Pablo Antonio Cuadra

Pablo Antonio Cuadra 1912-2002, Nicaraguan poet, b. Managua. Early in life, Cuadra became a member of the Vanguard literary movement and edited (1929) its journal. Influenced by Rubén Darío and preoccupied with the identity of Nicaragua and its people as well as of Latin America as a whole, he often treated these themes in his poetry, e.g., Poemas nicaraguenses [Nicaraguan poems] (1933). Active politically, Cuadra broke with the Somoza dictatorship in the 1940s, adopted liberation theology, and became a vocal supporter of Nicaragua's poor and oppressed. He was co-director of La Prensa newspaper in the 1950s and in 1961 became editor of the influential journal El Pez y La Serpiente [the fish and the serpent]. Cuadra went into self-imposed exile during the Sandinista regime, returning after its fall. Little of his verse is available in English translation except for the collection The Birth of the Sun: Selected Poems, 1935-1985 (1988). The versatile Cuadra was also an essayist, critic, playwright, and graphic artist.