When we asked Dr. Nicasio Urbina if the Festival was an element of identity cohesion for Nicaraguans, he replied that, in: «Nicaraguan identity, the idea of the poet as a special being has always been preached and has been organized around to the figure of Rubén Darío, that is why the Festival received so much support from the people of Nicaragua, from private companies, and for many years, from the Government”, and affirmed that its closure has “no logical or legal justification”.

Few people will know that there is a Granada in Nicaragua; on the shore of a lake, the Cocibolca. It is a small city, with a colonial appearance not very far from that of that time. With numerous adobe houses that still retain their clay roofs and dozens of beautiful Moorish-adorned mansions. It will be because of these mansions that Nicaraguans call this city «the great sultana», perhaps as a reminiscence of the old Muslim sultanate that reigned in Andalusian Granada.

Eighteen years ago, in 2005, a cultural event was born in Granada de Nicaragua that would celebrate poetry, in a country where the myth of the poet is part of the identity of the Nicaraguan being, for whom «…the idea of the poet as a special being,” said Nicasio Urbina, first vice president of the Granada International Poetry Festival and professor of Romance languages at the University of Cincinnati, United States.

Dr. Urbina gave an interview to the Uruguayan PEN Center where he spoke about the history of the Granada International Poetry Festival, and how an «insane dictatorship» «…does not need arguments to cancel the legal status of an organization.» The Foundation of the same name for the Festival it hosted was canceled on May 18 by the Nicaraguan National Assembly. This was expressed by the organization in an official statement.

Granada, cradle of the Nicaraguan “Literary Vanguard”

The Nicaraguan literary tradition “…has been organized around the figure of Rubén Darío…”, said Urbina. The literary modernity inaugurated by Darío, together with his fame as a poet, has always established the myth of being a “country of poets” in the imagination of Nicaraguans. No one doubts that the «figure of Rubén Darío» has deeply motivated several generations of Nicaraguan poets and writers throughout the 20th century. One of those generations saw its literary flourish in the 1930s, when it founded the Vanguard Movement in Granada. Its founders were Pablo Antonio Cuadra, José Coronel Urtecho and Joaquín Pasos. The anecdotes of the time tell that these avant-garde artists climbed the bell tower of La Merced Church in Granada to write poems and talk about poetry, and even to «criticize» Rubén Darío.

Nicasio Urbina said that these elements of Nicaraguan literary history were essential for the Poetry Festival of Granada, “…to receive so much support from the people of Nicaragua, from private companies, and for many years, from the Government. The city of Granada has always been closely linked to literary movements, especially the avant-garde movement that in the 1930s played a leading role in Nicaragua’s cultural life. So all these things contributed to the success of the Granada International Poetry Festival”.

The poets in the atriums of the churches.

When from PEN Uruguay we communicated with one of the » managers » of the Festival (who requested anonymity for security reasons) he told us that «…the festival had no major protocols with the hundreds of poets who came from the world every year…» , «…that the organizers only gave each day’s agenda to each poet and that they walked on their own where they had to read, whether it was in the atrium of a church or in a corner…», and added that » …all of Granada was going to listen to them read, crowding the streets…”.

The conversation with X implied that the Festival was like a huge cultural event in the open air with a beautiful city as a stage; That is why we asked Dr. Urbina if this format was original to the event, or if they took it from a reference seen before, to which he replied that:

The idea of the festival as a popular event in the streets of Granada came to us as a way to distinguish it from the Medellín poetry festival, which at that time was the main reference, and from other festivals on the continent. However, there is the precedent of the avant-garde movement that carried out burials and certain public events in the 1930s in Granada. When I was a student at the Salesian school we held a cultural week where we invited different poets, which ended with a reading by Ernesto Cardenal at the Granada stadium. That was in 1974-75. So there are several precedents that inspired us to develop the Granada International Poetry Festival, with the characteristics that it has been known for.

Every February of every year, the Festival was inaugurated with the so-called Poetic Carnival, a kind of “performance” that included some of the traditions practiced by avant-garde poets, such as the false “burials” that Urbina mentioned earlier. In the symbolic «burial» that took place during the poetic Carnival, the burial of ignorance and lack of culture was represented. However, now it is ironic to observe how the Ortega-Murillo regime is the one that buries the culture of its own country and treats its own people as ignorant; with the desire to disrupt an identity based on the singular archetype of the «heroes of letters», which for the Nicaraguan writer Sergio Ramírez, is represented in the figure of Rubén Darío whom he called «civil hero on foot».

