Published in Spanish in 1988, The Inhabited Woman has been translated into more than 20 languages, but French was long lacking. Through this cult novel, now published by Le Cherche Midi, the great Nicaraguan writer and poet Gioconda Belli looks back on her revolutionary years. In the 1970s, a young woman from the bourgeoisie, after studying in Europe, returns to her Central American country and joins a commando opposing the dictatorship. At the same time, she comes into contact with the spirit of an indigenous woman who had once opposed the Spanish colonizer.
During her youth, Gioconda Belli herself actively participated in the Sandinista revolution that overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in 1979. Ironically, she was introduced to the movement by Camilo Ortega, Daniel’s younger brother. [NDLR : président du Nicaragua de 1979 à 1990 puis depuis 2007]. After holding several official positions for the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSNL), she left politics in the second half of the 1980s, then left the Front in the early 1990s, in opposition to its leader Daniel Ortega. In 2018, Gioconda Belli criticized the Ortega regime’s repression of the popular protest movement. In 2023, like other opponents, she had her Nicaraguan nationality revoked, and had to go into exile in Madrid.
For L’Express, this tireless feminist fighter looks back on her career and describes an increasingly absurd dictatorship in the hands of a couple worthy of House of CardsDaniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. She also deplores the tragic “export” of the Cuban model to Nicaragua and Venezuela, which has long benefited from the blindness of the Western left. Interview.
L’Express: Why did you want to tell the story of your revolutionary years from a feminist point of view in this novel?
Gioconda Belli: The Inhabited Woman is the story of two women. The novel evokes two historical periods that are important to me: the 1970s and the colonial era. At school, we were taught a very romantic and idyllic version of colonization, when in fact it was a fierce struggle between the indigenous people and the Spanish conquistadors. And I wanted to tell the story of my own youth, during which I led a clandestine life within the Sandinista revolutionary movement. In Nicaragua, it is often said that revolt is in our roots. For me, there is a continuity between the opposition to colonialism and that to the Somoza dictatorship. [NDLR : famille qui régna de 1936 à 1979 sur le Nicaragua]. Through their struggles, my heroines also free themselves from the traditional role assigned to women. It is a double emancipation, one political, the other personal.
Nicaragua is never named in the book. There is only one town named Faguas…
Faguas is fire and water in Spanish. In Nicaragua we have volcanoes and lakes. I didn’t want to be limited by a specific historical period. I wanted to tell a story that applies to many countries in Latin America.
One of your characters quotes Che Guevara, who explained that in times of guerrilla warfare, women are perfect as cooks and messengers…
I wanted to demystify the image of the guerrilla (laughs). It’s funny how enthusiastic men are about making the revolution. But when it comes to their own behavior toward women, they are suddenly very conservative. The revolution, however, was a step forward for many women in Nicaragua, allowing us to free ourselves from many prejudices.
“Rosario Murillo really wants to create his own church”
Former revolutionary Daniel Ortega is now opposed to abortion…
This is crazy. Therapeutic abortion has been legal in Nicaragua since the 19th century. It is crazy to imagine that in the name of the Sandinista revolution, Ortega banned abortion, even therapeutic abortion, in 2008, all to win the favor of the Catholic Church and be reelected.
Like the heroine of the novel, you come from a wealthy family. Why did you get involved in the Sandinista revolution in the 1970s?
My grandfather was very rich. But my father, a “bastard”, did not inherit and had to build his own life. I grew up in a dictatorship. I saw the crimes of the Somoza regime. A young man who was playing baseball in my neighborhood was killed. That gives you a political conscience. During the holidays, I worked on a large farm, and I also witnessed the living conditions of the coffee pickers who slept crowded together. It was impossible not to see poverty and misery when you grew up in a country like Nicaragua.
So I ended up being convinced that an armed revolution was the only way to change things, because everything was locked down politically. It’s sad. Today, we see the same phenomenon happening again in Nicaragua, but also in Venezuela. For me, it was an even more difficult decision because I was already a mother, having had a daughter very young. But I told myself that I had to do it for her. I had to leave Nicaragua in 1975 because I was followed by the police. Like in the novel, I was involved in a commando and I knew that I had to leave. It was my first exile, and it was heartbreaking. I spent three years between Costa Rica and Mexico.
