Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Nation of Poets
Poetry lies at the very heart of Nicaragua's cultural identity. Both major daily newspapers
run a literary supplement in their Friday editions, high-school kids form poetry clubs, and
any
campesino
(farmer) picking coffee in the isolated mountains can tell you who the
greatest poet in history is: Rubén Darío, voice of the nation. They will then recite a poem
by Darío, quite possibly followed by a few of their own.
Nicaragua is also home to the peculiar cultural archetype of 'warrior poets,' folks who
choose to go with both the pen and the sword. Among the most famous are Leonel
Rugama, who held off the Guardia Nacional while hero Carlos Fonseca escaped; Rigoberto
López Pérez, who assassinated the original Somoza in León; liberation theologian Ernesto
Cardenal; and former Sandinista undercover agent Gioconda Belli.
Gioconda Belli's
The Inhabited Woman
is well worth tracking down. It's a loosely political tale
based partly on true events, but the magic here is in Belli's sensual, poetic prose.
The nation's original epic composition, the Nicaraguan equivalent to
Beowulf
or
Chan-
son de Roland,
is
El Güegüense,
a burlesque dating from the 1600s. A morality play of
sorts, it pits an indigenous Nicaraguan businessman against corrupt and inept Spanish au-
thorities; using only his sly wit and a few multilingual double entendres, the Nica ends up
on top.
León has been home to the nation's greatest poets, including Darío, Azarias H Pallais,
Salomon de la Selva and Alfonso Cortés, the last of whom did his best work while going
insane in Darío's childhood home. A Rubén Darío tribute site (
www.dariana.com
) has bio-
graphies and bibliographies of major Nicaraguan writers. The most important modern
writers include Pablo Antonio Cuadra, a former editor of
La Prensa,
and Ernesto Cardenal.
One of the few Nicaraguan writers regularly translated into English is Gioconda Belli
(
www.giocondabelli.org
), who was working undercover with the Sandinistas when she won
the prestigious Casa de las Americas international poetry prize. Her internationally ac-
claimed work is both sexual and revolutionary, and is the best way to get a woman's-eye
view of Nicaragua in the 1970s.
