Abstract
Ernesto Cardenal is Nicaragua's leading poet as well as being a priest committed to social change. Until October 1977 he lived on the island of Mancarron in the Solentiname archipelago in the Lake of Nicaragua, where he had organised a community among the local peasants. In that month he was accused by the authorities of instigating an uprising in neighbouring San Carlos, in which members of the Sandinista Liberation Front and government troops clashed. A warrant for Cardenal's arrest was issued in November 1977, and he went into exile in Costa Rica. The Nicaraguan National Guard meanwhile occupied the island, transforming the small local church into a prison. They destroyed all the handicraft workshops of the community as well as Cardenal's library and home. The members of the Solentiname community, like Cardenal himself, who used to be a pacifist, have now dedicated themselves to the revolutionary struggle in Nicaragua.