
Song? (dedicated to the FSLN), ?The Doubtful Strait,? ?Homage to the
American Indians,? etc.); now, the dialogue between an individual and his
surroundings could become an objective, mutually creative influence.5
Somoza's defeat (the Sandinistas* triumph) meant the reality of a ?new
species? (the ?hombre nuevo? of the Latin American revolutions)6 being a
?concrete,? not merely ?abstract? potentiality7 to which CardenaPs
cultural contribution would add, and in which he could find a context
receptive to his participation as well as formed by it.
At this point the concrete link is established, through Cardenal, be
tween the model peasant community on the island of Solentiname (begun by
him in 1966 and destroyed by Somoza's National Guard in 1977) and the
whole of the new community of social, economic, and cultural relations. As
Harvey Cox defines this role: ?Cardenal... is commited to more than the
r?int?gration of the ideas of politics and poetry, the sacred and the profane,
even nature and art. He is committed to nurturing an actual community
where people bring these separated spheres back together, providing one
small building block for the new culture...The vision he once cherished for
Solentiname has now become one for Nicaragua itself.?8 To join the
?separated spheres,? not separate by nature but disarticulated by man,
Cardenal and his group had functioned without social classes, without
privilege, and without paternalism or dogmatism, to produce the reality of a
culture of equality where all could be poets and artisans and participate in
discussion and dialogue.
II. Response
?No hay letras, que son expresi?n,
hasta que no hay esencia que expresar
en ellas. Ni habr? literatura hispano
americana hasta que no haya Hispano
am?rica.
[There are no letters, which are expression,
until there is an essence to express them.
Nor will there be Spanish-American literature
until there is a Spanish-America.]
Jos? Mart?
To assume responsibility to help create and develop a new social model

for Nicaragua as well as the means to attain and maintain it, to produce a
Peace, Poetry, and Popular Culture in Ernesto Cardenal 9
social project offering to all Nicaraguans the possibility of establishing an

alternative identity to that historically defined by outsiders, not merely a
?gesto rebelde?9 (rebellious gesture), is the goal of Cardenal as the Minister
for Cultural Affairs in the revolutionary government in Nicaragua. The
bases for this social order appear to be several.
First, there must be ?a consistent view of human nature.?10 That is,
that there is seen to be a place for man in the cosmos (all of which is
God's?see ?Salmo 148? in Poes?a escogida (Barcelona: Barrai, 1975));
man has both an origin11 and a constant evolution; man's life is in motion
and the present is related to the rest of history; man makes and defines his
role in society and communicates this through social and cultural expres
sion. This ?consistency? is summed up in CardenaPs poem ?Or?culo sobre
Managua? [Oracle over Managua] in which he speaks of the essential unity
and harmony of all life in (Marxist/Christian) community: ?Toda vida
une /une y no divide /.../Toda sustancia viva una? [AU life unites/unites
and does not divide/.../All living substance unites].
In second place, there is an attempt to integrate all aspects of human
personality (mystical, political, artistic, etc.), accompanied by an integra
tion of the outer world (community, country, region, world). This goes
beyond a reductionist view of society including only a subjective radius or
perception to a more encompassing social vision.
Third, there is the recovery of the physical body13 via participation for
all members of the new society in Nicaragua without the exclusionary
privileges of class, race, or sex: women, children, Indians, Blacks, peasants,
the poor, and all the minorities traditionally marginalized from ?belong
ing? to the corporeal, physical, tangible social reality as functioning
members.
These steps all lead to the fourth area, the control of cultural produc
tion. As Minister of Culture, Cardenal has organized the ?Talleres de
poesia? [Poetry Workshops] in the ?barrios? (popular neighborhoods) and
for the police and soldiers, with the idea of encouraging the people to ex
press themselves in their own way.14 There has also been an appropriation
of the ?artesan?as? (handicrafts) once made solely for tourists, and a
reorientation of fairs and festivals to be the expression of belonging to a
valuable national culture, not as compensation for a lack of genuine work
in ?normal? times. Both the Workshops and the fairs, as well as the pro
posal to establish ?an indigenous university for the Miskito Indians,?15
reaffirm the cultural identity of the forgotten people in their music, arts,
songs, dances, and language; in a word, Cardenal and his group seek ?to
oppose cultural ethnocide?16 in Nicaragua.
Lastly, the ultimate goal of the establishment of this society is to reach
peace and equality (both Marxist and Christian objectives),17 ?the integra
tion of all the members of the species into a single harmonious, cooperative
group?18 such as that ?Organism? described by Cardenal in his poem