“…To the poets of the world”

The world came to Granada through its poets. From Spain, Slovenia, Algeria, Philippines, India, Israel. Palestine. More than one hundred poets per year, in 18 years, walked the streets of Granada. In the past, the world came to Granada on ships.

When the city was founded in 1524, it became an Atlantic port for the Pacific. The Spanish took advantage of the fact that Granada was located on the shore of Lake Cocibolca, which empties into the Atlantic through the San Juan River. It was a natural interoceanic canal.

In 1849, the city became active again as a port. The American shipping businessman, Cornelio Vanderbilt, took advantage of the Nicaraguan canal to open the so-called “Transit Route”; that it was a sea route that started from New York to San Francisco in order to shorten the way in the search for gold discovered in California. Later, in 1856, it was burned down like a tropical Rome by order of the American filibuster William Walker, who had proclaimed himself president of Nicaragua in the midst of a National War.

After its rebuilding, the city has remained the same until today. It even managed to save itself in 1979 from the aerial bombardments that the dictator Somoza ordered to launch against some cities in Nicaragua. Both the war against the dictatorship, as well as the revolution and the transition to democracy in the 90s, kept Granada behind, eating away little by little for decades, in solitude.

However, according to our anonymous source, the “…Granada festival…” generated a “tourist boom” in the city that revived its “cosmopolitan” spirit. The city had grown exponentially in tourism and investment until before April 2018.

But beyond promoting tourism, for Urbina, this Festival was an «ecumenical» event, that is, universal. So we asked him to explain what it meant for Nicaragua and Central America to bring together hundreds of poets from all continents?

The festival was a unique event due to its ability to bring together hundreds of poets from all continents for a week, living together in a very friendly and close way, participating in the life of the city with the population of Granada and with Nicaraguans who love of poetry, who traveled from their cities and towns to participate in that week of poetry. The fact of summoning a hundred poets was a feat never seen before, due to the ecumenical spirit that the festival had and the desire to bring together several generations of poets. Consecrated poets and Nobel Prize winners with young poets who had one or 2 published books, and at the same time giving space to popular and unpublished poets in the open microphone, which became very popular. So it seems to us that the experience of the festival was enormously significant.

The professor also told us about the creation of the Granada International Poetry Festival. Urbina recalls that «…in 2002 we began to have conversations as a group of poets who met at Blanca Castellón’s house, at Francisco de Asís Fernández’s house and at the Nicaraguan Writers’ Center, with the idea of holding a festival.» He acknowledged that the current president, Francisco de Asís Fernández, “was the ideal driving force to collect the necessary funds to carry out work like this. He has a great ability to convene different sectors of society and motivate them to help financially and with their efforts for the success of the festival; and he also had the ability to convene different levels of government and public administration, which are essential for the success of a festival like ours”.

Ortega-Murillo regime cancels the legal status of the Granada International Poetry Festival Foundation

The authoritarian regime of the presidential couple of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo have launched a swift and predatory offensive against civil society organizations in Nicaragua. It is estimated that, at present, the country’s National Assembly has outlawed more than 300 foundations and civil organizations of the most diverse kinds.

On May 18, it was the Festival’s turn along with eighty-odd other organizations. After this massive cancellation that he took with him to the Granada Festival, we asked Urbina what were the arguments for the closure of the Foundation by the legislative power? In response he told us:

Currently in Nicaragua no arguments are needed to cancel the legal status of an organization. We are living through an insane dictatorship that is capable of taking away the legal status of Operation Smile or the Nicaraguan Academy of Language. We are witnessing a process in which citizens are prevented from organizing in any possible way, because the only organization that is allowed is the one around dictators. We are living a very dark period of personality cult and blind obedience to the designs of the Supreme Couple. So there are no logical or legal arguments for the things that are happening in Nicaragua: the murder of mothers who are marching for their sacrificed children, the sniper fire from the stadium towers, and the constant siege on the homes and offices of human rights defenders have no logical or legal justification: it is the dictator’s law.