'In Nicaragua, if a young person reads my poems, the police arrest them'

A Nicaraguan writer living in exile paints a stark picture of his homeland, describing it as a "cultural desert" devastated by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. He recounts how, in Nicaragua today, "if a police officer sees any young person reading my poetry collection, they are arrested." He characterizes the nation as a "republic of clandestine poets," where poetic words are a source of fear for the regime.

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If a police officer sees any young person reading my poetry collection, they are arrested!

The writer himself escaped the pervasive gang violence and poverty that plague his country, finding refuge in what he calls "the bread of culture." He shares a personal story of his mother's sacrifice, who left him at age five to come to Spain to clean stairs and pay for his education, ensuring he wouldn't become a sicario, a hitman. He grew up with his grandmother and his uncle Salvador, a hero of the 1979 Sandinista revolution who fought in the mountains against the "contra." His uncle, who lost a leg in a mine, would read poetry to his guerrilla group, instilling in the writer a deep love for verse.

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I cannot return, just like Sergio Ramírez and Gioconda Belli, Nicaraguan writers exiled in Spain: I venerate them.

"Nothing is more important than putting verse before barbarity," the writer says, a lesson from his uncle that has become his guiding principle. At twenty, he embarked on writing his latest poetry collection, "Cara de crimen" (Face of Crime), a work he says he "risked his life" to create. To capture the reality for his poems, he sought out sicarios, gang members, and drug traffickers in barrios, villages, and jungles across Central America, even coming face-to-face with a hitman who held a pistol to his heart.

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Nothing is more important than putting verse before barbarity.

He notes that Nicaragua, a country whose national hero is the poet Rubén Darío, now views poets as traitors. Writers like Sergio Ramírez and Gioconda Belli, also exiled in Spain, are venerated by him. The writer cannot return to Nicaragua himself, fearing arrest and imprisonment. He emphasizes that his uncle Salvador Corrales, who led the group "Los Cachorros," would read poetry to them every night in the mountains, a practice that deeply influenced him and solidified his belief in the power of words against violence.

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I risked my life to write 'Cara de crimen.'