The world-famous writer, is one of the sharpest critics of Daniel Ortega, President of Nicaragua. Now Gioconda Belli has been with the Hermann Kesten prize of the German PEN center awarded.
Could you take a look at the calendar of the Nicaraguan writer Gioconda Belli – you would certainly be surprised about the many events. At the beginning of October, she took part at the renowned journalists, festival Gabriel García Márquez in Colombia, then saw you on a Panel on the topic of “violence in Latin America” in Madrid, a few days later, she spoke publicly about feminism. Then she took in Madrid a literary prize, and promoted still in between readings for her new novel “Las fiebres de la memoria”. This Thursday (15.11.) it has now, contrary to the Darmstadt state theatre, the Hermann-Kesten prize of the German PEN-center.
Gioconda Belli with her new novel “Las fiebres de la memoria”
The Kesten award recognizes annually the so-called “Writers in Prison”-day personalities who, in a special way for persecuted and imprisoned writers and journalists. Among the previous winners Günter Grass, Anna Politkovskaya, and Liu Xiaobo. The award for Gioconda Belli is consistent, as the writer has been engaged for decades for the rights of women and for social justice.
Gioconda Belli, 1948 in Managua, was born and grew up in a wealthy environment. In the seventies, she joined the Sandinista liberation front (FSLN), a left revolutionary party, which made the Regime of the dictator Anastasio Somoza political and later armed resistance. In these politically turbulent years, Belli began writing her first poems. She supported the FSLN as a secret message messenger, as well as propaganda on travel in Latin America and Europe. As it was in Nicaragua to dangerous for her, she went into exile to Mexico and later to Costa Rica. In 1976, she was sentenced by a court for subversive activities in absence to seven years in prison.
A writer of world-class
The book of poems “youth” and the novel “If you want to love me” by Gioconda Belli
In 1979, shortly before the fall of the Somoza regime, returned Belli in your home country and the political education and her literary career. Her first novel, “the Inhabited woman”, in 1988, published, was a bestseller the world and sold in Germany in million edition. Belli is one of the internationally best-known women writers in Latin America. Several awards, her work has been translated and awarded in more than fourteen languages.
Of the policy and the critical view on the changes in your home country, Belli could never quite. To los said at the beginning of the 90s, you will be disappointed by the Sandinistas. Her former comrade-in-arms, Daniel Ortega, after the fall of the Somoza regime, the head of the Sandinista government junta, and the first elected President of Nicaragua, formed the FSLN and the Instrument of his always more authoritarian in order to quest for power. From 1985 to 1990, Ortega was President. In 2006, he was elected finally. Since his second arrival, he has already confirmed two more times in the office, the last in 2016.
Commitment to social justice
For your Beliefs a: Gioconda Belli 2013 at the “Hay Festival” in Cartagena, Colombia
Gioconda Belli described the increasingly authoritarian and narcissistic style of leadership of Daniel Ortega in Interviews, initially, somewhat mockingly, as “Danielismo”. However, with the outbreak of the bloody unrest in April 2018 has intensified Bellis criticism of the situation in Nicaragua. “I never thought I would live to see a dictatorship in Nicaragua,” she said in a recent Interview in the Spanish newspaper El País.
In an Interview with DW in July 2018, it called on Ortega to end the Repression and call for early elections to agree. “We have never seen in the history of our country, such a Repression against an unarmed people. This is not really the Ideals of the Sandinista Revolution. Daniel Ortega has destroyed the legacy of this Revolution long ago, and the darkest Chapter now writes in the history of the Sandinista liberation front,” she said to the DW.
She is tireless with 69 years on the road. Almost like back in the seventies, it advertises in Europe and Latin America for a socially-just and free Nicaragua, in which the people, without fear of their government can live. For real Revolutionaries, the fight seems to end never.