bjbjLULU GWEN IFILL: Finally tonight, one
of Latin America's most renowned, but also
controversial writers. Ray Suarez has our
profile. ERNESTO CARDENAL, poet (through translator):
"What's in a star? We are. All the elements
of our body and the planet were once in the
belly of a star. We are stardust." RAY SUAREZ:
At 86, Ernesto Cardenal is known as one of
Latin America's greatest living poets. ERNESTO
CARDENAL (through translator): "We are universal.
And after death, we will help to form other
stars and other galaxies. We come from the
stars, and to them, we shall return." RAY
SUAREZ: His recent work reflects on humanity's
connection to nature and relationship to the
universe. But even in his later years, Cardenal
doesn't shy away from politics, or controversy,
in his life or his writing. ERNESTO CARDENAL
(through translator): "Cell phone. You talk
on your cell phone and talk and talk and laugh
into your cell phone, never knowing how it
was made and much less how it works. But what
does that matter? Trouble is, you don't know,
just as I didn't. Many people die in the Congo,
thousands upon thousands for that cell phone.
They die in the Congo." RAY SUAREZ: Ernesto
Cardenal was born and raised in Nicaragua.
He left the country in the 1950s to study
in Kentucky with the famed poet-priest Thomas
Merton. When Cardenal later returned home,
he was ordained a Catholic priest, and quickly
resumed his political activism. A committed
Marxist, Cardenal championed the Sandinista
revolution in Nicaragua. When the revolution
seized power in the late 1970s, Cardenal became
the government's first cultural minister.
It was that post that famously drew condemnation
from Pope John Paul II, who publicly scolded
Cardenal when he visited Nicaragua. The confrontation
resulted in Cardenal losing his privileges
as a Catholic priest. Later, Cardenal left
the government and the Sandinista Party, opposing
the leadership of Daniel Ortega. We recently
spoke with Ernesto Cardenal while he was visiting
the U.S. at the Poets House in New York. We
spoke about his life and work, looking back
to the early days of Augusto Sandino's rebellion
against the United States in the early 20th
century. Sandino's guerrilla war against the
U.S. made him a symbol of resistance in Latin
America. Sandino was assassinated in 1934
by Gen. Anastasio Somoza Garcia, whose family
went on to rule Nicaragua for another 40 years.
His son's government was later overthrown
by a revolution that took on Sandino's name.
ERNESTO CARDENAL (through translator): Well,
I was about 6 years old when Sandino was murdered
by Somoza -- 7 years old. But later, and once
dead, a movement in favor of Sandino began.
As a young man, I participated in the resurrection
of the figure of Sandino that was taking place
in Nicaragua, and later appeared a political
movement, the Sandinist, which was a guerrilla
in the mountain with the emblem of Sandino,
with Sandino's flag. I also participated in
that Sandinist revolution of the '80s and
in its government. But now I am in the Sandinist
opposition of the present government, who
calls itself Sandinista, but which is not.
It is the betrayal of the Sandinist movement.
RAY SUAREZ: After you left government, and
after you parted ways with the party, were
your powers as a priest restored, your -- were
you able to carry out your priestly responsibilities
again in the eyes of the Vatican? ERNESTO
CARDENAL (through translator): No. I was sanctioned
by the Vatican for being a priest with a position
in the government, along with other priests
who also had them. But I have not wanted them
to give me back the sacrament administration,
because I didn't become a priest to administer
sacraments. For me, it wasn't important. It
was rather unpleasant. Performing baptisms,
marriages and all the pastoral and sacramental
exercises wasn't my vocation. My vocation
was contemplative, and I always exercised
the priesthood in a contemplative manner,
and, like a poet, delivering my message, my
sermons in my poems. "Praise the lord in the
cosmos, his sanctuary, the radius of a hundred
thousand million light years. Praise him through
the stars and the interstellar spaces. Praise
him for the galaxies and the intergalactic
spaces. Praise him for the atoms and the interatomic
voids." RAY SUAREZ: You have been writing
a long time. When you look back at your older
work, is it like your children, you love them
all equally? Or do you look back at an older
poem and say, oh, how naive, or, what was
I thinking then? ERNESTO CARDENAL (through
translator): Naturally, one always evolves.
As time passes by, one can see that one can
do better what was done before. Sometimes,
I correct what was done. Other times, it has
to stay like it, because there is no way you
can correct it. My favorite poem is always
the one I wrote last. After a while, I stop
liking it, and then I can do something new.
If one sticks with what is already done, one
cannot move forward. That's it. RAY SUAREZ:
And the new work, does it come from new thinking
about the world, new thinking about life?
ERNESTO CARDENAL (through translator): Yes.
In the first place, one matures, and can write
about things one couldn't before. One couldn't
get poetry out of this theme or this situation.
And later, you can do it because you have
more technical ability to do it. Now I can
do easily things that were impossible for
me to do when I was younger. That also happens
to painters, I guess, and to all artists and
creators. Even politicians mature and become,
perhaps, more astute or more cunning. "Evolution
unites us all, the living and the dead. Darwin
discovered it, that we come from a single
cell, that we are interlinked. If one rises
from the dead, we all rise from the dead."
GWEN IFILL: That was poet Ernesto Cardenal
reading from his book "Pluriverse." You can
watch him read more of his poetry on our website.
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Latin America's most renowned, but also controversial
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