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Editor, The Nicaraguan Academic Journal Ave Maria College of the Americas
Pulp History : Scraps and Shreds and Serendipty first steps towards an oral history project in Nicaragua The fact that I arrived in Nicaragua only a few months previous, clearly prevents me from knowing first-hand and in detail the history of the region. One might well smile and observe that several decades residence, perhaps even a lifetime, in the region, would be insufficient to equip one to expatiate on events and forces and directions that have gone to form the region—a region that has suffered and revealed and suppressed as much as has Nicaragua, since its rise from the ocean floor to become el paseo pantera, and to become as well as a conduit both serving and served by the two Americas that lie at its south and north porches. And yet, since most history is at best second-hand information, hearsay, let us term it, I have found a way to accelerate and compress my time "in country" and thus, in some sense at least, to obviate my ignorance. Nothing really new in this. My method has been simply to set myself deliberately about the task of meeting and talking with the most interesting and/or knowledgeable oral historians discoverable in the course of my wanderings from the Bay Islands north, to Bluefields and Managua in the center, and on then to Panama here in the south, the venue of our present convocation. In the course of my search I have come across a congeries of former ambassadors, political scientists, and priests; witches and hunters and gatherers—but perhaps I repeat myself. Even in a period of time as brief as that which is measured in months, such as has been my sojourn along the isthmus, a considerable body of raw data and anecdote might be amassed. My intention, however, is not to recount at length ad nauseum, ad infinitum, the various tales and wonders and impossibilities that have passed my way in the course of this short intrusion into Nicaragua. What I wish instead is to draw together what has emerged from one rather particular encounter with a very particular individual and to accord, if that is the proper term, that encounter with a scene from Cervantes' Don Quixote. During a discussion with a certain Carlos Schmidt one evening in Managua, as I listened to his accounts of gun-running along the Bay Island crescent, of a lost convent in the Sebaco region, of unrecorded petroglyphs along a box canyon running south out of Carazo, of Sandinista corruption and construction, of Somoza-era monkey marketeering and a dozen other events and quasi-events in the Central American panorama, I was struck by the breadth and complexity of what he told me. Astonished, I challenged him to effect a sort of synthesis. "While you can tell this multiplicity of tales, I can't but wonder if you have any way to make them hang together, the way history hangs together," I threw his way. "Well," he responded, then paused for a few seconds, apparently choosing his words with some care, "of course. I can only take my cue from a better. Have you read the story of the grand Biscayan?" he finished off. "Well, yes, if you mean Cervantes' story, I have read it, but so long ago that none of it remains." "Well then, you must. Before I can comply with your request for a synthesis, you'll have to take the time to read carefully through the two chapters that comprise the story. Go find Don Quixote, then read chapters 8 and 9. Give me a call, and we'll get together again for this so-called synthesizing vision you wish to have." Some two weeks further on, having read the story and reported my progress to Carlos Schmidt, he agreed to sit with me and, in the course of a more or less informal interview, provide me with certain insights about the processes of Latin American history, Nicaraguan in particular. It became clear in the course of my discussions with Dr. Schmidt, that an understanding of Central American history, though it certainly thrives in the rich soil of facts, as is true with most other regional histories, nevertheless requires, in order to achieve fullness and its proper complexity, a narratological analysis, an "event-centered" analysis, as well as a meandering, unpredictable, non-logical, "oral" component. Such a narratological structure becomes manifest in Dr. Schmidt's lucubrations. His insistence that I first read Cervantes' account of the Biscayan provided the narratological model for coming to grips with Central American history. Without detailing the niceties of the model, I will note that the "events" Cervantes uses to comprise his-story are found entirely fortuitously as "the author" passes an indolent day in Toledo. All the facts come precisely from the trash heap. He says:
Cervantes, with great good humor and farseeing wisdom, here shows us history in its most fundamental making, or perhaps "fabrication" is a better term. But what can this have to do with "real" history, one wants to ask. One does not find history in the scrapheap. