Claribel Alegría Vides Quotes

The art and the reality is very difficult sometimes to reconcile, but also I don’t think that the poet have to be in an ivory tower just thinking beautiful thoughts, you know, when there are so much horrible in — ‘mid you, you know, outside you. And then I think you have to go and look at that and feel it and suffer with the others and make that suffering useful.

It’s wonderful to read what we have now, fantastic, but don’t forget the classics. They have all the riches in the world, and they help us a lot.

In essence, all poets contribute to writing the great endless poem.

I hope we go back into our Indian roots in the next century, bring them to the surface, study them. There is only an elite that knows of the great richness and wisdom in the Popol Vuh (The Book of the Dawn of Life), we are going to get as much from this as we do from our Spanish heritage.

What do I hope for this next century? That the human race thinks deeply and puts aside hate, that we end all discrimination.

I was a child, seven years old, when the 1932 massacre began. I carried it with me as a terrible wound. It wasn’t until years later that I decided to write Ashes of Izalcowith Bud in order to exercise myself from that time. Martinez won and he stayed in power until 1944 when our people ousted him. And then more dictators and more dictators until, we thought, This is it! We are going to be free. Look—we didn’t even win the revolution. Maybe I am stupid, because I am utopic, but I don’t think El Salvador will be the same even though our revolution didn’t win. The people aren’t going to be the same anymore. Something has happened. When I was writing Don’t Take Me Alive I interviewed many peasant women who told me they were never going to be as they were before. Now they know how to read and write, they know they are not inferior to men, they have done beautiful things right there with the guerrillas. It’s a step forward, and will help the other generations. I don’t think everything is lost. I don’t think El Salvador and Nicaragua are going to be what they were 20 years or 30 years ago.