Ernesto Cardenal / Roberto Bolaño

Ernesto Cardenal

Those of us who wanted to be poets when we were twenty, in 1973, read Ernesto Cardenal, the author of Epigramas, Oración por Marylin Monroe, Salmos, Homenaje a los indios americanos, this last title quite superior in certain aspects to Neruda’s Canto general, and a new attempt, probably unsuccessful, at rereading Whitman.

Now a new book of memoirs with a lapidary title appears, Vida perdida (Seix Barral), and one can’t help, when reading it, but remember the time when reading Cardenal, a Catholic priest, fascinated us, precisely those of us who were lascivious and sinners and who never went to church, among other reasons because of the unbearable heaviness of priests and also because most of us didn’t believe in God either. And we had no intention of reforming ourselves, on the contrary, with every passing day we were more sinful, and we were helped in that endeavor, not to say encouraged, by Ernesto Cardenal’s poetry. Now this book appears, irregular like almost all memoirs (and like life), and Ernesto Cardenal’s voice sounds the same as it does in his memorable poems, but everything has changed, and what was once hope, an invitation to the unknown (or at least it seemed so to us), is now a silence and a quietude that surge from a lost province where the poet Cardenal still lives and still moves, despite having lost so many battles, recounting with slow prose the vicissitudes of his family, because that is what we find in this Vida perdida [Lost Life], the fate of a family and the fate of a man who is one Latin America’s greatest poets, along with the portraits of a few friends who remain beyond death, such as the American writer Thomas Merton, also a priest, and all of that together gives us a life more won than lost, and the final image of Cardenal who lives in limbo, which isn’t such a bad way to live, already so close to the sky.




{ Roberto Bolaño, Entre paréntesis, Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 2004 }

A LA COMUNIDAD INTERNACIONAL:

TO THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY:

We Denounce the Recent Attack by Daniel Ortega’s Government Against the Priest and Poet Ernesto Cardenal.

Father Cardenal had been accused of slander in 2005 due to a letter he published in self-defense, and he received a sentence absolving him of those charges and declaring him innocent, as the accusation was so absurd.

Now a judge who is obedient to Ortega has revoked that sentence and declared him guilty. This action is completely illegal. The Nicaraguan legislation considers that a sentence can only be appealed within six months, otherwise the matter is considered settled and cannot be changed. But the judicial system answers to the political will of Daniel Ortega.

All of this appears to be a clear reprisal for Father Cardenal’s permanent critical position against the abuses of Ortega’s government. Coincidentally, this sentence was announced upon his return from the inauguration of president Lugo in Paraguay, at which he was a guest of honor and which Daniel Ortega was unable to attend due to the protests of feminist organizations against his presence, given the accusations of sexual abuse that have been made against him by his stepdaughter Zoilamérica Narváez. In Paraguay, as in other places, Cardenal said what thinks of Ortega.

Cardenal’s integrity and his credentials as someone who has dedicated his life to the cause of justice, confer an enormous authority to his criticisms, both in and out of Nicaragua. This ends up being intolerable for Daniel Ortega and it is the reason why Ernesto Cardenal has been condemned by an unjust and vengeful, and therefore scandalous, court order.

Ernesto Cardenal is the most recent victim of the systematic harassment orchestrated against all those who have lifted their voices to denounce the lack of transparency, the authoritarian style and the unscrupulous behavior and lack of ethics of Daniel Ortega in his return to power.

We make a call to writers and friends of Nicaragua throughout the world to denounce this political persecution, to demand the end of these illegal and unfounded accusations and to express your solidarity with Ernesto Cardenal and the right of the Nicaraguan people to live without fear and repression.

