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Zamora (Daisy) Papers
BANC MSS 2010/254
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Contributing Institution:
The Bancroft Library
Title: Daisy Zamora papers
Creator:
Zamora, Daisy.
Identifier/Call Number: BANC MSS 2010/254
Physical Description:
11 linear feet
(6 cartons, 4 flat boxes, 1 box)
Physical Description:
15 sound cassettes
Date (inclusive): 1958-2005
Abstract: The Daisy Zamora papers document the life and work of a central figure in Nicaraguan poetry, politics, and feminism. The
papers include Zamora's personal and professional correspondence, poetic and political writings, documents of her time in
the FSLN (National Sandinista Liberation Front) in the time leading up to the 1979 revolution and in the subsequent decade
of Sandinista rule, and the literary and political writings of many other notable figures.
Physical Location: Many of the Bancroft Library collections are stored offsite and advance notice may be required for use. For current information
on the location of these materials, please consult the Library's online catalog.
Language of Material: Materials are in Spanish and English.
Collection is open for research.
Original archival audiovisual materials are restricted due to fragility. Audio cassette tapes have not yet been digitized.
Digital acess copies are currently in progress. Once the materials have been digitized, researchers will be provided with
instructions to view materials.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The Daisy Zamora papers were donated to The Bancroft Library by Burton Weiss in 2010.
Arranged mostly to the file level, in some instances arranged to the item level.
Daisy Zamora (born 1950) is a contemporary Nicaraguan poet, political activist, feminist, and teacher, currently living in
California.
Zamora was born to a well-off family in Managua, the capital city of Nicaragua. After obtaining a degree in psychology, Zamora
became involved in 1973 with the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), an insurrectionist party with a nationalist,
Marxist ideology fighting a guerrilla war against the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. As a Sandinista combatant,
Zamora was involved in the planning of a major victory when, in August 1978, the FSLN captured the National Palace of Nicaragua
with the government in session and took thousands of hostages. During the next year of battle between the Somoza regime and
the FSLN and its militant base of workers, peasants, and students, Zamora and other prominent Sandinistas were forced into
exile, spending time in Honduras, Panama, and Costa Rica. Zamora became the program director for, and voice of, the FSLN's
then-underground radio station, Radio Sandino.
The fall of the dictatorship came when Somoza fled the country on July 17, leaving the FSLN to take power on July 19, 1979.
In the new Sandinista government, Zamora became the Vice Minister of Culture alongside the Minister of Culture, Ernesto Cardenal,
a poet and Catholic priest. The Ministry of Culture promoted a widespread literacy initiative and supported cultural programs
related to Nicaraguan art, literature, theater, dance, and education.
Zamora's own poetry written before, during, and after the Revolution relates to politics, feminism, human rights, and Nicaraguan
and Central American culture and history. She has written many books of poetry in Spanish and English, including Riverbed
of Memory, Clean Slate, Life for Each, La Violenta Espuma [The Violent Foam], Fiel al Corazón [True to the Heart], and El
Encuentro Absoluto [The Absolute Encounter]. Zamora was the editor of the first anthology of Nicaraguan women poets, La Mujer
Nicaragüense en la Poesía [The Nicaraguan Woman in Poetry]. She has also been included in the City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology,
a collection of works by poets published in the legendary Pocket Poets series. She is the author of many political essays
and articles.
After a turbulent, war-torn decade in power, the FSLN was voted out in a 1990 election. Zamora and many other prominent Sandinistas
left the party due to internal divisions and disagreements with Daniel Ortega, the head of the FSLN. In 1995, Zamora joined
with a group of Sandinistas led by Sergio Ramírez to found the Sandinista Renovation Movement, a reform faction of the party.
Under the current government led by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, Zamora is again in exile and has been unable to return
to Nicaragua since 2020.
Beginning in 1990, Zamora taught literature, art history, culture, and poetry at universities in Nicaragua and the United
States, including Central American University in Managua, University of California, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco State University.
Zamora is married to the writer George Evans, who is himself a poet, as well as the translator of several of Zamora's works,
and the founder and editor of Streetfare Journal, a long-running public literature and arts project.
[Identification of item], The Daisy Zamora papers, BANC MSS 2010/254, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Processed by Bancroft Library staff in 2024 as part of a Mellon Foundation-funded grant to process archival collections relating
to 20th-century women poets. Processed at Level 4. Collections processed at Level 4 are provided with a collection level description
and a mixed-level (mostly file-level) container listing.
George Evans papers, circa 1970-2003 (BANC MSS 2010/255)
Streetfare Journal records, approximately 1984-1997 (BANC MSS 2010/256)
José Dolores Gámez papers (BANC MSS 2011/161)
The Daisy Zamora papers include correspondence, poetry and prose writings, documents, periodicals, and ephemera related to
political, literary, cultural, and feminist activities, and writings by other figures associated with Zamora. The bulk of
the collection relates to Zamora's time as a combatant in the FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front) leading up to the
1979 revolution, her subsequent tenure as the Vice Minister of Culture in the new government, her work on women's rights and
feminism, and her own literary output and career as a poet.