?Apocalipsis?: ?la especie no estaba compuesta de individuos/sino que era
un solo organismo /compuesto de hombres en vez de c?lulas/.../y el
Organismo recubr?a toda la redondez del p?a-/neta?19 [the species was not
composed of individuals/but rather it was one single organism/composed
of men instead of cells/.../and the Organism covered the entire face of the
earth]. This process of humanization of life and history is to oppose the
destruction of nuclear war, mocking those who plan survival strategies
?Who will put dark glasses on the cows?? asks Cardenal at a disarmament
conference in Harvard?,20 and attempting to construct a society free from
violence in which a relationship between man, culture, and nature is not
destroyed.
III. Cultural production: autonomy and control

?Tenle miedo a los poetas,
tirano.?
[Be afraid of the poets,
tyrant.]
Bosco Centeno
Social development and the recovery of the dignity of national tradi

tions have gone hand-in-hand since the beginning of the Nicaraguan revolu
tion in 1979. The road from cultural oppression (models?for writing,
painting, religion, government?imposed by others) to cultural liberation
can be viewed in the defense by intellectuals such as Cardenal of the self
expression of the Nicaraguan people through popular religion, popular arts,
and popular culture. In the particular case of Cardenal, he has defined his
own task as poet as also being assimilated into this contexto of popular arts
(not assuring a separation of social classes by reinforcing a separation be
tween ?art? (cultured) and ?artesan?a? (handicrafts, arts and crafts) as an
?instrumento para comprender, reproducir y transformar el sistema
social?21 [an instrument to understand, reproduce, and transform the social
system], a product whose function is to create as well as reflect new and
changing social relations. For Cardenal, this poetry, as well as all popular
cultural products, are no longer to be considered (as they once were by other
cultures) exotic objects of curiosity for the sentimental, romantic imagining
of primitive creative communities found attractive by those ?First
Worlders? discontent with the modern mass production of capitalism in
their own countries (and seeking in the Third World a pre-capitalist, pre
modern society as an escape). Instead, they are creations?literary, etc.?of
a nation by and for its people, embodying a search for their own expression
with language not of ?private worlds? but as ?constituting our social

