Reverend Father Ernesto Cardenal Martínez was a Nicaraguan Catholic priest, poet, and politician. He was a liberation theologian and the founder of the primitivist art community in the Solentiname Islands, where he lived for more than ten years (1965–1977). A former member of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas (he left the party in the early 1990s), he was Nicaragua's minister of culture from 1979 to 1987.His earlier poems focused on life and love. However, some works, such as "Zero Hour," had a direct correlation to his Marxist political ideas, being tied to the assassination of guerrilla leader Augusto César Sandino.