With the recent announcement of the elimination of the legal status of the Association for the Development of Solentiname founded by Ernesto Cardenal, Mónica Baltodano provides a brief history of Ernesto´s life and his persecution by both the Somoza and Ortega dictatorships.
Ernesto Cardenal, persecuted, dead or alive
By Mónica Baltodano in Confidencial, April 22, 2022
Four years since the April uprising, the dictatorship that oppresses Nicaragua has increased its repressive measures, harassing and capturing opponents, exiling Nicaraguans, blocking their entry into the country, continuing spurious trials against abducted politicians, invading homes and making independent organizations illegal and confiscating their assets.
This time, in the list of organizations whose legal statuses were eliminated this past April 20th, appeared the Association for the Development of Solentiname, founded in 1982 by the poet and Trappist priest Ernesto Cardenal, as a vehicle to negotiate support for the community of the beautiful archipelago where he lived between 1966 and 1977.
Cardenal was persecuted by the Somoza dictatorship and now by the Ortega one. In his case – like that of thousands of his fellow Nicaraguans – he lived and died under dictatorships, but the one of Ortega-Murillo has been merciless: they persecuted and put Ernesto on trial when he was alive; they offended him when his remains were still lying in his casket, which is why his burial had to be done in secret. Now, two years after his death, they continue to persecute him while trying to erase part of his work and social legacy and expel him from his beloved Solentiname where his remains are at rest.
In August 1965, already known then as a poet and contemplative missionary, he was anointed a priest. Months later on Febrary 12, 1966 he travelled to Mancarrón, one of the islands of the Solentiname archipelago in the Great Lake of Cochibolca, for the purpose of founding a Christian mission. He was accompanied by young people, enthusiastic about fixing up a hermitage, opening up a medical post and teaching the inhabitants of the islands to read. The group would live with the peasants and share their humble huts, food and work. To carry out the mission they had friends who, with the support of Bishop Mons. Julián Barni, collected resources for the project: notebooks, pencils, construction materials, medical equipment and they took off from Granada in a motorboat full of the materials they had collected (La Prensa 1).
Thomas Merton, a Trappist poet and novice master, with whom Cardenal lived in the Trappist Monastery in Gethsemani, Kentucky, spoke about the work of Cardenal with the US archbishop Mons. Fulton J. Sheen, and he wrote a beautiful letter to the poet, giving him his moral support and sending him a monetary contribution (Cabestrero: 194; Flakoll, D/Alegría: 247; La Prensa 2).
Starting then the Solentiname community had an important influence not only among the peasants and fisherpeople of the Rio San Juan, but among Christians throughout the country. In moments when the Latin American Church was reflecting about the role of Christians in the face of the reality of injustice and exclusion that large masses of workers and peasants were facing in the region, the community was an example of the role of the priesthood beside the poor and the project of the society of social justice that we revolutionaries dreamed of building.
Ernesto Cardenal was even before that time an open anti-Somocista and a fighter against the dictatorship. He had already participated in the armed rebellion of 1954, which ended with the massacre of most of those who rose up, some of them killed through torture. His presence in Solentiname committed him even more to this oppressed people, and reflected on the relationship between the Gospel and the project of popular liberation with them. The Gospel of Solentiname emerged from there in 1975.
Invited by the Casa de las América, Ernesto visited Cuba in 1970. On returning he gave fiery statements that were published in newspapers in Nicaragua. Somoza followers then promoted an official march of secondary students against Cuba, its revolution and Cardenal. Simultaneously, and from different official, local and national media, they promoted his destitution from his ecclesial functions (Novedades).
With his positions and arguments the Trappist poet and priest radicalized the thinking of Christians, contributed to the reconciliation between Marxists and Christians, challenged the dictatorship and became an international reference point for revolutionary positions.
Ernesto also visited Chile during the Government of Salvador Allende. On returning he was vigorously searched. The immigration officials took from him books and documents that he was bringing in his luggage. The next day he held a press conference and reported on his trip to Chile, Peru and Cuba, where he met with heads of State: Salvador Allende, Velasco Alvarado and Fidel Castro, to learn about the revolutions that were carried out in those countries.
