Gioconda Belli

The Literary Revolutionary

For years she led a secret double life as wife and guerilla fighter in Nicaragua. Today, Gioconda Belli enjoys the fruits of literary success from her home in suburban Los Angeles.

Gioconda Belli's life is one of contradictions.

She is a mother of four and has smuggled weapons for the Sandinistas across the Nicaraguan border in the truck of her car. She grew up in a wealthy family in Managua and published daring erotic poetry at a time when that was still unheard of in conservative, catholic Nicaragua. She fought against the U.S.-backed Contras, but today lives in Los Angeles for most of the year.

And that's just the beginning.

Belli's unusual past has vaulted her to the status of role model for the feminist movement in Europe and the Americas. But that's not an image she is inclined to promote.

"I don't like people to think that I'm a heroine, you know? I am a normal person," says Belli. "I'm a human being who has had many moments of fear and weaknesses and who has had to overcome all of these things."

Belli indeed had to overcome countless obstacles before joining the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and finding her voice as a writer.

Many of the decisions that shaped Belli's earlier years were actually not her own. Born in 1948 in the Nicaraguan capital of Managua, Belli was sent to the United States for a degree in communication studies at a Philadelphia university. The daughter of an aristocratic catholic family in Nicaragua, Belli soon married a much older man.

"That's how I bumped into marriage at the age of 18," Belli has wryly remarked about that chapter in her life.

Finding her voice

But it didn't take long before the poet shifted from the passive to the active voice and took control of her own life. After her wedding, Belli began working in advertising, much to the dismay of her first husband, who would have preferred that she become a housewife and mother.

During that time, she also began a clandestine relationship with members of FSLN, also know simply as "Frente" (or front). The relationship marked a pivotal chapter in her life. Without her husband's knowledge, Belli worked for the underground "Frente" for five years and joined the guerillas in their effort to overthrow the regime of Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle.

Yet Belli didn't only experience a "private political revolution" during that time. Her writing also underwent great change. She was introduced to an elite circle of Central and South America's greatest writers, including Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez and Argentinian-Belgian writer Julio Cortázar. Eventually, Belli herself would enter into the same leagues as these writers and be counted among the Latin-American writers' hall of fame.

A revolutionary in war and literature

In 1974, Belli kick-started her literary career with a collection of poetry called On The Lawn. Veteran Nicaraguan poet José Coronel Urtecho praised Belli's collection, saying it marked no less than the beginning of "the liberation of Nicaraguan women."

Writing in an afterword to a second edition of On The Lawn, Urtecho declared Belli's book of poems a harbinger of the Nicaraguan revolution. "Belli herself and her poetry are not two but one, already part of the quintessence of the revolution," Urtecho wrote.

However, revolution for Belli also meant being uprooted and having to go into exile shortly after the publication of her first book of poetry. Together with her two young daughters, Melissa and Margam, she fled to Mexico and later to Costa Rica.

She left just in time. Only weeks after she safely arrived in Mexico, Nicaraguan secret police raided Belli's office. They arrested and tortured fellow Frente member Jacobo to find out Belli's whereabouts.

Unable to track her down and bring her back to Nicaragua, the government convicted Belli in absentia and sentenced her to seven years in prison. But owing to Jacobo's perseverance, Belli never had to serve any time when she returned to the country.