world?22 in recovered communication and conversation.
According to Cardenal, the artistic material offered by contemporary
Nicaragua results necessarily in realistic poetry because there it finds a genu
ine context for its expression (and from which it takes its expression). His
often quoted23 definition of ?exteriorist? poetry fits in perfectly with what
is being written in Nicaragua today, a poetry which is changing and flexible
in correspondence with reality itself, not static theory: ?Es toda poes?a
directa, que trata de la realidad exterior. Y exteriorismo...[es] la poes?a de
todos los pueblos primitivos?24 [It is all direct poetry which deals with ex
ternal reality. And exteriorism (is)... the poetry of all primitive peoples].
Why is it the poetry of primitive peoples? The ?primitive? may be taken as
the Spanish Americans writing for the first time (in modern days, at least)
on their own, and also as people in direct, unmediated relation to their en
vironment (with no outside a priori rules or norms), not at a distance from
lived experience. This is also explained by the inheritance of the traditions,
still existing in modern Nicaragua, of the rural storytellers (social historians
of the communities), oral song gatherings, and popular Catholicism among
the peasants in the countryside which all continue in spite of (even more, ac
tually, because of: by its isolating them from functioning economically and
socially) capitalist development. As Walter J. Ong has written (about the
scribes in the Middle Ages, St. Thomas Aquinas, and the oral tradition),
?an early poet would write down a poem by imagining himself declaiming it
to an audience,?25 thereby emphasizing the collective and communicative
aspects of the ?primitive? poetry. In all senses, the poetry of contemporary
Nicaragua?CardenaPs own as well as that produced by children or in the
Workshops and popular neighborhoods?affirms itself and is not skeptical
toward society or man: see, for example, CardenaPs ?Visi?n m?stica de las
letras FSLN? in which he writes of not losing faith in the triumph of the
revolution; even God gently mocks Cardenal at the end with ?hombre de
poca fe /pendejo? [man of little faith /fool]. It is forward-looking in its
orientation toward historical movement and progress (it does not yearn for
a lost past but returns to it to understand the present), as in CardenaPs
?Canto nacional al FSLN?: ?Yo canto/un pa?s que va a nacer?26 [I sing /of
a country which will be born]. It is also a poetry of identifiable daily scenes
(workers, farmers, mothers, children, etc.), and a poetry as praxis or prac
tical, communicative activity which contributes to the building of the social
community. There are a number of points in common which deserve men
tion in regard to the content and form of these words.
To begin with, there is demonstrated a growing understanding by the
people within the present historical circumstances of concepts such as
?imperialism? (a synonym for the United States) and ?nationalism? (in
regard to Central America) as they write (or learn to write, some of them;
thus, the simplicity of the conversational form) of what all can com
prehend:27 shared experiences in work, in the revolution, in families,
cooperation in social relations, the coexistence of the military and nature,
war and love, Christians and Marxists. These experiences of solidarity and
participation define and present the conduct appropriate?and necessary?
for the society in formation. Compare, for instance, the following three
verses:
Con las mismas manos de acariciarte estoy

construyendo una escuela28 [With the same
hands that I caress you I am/building a
school]
Bonita vos con tu vestido a la moda

por la Avenida Central
pero m?s bonita sos en el campamento
con el uniforme y tu fusil29 [You look
pretty with your stylish dress /walking down
the main street/but you look even prettier
in the encampment/with your uniform and
rifle]
Madre Ana a?n es monja

pero en plena revoluci?n nicarag?ense
es monja reaccionaria30 [Mother Ann is
still a nun/but in the middle of the
Nicaraguan revolution/she is a reactionary
nun]
Although at first they may not appear to have much in common, all three
poems actually speak of aesthetics, beauty, admiration, and human love, or
the lack thereof under changing circumstances. The first, by the Cuban poet
Roberto Fern?ndez Retamar after the Cuban revolution, demonstrates that
the tenderness toward others does not disappear, but is actually enhanced
and expanded, by the multiple aspects the same pair of hands shows. Both
caresses and the making for others of a place of learning offer positive
human values to the social community, and also give an individual social
worth and belonging. The second poem, by the Nicaraguan Bosco Centeno,
judges the beauty of the individual not by external manifestations of style
but through participation in society?here, the woman in the military, in the
service of the people, being even more ?attractive? than if she were just a
beautiful object in and of herself. The third poem is by Ernesto Cardenal
himself, of particular interest because it reinforces what the other two have
presented, especially Bosco Centeno's work. The lines quoted are the last
three of the poem, concluding a commentary on the nun who starts out as a
young woman admired by Cardenal (who is her cousin) when she, dressed in
a bathing suit in the summer sun, exhibits a graceful figure. Cardenal
remarks on ?el buen gusto de Dios? [God's good taste] at having called her
to serve the church. However, when there is the necessity, as he sees it, for
social commitment in Nicaragua, she becomes a woman disconnected from
the world, a proponent of institutionalized religion and not the ?living?
religion of the people. Her physical beauty as a young woman is a static
one, without value now since beauty, for Cardenal, is tied to attitude and
activity. Therefore, intrinsic beauty, for both Centeno and Cardenal, must
be complemented by ?social beauty?, just as in the case of the caresses by
the ?working hands? in the poem by Fern?ndez Retamar. If it is true that
?writing fosters abstractions that disengage knowledge from the arena
where human beings struggle with one another,?31 then these poems reflect
in this culture an immediacy of contact (context) within a physical, social
environment which is seen in their simplicity of language (vocabulary,
description, syntax; orality), use of conversation and dialogue, and inclu
sion of questions or exclamations (as well as repetition) that seem to engage
others (here, the reader) in verbal response or recognition.
Another point in common among these poets is the expression of the
unity of the ?Third World? and its villages, no longer as isolated units but
as part of the world. The poems present the dignity of having one's own
culture, not being anyone's ?backyard.? An excellent example is ?No voy a
decirte,? again by Bosco Centeno, written to his wife.
No voy a decirte que las estrellas