The collection has been divided into three series: Correspondence, Writings, and Political Materials.
The Correspondence series includes manuscript correspondence, typescript correspondence, and printed email correspondence.
The bulk of the series consists of incoming correspondence, but folders in this series also contain outgoing correspondence
and other related materials. Zamora's correspondents include other Nicaraguan writers such as Ernesto Cardenal, Vidaluz Meneses,
Gioconda Belli, Sergio Ramírez, Julio Valle Castillo, and Claribel Alegría. Writers working elsewhere in Latin America and
in the United States represented in Zamora's correspondence include Margaret Randall, Marjorie Agosín, Lawrence Ferlinghetti,
and Anselm Hollo.
Zamora's writings in the collection begin with early poetry dating back to her childhood in the late 1950s. Zamora's teenage
writings and artworks are included in several issues of The Herald, a magazine produced by her classmates at Colegio Teresiano
in Managua; a classmate represented alongside Zamora in these magazines is Nora Astorga, who was herself to become a notable
Sandinista. Later writings include Zamora's poetry and prose manuscripts and typescripts, including drafts of unpublished
poetry collections and published works like La Violenta Espuma [The Violent Foam] and Fiel al Corazón [True to the Heart].
Also among Zamora's writings are academic writings and research, many on topics related to Central American history, culture,
and literature. Zamora's writings published in periodicals, anthologies, and other printed works are included in journals,
clippings, and copies of a variety of sources.
The Writings series also includes profiles of and interviews with Zamora, as well as a large amount of publicity, clippings,
and ephemera relating to Zamora's literary output and career, including reading flyers, book reviews, press, clippings, and
other materials related to Zamora's writings and readings.
Also included in the Writings series are literary writings by other writers from throughout the Americas, including June Beer,
Eduardo Galeano, Claudia Bernardi, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Vidaluz Meneses, Jorge Narváez (a possible
pseudonym of Subcomandante Marcos), Jorge Luis Oviedo, Margaret Randall, and Julio Valle-Castillo.
The Political Materials series includes materials related to Zamora's time as a combatant in the FSLN and as the voice of
the underground Radio Sandino leading up to the 1979 revolution, her subsequent tenure as the Vice Minister of Culture in
the new government, her other departmental and party work during her time in the Sandinista government, her subsequent involvement
with the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) party, and her work on women's rights and feminism during and after this time.
Materials related to the FSLN insurgency during the rule of Anastasio Somoza Debayle include FSLN party literature and news
clippings beginning in 1974. Memos, notes, bills, and other materials document Zamora's involvement in the months leading
up to the Sandinista triumph in July 1979. Also included in Zamora's papers are correspondence, internal and external documents,
and party literature documenting the early days of the new government, with a particular emphasis on documents related to
the literacy campaign instituted across Nicaragua by the FSLN. Also included in this series is a collection of newspapers
from the early days and months of the Revolution. The collection begins with the first issue of Barricada, the official newspaper
of the FSLN, published on July 25, 1979, and includes many other issues of Barricada from July and August of that year.
Materials related to Zamora's time as the Vice Minister of Culture, alongside Minister of Culture Ernesto Cardenal, include
clippings and ephemera related to theater, dance, poetry, and other arts programs sponsored and promoted by the department,
periodicals and literature published by Popular Culture Centers, and correspondence and other internal departmental business.
Also included are 20 issues (the complete run) of Poesía Libre, the Ministry of Culture's literary magazine, and 14 issues
(of an unknown total run) of Nicaráuac, the Ministry of Culture's general magazine.
Zamora's work with the Departamento de Relaciones Internacionales (DRI) and the Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas y
Sociales (INIES) during her time in the Sandinista government is represented by documents and correspondence. Also included
are materials related to the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS), officially founded in 1995 in a split from the FSLN leadership
of Daniel Ortega, led by Sergio Ramírez and other prominent Sandinistas including Zamora; these materials date back to 1992
and cover the initial years of the MRS.
Materials related to Zamora's work in the areas of women's rights and feminism cover much of her political and literary career.
Documents include published reports, papers, and books, as well as manuscripts, typescripts, and memos that relate to women's
rights in Nicaragua and throughout Central America, the women's movement more generally, and the intersection of feminism
and Zamora's literary career.
The collection also includes fourteen audio cassette recordings of Zamora speaking on the underground Radio Sandino from May
1979 through July 1979, in the months and days leading up to the FSLN victory.
Some materials in these collections may be protected by the U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.). In addition, the reproduction
of some materials may be restricted by terms of University of California gift or purchase agreements, donor restrictions,
privacy and publicity rights, licensing and trademarks. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond
that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be
commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owner. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user.
For additional information about the University of California, Berkeley Library's permissions policy please see: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/about/permissions-policies.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional
Nicaragua -- Politics and government -- 1979-1990.
Nicaragua
Poetry
Central America
Central American poetry
Women poets, Nicaraguan
Poets, Latin American