[In the following essay, Schaefer-Rodriguez analyzes Cardenal's response to the Nicaraguan Revolution of 1979 as it is expressed through his poetry.]

The events occurring in Nicaragua in the decade of the 1970's, particularly 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 participated. When most readers last left Cardenal, on the eve of the revolution, 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

«quién sabe
Si sólo los muertos no son
hombres de transición»
[who knows
If only the dead are not
men of transition]

Roberto Fernández 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 in the 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, the extension of electric and sanitary services to rural areas, the incorporation of women as a national force, and so on.⁴ The optimistic protests of Cardenal's 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 Cardenal's 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, between 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 committed to more than the reintegration 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 expresión,
hasta que no hay esencia que expresar
en ellas. Ni habrá literatura hispano-
americana hasta que no haya Hispano-
américa.»
[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.]

José Martí

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 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 Poesía escogida (Barcelona: Barral, 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 expression. This «consistency» is summed up in Cardenal's poem «Oráculo 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» [All life unites / unites and does not divide / … / All living substance unites].¹²

In second place, there is an attempt to integrate all aspects of human personality (mystical, political, artistic, etc.), accompanied by an integration 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 «belonging» to the corporeal, physical, tangible social reality as functioning members.

These steps all lead to the fourth area, the control of cultural production. As Minister of Culture, Cardenal has organized the «Talleres de poesía» [Poetry Workshops] in the «barrios» (popular neighborhoods) and for the police and soldiers, with the idea of encouraging the people to express themselves in their own way.¹⁴ There has also been an appropriation of the «artesanías» (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 proposal 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 integration of all the members of the species into a single harmonious, cooperative group»¹⁸ such as that «Organism» described by Cardenal in his poem «Apocalípsis»: «la especie no estaba compuesta de individuos / sino que era un solo organismo / compuesto de hombres en vez de células / … / y el Organismo recubría toda la redondez del pla- / 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 traditions have gone hand-in-hand since the beginning of the Nicaraguan revolution 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 context of popular arts (not assuring a separation of social classes by reinforcing a separation between «art» (cultured) and «artesanía» (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 genuine 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 poesía directa, que trata de la realidad exterior. Y exteriorismo … [es] la poesía de todos los pueblos primitivos»²⁴ [It is all direct poetry which deals with external 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 environment (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, actually, 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—Cardenal's 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, Cardenal's «Visión mística 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 Cardenal's «Canto nacional al FSLN»: «Yo canto / un país 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 practical, communicative activity which contributes to the building of the social community. There are a number of points in common which deserve mention 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 comprehend: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 escuela(28) [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 más bonita sos en el campamento
con el uniforme y tu fusil(29)
[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 aún es monja
pero en plena revolución nicaragüense
es monja reaccionaria(30)
[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 Fernández 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 Fernández 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 inclusion 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 algún lugar del infinito
o que nos encontramos al oír las canciones de amor
que escuchábamos cuando éramos novios.
Esperanza
nuestra unión es en …
… la compañera vende-chancho y el compañero
que vende el pan y el compañero que hace posta
en los bancos
y estamos unidos a ellos como en un circuito eléctrico
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 immediate 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, particularly 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 narrated 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 histórico es una satisfacción»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; Iván Guevara, too, speaks of the harmony between men and their environment [«Las cinco de la mañana. La selva está oscura todavía, / … / Mis compañeros comienzan a levantarse con gran entusiasmo junto con los pájaros»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 sandinistas»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 working 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 communication since they are shared and enjoyed by all, and since, as was mentioned 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 colonization through Somoza), as described in a poem by Nubia Arcia: «veouna vieja gorda morena / y unos niños de pantalón corto; / un viejo con sombrero de palma / que siembra la tierra que les ha dado la Revolución»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

Notes

1. See my article, «A Search for Utopia on Earth: Toward an Understanding of the Literary Production of Ernesto Cardenal,» in Crítica Hispánica, Vol. IV, No. 2 (1982), pp. 171–179. For an update on Central American poetry available in English translation, refer to the excellent 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 Cardenal's «Visión mística de las letras FSLN» in Plural, 2^a época, 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 revolución de Nicaragua (Palabras pronunciadas en la Universidad de Harvard, clausurando un Congreso sobre el desarme y la paz),» Colección Popular de Literatura Nicaragüense, Documentos, No. 1 (Nicaragua: Ministerio de Cultura, 1981), without pagination).