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Let us see what emerges from the words of Dr. Schmidt. Here then follows my first step in initiating an oral history project in Nicaragua—the distillation of a series of interviews with Dr. Carlos Schmidt. I am unable to make a claim, pro- or contra-, the veracity of what follows. My purpose has not been to delve deeply for the factual truth so much as to discover what is necessary to begin getting a sense of the storytelling with which Nicaragua is so abundantly gifted. ***Question: What is the starting point in Nicaraguan history? not chronologically, but conceptually? Answer: The starting point in Nicaraguan history is 1522. Now, what I mean by that is there was this rather rough guy who was the royal treasurer of the audiencia of Santo Domingo, a guy named Davila. He got a royal license to conquer Nicaragua. He got that, I don't know the exact date, in 1518 or '19. He then came to Panama and he got into a big fight with Pedrarias who was then the governor of Panama, who had just cut the head off his future son-in-law, Balboa. And Balboa who was then mobilizing to conquer Nicaragua, had a bunch of ships for sale and Pedrarias and Davila couldn't agree on very much. So what we do have for Gonzales Davila is the actual list of his expenses for the conquest of Nicaragua. It's in the Colleción Somoza—right down to the last horseshoe nail, the boats, everything, the rigging, the sails, the food; and we've got the actual trade agreement. Because you see Nicaragua and most of Latin America was not conquered to make things right with God; it was conquered because of a joint-stock agreement. And so we actually have for both the Gil Gonzales expedition and the one of Francisco Hernandez, the joint-stock agreement—how much capital was invested and how much they got. For example, Gil Gonzalez invested—there was 8000 gold pesos or what later came to be called ducatos—each one worth about $30.00—that was the capital investment—but the capital investment included both sweat equity and actual financing and over a two month period they netted a little bit more than a hundred thousand gold pesos—so they did very well. About the same amount of profit was in the Francisco Hernandez expedition; we also have that joint-stock agreement; they had a little bit more money and they had more men—they had 229 men and they netted about 130,000 gold pesos; and when I say gold pesos, I mean gold; what they did is they came into Nicaragua from Costa Rica and they found that most of the native churches, mesquinas, contained gold objects—that had accumulated there from prospecting or that was gotten by trade—north country alluvial gold—over about the last 800 years—before the conquest—so they actually netted out of here—both of those expeditions, about 230-250 thousand gold pesos which would translate to about 25,000 troy ounces of gold—how pure it was we're not sure—probably a lot of copper in it. So they did very well. ***Question: Shift out of the chronlogy a bit and tell me what are the big ideas that orient a person to Nicaraguan history? Answer: Well there are about 3 or 4, some of which I'm not a believer in. One is the conquest of the New World as something to bring Christianity to the Indians—that's one big theme—it comes out of a discussion that began in Spain in 1912 where a journalist came up with the idea of the "black history." If you look at the writings of Bartolomeo las Casas you'll find that there are a lot of really nasty things written about the Spaniards in conquering the new world, including Nicaragua in his book la Destrucion de las Indias; and so that's one big theme you can argue back and forth; there is quite frankly a large Francista or Phalangist ideological counterpart to that; because a lot of the stuff that originally proposed those ideas came out of Spain from about 1920 to about 1960 and we find that Franco and his soulmate, his previous soulmate, Primadera Rivera, dictator in Spain in the 1920s, were very much interested in bringing about an interest in Spain based upon her previous glory; somewhat similar to what Benito Mussolini did in the 1930s with Roman archaeology; so we find that a major theme of Latin American development is the Christianizing of the Indians and the establishment of Hispanic institutions. The other opposing conceptual approach is, you might say, the indigenist one, or the view that the Spaniards came and really screwed up some very vibrant civilizations—the idea that Nicaragua is on the fringe of a place that has been called since 1944 meso-america; where you have a great influence of Indians from Mexico—many people here insist that the Aztecs came here—which is absolute baloney; but what you do have is this view that the indigenous institutions were destroyed very quickly with the conquest and much valuable information was lost with the cruelty of the Spaniards; we know for example that the population in these areas diminished about 90%—Nicaragua 92%—from the date right before the conquest till about 30 years into the conquest—so we find that happening—in Nicaragua my conclusion is that it had to do with diseases—the slavery explanation doesn't make any sense when you look at maritime activity; they would have had to tie the Indians together and throw them in the ocean and tell them to start swimming towards Panama; because there were not enough boats to do the massive exportation that has been claimed; and we have for one year, 1527-28, we have the actual tax receipts that were made; because you see under Spanish law when an Indian became a slave it became a taxable event and so the owner of the slave would actually brand the Indian in front of the man who had two different jobs pator and viedor, which mean inspector and worker; they would actually hold the guy down and brand him on the cheek or the forehead with a G or an R depending on the social status of the slave at the time of the rescue from the Indians; and as a result of that there was pretty good evidence that, in Nicaragua when slavery was legal for example, that the total amount of slaves that were declared was about 7800; I've gone through and counted all the accounting receipts, because the treasurer had to produce that in some later lawsuits; including a great deal of money paid on a bunch of IOU's; so we have that documentation; you say, well there were probably a whole bunch of Indians that didn't get taxed. Well that's probably true, but if you multiply it by another 100%, you get nowhere near the 250,000 – 500,000 Indians exported from Nicaragua from 1522-1550—there just weren't enough