At the end of November 1975 Ernesto Cardenal, along with his brother, Fernando, met with Carlos Fonseca Amador – the principal architect of the FSLN – in the home of Tito Castillo. Fernando recalled that interview in this way: We talked all night long about many topics. It was the first time that I saw him; Ernesto had met him before. His enthusiasm, mystique, absolute commitment to the revolution, his ideas, personality, his capacity to transmit values and motivation, impressed me. Carlos said to Ernesto that he wanted him to be the president of the Junta de Gobierno. Ernesto immediately told him no, that he could support the revolution in a thousand other ways, but not in a Junta de Gobierno. (Cardenal, F. 2008 TI, 102; Baltadano, Mónica, 2010, TI:352)
On Christmas of that year Ernesto received his brother Fernando and the songwriter Carlos Mejía Godoy in Solentiname, and with the peasants of the archipelago they created the words to the Misa Campesina ( Cardenal, F, TI:123). In 1976 Ernesto was part of the delegation that in the name of Nicaragua attended the Russel Tribunal, which condemned the dictatorships of Latin America, among them the dictatorship of Somoza.
At the beginning of 1977, Cardenal the poet did a tour through eleven States of the US, Venezuela and Mexico, denouncing the dictatorship, the repression that was being experienced in Nicaragua, and demanding that the United States quit providing aid to Somoza. This pressure bore fruit, because on March 28 the Agency for International Development (AID) of the United States declared their aid frozen, and in the future this country conditioned its assistance to the Somoza regime.
Young Christians, not just from Nicaragua but from other parts of the continent, turned Solentiname into a site for retreats and reflection that committed them to the fight against injustice, incarnated at that time in the Somoza dictatorship. So it was that several youth, members of the community, were followers of the FSLN of Carlos Fonseca and in 1977, participated in the attack on the National Guard base in San Carlos, the provincial capital of San Juan. Some of them, like Elvis Díaz, Felipe Peña and Donald Guevara, gave their lives in that struggle, or in the defense of the Revolution like Laureano Mairena.
After the attack on the base of San Carlos, the Somoza dictatorship brutally repressed the community of Solentiname. Ernesto Cardenal, then in exile in Costa Rica, denounced, “a true looting had been done of the community situated on the Island of Mancarrón, in the Archipelago of our Lady of Solentiname. The community was practically decimated by the National Guard, who destroyed a craft workshop built on the basis of effort of peasants and fisherpeople of the region. Among the valuable belongings that have disappeared is a collection of pre-Colombine pieces and the library of the community, one of the most complete collections of Nicaraguan books that there was in the country (La Prensa, 3).
When the revolution triumphed in 1979 the youth returned to their community and found the things that they had built destroyed, but they had absolute trust that they would be restablished. Ernesto Cardenal, named as the minister of Culture of Nicaragua, never quit being connected to the community of Solentiname, nor with the demands and dreams of its men and women, fisherpeople, farmers, craft makers and painters.
In 1982 the poet founded the Association for the Development of Solentiname and raised funds for different projects of the community who, in addition, was very present in the culture with his primitivism painting, and his sculpting and balsa wood workshops, which were known and admired throughout the country and internationally.
After the electoral defeat of the FSLN in 1990, Cardenal returned to live in his beloved archipelago, where he had sung to the guapotes, guabinas, pepescas and its birds, but also was part of those who harshly criticized la piñata, or the illegal personal appropriation of assets, farm and urban properties, carried out by Sandinista leaders during the Government transition. The complaints and protests over what were considered a departure from the mystique and ethics that had characterized the revolutionary followers were not listened to, and in October 1994 Cardenal publicly left the FSLN, pointing out as causes “the strong man culture and corruption” of the Party, in moments in which this was debated among the currents that were expressed in the FSLN Congress of that year.
I will continue being Sandinista and revolutionary, with the ideals of Sandino and the Sandinista Front of before, and also Marxist and Christian (El País).
When Ortega came to power in 2007, Cardenal publicly warned that nothing was left of the revolution, and that it was a falsehood that the Ortega Murillo couple would speak about the continuity of that beautiful work undertaken in 1979.