que miramos en un mismo instante
nos unen en alg?n lugar del infinito
o que nos encontramos al o?r las canciones de amor
que escuch?bamos cuando ?ramos novios.
Esperanza
nuestra uni?n es en ...
...la compa?era vende-chancho y el compa?ero

que vende el pan y el compa?ero que hace posta
en los bancos
y estamos unidos a ellos como en un circuito el?ctrico
donde fluye el amor.32
[I am not going to tell you that the stars

that we look at the very same instant
unite us in some place in infinity
or that we find each other upon hearing the love songs

which we listened to when we were courting.
Esperanza
our union is in ...
...our pork-selling comrade and our comrade

who sells bread and our comrade who keeps watch
in the banks
and we are united with them as in an electric circuit
where love flows.]
The unity of Nicarguan society is described, then, as one including the im

mediate family but also going beyond to reach the entire country, and even
farther beyond to all of Central America.33 Moreover, this unity includes
the communication and establishment of a sense of history of struggle, par
ticularly from Sandino on, in the movement toward the new Nicaragua (and
incorporating other struggles?past, present, and future?into one long
search for liberation and independence). In one case, Cardenal writes of /to
the poet and soldier Leonel Rugama, killed in the revolution but alive in its .
. . other struggles?ideals and continuers; Roberto Vargas (now in the
revolutionary army) tells of a woman friend who also died in combat but
who is obviously not forgotten. Both of these, in addition to Carlos Fonseca
and many more, appear in the poetry as parts of a process of history nar
rated by its own makers. Their voices record pride in their contributions to
their own development, pride in being incorporated into Nicaragua's
history for the first time. Women in the revolution, in the militia, and
teaching the peasants to read34 are three of the circumstances presented.
These are not always easy to deal with, but they are always seen by the poets
in the light of their being part of a large historical scheme: when a man is in
battle without his wife being sure of where he is or if he is still alive, he
writes ?nuestra pena /en este momento hist?rico es una satisfacci?n?35 [our
pain/at this historical moment is a satisfaction].
The Nicaraguans are also rediscovering nature as a part of man's
world, neither hostile, a paradisiacal haven (as some would have had them
believe), nor merely a place to hide from oppressors. Thus, Gerardo Gadea
is able to write in the same verses of tropical birds and the army sharing the
same mountainous jungle space; Iv?n Guevara, too, speaks of the harmony
between men and their environment [?Las cinco de la ma?ana. La selva est?
oscura todav?a,/.../Mis compa?eros comienzan a levantarse con gran en
tusiasmo junto con los p?jaros?36 (It is five a.m. The jungle is still
dark,/.../My comrades begin to get up with great enthusiasm along with
the birds)]. Cardenal goes one step further by identifying certain values in
common between nature and man, especially liberty: ?Son las selvas del
quetzal que no sabe vivir cautivo/el habitat del quetzal, y de los San
dinistas?37 [These are the jungles of the quetzal that does not know how to
live captive/the habitat of the quetzal, and of the Sandinistas]. Man's work
ing with and within nature?in economics, communities, arts, and culture?
affords each (man as well as nature) meaning and identity forged from this
continual interaction.
Lastly, the discourse of contemporary Nicaragua concentrates on the
concrete benefits earned as a result of the 1979 revolution. Improvements in
health, housing, education, nutrition, and attitude toward everyday life (no
fear, no Somoza National Guard) are naturally considered topics for com
munication since they are shared and enjoyed by all, and since, as was men
tioned earlier, this poetry is fundamentally self-affirming and constructive.
The benefits are to be witnessed in the happy, fearless children who now
write poetry and admire nature, as opposed to those who were ?martyred?
in the revolution38 or suffered before then. There is also special testimony
to these benefits in the agricultural reform, joining Nicaraguans to the land
from which many had been alienated for centuries (from the Spanish col
onization through Somoza), as described in a poem by Nubia Arcia: ?veo
una vieja gorda morena/y unos ni?os de pantal?n corto;/un viejo con som
brero de palma/que siembra la tierra que les ha dado la Revoluci?n?39 [I see
a dark old woman/and some children in short pants;/an old man with a