After the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSNL) came to power, you held official positions until 1986…
I was even the executive secretary of the first elections that took place in 1984. But then I wanted to return to literature. I couldn’t keep quiet. I told my boss, one of the “commander“, that I wanted to write this novel. Then I left the FSNL in 1994. When the Sandinistas lost the election in 1990, Daniel Ortega began his maneuvers to turn the Sandinista party into his own party. Today, Nicaragua is a dictatorship, but it all started in the early 1990s. I told myself that I had not fought for this in my youth. And like many, I left Sandinismo.
When Ortega returned to power in 2007, I started a blog to analyze what was happening. But after a few years, I gave up, thinking that there was nothing to be done against him, he controlled the country so much. In 2018, people revolted, and the repression began. Last year, the regime stripped me of my nationality, confiscated everything I owned. As with other opponents, my name was erased from the records. I am no longer studied in schools, my books have disappeared. Almost fifty years later, I have experienced a new exile. The myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus helped me a lot in this ordeal. It is the human condition to try, to fail and to try again. But you have to keep pushing the stone, even if it will fall back down the mountain. I deeply love Nicaragua, my country, it has been the source of my inspiration.
For several years, Ortega has been attacking the Catholic Church, his former ally…
The regime wants to control everything. And the priests criticized the repression of 2018. Above all, his wife Rosario Murillo, as I have been saying for years, really wants to create her own church. She is keen on esotericism and New Age. She is a very cruel person. She is much worse than Ortega.
Like you, Rosario Murillo is a poet…
(She cuts) We don’t do the same job at all.
Rosario Murillo is both the “first lady” and the vice president of the country…
It’s only in the series House of Cards that we see the same thing (laughs). Rosario Murillo gained a place in power by abandoning her own daughter. In 1998, she denounced her father-in-law Daniel Ortega for sexually abusing her. But Rosario Murillo supported Ortega, calling her daughter a liar. This gave her a strong political position. And she is the one who is taking power against an aging Ortega. She is driven by a desire for revenge and a feeling of hatred. For her, it is inconceivable that people would dare to defy them in 2018. She cannot forgive that.
“Nicaragua, Venezuela or Cuba have nothing more to do with left-wing values!”
Today, Nicaragua is truly a totalitarian dictatorship. They have suppressed all independent press. More than 200 journalists are in exile. The regime has closed all NGOs. Rosario Murillo has expelled all those who disagree with her, all the party leaders, the entire opposition. She calls all critics “vipers” or “demons”, in a mixture of voodoo and Catholicism.
Internationally, the regime is now allied with Russia, China, Iran…
It is sad when you think of all the sacrifices we made to end forty years of dictatorship. Ortega claims to act in the name of Sandinismo. But the party no longer exists, there is only him and Murillo. It is a deeply corrupt regime. We are seeing the same thing in Venezuela. These regimes “buy” the army and blackmail the military to ensure their support.
Aren’t all socialist or Marxist revolutions doomed to end in dictatorship? We have seen it in Cuba, Nicaragua and today in Venezuela…
I have thought a lot about this question. It is incredible to think that Cuba has exported a model of oppression that has failed dramatically to bring happiness and progress to its citizens. This regime that tolerates no dissenting opinion was “sold” to Nicaragua and Venezuela. Cuba actively advises and supports the Maduro and Ortega regimes. When I was young, I too believed in the Cuban revolution. But it led to tragedies. And today, the prospects for these countries seem very bleak. I hope there will be change, but it seems difficult.
Do you feel that you have enough support from the Western left?
Sometimes yes, sometimes not enough. In Europe, many are still attached to the idea that the regimes in power in Nicaragua, Venezuela or Cuba are left-wing. But that has nothing to do with left-wing values anymore! They are just very corrupt countries, increasingly conservative, and which make their populations pay a heavy price, in exchange for only a few social programs supposed to benefit the poor. Eight million people have left Venezuela. In Nicaragua, it is 1 million people, or one sixth of the population! The country depends on what these exiles send to their families. It is terrible. My hero on the left is Gabriel Boric, the Chilean president. Here is a social democrat who did not hesitate to harshly criticize Maduro, clearly describing his regime as a “dictatorship”.
Do you think you will ever see your country again?
I don’t know. But I’m not very optimistic. The day Ortega dies, there will probably be an opportunity to end the regime. But before that, I don’t see any possible change. The opposition in Nicaragua has been completely dismantled. Those who have had to leave the country no longer have any income, not even a pension, and they are deprived of their passports. Fortunately, Spain has been very generous with us.
The inhabited womanby Gioconda Belli, translated from Spanish by Anne Proenza. Le Cherche Midi, 504 p., €23.
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