Nicaragua, the “Republic of Poets” has become a “Republic of Clandestine Poets.”
One of the martyred heroes of the Sandinista revolution is Leonel Rugama, the young poet who died in combat at the age of 20. His poem "The Earth is a satellite of the Moon " has been considered by critics as one of the most widely distributed poems in Latin American poetry. It was a poet, Rigoberto Lopez Perez, who assassinated the first Somoza, at a ball in 1956, and was himself beaten and shot to death on the dance floor.
Nicaraguan newspapers used to feature literary supplements filled with poems from both luminaries and unknowns. Leading poets could be spotted, like movie stars, in certain cafes in the cities. In the university town of Leon, busts of Nicaraguan poets and plaques with quotations from their work fill the “Park of Poets,” while the main street, Calle Ruben Dario, is named for the country’s preeminent poet.
Ruben Dario, the poet and writer of Nicaragua is the most well-known in the world. He is considered as the father of the Modernist Movement in Spanish literature in the twentieth century. His book Azul (1888) is said to be the inaugural book of Hispanic-American modernism. He was a precocious poet and published his poem in a newspaper at the age of thirteen.
Eres los Estados Unidos,
eres el futuro invasor
You are the United States
you are the future invader
Nicaragua was one of the worst victims of US interventions. The US had occupied Nicaragua from 1912 to 1933 to protect American business interests. The US had supported and nurtured the Somoza dictatorship for four decades. Later, the US unleashed a deadly counter-revolutionary war to bleed the elected Sandinista government from 1979 to 1989 with mercenaries recruited from other Central American countries.
President Daniel Ortega is a poet, as is his wife, Rosario Murillo. When Ortega was a political prisoner from 1968 (at the age of 23) to 1974 during the dictatorship of Somoza, he wrote many poems, including the famous one titled “I never saw Managua when miniskirts were in fashion.” While in jail he received visits from Rosario Murillo, a poet. The prisoner and visitor fell in love; Murillo became Ortega's wife. She has published several books of poems. One of them is called as ¨Amar es combatir ¨- to love is to combat.
After the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship in 1979, the victorious Sandinistas named one of the country’s most famous poets, Ernesto Cardenal, as minister of culture. He brought poets to all corners of the country to teach people to read and write poetry at a time when Nicaragua suffered a 70 to 95 percent illiteracy rate. It is still possible in villages to find people who are unable to read or write but can recite Dario’s poetry by heart. Poetry was used as a tool for political literacy, consolidating the country as a "Republic of Poets.”
Some of the ministers in the initial years of President Ortega's cabinet were poets and writers. Notable among these is Sergio Ramirez, Gioconda Belli and Ernesto Cardinal.
Since his reelection as President in 2007, Daniel Ortega has become authoritarian and has rigged the elections and the constitution to continue as president indefinitely. His wife Rosario Murillo has now become the Co-President after having been Vice-President for some years. The couple have betrayed the noble ideals of the Sandinista revolution and have created a corrupt family dictatorship, similiar to the Somoza dynastic dictatorship which had ruled for 42 years. Most of the writers and intellectuals who had nurtured the revolution eventually left the Sandinista party and started fighting against the dictatorial regime. They used poetry to fight back, just like they did during the revolutionary era against the Somoza dictatorship. The Ortegas have suppressed dissent and persecuted poets, intellectuals and journalists besides political leaders who resisted their dictatorship. The regime has imprisoned or exiled some of the dissidents, stripped their citizenship and even seized their assets and houses. The regime has become harsher after the large scale public protests in 2018. Many exiled poets and writes live in Costa Rica and Spain. The exiled poets include Sergio Ramírez, Gioconda Belli and Freddy Quezada. The regime has shut down thousands of NGOs and independent media outlets, including PEN Nicaragua and the Nicaraguan Academy of Language. One of the hardest blows to Nicaraguan literary culture came in 2022 with the cancellation of the Granada International Poetry Festival, created in 2005, which once brought together more than 1,200 poets from 120 countries. The regime revoked the legal status of the NGO that funded it, leading to its cancellation.
While accepting the Cervantes Prize for literature in April 2018, Ramírez dedicated his award to the young people then protesting Ortega’s government and to the memory of Nicaraguans who had recently “been murdered on the streets after demanding justice and democracy.”
The Ortega-Murillo dictatorship has driven the poetry underground. The poets hide themselves and their poems from the repressive regime which has been ruthlessly censoring literature and news. The poets write clandestinely expressing their frustration and resistance. The "Republic of Poets" has now become the "Republic of Clandestine Poets".
