Ernesto Cardenal was a champion of freedom and poetry, he worked for the needy and fought against the regime in Nicaragua his motherland that saw him write painful verses about injustice, as well as hopeful lyrics for humanity.
Cardenal was born on January 20, 1925 in Granada, Nicaragua. He studied at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UNAM and at Columbia University in New York. He returned to Nicaragua in 1950 to take part in the coup d’état against the Anastasio Somoza regime called the April Revolution. which failed and in which Cardenal lost several fellow fighters.
In 1957 he entered the seminary of Our Lady of Gethsemane in Kentucky, United States, after his years within the community he was ordained as a priest in 1965 when he returned to Nicaragua. There he founded a community of fishermen and artists on the island of Solentiname. where he wrote his famous book The Gospel of Solentiname .
The poet was deeply influenced by liberation theology, a movement that emerged in Latin America in the 1960s that had as its center the gospel directed to the most needy, as well as the use of social and human sciences for that purpose. “Gospel in Greek means good news and the good news for the poor is justice. It turned out that this theology was not that of the Vatican. “We believed in Jesus of Nazareth.” Cardenal said to The Country in 2012.
His literary work is united by the common thread of compassion and the fight for social justice as well as his relationship with God and spirituality as in this poem called Give me justice Lord (Psalm 25) :
Do me justice Lord
because I am innocent
Because I trusted you
and not in the leaders
Defend me at the War Council
defend me in the False Witness Process
and false evidence
I don’t sit with them at their round tables
nor do I toast at their banquets
I don’t belong to your organizations
I’m not even in their games
nor do I have shares in their companies
nor are they my partners
I will wash my hands among the innocent
and I will be around your altar Lord
Don’t lose me with bloodthirsty politicians
in whose folders there is nothing but crime
and whose bank accounts are made of bribes
Don’t hand me over to the Party of wicked men
Free me Lord!
And I will bless the Lord in our community
in our assemblies
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Cardenal collaborated very closely with the Sandinista National Liberation Front and When he triumphed over the Somoza regime in 1979, the poet was appointed Minister of Culture of Nicaragua.
I want another country
We must make a country here.
We are at the entrance to a promised land
that emanates milk and honey like a woman.
My song, my poetry is from this land.
But there are still the orders
And when the bell rings on the New York Stock Exchange,
Something you don’t know, brother, has been taken from you.
Sandino told the peasants – someday we will triumph – and,
If I don’t see it, the little ants will come to tell me under the ground.
Things are important, but people are more important.
There is so much corn to plant.
So many children to teach,
so much sick to cure,
so much love to realize,
so much singing
I sing to a country that is going to be born.
In 1983 Pope John Paul II visited Nicaragua and Cardenal received him on his knees, The pontiff publicly reprimanded him for belonging to a socialist party and committing actions that were against the episcopal work of Catholicism. a year later suspended him from priestly exercise, however, in 2019 Pope Francis again granted permission to return to the office.
Cardenal left the party in the 90s when Daniel Ortega took power and turned Nicaragua into a military dictatorship. The poet dedicated himself to writing and social work in the community of Solentiname, that same land where his remains are still kept. The writer died on March 1, 2020 at the age of 95.
Fragment of “Gethsemane, NY”.
Behind the monastery, next to the road,
There is a cemetery of worn things,
where the dirty iron lies, pieces
china, broken pipes, twisted wires,
empty cigarette packs, sawdust
and zinc, aged plastic, broken tires,
waiting like us for the resurrection.
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