Granada (Nicaragua), 1925

By Flávio Aguiar

Ordained as a priest in 1965, Ernesto Cardenal Martínez developed his religious career alongside his literary and political endeavors, which gave his poetic production a blend of prophetic tone, biblical forms full of lyricism, and commitment to the Sandinista Revolution.

In 1952, he founded the publishing house El Hilo Azul and also opened a bookstore, which boosted national poetry. Alongside the avant-garde writer José Coronel Urtecho, he translated several American poems. In 1954, he participated in the armed movement against the Nicaraguan dictatorship known as the April Rebellion. In 1956, he wrote the extensive political poem Hora Cero.

Pablo Neruda published some of his epigrams, then anonymous, in La Gaceta of Chile, addressing the situation in his country. In the 1970s and 1980s, he was one of the ideologists of Liberation Theology, alongside singer Carlos Mejía Godoy, one of the main inspirers of Christian anti-Somoza Sandinismo. He lived in exile until the fall of dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979. When the revolutionaries came to power, he was appointed Minister of Education, a position he held until 1987. His works include Salmos (1964), Oráculo sobre Managua (1973), Cántico cósmico (1989), and Vida perdida (1998).

Content updated on 04/07/2017 16:30