Daisy Zamora Interview
Interview with Daisy Zamora conducted by Steve Luttrell
Steve Luttrell: Daisy, as a young woman you were thrown in, as it were, to a full–scale revolution, as an active combatant. So that one might easily say your Poetry, your poetic vision, was forged in Revolution. So what would you say now is the role of a poet in a social activist situation?
Daisy Zamora: Poetry is essential in the human being, is part of the human essence we all share. My opinion is that poets should recognize in themselves this common essence and speak from there. Recognizing ourselves in others heightens our empathy and compassion; so, if we speak from there, everything we say in our poems will be true; we would expose a truth about something, be it from the outside world or from the personal sphere, but it will always provoke an emotional reaction. Many of the truths that poetry reveals are not accepted in this era of so much banality. In this sense, a poet is per se a social activist who, through poetry, shows something that should be acknowledged, but it’s usually overlooked. I also believe that recognizing ourselves in others involves the ethical commitment to uphold our word by validating it with our actions.
SL: It would seem that the Revolution in Nicaragua in the 70s, existed on at least two levels, one of which was women’s liberation as well as a National liberation. Do you feel in retrospect that women did not achieve as much social freedom as their participation in military combat should have given them? Were they “sold out” by the men that they fought alongside?
DZ: It’s been said that about 33% of the combatants of the Nicaraguan Revolution were women, and some were commanders like Dora María Téllez, who successfully led the taking of the city of León by the revolutionary forces on June 20, 1979. The capture of León, the second most important city in Nicaragua, was done by a woman and it was decisive in achieving the victory of the Revolution on July 19 of that same year. Women who had actively participated in the revolutionary struggle including in military combat had every right to act so that their demands were met, but men in all strata of power manipulated their advancement in every possible way, and kept brushing off and even ostracizing those women who were struggling for their rights. The men in power were able to do it because there were also enough women who joined them and supported them in their maneuvers in order to keep their posts or because they were personally involved with the comandantes.
There were, however, many women who fought to make a revolution within the Revolution, since power is held by men and they won’t give it away by themselves. So, the answer to your question is yes, women were “sold out” by the men that they fought alongside, because those men were uncapable of understanding — much less articulating — a different concept of power.
SL: Daisy, you have experienced living in exile. Could you describe that experience and how it might have informed your poetry? Also, is that anything you could have foreseen in your life?
DZ: Exile is possibly one of the most harrowing experiences to have in life. It brutally uproots you from your environment, and that uprooting provokes an essential void, because the place where we are born and grow up largely defines who we are, and losing it causes deep pain, sadness, nostalgia, and longing. But for a writer or a poet all this can be also a source of inspiration for their creativity, to write about it, which is what has happened to me.
As a child I knew about exile since my family was of liberal tradition, prominent and politically active. Uncles were exiled in Mexico, my father was imprisoned for participating in the April 1954 Rebellion against Anastasio Somoza García (the first of the Somoza dynasty), and I listened to family stories about past revolutions in which my ancestors had participated, but I did not anticipate then that I would also be part of a revolution or suffer exile.
SL: Looking back on it now, in what ways do you think that the Revolution failed? Has change benefited all the classes? Has the post–Revolutionary leadership tried to re–write the history of the Revolution?
DZ: The Revolution was lost due to many causes, both external and internal.
Among the external causes it’s important to point out that the triumph of the Nicaraguan Revolution happened during the “Cold War” era and the Reagan Administration could not tolerate a revolutionary and socialist government in Nicaragua that would endanger the control of the U.S. on its own “back yard.” President Ronald Reagan financed the counterrevolution, imposed a blockade, and waged a “low intensity warfare” against the Nicaraguan Revolution. On the other hand, there was the Soviet Union and the bloc of countries under its orbit, including Cuba, so they all meddled to manipulate the Nicaraguan revolutionary process in favor of their own interests.
The internal causes were also many but, most of all, it was the authoritarian drift and abuse of power of the comandantes and other leaders, and their moral and ethical corruption, and also the warmongering and macho culture in general that the leadership was unable to transform into a humanist culture of equity and social justice.
During the revolutionary period there were changes for the benefit of all classes, but they were eventually lost due to the causes that I mentioned before.
If by post–Revolutionary leadership you mean the current dictatorship of Ortega and Murillo, they have tried not only to rewrite the history of the Revolution, but to adulterate it, falsify it, and accommodate it to their own interests of consolidating themselves in a family dynasty in power as pernicious or worse than that of the Somozas.
SL: What do you see as some of the most powerful undercurrents in Latino culture today?
DZ: I see an empowering of Latino culture in general. Latino literature and visual arts, and also Latino theatre, dances, and music are more visible in the media; and traditional Latino customs and foods, as well as Spanish, are becoming more widespread. Likewise, the transnational nature of Latino culture represented in large part by a population that maintains its family and cultural ties with its countries of origin and shares Spanish as a common language, means that Latin America is already “inside” the United States. Puerto Ricans and Chicanos are the other part of the Latino population whose origins are also linked to Latin American culture including, of course, the Spanish speaking Caribbean. Also, the Latino population in the U.S. is now an important presence at all levels of society and politics. The Latino vote has to be taken into account by whoever wants to run for President in this country.