*

The first precaution will consist of never confusing the law with justice. The law has not served Ernesto Cardenal because it is administered by a justice that allowed itself to be corrupted by power’s resentment and envy. Ernesto Cardenal, one of the most extraordinary men warmed by the sun, has been the victim of the bad conscience of a Daniel Ortega who is unworthy of his own past, and who is now unable to recognize the greatness of someone whom even a Pope, in vain, tried to humiliate. I ask Daniel Ortega to look at himself in the mirror and tell me what he might find there. If he feels shame, then he should at least have the courage to ask forgiveness. If he does not ask for it, if he does not lift his voice to speak out against Ernesto Cardenal’s sentence, we will know that his human and political merits have fallen to zero. Once again, a revolution has been betrayed from within.
– José Saramago


All my solidarity for Ernesto Cardenal, a great poet, splendid person and brother of my soul, against this vile sentence by a vile judge at the service of a vile government. These infamies praise you, Ernesto.

I embrace you, from afar, from nearby.
– Eduardo Galeano


Héctor Abad Faciolince (Colombia)
Hugo Achúgar (Uruguay)
Luis Fernando Afanador (Colombia)
Héctor Aguilar Camín (Mexico)
Sergio Aguayo (Mexico)
Sealtiel Alatriste (Mexico)
Eliseo Alberto (Cuba)
Felipe Aljure (Colombia)
Nuria Amat (Spain)
Jotamario Arbeláez (Colombia)
Edda Armas (President of Pen Club of Venezuela)
Ricardo Bada (Spain)
Mario Benedetti (Spain)
Jorge Boccanera (Argentina)
Juan Carlos Botero (Colombia)
Javier Bozalongo (Spain)
Marco Antonio Campos (Mexico)
Horacio Castellanos Moya (El Salvador)
Victoria de Stefano (Venezuela)
Luis Antonio de Villena (Spain)
Joaquín Estefanía (Spain)
Poetry Festival of Granada (Spain)
Julio Figueroa (Mexico)
Eduardo Galeano (Uruguay)
Francisco Goldman (United States/Guatemala)
Gloria Guardia (Panama)
Jorge F. Hernández (Mexico)
Miguel Huezo Mixco (El Salvador)
Bianca Jagger (England)
Darío Jaramillo (Colombia)
Noe Jitrik (Argentina)
Ana Istarú (Costa Rica)
Patricia Lara (Colombia)
Luce López-Baralt (Puerto Rico)
Ángeles Mastretta (Mexico)
Oscar Marcano (Venezuela)
Mario Mendoza (Colombia)
Seymour Menton (United States)
Tulio Mora (President of Pen Club of Peru)
Eric Nepomuceno (Brazil)
Julio Ortega (Peru)
José Miguel Oviedo (Peru)
Cristina Pacheco (Mexico)
José Emilio Pacheco (Mexico)
José María Pérez Gay (Mexico)
Nélida Piñón (Brazil)
Vicente Quirarte (Mexico)
Josúe Ramírez Velásquez (Mexico)
Abelardo Rodríguez Macías (Mexico)
Daniel Rodríguez Moya (Spain)
Margaret Randall (United States)
Rosa Regás (Spain)
Laura Restrepo (Colombia)
Juan Manuel Roca (Colombia)
Miguel Rojas Mix (Chile)
Carmen Ruiz-Barrionuevo (Spain)
José Carlos Rosales (Spain)
Alejandro Sánchez-Aizcorbe (Peru)
Julio Eutiquio Saravia (Mexico)
Stacy Alba Scar (United States)
Federico Schopf (Chile)
Ricardo Silva Romero (Colombia)
Saúl Sosnowski (Argentina)
David Unger (United States)
Marcela Valencia Tsuchiya (Peru)
Fernando Valverde (Spain)
Minerva Margarita Villarreal (Mexico)
José Javier Villarreal (Mexico)
Juan Villoro (Mexico)
José Félix Zavala (Mexico)
Teodoro Petkoff (Venezuela)




[Translator’s note: Original Spanish version can be read at Poetas Contra la Dictadura]




{ Tal Cual, 1 September 2008 }

Continúan muestras de apoyo a Cardenal

Displays of Solidarity with Cardenal Continue

Intellectuals from various parts of the world point to president Daniel Ortega as being responsible for the court action against the poet.


