“If the Writers of the World Get Together”: Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Literary Solidarity in Sandinista Nicaragua

Abstract

In Managua in January 1982, Allen Ginsberg joined two other poets—Ernesto Cardenal of Nicaragua and Yevgeny Yevtushenko of the Soviet Union—to draft a declaration that would invite the world’s writers to visit revolutionary Nicaragua. Their “Declaration of Three” was one of several invitations to Nicaragua in this period that targeted writers, artists, and intellectuals, and it drew on the attractive image of Nicaragua as a place that had made literacy and literature central to its revolution. Nicaragua has often been called “the nation of poets,” but after the Sandinista victory in 1979, this title might have been changed to “the nationstate of poets.” Before 1979, as John Beverley and Marc Zimmerman have argued, poetry and testimonios written by members of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) created a culture of opposition to the tyrannical rule of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. After Somoza’s departure, many poets and novelists who survived the revolution shifted their energies from opposing the government to building a new nation. “[T]he revolution was primary,” said poet Gioconda Belli, “the dream we had to make reality, the most urgent poem all Nicaraguans had to help write in order that we could begin building a more just society” (qtd. in Randall, Risking 146). Not only did prominent writers such as Cardenal and novelist Sergio Ramírez enter top political posts, but the Sandinistas also made literacy and literature key elements of the “Sandinista experiment.” Cardenal’s Ministry of Culture (founded one day after the FSLN entered Managua on July 19, 1979) created an elaborate system of cultural institutions, policies, and programs—such as nationwide poetry workshops—intended to democratize culture in the wake of the large-scale literacy campaign of 1980 (Whisnant 200).