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Daisy Zamora (born 20 June 1950 in Managua, Nicaragua) is a contemporary Latin American poet. Her work covers daily life, human rights, politics, revolution, feminist issues, art, history and culture.
She was raised in a wealthy liberal and politically active family. She attended convent schools and studied at the Universidad Centroamericana in Nicaragua where she earned a degree in psychology. She earned a post graduate diploma from INCAE, a branch of Harvard University in Central America. She also studied at the Academia Dante Alighieri and the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes.
She was involved in the fight against the Somoza dictatorship in the 1970s, and joined the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in 1973. She was exiled to Honduras, Panama and Costa Rica. During Nicaragua’s Sandinista Revolution, she was a combatant for the FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front), became the voice and program director for clandestine Radio Sandino during the final 1979 Sandinista offensive, then after the triumph of the revolution, was appointed vice minister of culture for the new government.
She worked as Vice Minister of Culture with fellow poet and mentor Ernesto Cardenal, Minister of Culture to create and implement numerous programs that successfully revitalized the war damaged cultural life of Nicaragua, including a popular, highly successful national literacy program that brought books and reading, poetry, and visual arts to even the remotest areas of the country.
Author of numerous books of poetry in Spanish, as well as a collection of political essays, she also edited the first comprehensive anthology of Nicaraguan women poets published in Latin America. Her latest poetry collection, La violenta espuma, was published in Madrid by renowned Spanish poetry publisher Visor in late December 2017. Also recently, she was featured in director Jenny Murray’s award-winning documentary ¡Las Sandinistas!, soon to be aired on PBS.
Among her poetry books in English, The Violent Foam: New & Selected Poems, a bilingual collection, was published by Curbstone Press. Life for Each, was published in England by Katabasis in 1994; an earlier collection, Riverbed of Memory, was published by City Lights Books in 1992, and Clean Slate by Curbstone Press in 1993.
Her work has been published in magazines and literary newspapers in Latin America, the Caribbean, the U.S., Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Viet Nam. Her poetry has appeared in more than eighty anthologies in thirty languages, including the influential Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry. She has given poetry readings and lectures throughout the world, at many venues in the U.S., and was a featured poet in Bill Moyer’s PBS series The Language of Life.
A political activist and advocate for women's rights throughout her life, for the last several years she has taught poetry workshops at a number of universities and colleges, and has been a lecturer of Latin American culture and literature for the Latin American & Latino Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, the University of San Francisco, and currently at San Francisco State University. She has also served as a member of the jury for the Neustadt International Poetry Prize based in the U.S.
Early in her career she was awarded the prestigious Mariano Fiallos Gil National Poetry Prize of Nicaragua. She has been honored by the Nicaraguan Writers Center for valuable contributions to Nicaraguan Literature, and named Woman Writer of the Year by the Nicaraguan National Association of Artists. In the U.S. she has received a California Arts Council Fellowship for poetry. She has three children, and resides in Managua and San Francisco, where she lives with her husband, U.S. poet and writer George Evans.
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José Daniel Ortega Saavedra is a Nicaraguan politician who has been President of Nicaragua since 2007. Previously he was leader of Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990, first as coordinator (1979–1985) of the Junta of National Reconstruction, and then as President of Nicaragua (1985–1990). During his first term, he implemented policies to achieve leftist reforms across Nicaragua. In later years, Ortega's left-wing radical politics cooled significantly, leading him to pursue pro-business policies and even rapprochement with the Catholic Church. As a part of this, his government adopted strong anti-abortion policies, and his rhetoric took on a new, strongly religious tenor.
Nicaragua is a nation in Central America. It is located about midway between Mexico and Colombia, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. Nicaragua ranges from the Caribbean Sea on the nation's east coast, and the Pacific Ocean bordering the west. Nicaragua also possesses a series of islands and cays located in the Caribbean Sea.
The Sandinista National Liberation Front is a left-wing political party in Nicaragua. Its members are called Sandinistas in both English and Spanish. The party is named after Augusto César Sandino, who led the Nicaraguan resistance against the United States occupation of Nicaragua in the 1930s.
Anastasio "Tacho" Somoza Debayle was the President of Nicaragua from 1 May 1967 to 1 May 1972 and from 1 December 1974 to 17 July 1979. As head of the National Guard, he was de facto ruler of the country between 1967 and 1979, even during the period when he was not the de jure ruler.
Gioconda Belli is a Nicaraguan-born novelist and poet known for her contributions to Nicaraguan literature.
The Nicaraguan Revolution encompassed the rising opposition to the Somoza dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s, the campaign led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) to oust the dictatorship in 1978–79, the subsequent efforts of the FSLN to govern Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990, and the Contra War, which was waged between the FSLN-led government of Nicaragua and the United States–backed Contras from 1981 to 1990. The revolution marked a significant period in the history of Nicaragua and revealed the country as one of the major proxy war battlegrounds of the Cold War, attracting much international attention.
