Ramírez Mercado, Sergio (1942–)

Sergio Ramírez Mercado is a Nicaraguan writer who served as vice president of Nicaragua from 1984 to 1990 in the Sandinista government. In the early twenty-first century Ramírez is a harsh critic of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (Sandinista National Liberation Front, FSLN). He was born in the town of Masatepe, where his father was a coffee planter and a member of the Somoza family's National Liberal Party. Ramírez helped form the Student Revolutionary Front in 1961 while at the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua. In 1964 he started a literary career with the journal Ventana. He attended the University of Kansas and studied in West Berlin between 1972 and 1975. He went to Costa Rica to serve on the Central American Council of Universities. There he completed an essay about the Nicaraguan revolutionary Augusto César Sandino that appeared in a collection on Sandino's life and thought. In 1988 Ramírez revitalized his literary career with his most celebrated novel Castigo Divino (Divine punishment).

After the FSLN's electoral defeat in February 1990, Ramírez joined the Sandinista National Directorate. However, powerful Sandinista commanders expelled him in July 1994 due to serious disagreements about the future of the revolutionary movement. He founded the dissident Movimiento de Renovación Sandinista (Sandinista Renewal Movement) in 1995. Since that time, he has published several award-winning novels and short stories and a memoir of his revolutionary experiences. Though he no longer runs as a candidate for national political office, he maintains an active role in the Sandinista renewal movement.

See alsoNicaragua, Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN); Sandino, Augusto César; Somoza Debayle, Anastasio.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ramírez, Sergio. Castigo Divino. Madrid: Mondadori, 1988.

Ramírez, Sergio. Margarita, está linda la mar. Madrid: Alfaguara, 1998.

Ramírez, Sergio. Adiós Muchachos: Una Memoria de la revolución sandinista. México City: El País; Madrid: Aguilar, 1999.

Ramírez, Sergio. "La revolución que no fue." La Jornada (México City), July 18, 2004.

Ramírez, Sergio, ed. El pensamiento vivo de Sandino. San José, Costa Rica: EDUCA, 1975; Managua: Editorial Nueva Nicaragua, 1984.

                                      Mark Everingham