boats—you know, where are the boats that were supposed to take them? and the answer is: when I looked at maritime activity in Nicaragua and now that I get some other information about the Pacific area between Mexico and Peru—there just weren't enough boats—so as a result that goes out the window, the slave theory—there were Indians who died from diseases—we know that there was measles, there was probably pneumonic plague, very deadly, at least 80% mortality, there may have been smallpox, there were at least three or four waves of diseases that went through here in the late 1520's and 1530's and there was probably one that went through here before the Spaniards got here that came from Mexico; and the Indians went from about 700,000, Jan 1, 1522 to 42,000 in Nov of 1548; then back up to about 27,000 in the census of 1581, but slavery had very little to do with it; very little indeed. ***Question: What are the areas of primary concern for the Nicaraguan historiographer? Answer: Well there is so much. Here's the problem. In order to write history you need two things: you need somebody that's willing to go through dusty old records and try to make some sense out of them and the other thing you need is the dusty old records; you can't write history without a database; you can't write history without a primary set of documents that other people have not interpreted; writing history based on somebody else's interpretation is stupid; that's why when I've written history I've always gone back to the primary documents; and you draw conclusions that are really quite different from the mainstream history; the problem with the 20th century is lack of documents; one of the great problems of the Sandinista revolution, is that one of the first things they did is destroy most of the documents of the Somoza era; so, in terms of studying governance and institutions, I don't think there is anything there. ***Question: What was their motive for destroying the documents? Answer: It was the era of the "new man." There was no use keeping those nasty old documents around. One set of documents that did survive, and one of these years I'm going to dig into, is the archives of the Sandino mini-government up at Wiwili and in 1934 it was raided by the Guardia when they assassinated Sandino—the documents disappeared and it turns out that Somoza had them all along, because when they sacked his house, those documents—thousands of documents—lot of pictures—were taken over by the Frente and they ended up in the Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua de Central America—so they're over in the UCA—though they're a little bit touchy about some aspects of it—but those documents are there—it's a great database for the Sandinista movement. So far as I know, no historian has ever touched them. You get a lot of stuff from the American Archives, from the Marines for example and American diplomatic history, but on the Nicaragua side, there really isn't very much. *** For the modern historian, the biggest problem is probably being hobbled, or crippled by the historian walking into an area to write history in which he already has a pretty well preconceived notion of what happened or saying I can only write this history based upon one intellectual template—the most common one down here is Gramschi-style Marxism-Leninism. Grasmschi was an Italian Marxist who everybody knows was in jail and while he was there he put down his thoughts; he had enough time in jail to write many notebooks of his thoughts; and so a lot of Gramschi's work has found its way into Marxist analyses, usually coming from Britain in the 1960's and 70's; and many of the writers of Nicaragua who've written history, a guy named Luis Velasquez who was a Sandinista, in a sense, is now a reprobate or reformed he wrote his history of the 1870's in Nicaragua very clearly saying this will follow Gramschi's schemata; another contemporary historian has just finished a series, Oscar Rene Vargas, who writes history using footnotes from Das Kapital as a hardshell Baptist would write religious history based upon footnotes from the Bible; the trouble is of course not everything is predictable; and one of the major problems with using Marxist theory is no one has ever tested it empirically, that is to say, used any research tools or set it down in terms of hypothetical syllogisms to see if it works; if you look at Marxism, you see that there's a very defined scheme of things based upon human social thought in Europe in the 1830's and 1860's; you get an idea for example that history goes from less developed to more developed, an idea that was very popular in anthropology in the 19th century and people have thrown that right out the window; so I think that's one of the problems; trying to explain everything in one historical work as another. One thing I've tried to do is to set the facts down straight; and the only thing you can do is go back to the primary data, go through it, throw out all presumptions about the data, read it with a new fresh view and you go blindly where the proofs lead, and let me repeat that, you go blindly where the proofs lead. For example, one of the conclusions that I drew is that Pedrarias, one of the real bogey men of Nicaragua history, wasn't so bad. He was a good administrator. He had a fine mind. We have a speech that he gave, not a speech, actually a transcription of one of his extemporaneous addresses he gave at the city election of Leon in 1530 and its very very good. He's lying on his deathbed. They brought him in on a cot—his lecho de muerte almost—he died three months later and he gave a wonderful analysis of the political process and the different groups that were allied with him and against him—why one guy was good and another was a bastard; its brilliant; and here's a guy nearly 90 years old