SL: Daisy, after the fighting you worked with Fr. Ernesto Cardenal, in the Ministry of Culture. Can you give me your thoughts and memories of working with him? Do you feel he was later persecuted for his views and his work on Liberation Theology?
DZ: One of the most extraordinary experiences of my life has been working with Ernesto Cardenal at the Ministry of Culture that we created right after the triumph of the Revolution. In Nicaragua there had never been a Ministry of Culture and people were very interested in knowing what was it about.
Representatives of townspeople from everywhere in the country flooded us asking for guidance to organize cultural activities, so one of the first programs we created was the network of Centros Populares de Cultura (Popular Cultural Centers) also known as Casas de Cultura (Houses of Culture).
As Vice–Minister I participated in the organization and management of a number of national cultural programs. The network of popular cultural centers (Centros Populares de Cultura ) included workshops on theatre, dance, music, painting, and poetry. All of these programs were highly successful but the most popular of them were the poetry workshops. There was such a blossoming of poetry that writers and poets from all the over the world — including poets from the U.S. like Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and others — went to Nicaragua to witness the Poetry Marathon; a national event held annually at a big amphitheater in Ciudad Darío — the town where Rubén Darío, our national poet and cultural hero, was born — to commemorate his birthday. It was amazing to watch thousands of people attentively listening to poetry readings in the plazas (squares) of towns and cities all over the country and also participating with their own poems.
Many people participated in the poetry workshops: carpenters, shoemakers, seamstresses, peasants, construction workers, nurses, clerks, housewives, kids, elderly people, policemen, members of the armed forces, etc. The Ministry of Culture issued Poesía Libre, a monthly magazine that was used as reading material in the workshops. The magazine was the size of a notebook and made of brown (Kraft) paper with pages tied together with a slender cord of natural fiber (henequén ). Every issue had poetry from around the world, including poetry from the U.S. translated into Spanish. People who had just learned to read and write were also welcome to participate in the workshops and we published their poems in a special section of the Poesía Libre magazine. It still moves me to remember the happiness of those people when they saw their poems in print. Ernesto used to say that the success of the poetry workshops was evidence that “we [had] socialized the means of poetic production.”
The program was such a success that we published anthologies of peasant poetry and poetry of the armed forces, and also a general anthology of the poetry workshops.
Other programs of the Ministry of Culture were the Nicaraguan Film Institute (INCINE), the Nicaraguan Sports Institute (IND), the School of Fine Arts (Visual Arts), the Conservatory of Music, the School of Dance, the Center for Performing Arts, the Institute of Historical Patrimony of Nicaragua, the Institute for Cultural Research, the Institute for traditional craftsmanship, the Institute for Mass Media which had the government radio station Voice of Nicaragua (Voz de Nicaragua), and the cultural radio station Radio Güegüense. Also were part of the Ministry of Culture: the Rubén Darío National Library, the National Archives, the National Cataloging Center, the National Network of Public Libraries, the Center for Geographical Research, the Center for Historical Research, the National Museum, and a nationwide network of Community Museums (Museos Didácticos Comunitarios ). There were nationwide programs for the research and promotion of folk art and handicrafts and programs for the promotion of visual arts, performing arts, music, and literature, and some cultural programs which were broadcasted nationwide by the national television channel TVDN (Televisión de Nicaragua ).
There were also several enterprises for the promotion of cultural goods: ENIGRAC (Empresa Nicaragüense de Grabaciones ) for the recording and production of records and cassettes; ENIARTES (Empresa Nicaragüense de Artesanías) for the commercialization and export of Nicaraguan folk art; ENIEC (Empresa Nicaragüense de Ediciones Culturales) for the publication of books and magazines, and ENIARES (Empresa Nicaragüense de Artistas y Espectáculos) for the international promotion of Nicaraguan professional artists, performers and ensembles.
We worked endlessly, day and night, organizing all the programs, adding something new almost on a daily basis because people were so eager to participate and develop all of their artistic potential. The work was so intense and we were starting so many new programs that it felt as if we were creating a world while watching it grow and expand itself. The Ministry of Culture led by Ernesto Cardenal was essential for the flowering of a true artistic and cultural revolution in the Nicaraguan people through successful and influential programs that were quickly changing the cultural landscape in Nicaragua.
