SOURCE: "Ernesto Cardenal's El estrecho dudoso: Reading/Re-writing History," in Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, Vol. XV, No. 1, 1990, pp. 111-21.

In the following essay, Williams analyzes the epic structure and subject matter of El estrecho dudoso, maintaining that the poem is both secular and religious.

Ernesto Cardenal's El estrecho dudoso (1966) is a book-length poem of over 3,000 lines. Divided into twenty-five cantos, the text's primary focus is on the historical events linked to the area now generally referred to as Mesoamérica, with a specific (but not exclusive) interest in Nicaragua. The poem concentrates on the first one hundred years of activity following the arrival of the Spanish on the American continent. It opens with Columbus' fourth voyage and his discovery of Terra Firma near the present Cape of Honduras in 1502, and concludes with a cataclysmic finale which narrates the destruction of the City of León, Nicaragua...