Songs of Cifar and the Sweet Sea

Pablo Antonio Cuadra (1912-2002) was a Nicaraguan essayist, critic, playwright, graphic artist and one of Nicaragua's most famous poets. In1931 he founded the Vanguardia literary movement with Jose Coronel Urtecho, Joaquin Pasos, and other writers. Cuadra's ground-breaking Poemas nicaraguenses [Nicaraguan Poems] was published in 1934. He opposed the American intervention against Augusto Cesar Sandino in the 1930s and broke with the dictatorial Somoza dynasty in the1940s. In 1954 he became co-director of La Prensa newspaper alongside his cousin and partner, Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Cardenal, who was later assassinated by Somoza supporters. Cuadra himself was jailed in 1956 for his opposition to the regime. In 1961 he became editor of the journal El Pez y La Serpiente [The Fish and the Serpent], which was influential throughout Latin America. Cuadra became an outspoken advocate for Nicaragua's poor, embracing liberation theology and other opinions regarded as subversive by the Somoza government. He later criticised the post-Sandinista National Liberation Front regime for stifling Nicaragua's culture and, for several years afterwards, lived in self-imposed exile in Costa Rica and Texas. His many literary honours included the Gabriela Mistral Inter-American Cultural Prize, awarded by the Organization of American States in 1991.