probably with a quavery voice who knew everything that was happening; a brilliant bit of analysis and we find in the Colleción Somoza just touches of things where the scribes, escribanos, almost get down word for word, you see it once in a while by the way they put the words together its really close to extemporaneous conversation. And he was a smart old boy. ***Question: What are some of the uncharted regions of Nicaraguan history? Answer: Almost everything One of the things I want to get some money to write about is an in-depth analysis of the Jose Santo Zelaya regime of 1893-1909; his relations with the church; I'd like to do a really in-depth history of the church in Nicaragua and why they fought so hard against Zelaya; that is when the actual nation-state of Nicaragua was formed; during the regime of Jose Santo Zelaya; I haven't made up my mind about Zelaya; he did a bunch of stuff that I like, but he did a bunch of stuff that I really don't like; he seems to have had a pretty good sense of humor and there are a lot of funny stories about him; I had a chance to read his will about ten years ago; and he was very practical minded; one of the reasons the Americans decided to get rid of him was he was going to finance a railroad, a canal seco, from Monkey Point over to the Great Lake, either San Miguel or San Morito; and he got European financing to do so; and the gringos said "he's really gonna screw up our canal; so he's gotta go." I found out years later, what he'd done; he'd gone over to Monkey Point in the Oleana mountains and he'd bought about 10,000 manzanas of land; so he was all set to become Mr. Rich Guy; his wife who was Belgian, she ended up selling that to the father of the guy that told me about it all in about 1940 or '45. So Zelaya is one. Another era that we have almost no documents about is the civil wars that broke out here right after independence—1822 to 1830—there was almost constant civil war here; there's some really bloody things that happened. There is a lot to be done with William Walker; Walker's another one where his entire government archives were saved; they're sitting up at Tulane; through a kind of interesting circumstance; and there are 6000 documents and the only person who has ever delved into them has been Alejandro Bolanos, the brother of our president, when he wrote his five-volume series on Walker; but there's lots there; they're all over at the Institut de Historia and there's all kinds of stuff in there. So the problem isn't picking out the areas to work on. The problem is finding the database to work from. ***Question: How do you assess the state of the country in the wake of the revolution? What are the permanent achievements of the Sandinistas. Answer: I think that their major achievement was not in the institution of Marxist-Leninist institutions in Nicaragua, because they've all gone poof. But the major accomplishment, and I'm not sure this is a bad accomplishment, to tell you the truth, I'm not a Sandinista, I'm not a Marxist, quite obviously; what happened was, the two-party system that had been created under the Somoza regime, we have the Partido Nacionalista, which was Somoza's party and with the main opposition party of the Partido Conservador. That is changed. What happened was that Arnoldo Aleman and three or four guys in 1990 formed the basis of the PLC; it had been around, but it wasn't very big. Ernesto Somarribo was its head in the 1980's. That became the liberal party as it is today. It is based vaguely on some of the ideas of Jose Santo Zelaya, very few actually, Jose Santo Zalaya hated the Catholic church, and the liberal party here has a very close relationship, notice I didn't say in bed with, the Church. But a very close relationship with the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. What happened in the Sandinista Revolution was that the conservative party largely disappeared. And the other major party in the country is the Frente Sandinista. So we really do have a party of the left which is the Frente and a party which would probably in American terms be something akin to a rather right-wing Reaganist or even farther right wing party in the form of the Liberal party—in terms of their economics and politics—they are very much right-wing Republican. And the other component of that of course is that if you look at the members of the army, if you look at the, probably the top one thousand Sandanistas, who are wealthy people today, you will find an astonishing thing, and I don't know what the numbers are, but you'll find a good portion who are really members of rich families—Joaquin Cuadra is the best example; but you find a whole new group of upper class who had very little money, had ambition, had no way to realize those ambitions under the Somoza regime—it was pretty well a closed matter. and they were able to push themselves up into the cupola of the richest people in the country. The Ortega brothers is the best example. But if you look at the formation of the Banco de Finanza, which is a bank with strong ties to the army, if you look at the Board of Directors there, you'll find people who are intelligent, but didn't come from rich families and now are very rich, multimillionaires. So we find, if you ask me what is the accomplishment of the Sandinista revolution was the fact that it institutionalized the Sandinista party as a left of center party and it created a whole new class of nouveau riche. Now, as I say, in terms of the Marxist-Leninist institutions—they're all gone. It took Nicaragua about 7 or 8 years to do away with that. The best example is the army. Almost all the people in the top rungs of the army have backgrounds that are rather similar to leftists of the European 70s. But they're all now fairly well to do. And the Army is probably the least politicized in Central