Times were both wonderful and terrible. You were fighting all the time, you were really thinking the country was going to have a fantastic revolution… - Claribel Alegría Vides

poetry to me is something sacred. If you want to be a poet, it’s very difficult. You have to listen to that voice, follow that voice. Never put poetry to the service of anything. No! We are at the service of poetry, and you have to read a lot to feed off of other poets. You have to get fed by other poets, to write all the time, even if it’s one line a day. You have to be disciplined and humble.

I would love Central America to be one country. We are the same everywhere. We belong to this beautiful cosmic race and it is the cosmic race that is going to reign in this next century. It is the mixture of races that is so beautiful...We have to accept each other, if we mix fantastic. Why not? Not to make you marry someone that is not of your race; but if you want to, so what? I believe in the mixture. All of us have a gift to give. All of us.

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.