MANAGUA ANSA

Intellectuals from various parts of the world are criticizing the government of Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega, whom they point to as being responsible for a court action against the poet and priest Ernesto Cardenal.

One week after the penal judge David Rojas fined Cardenal $1,025 dollars for slander against a married couple of tourism entrepreneurs, whom he qualified as thieves, the pronouncements of solidarity with Cardenal continue to arrive in Nicaragua.

Writers such as the Nobel laureate José Saramago and the poet Mario Benedetti, along with the Nicaraguans Sergio Ramírez and Gioconda Belli, signed documents in favor of Cardenal. The Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano called Ortega “vile.”

Rojas denied any political persecution against Cardenal, who is considered an icon of the Sandinista revolution during the eighties, when he was Minister of Culture and a friend of Ortega.

Cardenal was even sanctioned by the Vatican in 1983 for his participation in the Marxist government led by the current president until his first electoral defeat in 1990. The 83 year old priest broke away from Ortega and since then has emitted strong criticisms against the leader.

The judge said Cardenal will not go to prison because of his age, despite having publicly declared his rebellion and contempt of court by refusing to pay the fine.




{ El Nacional, 31 August 2008 }

Cardenales, ateos / Fernando Rodríguez

Cardinals, Atheists

In a short wire published in El Nacional we read of an angry attack by the poet Ernesto Cardenal against Daniel Ortega for sabotaging his candidacy to the Nobel Prize in Literature, in revenge for his criticism of the government. For me, this awakens at least two curiosities.

The first is of a political order: the poet’s rupture with the Sandinistas and his harsh judgments of them are well known, and they’ve even been gathered in one volume of his memoirs [La revolución perdida, Madrid, Editorial Trotta, 2004]. That’s not the matter, but rather his devotion for Chávez. Because if Ortega is undoubtedly a political reject responsible for all types of somersaults and who has allied himself with anyone who might be of use to him regardless of their character, which has been quite low in many cases, Chávez is not precisely a revolutionary vestal, in the manner of Che or of Fidel himself. Instead, much of what Cardenal criticizes in Ortega has been carried out to the umpteenth power by our national hero in Venezuela. Every day this government plays a larger role in our red pages and in our rose colored ones devoted to leisure and social ostentation in the newspapers. It’s what we might call a case of political myopia, seeing the detritus nearby but not far off in the distance, an illness that’s quite generalized (as well as its opposite, hypermetropy).

The second matter that surprises me in such a brief news item is of an existential order: I have been a more or less assiduous reader of Cardenal’s poetry and, beyond the political commitment of his work, it contains an evident mystical spirit, in the strict sense of the word. He wasn’t a cloistered monk in vain and among his most beautiful texts are those dedicated to divine love. That St. John of the Cross ended up hand in hand with Che can be odd, but in his view they are two forms of sainthood. The point is that a soul as pure as that of the poet and priest, revolutionary and mystic, becomes so enraged with such a mundane thing as a literary prize, even if it is the Nobel. We already know what true Christians should think about the glory of the world. And it’s good to remember the example of Sartre, a radical atheist, who rejected the coveted laurel so that his work wouldn’t be institutionalized, because he wanted to continue being a ceaseless negativity. Such earthly anger from the Nicaraguan cleric reminds me that Luis Castro Leiva, in his book Insinuaciones deshonestas, exhibits the case of a priest who at the end of the colonial period solicits permission from his superiors to wear a wig, in order to increase the seduction of his faithful and inculcate them with faith. Luis uses this example – and others – to demonstrate how during its death rattles colonial life was already penetrated by the mundanity of the enlightenment spirit. In the case we’re now addressing one has to ask about the claim many have made regarding the mediatization of the Catholic religion, of which one of the greatest examples was that idol for the multitudes, John Paul II.