4. The Sandinista program is described in detail in Borge, Tomás, Carlos Fonseca, Daniel Ortega, Humberto Ortega, and Jaime Wheelock, Sandinistas Speak, ed. Bruce Marcus (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1982).

5. Georg Lukács 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, «Apocalípsis,» from «Oración por Marilyn Monroe y otros poemas,» in Poemas (Barcelona: Ed. Libres de Sinera, 1971), pp. 93–99.

7. Georg Lukács, 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 América Latina,» Ideologies and Literature, Vol. III, No. 11 (Nov-Dic. 1979), p. 40.

10. Georg Lukács, Realism in our Time, p. 26.

11. «De una nube de polvo cósmico en rotación / … / comenzaste a sacar las espirales de las galaxias / … / y la primera molécula por el efecto del agua y la / luz se fecundó / … / 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 país que nace (Puebla: Ed. de la Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, 1978), p. 203. Unless otherwise noted, the translations from Spanish to English are nine.

13. Harvey Cox sees this as corresponding to the differences between the orientations of «modern» and «postmodern» theology (an interesting point, considering Cardenal's interest in the church and popular religion): «Modern theology was fascinated with the mind. It concentrated 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 question 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 revolución de Nicaragua,» Cardenal suggests the amplitude of such workshops and the general interest in them: «Y ojalá que en otros ejércitos haya también poesía y canto como en Nicaragua. Podemos ofrecer a otros Ejércitos asesoría en materia de poesía» [I hope that in other armies there are also poetry and song as there are in Nicaragua. We can offer other Armies advice on the subject of poetry].

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 Revolution 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, according 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 increase, 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, «Apocalípsis,» p. 99.

20. «La paz mundial y la revolución de Nicaragua,» without pagination.

21. Néstor García Canclini, Las culturas populares en el capitalismo (Mexico: Nueva Imagen, 1982), p. 17.

22. Cornel West, Review, p. 56.

23. The reason for citing this definition is often to refute his ideas: see Carlos Monsiváis («El esplendor de la poesía nicaragüense,» in Siempre, No. 1607, abril 11 de 1984, p. 41), for example, who objects to Cardenal's statement that «exteriorism» is «la única poesía que puede expresar la realidad latinoamericana» [the only poetry that can express Latin American reality].

24. Poesía cubana de la revolución, selección, presentación y notas de Ernesto Cardenal (Mexico: Extemporáneos, 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 Fernández Retamar's own definition of «conversational poetry» parallels closely Cardenal's: «La poesía conversacional se define positivamente, e incluso yo diría que se cuida poco de definirse: se proyecta a la aventura del porvenir sin demasiado ciudado por la definición» [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 teoría 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 país que nace, p. 199.

27. Cardenal mentions two examples in «La paz mundial y la revolución de Nicaragua»: Porfirio Salgado who writes of soldiers greeted by children in the countryside, and Santiago López, 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 Fernández Retamar, «Con las mismas manos,» A quien pueda interesar: Poesía, 1958–1970 (Mexico: Siglo XXI), p. 26.

29. Bosco Centeno, «Vos,» Poesía campesina de Solentiname, selección y prólogo de Mayra Jiménez (Nicaragua: Ministerio de Cultura, 1980), p. 58.

30. Ernesto Cardenal, «Recordando de pronto,» Plural, 2^a época, Vol. XI–X, No. 130, Julio de 1982, p. 23.

31. Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy, pp. 43–44.

32. From Poesía 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 program: «XI. 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 States» (Sandinistas Speak, p. 21).

34. See Aldo Solórzano, Pedro Pablo Benavides, and Victor Manuel Gómez, respectively. Cited in Cardenal, «La paz mundial y la revolución de Nicaragua,» without pagination.

35. Bosco Centeno, «A Esperanza mi mujer,» in Poesía campesina de Solentiname, p. 61.

36. Iván Guevara, «Una posta al amanecer,» in Poesía campesina de Solentiname, p. 86.

37. Ernesto Cardenal, «Canto nacional al FSLN,» Canto a un país que nace, p. 191.

38. See Ernesto Cardenal, «La paz mundial y la revolución de Nicaragua,» without pagination.

39. Nubia Arcia, «Hace una tarde hermosa,» in Poesía 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 Journal, June 1984, pp. 38, 79.