Ernesto Cardenal Martínez was a Nicaraguan Catholic priest, poet, and politician. He was a liberation theologian and the founder of the primitivist art community in the Solentiname Islands, where he lived for more than ten years (1965–1977). A former member of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, he was Nicaragua's minister of culture from 1979 to 1987. He was prohibited from administering the sacraments in 1984 by Pope John Paul II, but rehabilitated by Pope Francis in 2019.
Sergio Ramírez Mercado is a Nicaraguan writer and intellectual who was a key figure in 1979 revolution, served in the leftist Government Junta of National Reconstruction and as vice president of the country 1985–1990 under the presidency of Daniel Ortega. He has been described as Nicaragua's "best-known living writer". Since the 1990s, he has been involved in the left-wing opposition to the Nicaraguan government, in particular in the Movimiento de Renovación Sandinista. He was exiled from the country in 2021 and stripped of his nationality by the government in 2023.
Carlos Fonseca Amador was a Nicaraguan teacher, librarian and revolutionary who founded the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). Fonseca was later killed in the mountains of the Zelaya Department, Nicaragua, three years before the FSLN took power.
Clara Isabel Alegría Vides, also known by her pseudonym Claribel Alegría, was a Nicaraguan-Salvadoran poet, essayist, novelist, and journalist who was a major voice in the literature of contemporary Central America. She was awarded the 2006 Neustadt International Prize for Literature.
Gaspar García Laviana was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest who took up arms to fight as a soldier in Nicaragua with the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in 1977.
Tomás Borge Martínez, often spelled as Thomas Borge in American newspapers, was a cofounder of the Sandinista National Liberation Front in Nicaragua and was Interior Minister of Nicaragua during one of the administrations of Daniel Ortega. He was also a renowned statesman, writer, and politician. Tomás Borge also held the titles of "Vice-Secretary and President of the FSLN", member of the Nicaraguan Parliament and National Congress, and Ambassador to Peru. Considered a hardliner, he led the "prolonged people's war" tendency within the FSLN until his death.
Joaquín Cuadra Lacayo a scion of Nicaragua's elite, joined the rebel Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in late 1972. After their victory in 1979, he became army chief of staff.
Dora María Téllez Argüello is a Nicaraguan historian known for her involvement in the Nicaraguan Revolution. As a young university medical student in León in the 1970s, Téllez was recruited by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). Téllez went on to become a comandante and fought alongside later president Daniel Ortega in the revolution that ousted dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979. In the subsequent FSLN government, she served as Health Minister under Ortega and has also been an advocate for women's rights. She ultimately became a critic of repression and corruption under President Ortega and left the FSLN in 1995 to found the party Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS), later renamed Unamos. Along with several other opposition figures, she was arrested in June 2021 by the Ortega government.
Religion in Nicaragua is predominantly Christian and forms a significant part of the culture of the country as well as its constitution. Religious freedom and religious tolerance is promoted by the Nicaraguan constitution yet the government has in recent years detained, imprisoned, and likely tortured numerous Catholic leaders, according to multiple news outlets. As of 2020, 79% of believers stated they are Christian.
Yolanda Blanco is a Nicaraguan poet.
In 1979, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) overthrew Anastasio Somoza Debayle, ending the Somoza dynasty, and established a revolutionary government in Nicaragua. Following their seizure of power, the Sandinistas ruled the country first as part of a Junta of National Reconstruction. Following the resignation of centrist members from this Junta, the FSLN took exclusive power in March 1981.
In the decade of Sandinista rule following the triumph of the Nicaraguan Revolution in 1979, close to 300 murals were created in that country. These murals provided a narrative of the revolution, portraying recent and more distant history, and visualizing the better future promised by the revolution.
Sofía Montenegro Alarcón is a Nicaraguan journalist, social researcher, and feminist. Montenegro's family were militarily aligned with the Somoza forces, but her feminist and Marxist studies moved her to join with the opposition to the regime. She fought in the Sandinista Revolution and though initially supportive of the Sandinista Party, later became an outspoken critic, saying it had moved to the right. She served as an editor of various divisions of the official Sandinista newspaper, Barricada, until 1994, when she founded the Center for Communication Research (CINCO) as an independent research organization free of government influence. She has written broadly on power, gender, and social interaction.
Mónica Baltodano was a commander of the guerrilla revolutionary group known as the Sandinista National Liberation Front during the Nicaraguan Revolution. She worked in the movement for several decades, and after experiencing the corruption and authoritarianism within the movement, she left in 2005 to form the Sandinista Renovation Movement, known as El Rescate.