II
Returning to the case of the athenaeums [cultural centers] and related matters – it’s now being said that the academies are next – the latest issue of Todos adentro puts what will happen in the mouth of Farruco [Francisco Sesto]: in the meantime, the athenaeums can’t be controlled because they are private entities and, moreover, the Vice Minister of Culture recognizes their noble efforts. Now, if they aren’t democratized they won’t be able to count on funding or installations from the State.

Which means Socialism or Death for most of them. Democratize means reform the statutes so that communities can have access to their decisions and the election of their authorities. Of course, the communities that barely pay attention to culture and that usually prefer RCTV or Venevisión or the game of Bolas Criollas end up being hordes of red shirts who each day are more proficient in these types of tasks involving the displacement of anyone who doesn’t wear red, substituting merit with party affiliation, or membership in a Bolivarian circle or a mission or the militias or the armed forces. All of it legal, and above all, perfectly democratic.




{ Fernando Rodríguez, Tal Cual, 27 August 2007 }

Corona de lauros / Sergio Ramírez

Laurel Crown

This January marks 80 years since the birth of Ernesto Cardenal. His name belongs to the race of Nicaraguan poets that opens up to the mentoring shadow of Ruben Darío and floods the entire XX century beneath a singular sign of modernity. Darío imposed modernismo on Latin America, as the sign of an entire memorable era, from whose ribs Lorca, Neruda and Vallejo would eventually emerge. But in Nicaragua he imposed modernity in poetry as an organic and immediate phenomenon, along with that desire for always adding different voices, updated voices. Undoubtedly, Darío had been a renovator.

Quite a singular desire for this small country which, throughout the same century, while remaining poor and marginal and afflicted by disturbances, civil wars, military occupations and dictatorships, saw itself far away from achieving modernity as a society, as it would within literature. And if Darío would open the doors of the Spanish language to French Symbolist poetry, José Coronel Urtecho, the founder of the vanguardia in Nicaragua, would open them to modern North American poetry as early as 1927. Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot were already familiar names when my own generation of writers appeared at the beginning of the sixties.

The modernista poetry of princesses and swans, taken on its most superficial level, remained for provincial-minded poets, while modernity would become a permanent engagement and complaint during the entire century. Alfonso Cortés, Salomón de la Selva, Azarías Pallais, who appeared after Darío and then Coronel Urtecho, Joaquín Pasos, Pablo Antonio Cuadra, from the vanguardia generation, until reaching Carlos Martínez Rivas and Ernesto Cardenal, who arrived later. Along with Coronel, Cardenal would translate the poems for the anthology of North American poetry which was published in Spain by Editorial Aguilar at the beginning of the fifties, a true novelty.

The poetry of descriptive images, with a conversational tone, which takes into account what the external world is capable of offering in terms of unique sensations and perceptions and which Cardenal would make his own until it became his personal trademark, all that which has been called exteriorismo, much of it comes from North American poetry. But it was already present within the Epístola by Darío dedicated to Juana Lugones, Leopoldo Lugones's wife, a very long account written in Alexandrine couplets, with Alexandrine footnotes as well.

Cardenal would go even further, until incorporating the poetry he finds in the dry documents of the archives of the Indies concerning the conquest and colonization of Nicaragua, in his book El estrecho dudoso.

But before that we have the Cardenal of the Epigramas, which were the result of his reading of Catullus and Marcial during his years at the Department of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Mexico. Two poets he thus translated in perfect games of intelligence about love, solitude and disillusion. Verses that are copied in love letters and can be heard recited by the hopeless in bars. But the Cardenal who seduced me as a teenager, before anything, was from the period of Hora 0, because he helped me understand how much poetry prose can sustain and vice versa. The border between the two was shown to be tenuous with the revelation of that poem's long structure that defied the canon, which up to that time had ruled what we could call "political poetry." Cardenal accomplished this while still separating himself from what Neruda was writing.

