SOURCE: Schaefer-Rodriquez, Claudia. “Peace, Poetry, and Popular Culture: Ernesto Cardenal and the Nicaraguan Revolution.” Latin American Literary Review 13, no. 26 (July 1985): 7–18.

In the following essay, Schaefer-Rodriguez analyzes Cardenal's response to the Nicaraguan Revolution of 1979 as it is expressed through his poetry.

The events occurring in Nicaragua in the decade of the 1970's, particularly the revolution which finally ousted the government of Anastasio Somoza in July of 1979, attracted the attention of many, from multiple points of view. Among the various aspects which stimulated interest was that of what the response—literary and otherwise—would be of the writer and priest Ernesto Cardenal to these changes in which he himself had participated. When most readers last left Cardenal, on the eve of the revolution, the question was left open-ended¹ or speculative. The crucial task now, five years later, is to pick up the historical thread and examine what has taken place...