The Ortega Murillo regime broadly used their control over all the State apparatus to repress their opponents, particularly those who came from Sandinista ranks, because they were aware that the positions of these movements could weaken their bases, much more than the traditional liberal or conservative right wing. So in 2003, Ortega put on trial the Comandante of the Revolution Henry Ruiz (Modesto) to be able to control the “Augusto C Sandino” Foundation (FACS), and in power in 2013, sentenced him to a year in prison, but then did not dare to send him to jail (El Correo, 2013).
Likewise, he used power against Ernesto Cardenal, in a trial where Nubia Arcia contested assets that belonged to the Association for the Development of Solentiname. Years later in 2017, the regime through a judicial decree, imposed on the poet a fine of US$800,000 dollars over this case and over which he considered the statute of limitations had passed. So, Daniel Ortega renewed what Ernesto described as political persecution against him.
On that occasion Luz Marina Acosta – the personal assistant of the priest and poet Cardenal – said that in the beginning of the trial they even froze the bank account of the poet.
The Government that we have is persecuting me, the presidential couple of Daniel Ortega and his spouse. They are the owners of all the branches of government in Nicaragua. They have absolute, infinite power, which has no limits, and that power is now against me. Previously he had stated about the Government: it is not leftist, nor Sandinista, nor revolutionary, but simply a family dictatorship (Confidencial 1, emol).
But the persecution did not end even with his death. After the uprising started in April 2018, Cardenal, now sick, did international work to denounce the criminal turn of Ortega, who repressed with crimes categorized as crimes against humanity against the rebellious people, particularly hundreds of young people.
Ernesto died on March 1, 2020 and his remains were taken to the Cathedral of Managua for the burial mass. The blue and white people, who shared his ideals, gathered spontaneously. Platoons of Ortega mobs, disguised as the faithful, were sent to the mass to yell in front of his casket: traitor, sell-out, and any other epithet that they might think of. Later on they attacked the participants, particularly journalists from independent media (Confidencial, 2).
In addition to his poetry and rebellious and politically committed priesthood, Cardenal brought to the peasants and fisherpeople of the archipelago the Association for the Development of Solentiname, with its workshops on craftmaking and painting, library, church, medical post, a community center and a small hotel, as a mechanism for self-sustainment, all on the paradise islands where the poet lived his most sublime moments in contemplation and silence.
Today, with the elimination of the legal status of the Association for the Development of Solentiname, a new page of perversion is written of the Ortega dictatorship against the symbolic legacy of one of the most brilliant poets in the contemporary cultural history of Nicaragua and Latin America, and one of the international reference points for Liberation Theology. It is still be be seen whether in addition to stealing the assets of the Association, they will also dare to remove from its sanctuary the remains of Ernesto and the Sandinista heroes buried there.
References
Alegría, Claribel/ D.J. Flakoll: Nicaragua: La Revolución Sandinista, una crónica política 1855-1979 Managua, Anamá Ediciones Centroamericanas, 2004.
Cabestrero, Teófilo: Leonel Rugama: El delito de tomar la vida en serio Managua, Editorial Nueva Nicaragua 1989.
Cardenal S. J., Fernando: Sacerdote en la Revolución: Memorias Tomos I y II. Managua, Anamá, Ediciones Centroamericanas, 2008.
Confidencial 1: 14 de febrero de 2017. Cardenal: Soy a perseguido político de Ortega y su mujer
Confidencial 2: 3 de marzo de 2020. Turbas del régimen invaden misa de cuerpo presente del poeta Cardenal.
El Correo: 2013 Reviven causa a Modesto. https://elcorreonicaraguense.blogspot.com/2013/05/reviven-causa-modesto
El País: 25 de octubre 1994 El abandono de Cardenal acentúa la profunda crisis del Frente Sandinista
La Prensa 1: 13 de febrero de 1966: Misión Cristiana en viaje a Solentiname
La Prensa 2: 20 de marzo de 1966: Monseñor Sheen ayuda a Solentiname
La Prensa 3: 8 de noviembre de 1977: P Cardenal denuncia abusos en Solentiname
Novedades 1 y 5 de agosto: Estudiantes repudian a Castro; Anuncian remoción del Padre Ernesto Cardenal.