In Hora 0, a poem about the Central American dictatorships of Somoza, Ubico and Carías, Cardenal doesn't denounce but instead he describes from an almost neutral perspective, as a good narrator must. It is a poem that is already half a century old and which has lost, at least in my eyes, none of its original freshness and continues to seem like a new experiment to me, as always happens with classic literary pieces.

It doesn't carry a single lyrical tone, it clears out all rhetoric and it doesn't try to impress with elegiac accents.

And I would go further with Canto nacional, a beautiful and unique elegy to Nicaragua which also lacks a lyrical tone and which functions as a scrupulous register of the country.

A profound change begins with Hora 0, affecting the approach to understanding poetic composition. A change which has ended up having so much influence in Latin America and has been reduced, as always, to the simple term exteriorismo.

The poems of Getsemaní, KY are not far behind, poems which were written during his apprenticeship in the Trappist monastery in Kentucky where Thomas Merton lived, his mentor in many senses.

Of course, the poetry that took Cardenal to the stages of Europe was that of the Salmos, which European youth at the start of the seventies, especially in Holland, Germany and in the Scandinavian countries, assumed as a symbol of their identity as they faced the shadows of oppression and totalitarianism. His voice was one which in the midst of the XX century, a century of horrors and human cataclisms, massive purges and concentration camps, cold war and threats of nuclear extinction, called out toward the heights with accents from the Old Testament. Once again, the voice of the prophets.

A voice which has crossed the borders of the XX century and which always rises anew, as it does in Cántico cósmico, the deepest and farthest that Cardenal's poetry has gone and whose influence will grow as we enter the new century.

Today, in his 80th year, he has merely entered a new stage of his literary life.




Masatepe, January 2005




{ Sergio Ramírez, El Nacional, 30 January 2005 }

La fe del cardenal

Ana Teresa Torres

Opinión
Viernes 30 de Abril de 2004
TalCual


Como no soy creyente me conmuevo ante la fe y hasta la envidio; es una manera de resistir a las trampas de la realidad. Aquí resumo algunos artículos de fe del poeta de Solentiname que recuerdan un libro que en otro tiempo leímos con fervor: En Cuba, de 1972.

Renovadas sus creencias, don Ernesto escribe sus vivencias y observaciones recogidas en su visita a Venezuela con motivo del Festival Mundial de Poesía. Uno de los logros destacados es que “hasta hace poco una india era ministro” y su ministro anfitrión, es negro. El viceministro de Cultura “le contó” (no sabemos si es un cuento corto o una noveleta) que se han repartido gratuitamente 25 millones de ejemplares de diversos títulos, se ha producido una distribuidora de libros (¿será el cadáver de Kuai Mare?), así como una editorial de libros políticos porque la población “casi sólo encontraba libros de derecha”. (¿En las repisas de la derecha?, ¿a la orilla derecha del río?). “Algunos poetas” le explicaron que el apasionamiento por la poesía era producto de la revolución. Otra noticia es que ahora la universidad será gratis, así que las universidades nacionales probablemente fueron parte de una falsa información de la derecha que nos tuvo engañados por décadas.

Por suerte, dice el poeta, en Cuba “un gran contingente de estudiantes, muy bien escogidos, con la prohibición de pertenecer a partidos políticos, se están formando para realizar en el futuro tareas de gobierno”. ¡Ah!, Internet es gratis para el pueblo, “hasta en el campo”. Corran a las sabanas y conéctense. Lo más destacable es la “confraternización de civiles y soldados, unidos en una sola revolución”. (¿Los de Fuerte Mara? ¿O los que compartieron la piscina con Acosta Carles?). También la religión es de mencionar.

Chávez, por ejemplo, hace citas falsas del Evangelio, pero, eso sí, con el mismo espíritu con que Jesús lo hacía. También de la geografía en sus comparecencias públicas hace campaña para fomentar la lectura y recomienda libros y recita. “Esa vez en atención a mí leyó un poema mío”.

