Poems from Lenca lands. Danilo Vásquez

 Original poetry © Danilo Vásquez

Introduction, pictures and translation from Spanish © Christián González Reyes

If you prefer to read the PDF, please click HERE

Danilo Vásquez (b. 1960) is a Lenca poet and teacher who was born in San Miguel, El Salvador. He received a Bachelor’s in Literature from the University of El Salvador. He resides in Santa Rosa de Lima where he teaches language and literature at Centro Escolar Centroamericana. His published writings include: El diablo en Santa Rosa de Lima (1987), Náuseas de Lemas y Dilemas (1988), Adiós a un ideal (1989), Cuentos de Santa Rosa de Lima (1989), Mamá abuela (1990), Cuando la luna llena (1992), Fragmentos de un sueño (1998), Cuba…una sílaba tras otra (1999), and Cuadernos lencas taulepas (2016).

The poems I have chosen to translate come from various places, such as his poemario Cuando la luna llena (1992) and Cuadernos lencas Taulepa (2016). For this reason, I have decided to “name” the following group of translated work “Poems from Lenca lands.” I have included the original poems in Spanish so readers are able to consult either the original or my translations into English. In his poems, readers will find an array of themes and ideals, many of which speak to a trans-American and Lenca experience.

Danilo Vásquez’s work has gone unnoticed by many readers and writers, which is of no surprise given the peripheral status that Central American authors have been afforded within Latin American literary and publishing spaces, as well as World Literature more generally. Amidst this reality, many Indigenous writers from Central America and Abya Yala have found ways to disperse their work in and outside of Latin America, particularly through Indigenous-led writing collectives and the Internet’s ability to connect millions of people across time and space. In Danilo’s case, much of his work is no longer under (physical) circulation, so the Internet has been an important avenue for the circulation of his poems from Lenca lands. He has turned to sites such as Instagram, Facebook, Scribd, and Twitter, among many others, in order to share his poetics with readers like us. 

In Danilo’s work, readers will find the maneuvers and beauty that he deploys through his use of the Spanish language. As many Indigenous scholars and artists have pointed out, even though we produce in colonial languages, such as Spanish and English, we have made them our own, ultimately Indigenizing the languages. In deploying Spanish, Danilo is able to capture the tensions and beauty found currently in Lenca lands in order to advocate for and to convey the contributions Lenca writers have to the world of literature. In the poems I have included, Danilo’s words speak historically and culturally to a post-bellum El Salvador and the legacy of colonial violence found on Lenca lands, lands that are divided by what today are known as El Salvador and Honduras. The poems the reader will find below are filled with Lenca cosmovisions as well as preoccupations with international and transnational struggles and solidarity efforts. These culminate in a tapestry of Lenca words that seek to build connections across time and space with non-Lenca and Lenca peoples alike.

Lastly, I would like to dedicate these translations to Berta Cáceres, a Lenca activist who was murdered in Honduras for advocating for Mother Earth and for Lenca and Indigenous rights and autonomy. She was taken from us too soon, a decade ago on March 3, 2016. Danilo Vásquez has a poem on her power and sacrifice, titled “A Bertha Cáceres,” where he recounts how the Lenka people will keep fighting against the material injustices perpetrated by the nation-states that occupy Lenka lands (Honduras and El Salvador). In conversation with Danilo, he told me the following about her: “La magia y el amor de una incansable luchadora manifestado en su aguerrida lucha. Berta es el atavismo genealógico de las guerreras Comizahuales” (25 Jan 2026 via Whatsapp).  Abrazos.

A Poem for Berta Cáceres

March 3, 2016

From Cuadernos lencas Taulepa (2016)

English translation originally published in Latin American Literature Today (2026) 

We grieve for Honduras

Like the twin sister

Who suffers at the same time as the heart

We grieve

Because we carry a sea of blood that unifies us

Because for every thorn that wounds us

Grandparents

parents

And siblings bleed.

It breaks our soul

To know that foreign gunpowder

Keeps exploding in our mountains

Cowards

Murderers

How dare they spill our blood

Murderers

Forever dammed 

The blood that dyed red

Our rivers wasn’t enough for them

Did they really think that the children of Manawana Lempira

won’t raise their spears?

Our arrows will be poisoned with dignity

With decorum

To combat the grim and crude invader

All the fury of the confederation

All the strategy and tactics

Will be felt in the vengeance for our spilled blood

Our fallen, heroic siblings

will be avenged one by one

The fight begins

The combativeness of the glorious Lenca will be felt

Even in the rotten and dirty bones of the transnationals.

From Cuando la luna llena (1992) 

MONDAY 

The rain has already washed the horizon 

The night covers the earth with her cloth 

A cricket sings desperate songs 

An out-of-tune rooster plays along with him 

Slowly the moon walks 

Without knowing where to. 

THURSDAY

And I will keep living 

In each of the sun’s marimbazos *  

Picking up the lost lights 

Shaping the faces of the past 

Walking hand in hand 

With my existential dread

Crashing my full moon voice

Spilling the aged wine 

On the comal of a dark town. **

~~~

* The Central-American marimba is a melodic percussion wooden instrument.

** The comal is a Central-American rounded earthenwear griddle where tortillas are cooked.

JANUARY 

The words arrived

On old paper 

And one syllable after another 

Washed the antihistorical retina 

And in the wide sky 

The sea reflected an island 

The path was named utopia 

And hope walked 

hand in hand with happiness 

And a respectable and courageous people 

That exists beyond the sea 

Shouted at my heart 

Two fiery syllables 

CU-BA 

JULY 

I sense a decline 

Like a bird 

That loses its wings 

After so much flying. 

I picture a kid 

Sitting at the bank 

Of a river that was yesterday. 

And I see a shadow 

On the leaf of a tree 

That was also yesterday. 

Even so  

I have the pleasure of the word and the smile.

Even if sometimes I feel 

That they slip away from me 

Like the shadow of what I was yesterday.

OCTOBER  

I return and can’t find yesterday 

Today 

Tomorrow 

Not even a single year

I look for 

One syllable after another 

Daring 

Lucid 

That spread 

Liberty 

Justice 

Democracy 

And beyond the sea 

The Pope prays in Havana 

And Cuba goes on 

And lives 

And will live forever.

NOVEMBER  

Once 

Upon a midnight 

Liberty leaned out 

Dressed up in daydreams. 

Wrapped up on her horse 

She rode through the grey forests 

She opened grooves

Paths 

And roads 

That no one has traversed. 

The route was so steep 

That the night turned into 

A long, long voyage. 

Reality’s light 

Kept awake consciousness’s dark cloak.

Stunned and a sleepwalker 

And with the light on 

I understood that life 

Was a nightmare

Dressed up in daydreams 

And that liberty was a horse 

Full of grooves, paths, and roads. 

DECEMBER  

And in the goodbyes of a dream 

I will pour out the water from my eyes 

In order to wash the land of my ancestors. 

I will open the door of the world 

In order to draw songs 

on the distant horizon of your life 

And at the end of endings 

Like the gazes 

The words 

The rivers 

The hills 

And like old fields 

I must also wither away. 

For more about Danilo Vásquez

• @poetadanilovasquez
• Danilo Vásquez as guest-speaker at Manzanita School, California. 
• “Cuadernos lenkas”, El Escarabajo, 2026. 

For more about the translator

Original poetry © Danilo Vásquez

Introduction and translation from Spanish by Christián González Reyes ~

Siwar Mayu, March 2026