Cuadra, Pablo Antonio (1912–2002)

views updated

Cuadra, Pablo Antonio (1912–2002)

Pablo Antonio Cuadra (4 November 1912–2 January 2002), Nicaraguan poet, journalist, and director of the Nicaraguan Academy of Letters. Cuadra studied with the Jesuits and attended law school. At nineteen he co-founded the Vanguardia group and began his journalistic work. He edited and co-edited several publications, beginning with the Vanguardia (1931–1933) and ending with La Prensa, which he edited after the newspaper's founder and editor Pedro Joaquín Chamorro was assassinated by supporters of the Somoza regime in 1978.

Cuadra's poetry and political ideology grew together. He was a Sandinista who published his first book at twenty-two: Poemas nicaragüenses (1934), followed by Cuaderno del Sur (1934–1935), Hacia la cruz del sur (1936), and Canto temporal (1943). In the 1940s, away from Nicaragua, he wrote three essays: Breviario imperial (1940), Promisión de México (1945), and Entre la cruz y la espada (1946).

Back at home, La tierra prometida (1952) and Libro de horas (1954) appeared. Cuadra recorded his persecution after Somoza's assassination in América o el purgatorio (1955); he won important prizes in 1959 and 1964, and published Cantos de Cifar y del Mar Dulce (1971), Tierra que habla (1974), Esos rostros que asoman en la multitud (1976), Siete árboles contra el atardecer (1980), and Poesía selecta (1991).

The Sandinista government continued Cuadra's marginalization, closing La Prensa in 1986. Cuadra's international status grew, however. He lectured abroad, won Fulbright (1987) and Guggenheim (1989) fellowships, and published his Obra poética completa (1983–1989).