Lo peor, desde luego, es la derecha vandálica. Le roban sus pertenencias a los muchachos que viajan a Cuba, y su campaña es tan terrorífica que un psiquiatra le contó de la cantidad de pacientes afectados. Afortunadamente los periódicos de derecha ya no se venden, él vio los bultos sin abrir al final del día.

Además, “en Caracas hay un edificio blanco muy grande y muy bello, que era la sede central de Petróleos de Venezuela. Allí la riqueza petrolera era administrada autónomamente sin que el Estado pudiera intervenir en nada, y se robaban esa riqueza. Sólo ahora, mediante la nueva Constitución el gobierno pudo tener control de la empresa”. Junto a que no hay presos políticos, éstas son las dos mejores nuevas.

En fin, afortunadamente, dice el poeta: “No debo negar que encontré en Venezuela intelectuales honestos, algunos de ellos amigos míos, que se oponen visceralmente a Chávez”. Después dicen que los intelectuales no sirven para nada, cuando son los mejores publicistas. Pero, como apunté al principio, soy respetuosa de los creyentes, y aquí tenemos la fe que mueve montañas.




(Ana Teresa Torres, Tal Cual, 30 Abril, 2004)

Los poetas no fueron a Turiaca / Joaquín Marta Sosa

The Poets Did Not Visit Turiaca

More than twenty years have passed (twenty years is a long time, no matter what the tango might say) and the poet is slightly stooped, his legs give the impression they can barely support his body. But he remains the same self-absorbed person, affectionate in flashes, who listens to me as though he were scrutinizing each word with his serene eyes somewhat dimmed.

I tell him about Juan Carlos Zambrano, who was broken to pieces at a military camp, Turiaca, and in whose stomach the forensic doctors found human hair drenched in a kilogram of shit. I remind him that the same thing happened in his country and that it's always for the same reason, the regime's precarious loss of support.

"But the United States is conspiring here against the government," he tells me. "We're both too old," I allege, "to go around claiming the United States as the only reason for defending any government at random. I don't care what the American government thinks or plans in regards to Venezuela." He is not going to dictate my political morals, nor is he going to mark me along the line separating the acceptable from the detestable. "That argument," we look each other in the eyes, "already smells stale. One supports or opposes a government because of its actions, not because of the friends or enemies it might have."

"But the media," he replies, "are all in the opposition and they attack relentlessly."

"As they did with all the other administrations," I underline for him. "To a large degree, the media were responsible for the legitimization of the chavista coup against an administration that, like the current one, was democratically elected. And several very important newspapers and journalists were truly aligned with chavismo throughout its campaign for the presidency. And they tolerated the closure of Congress, the violation of the Constitution in place at the time, all within the pretext that only he could end the corruption and poverty caused by the political parties.

Corruption today is infinitely higher, and in regards to the political parties his own has been substituted by an appoint-ocracy. It's an old form of excessive and anti-democratic caudillismo, from which we've heard varied and horrible news throughout our national experience."

The poet looks at me, he remains silent. And I know that it's not that he agrees with me but that, instead, it must feel inappropriate to contradict me. After all, we haven't seen each other in twenty years. "And yet," he points out, "he has plenty of popular support." "Yes, that has never been denied," I say, "but today the opposition has more popular support. That's why, against all promises, he resorts to trickery in order to prevent a democratic referendum. This includes the current persecution against those who signed for the convocation of a referendum. With this referendum we all have rights, just as long as we have sworn loyalty to the government. Besides," I insist, "he has done nothing but enhance the ancient heritage of corruption and mismanagement, to which he has added a grim expansion of poverty. In this regard, he only exhibits a frightening disloyalty to the will of the people who elected him. Instead of into the future from a better present, he shoves them in a forced march toward the worst elements of our past."

He stops talking. I stop talking. Someone arrives to take him to another event.