straw hat/who is planting seeds in the land that the Revolution gave them].
But perhaps the best testimony to the concrete benefits are the poetry and
popular arts themselves, the consolidation of voices where before there was
silence. In this development of national expression, Ernesto Cardenal and
his Ministry of Popular Culture have been essential catalysts.40
The University of Rochester
NOTES
1. See my article, ?A Search for Utopia on Earth: Toward an Understanding of the Literary
Production of Ernesto Cardenal,? in Critica Hisp?nica, Vol. IV, No. 2 (1982), pp. 171-179.
For an update on Central American poetry available in English translation, refer to the ex
cellent summary and review by John Beverley, ?Sandinista Poetics,? in The Minnesota
Review, NS 20, Spring 1983, pp. 127-134.
2. These include: United States economic and military intervention, the Somoza family, the
multinationals, Third World cities as paradoxes of consumption (at once tourist sites and
shanty towns), etc. See Ernesto Cardenales ?Visi?n m?stica de las letras FSLN? in Plural, 2*
?poca, Vol. XI-X, No. 130, Julio de 1982, p. 23. Also, almost all of the earlier poetry has
references?direct or indirect?to the same (for example, ?Managua 6:30 P.M.?).
3. Cornel West, Review of Faith and Ideologies by Juan Luis Segundo in Commonweal,
January 27, 1984, p. 53. My emphasis. It is to be noted, in addition, that Cardenal seems to
show the same hope in the face of another crisis, this time on a world scale: the arms race and
the threat of nuclear war. (See his ?La paz mundial y la revoluci?n de Nicaragua (Palabras pro
nunciadas en la Universidad de Harvard, clausurando un Congreso sobre el desarme y la
paz)?, Colecci?n Popular de Literatura Nicarag?ense, Documentos, No. 1 (Nicaragua:
Ministerio de Cultura, 1981), without pagination).
4. The Sandinista program is described in detail in Borge, Tom?s, Carlos Fonseca, Daniel
Ortega, Humberto Ortega, and Jaime Wheelock, Sandinistas Speak, ed. Bruce Marcus (New
York: Pathfinder Press, 1982).
5. Georg Luk?cs calls this the ?realization of individual consciousness through the concrete,
historical situation? (Realism in our Time: Literature and the Class Struggle, trans. John and
Necke Mander (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), p. 8).
6. See Ernesto Cardenal, ?Apocalipsis,? from ?Oraci?n por Marilyn Monroe y otros
poemas,? in Poemas (Barcelona: Ed. Libres de Sinera, 1971), pp. 93-99.
7. Georg Luk?cs, Realism in our Time, pp. 23-24.
8. Harvey Cox, Religion in the Secular City: Toward a Postmodern Theology (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1984), p. 90.
9. Alejandro Losada, ?El surgimiento del realismo social en la literatura de Am?rica
Latina,? Ideologies and Literature, Vol. HI, No. 11 (Nov-Dic. 1979), p. 40.
10. Georg Luk?cs, Realism in our Time, p. 26.
11. ?De una nube de polvo c?smico en rotaci?n/.../comenzaste a sacar las espirales de las
galaxias/... /y la primera mol?cula por el efecto del agua y la /luz se fecund?/... /y a comienzos
del Cuartenario creaste el hombre? [From a cloud of cosmic dust in rotation/... /You began to
form the spirals of the galaxies/.../and by means of the effect of water and light the first
molecule was formed/.../and at the beginning of the Quaternary period You created man],
?Salmo 103? from Poemas, pp. 59-61.
12. Ernesto Cardenal, Canto a un pals que nace (Puebla: Ed. de la Universidad Aut?noma de
Puebla, 1978), p. 203. Unless otherwise noted, the translations from Spanish to English are
mine.
13. Harvey Cox sees this as corresponding to the differences between the orientations of
?modern? and ?postmodern? theology (an interesting point, considering CardenaTs interest in
the church and popular religion): ?Modern theology was fascinated with the mind. It concen
trated on ideas and was especially interested in the question of good and evil. Postmodern
theology will concentrate on the body, on the nature of human community, and on the ques
tion of life and death.? (Religion in the Secular City, p. 209). Cardenal seems to have put this
into practice in Solentiname.
14. In ?La paz mundial y la revoluci?n de Nicaragua,? Cardenal suggests the amplitude of
such workshops and the general interest in them: ?Y ojal? que en otros ej?rcitos haya tambi?n
poes?a y canto como en Nicaragua. Podemos ofrecer a otros Ej?rcitos asesor?a en materia de
poes?a? [I hope that in other armies there are also poetry and and song as there are in
Nicaragua. We can offer other Armies advice on the subject of poetryj.
15. Harvey Cox, Religion in the Secular City, p. 88.
16. Ernesto Cardenal, ?Toward a New Democracy of Culture,? statement to UNESCO in