The persecution of Ernesto began quite early and was organized and led by Rosario Murillo, who was already Daniel Ortega’s partner at the time. On February 1982 she managed to be elected as the General Secretary of the Sandinista Association of Artists and Writers (ASTC) and also to be the chief editor of Ventana, the cultural supplement of the then powerful newspaper Barricada. Endorsed by some well–known artists and poets — a few of whom are now opponents of the Ortega–Murillo dictatorship and deny having participated in the plot against Ernesto — Rosario Murillo started a vitriolic smear campaign against the programs of the Ministry of Culture, and especially against the poetry workshops that were the most popular. The relentless harassment by Murillo went on for years and did not cease until Ernesto was ousted from his post as Minister in February 1988 and the Ministry of Culture was dismantled to create a new Institute of Culture headed by Rosario Murillo. Neither Daniel Ortega nor any of the members of the FSLN National Directorate acknowledged Murillo’s abusive behavior and corrupted methods (since artists and poets that supported her would usually receive bribes, enjoyed perks and trips and were promoted abroad ). Only Sergio Ramírez who was then Vice President of Nicaragua, tried in vain to prevent the collapse of the Ministry of Culture.
At that time, it was difficult or almost impossible to understand why Murillo was allowed to do such things, but in retrospective it becomes clear that the visionary project of Ernesto for the Nicaraguan people to be not only consumers of culture but also producers of culture was not a priority for the revolutionary leadership. The ASTC under the direction of Murillo got all the resources to become a second Ministry of Culture, and by 1985 with the economic problems caused by the war between the Sandinista Army and the Contras financed by the U.S., the Ministry of Culture was left practically without a budget and its originally most successful programs languished, thus ending the project of democratization of culture and cultural democracy that had been Ernesto’s dream.
The concept of cultural work that Ernesto Cardenal had was holistic, integral, inclusive, and comprehensive; it is clearly expressed in several of his speeches and writings. It would be necessary to read at least some of them, for example For a Culture of Peace, World Peace and the Nicaraguan Revolution, Culture and Sovereignty, etc., and above all, The Democratization of Culture, that I consider a key text to understand the scope of the cultural project that Ernesto wanted to realize in Nicaragua. I traveled a lot around the country in those first years working as Vice Minister of Culture and I witnessed that the cultural and artistic explosion that took place in Nicaragua right after the Revolution had no precedent: it was like a renaissance and rebirth of all of the cultural richness which had once been oppressed and buried under the weight of the Somocista dictatorship.
SL: You’ve worked in radio during the Revolution (Radio Sandino). How do you see the media today as acting in both a positive and a negative force? What influence do you think it brings to bear on culture in general?
DZ: There is the mainstream media that belongs to corporations, so the news and everything they report to a greater or lesser extent prioritizes and reflects the political and economic interests of the elites that rule this country. There is the independent media from which more truthful news and information can be expected, and there are also the social networks that have tremendous influence in the world and are available to anyone with access to the internet. To be interconnected also means that we have lost all privacy. We are being tracked by every search engine or browser we use and every site we visit, and we are in the hands of the powerful owners of social media.
Simultaneous communication has an undeniable impact on culture because it has changed the way we interact and relate to one another, so depending of the ends for which it is used in the different media, it can be a positive or a negative force.
SL: Daisy, in what ways do you feel your poetry has evolved over the years? Especially as it involves more contact with other poets?
DZ: Poetry makes us be in touch with ourselves, with our communities and with the world at large. It’s like a door we open to our inner self and to the outside and different realities; a bridge that connects us as species in a divided and constantly changing world. I try to express all that through my poetry and I am constantly looking to do it in a way I have not done it before. It is a permanent search for a better way of saying whatever I want and need to say. My poetry also evolves through reading the works of other poets, and through many other readings. It is like an endless personal revolution, an underground river, a relentless inner sea that must keep moving to avoid stagnation and repetition.
SL: Father Cardenal was known for his practice of Liberation Theology, which was heavily Marxist influenced. Did you ever self–identify as a Marxist?
DZ: Marx’s historical materialism is a resource to learn about history’s structure and direction and also about the forces of production, relations of production, and modes of production that conform capitalism, among other important notions that must be studied as useful tools for analyzing the connection between politics and economy, or the role of the state and the ruling classes in the society. I believe it is part of a political education to study Marx and also Antonio Gramsci and Louis Althusser who have contributed to expand Marxist themes.
SL: In your role as a teacher, what do you look for in a student’s work that you feel shows talent and an authentic voice? What do you consider to be the elements of good poetry?
DZ: What I look for in my students is that they penetrate the surface to the entrails of what they want to write and say it using the full expressive potential of each word they choose, seeing it with a fresh look as if they were seeing it for the first time. I tell them to be honest to themselves because poetry is about truth, about revealing something of our human nature and about the world. I tell them not to be afraid of saying what they see and feel and need to say. To write a poem as many times as they can stand it, and then leave it there. Then, to contemplate the words on the page, contemplate the poem as an object, and try again to say what they want to say the best they can. If they don’t find a way, to keep trying, because when something is haunting you and you don’t know what it is, it’s because poetry is sending messages, but they come to you in waves, like the sea. You know that you are going somewhere, but need a compass, and humbleness is the compass. I tell them that poetry is pitiless. If you cheat, it makes the part of you that is not honest come through the lines of the poem and that poem will age and die.
Daisy Zamora
San Francisco, May 27, 2023