"Well," he says in parting, "take care of yourself." He walks away between two ushers from the seemingly well-organized and efficient event. (I recommend its organizers be promoted to the highest posts in the administration, just to see if something improves, cultural affairs for instance.) The poets have been well-attended , in hotels available to very few people here. They have been generously paid, they have travelled first class.

Surely marvelous. But I wish this courtesy toward poetry were not reserved only for the faithful and for the foreigners who can be displayed like crown jewels. And I would like for a festival that aims to encompass the "world" to invite all the major Venezuelan poets, without requiring a political blood oath.

As I leave the hotel, I am thinking that the poets were not informed, nor was there a ceremony to take them out to Turiaca.

Here, the unarmed individual is murdered under orders from that military chief who has become an inaccessible darkness, thanks to the government's protection and complicity. A darkness perhaps reminiscent of Pinochet, although never of Góngora.

Meanwhile let us read Romeu, in whose caricatures someone says: "It seems odd to me when I encounter a leader who is not delusional, overbearing, ill-mannered and swollen like a globe." I don't even need to be here to know this.





Translator's note:

Joaquín Marta Sosa recently edited an anthology of Venezuelan poetry: Navegación de tres siglos (antología básica de la poesía venezolana 1826/2002), Caracas: Fundación Para La Cultura Urbana, 2003. The writer that Marta Sosa refers to in this essay is most likely the Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal, who was in Caracas last week to attend the Festival Mundial de Poesía. This government-funded festival and conference was organized by the poet Luis Alberto Crespo, a staunch chavista, who is the director of the Casa Nacional de las Letras Andrés Bello. Important Venezuelan poets such as Elizabeth Schön, Rafael Cadenas, Yolanda Pantin, Jacqueline Goldberg, Eugenio Montejo, and Patricia Guzmán (to name just a few) were not invited to attend the conference.



{ Joaquín Marta Sosa, El Nacional, 1 April 2004 }

La revolución perdida

According to today's Tal Cual, Ernesto Cardenal has just released the third and final volume of his autobiography, La revolución perdida, in Managua. The article quotes comments that Cardenal made during an interview with a Chilean newspaper. In recent years, Cardenal has been explicit in his criticism of his former comrades in the Sandinista movement, blaming their obsession with power for the failure of the Nicaraguan revolution.

For me, there are very few poets who are as exciting to read as Cardenal. I am heartened by the fact that he refuses to romanticize the idea of revolution.

*

Below is a translated excerpt from the Tal Cual article:


Cardenal explains that he renounced from the Sandinista Party in 1994 because "I couldn't accept that in a country with so much poverty, supposedly revolutionary leaders would clean out the State funds when they were forced to give up power."

The poet affirms that the leaders of the Sandinista National Front were incapable of assimilating the 1990 electoral defeat against Violeta Chamorro. "The [Sandinista] Party was corrupted. Defeat did not have to mean the end of the revolution, which had been democratic and which created free, just, and honest elections, and which because of this could lose those elections. As it did.

But it could go on being the revolution from the side of the opposition. Once they lost the election, its leaders were demoralized and they devoted themselves to stealing before handing over the government. They destroyed the revolution for the sake of personal enrichment," said Cardenal to the newspaper La Vanguardia.

That was the end of the Sandinista dream for Cardenal: "Once it was corrupted, that beautiful project stopped being revolutionary. That is why I have left the Sandinistas.

Today the party is dominated by a Stalinist leadership." With the exception of the writer Sergio Ramírez, the former Minister of Culture does not exempt any of the Sandinista ex-leaders from blame.

"I excuse neither Daniel nor Humberto Ortega. Both of them took advantage of their positions in order to enrich themselves. Nor do I excuse Tomás Borge, the guerrilla leader who participated in that great robbery. Many others succumbed to temptation. As Galeano said: those who were not afraid to give their lives were afraid to hand over their Mercedes Benz, their houses, and the products of that robbery carried out by the Sandinista leadership."