Paris, April 23,1982, trans. Rebecca Cohn, in The Nicaragua Reader: Documents of a Revolu
tion Under Fire (eds. Peter Rosset and John Vandermeer) (New York: Grove Press, 1983), p.
347. Instead of aesthetic models being foreign (from the United States, particularly Miami, ac
cording to Cardenal) the Nicaraguans have begun to look inside their own country and region.
17. Helmut Fleischer defines Marx's view of history as ?a form of progress leading to an in
crease, not only of material amenities, but also of human friendliness, with 'permanent peace*
between men as the 'ultimate result'.? (Marxism and History, trans. Eric Mosbacher (New
York: Harper and Row, 1973), p. 75.
18. Helmut Fleischer, Marxism and History, p. 75.
19. Ernesto Cardenal, ?Apocalipsis,? p. 99.
20. ?La paz mundial y la revoluci?n de Nicaragua,? without pagination.
21. N?stor Garcia Canclini, Las culturas populares en el capitalismo (Mexico: Nueva Ima
gen, 1982), p. 17.
22. Cornel West, Review, p. 56.
23. The reason for citing this definition is often to refute his ideas: see Carlos Monsiv?is (?El
esplendor de la poes?a nicarag?ense,? in Siempre, No. 1607, abril 11 de 1984, p. 41), for exam
ple, who objects to CardenaTs statement that ?exteriorism? is ?la ?nica poes?a que puede ex
presar la realidad latinoamericana? [the only poetry that can express Latin American reality].
24. Poes?a cubana de la revoluci?n, selecci?n, presentaci?n y notas de Ernesto Cardenal
(Mexico: Extempor?neos, 1976), p. 12. It is very interesting to note that these words appear in
a preface to a collection of contemporary Cuban poetry, which it is to be supposed therefore
has something in common with that of revolutionary Nicaragua. The Cuban writer of essays
and poetry Roberto Fern?ndez Retamar's own definition of ?conversational poetry? parallels
closely Cardenal's : ?La poes?a conversacional se define positivamente, e incluso yo dir?a que se
cuida poco de definirse: se proyecta a la aventura del porvenir sin demasiado ciudado por la
definici?n? [Conversational poetry defines itself positively, and I would even say that it takes
little care to define itself: it projects itself toward the adventure of the future without too much
care of its definition]. (Para una teor?a de la literatura hispanoamericana (Mexico: Nuestro
Tiempo, 1977), p. 156).
25. Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the World (London:
Methuen, 1982), p. 95.
26. From Canto a un pals que nace, p. 199.
27. Cardenal mentions two examples in ?La paz mundial y la revoluci?n de Nicaragua?: Por
firio Salgado who writes of soldiers greeted by children in the countryside, and Santiago
L?pez, a policeman, who remembers the closeness of his companions in battle. See a report
from ?The Nation? (May 7, 1983) quoted in Radical Teacher (November 1983) about the over
400,000 taught to read and write in just six months under the Nicaraguan literacy campaign.
With literacy, they are also taught their own value in making social change, thereby giving
reading and writing a positive value of acquisition within the society.
28. Roberto Fern?ndez Retamar, ?Con las mismas manos,? A quien pueda interesar: Poes?a,
1958-1970 (Mexico: Siglo XXI), p. 26.
29. Bosco Centeno, ?Vos,? Poes?a campesina de Solentiname, selecci?n y pr?logo de Mayra
