``I was thrown in his prisons and horribly tortured,'' said Roberto Zelaya Blanco, a Nicaraguan exile in Miami. ``I want people to know who he is. He ran the prisons during the worst time in our history, when people were tortured and executed and put in secret graves.''
Poet Francisco de Asis Fernandez Arellano admits he was director of the penal system -- from November 1979 through February 1980, he said -- but denies he ever hurt anyone.
``My poetry speaks of love and the human condition,'' Fernandez said in an interview Thursday from his home in Managua. ``If in any way I had even one death on my conscience, I couldn't stand up and read poetry.''
Fernandez is scheduled to speak at 10:30 a.m. Saturday in Room 3208 at Miami-Dade Community College's Wolfson Campus in downtown Miami. Members of the Association of Nicaraguan Ex-Political Prisoners plan to meet with Miami Police today to get a permit to picket Fernandez's participation, Zelaya said.
Book fair organizers said they were unaware of Fernandez's background until Zelaya sent them a letter earlier this week. Fernandez was invited to the book fair based on recommendations of other intellectuals and news clippings lauding his work, said Alejandro Rios, one of the organizers of the Spanish-language program.
``We were surprised to learn this,'' Rios said. ``We called Mr. Fernandez, told him about the concerns raised and gave him the choice of attending or not attending. He said he would like to attend.''
The book fair is not rescinding the invitation, Rios said.
Fernandez, 52, has published several volumes of poetry, including La sangre constante (The Constant Blood); En el cambio de estaciones (In the Change of Seasons); Pasion de la memoria (Passion of Memory) and Friso de la poesia, el amor y la muerte (Frieze of Poetry, Love and Death).
Fernandez was appointed to the position of director of the penal system at a time when the victorious Sandinista commanders were appointing intellectuals to head the country's institutions.
``There was all this romanticism about the Revolution,'' said Lino Hernandez, head of Nicaragua's independent Human Rights Commission. ``But it was also a hard time for prisoners who were tortured and assassinated by the newly created arms of the state security.''
Although he has investigated scores of human-rights violations, Hernandez said, he does not have any against Fernandez personally.
``I never even set foot in a prison,'' Fernandez said. ``My job was more ideological. I was working on a philosophy of what the penal system should be like. I was trying to create a system that would educate prisoners and put them to work in useful endeavors.''
Fernandez didn't last long in the job and was quickly replaced by someone who was much harsher, Hernandez said.
``He was seen as too soft,'' Hernandez said.
But that's not how Zelaya sees it.
He was an engineer in the state's electrical plant and a writer of political commentary for the newspaper Novedades when he was rounded up July 24, 1979, and thrown in prison.
Several of Fernandez's assistants in the penal system, Zelaya said, ``savagely tortured me, they handcuffed me and hung me from the ceiling until I fainted.
``Then they would throw cold water on me, hang me up again and start all over.''
His torturers were trying to get him to confess to having participated in the assassination of beloved opposition leader Pedro Joaquin Chamorro (husband of former president Violeta Chamorro), Zelaya said. He denies any involvement in the death.
``It's impossible, impossible'' that Fernandez did not know what was going on, Zelaya said.
Fernandez said those who criticize him don't know him.
``I am a respected poet in this country and a cultural adviser to the president,'' he said. ``I'm glad my time in the penal system was short, because a place that takes away freedoms is not the right ambience for a poet. And that is all I am, a poet who writes with love and humor.''
Copyright © 1997 The Miami Herald