Masaya

"Rivers run through me
mountains bore into my body
and the geography of this country
begins forming in me
turning me into lakes, chasms, ravines,
earth for sowing love
opening like a furrow
filling me with a longing to live...

I want to explode with love..."

-Gioconda Belli
(Nicaraguan poet)

Granada

Granada

Las Isletas

"They killed you and didn't say where they buried your body,
but since then the entire country has been your tomb,
and in every inch of Nicargua where your body isn't buried,
you were reborn.

They thought they'd killed you with their order of Fire!
They thought they'd buried you
and all they had done was to bury a seed."

-Ernesto Cardenal
from "Epitaph for the Tomb of Adolfo Baez Bone"

Granada

This photo was taken in Caterina.

"In Caterina they'd shoot two young people every night."

-Ernesto Cardenal (referencing the systematic violence of dictator Somoza's guardia, who were trained and financed by the U.S. to suppress democracy in Nicaragua.)

"Twelve years ago I went to Solentiname with two
brothers
in Christ
to found a small contemplative community...
contemplation
brought us to the revolution;
and thus it had to be
because in Latin America
a man of contemplation cannot turn his back
on political struggle..."

-Ernesto Cardenal
from "The Meaning of Solentiname"

Granada

"You are the God of the poor,
the human and simple God,
the God with the work-hardened face,
that's why I talk to you...
just as my people do,
because you are the worker God,
you are the labourer-Christ."

-excerpt from the peasants' mass (Misa Campesina) in liberation theology

Coyotepe

Rio San Juan

Pueblos Blancos

"The anger that breaks the man into children,
that breaks the child into equal birds,
and the bird, afterward, into little eggs;
the anger of the poor
has one oil against two vinegars.

The anger that breaks the tree into leaves,
the leaf into unequal buds
and the bud, into telescopic grooves;
the anger of the poor
has two rivers against many seas.

The anger that breaks the good into doubts,
the doubt, ino three similar arcs
and the arc, later on, into unforeseeable tombs;
the anger of the poor
has one steel against two daggers.

The anger that breaks the soul into bodies;
the body nto dissimilar organs
and the organ, into octave thoughts;
the anger of the poor
has one central fire against two craters."

-Cesar Vallejo (Peruvian poet)