Jim?nez (Nicaragua: Ministerio de Cultura, 1980), p.58.
30. Ernesto Cardenal, ?Recordando de pronto,? Plural, 2* ?poca, Vol. XI-X, No. 130, Julio
de 1982, p. 23.
31. Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy, pp. 43-44.
32. From Poes?a campesina de Solentiname, p. 64.
33. This would correspond to the concrete proposals of the revolutionary government for
Nicaragua: ?X. Central American people's unity: The Sandinista people's revolution is for the
true union of the Central American people in a single country? (Sandinistas Speak, p. 21). This
?fraternal? feeling toward all ?Third World? peoples is also seen in another section of the pro
gram: ?XL Solidarity among peoples:...[to] support the struggle of the peoples of Asia,
Africa, and Latin America against the new and old colonialism...[as well as] the struggle of the
Black People ... of the United Statesd? (Sandinistas Speak, p. 21).
34. See Aldo Sol?rzano, Pedro Pablo Benavides, and Victor Manuel G?mez, respectively.
Cited in Cardenal, ?La paz mundial y la revoluci?n de Nicaragua,? without pagination.
35. Bosco Centeno, ?A Esperanza mi mujer,? in Poes?a campesina de Solentiname, p. 61.
36. Iv?n Guevara, ?Una posta al amanecer,? in Poes?a campesina de Solentiname, p. 86.
37. Ernesto Cardenal, ?Canto nacional al FSLN,? Canto a un pals que nace, p. 191.
38. See Ernesto Cardenal, ?La paz mundial y la revoluci?n de Nicaragua,? without pagina
tion.
39. Nubia Arcia, ?Hace una tarde hermosa,? in Poes?a campesina de Solentiname, p. 107.
40. Cardenal himself has recently stated his desire to leave the government position and
return to his island of Our Lady of Solentiname so that he, too, may once again write more
poetry (?about Indians? as he says). See Bill Finnegan, ?Travels with Ernesto,? New Age Jour
nal, June 1984, pp. 38, 79.

Ernesto Cardenal. Peace, Poetry and Popular Culture

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Ernesto Cardenal. Peace, Poetry and Popular Culture

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Peace, Poetry, and Popular Culture: Ernesto Cardenal and the Nicaraguan Revolution

Author(s): Claudia Schaefer-Rodriguez

The events occurring in Nicaragua in the decade of the 1970's, par

I. The historical moment

Cardenal's critical consciousness of the problems and contradictions in

To assume responsibility to help create and develop a new social model

social project offering to all Nicaraguans the possibility of establishing an

group?18 such as that ?Organism? described by Cardenal in his poem

III. Cultural production: autonomy and control

Social development and the recovery of the dignity of national tradi

with language not of ?private worlds? but as ?constituting our social

Con las mismas manos de acariciarte estoy

Bonita vos con tu vestido a la moda

Madre Ana a?n es monja

No voy a decirte que las estrellas

...la compa?era vende-chancho y el compa?ero

[I am not going to tell you that the stars

or that we find each other upon hearing the love songs

...our pork-selling comrade and our comrade

The unity of Nicarguan society is described, then, as one including the im

The University of Rochester

16. Ernesto Cardenal, ?Toward a New Democracy of Culture,? statement to UNESCO in

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