America now, particularly compared to Honduras, Salvador and Guatemala. That's quite an accomplishment. They may all be Marxist-Leninist at home, but the Army here and I think if you'll look at the National Police force here—nobody is accusing anybody of massive human rights violations, imprisonments, people disappearing, nothing. I hate to be too nationalist about it, but my perception is that of all the police in Central America, the Nicaraguan police are probably the most polite and the most respectful. Wait till you get stopped in Costa Rica—or by some of the cops in Choluteca, Honduras. I've been to both places and I much prefer the police in Nicaragua a hundred times over. So I think those sorts of things are important when you look at what were the accomplishments of the Sandinista Revolution. The falling of the Berlin wall and the end of a world-history cycle of Marxism as a growing political force has ended and I think everybody at this point is interested in making the country prosper and this new anti-corruption movement is I think a movement I've been waiting for years for—the middle class of Nicaragua to say "Enough. You've stolen too much. It's time to stop." You find this happening periodically in Latin America. It happened in Argentina in 1896, a guy named Alejandro Além. Where you have the middle class saying of the upper-class or the powers that be that things are just too crude and corrupt; therefore we have to clean things up; never before in this country's history have I seen people closely tied to a previous regime being tried and at least bound over, they haven't gone to trial yet, but at least in preliminary examination, being bound over by judges that are lower class, in some cases women of intelligence; most of them were Sandinista during the 80s; went to law school afterwards and they appear to be doing a fairly decent job. So the middle class, most of whom left Nicaragua in the 80s, is reforming itself. ***Question: Have you any thoughts on the need for an oral history project in Nicaragua? Are there areas of particular importance, soon to be lost, we need to record now. Answer: Yes, absolutely. The trouble with history is it dies unless you write it down. And the trouble with this country is back in the campo people are pretty much pre-literate; the history disappears. One of the most interesting guys I talked to back in 1994, was the last warrior for Sandino. Sandino had a mountaintop fortress that was called el Chipote near Kilili & his last warrior was a guy, then he was 93 years old—he still rode his mule around, still saddled his mule, and when I talked to him he really did know enough specific things to convince me, no question he'd been there. He confirmed a lot of things about Sandino that had been told me by my father-in-law who as a young man in the Constitutionalist Revolution of 1926. They both told me the exact same things about Sandino. There are lots of people around like that. Question: You mean participants in the wars? Answer: Participants in it and, for example in the Contra war; time goes so quickly; that war ended 12 years ago. There are a lot of people around who I've talked to—the main field commanders who I've talked to—most of them were either illiterate or they really were campesinos; they were not of the upper class—and they have all kinds of interesting things to say. The times of Somoza, I knew Tacho Somoza, he was a man—the best way to describe him was human sewage—but intelligent human sewage. Very knowledgeable about economic matters. They made Nicaragua flower in the 1970s. But completely arrogant and a real jerk. And that's why politics here turned off so many people of my age in the 1970s, because it was so much of an ass-kissing operation. There are all kinds of oral histories that should be put down. But the trouble is funding it and administering it. When I was up in the jungle three weeks ago, the Sumos—I'm sorry its politically correct to say the Mayagna—they asked if we would be interested in doing that and I said yeah, I would; but, for their own reasons, they didn't wish to do really that much at that point. So I don't know where that's going. But there you have a society of about 6000 people that's going to disappear in the next 20 years. Because they are starting to lose the ability to make cloth from tree bark and really all their daily implements from stuff they find in the jungle. They use trade goods now. So that's all changing. So yeah, there's a great need. Question: Any observations for the benefit of the norte americanos who come here? how to adjust? what to expect? what to look out for? Answer: I've lived down here so long, too long maybe, and I must say I'm beginning to lose my patience with my American brethren. In the sense that most of them end up being either mildly or highly offensive without really intending to be so; but the complete unwillingness to learn the language, learn the culture—that is a detriment. You need to pick up the language as quick as you can, you need to pick up the culture as quick as you can. Its difficult if you live in an American cocoon. If you come to Nicaragua you should learn the language, the culture, the geography. This country is not for everybody. ***Question: And what about the teaching of Central American and Nicaraguan history in national, Nicaraguan universities? How is it done and what is the quality? And how does it relate to the writing of historical novels? Answer: The quality is spotty. And it all depends on the real reason why history is taught. For many, teaching history is teaching nationalism; for others it is advocating a particular ideological line or justification. I have always taken a much simpler view of history: the work of the historian is to recreate with words what actually happened, as if he had a video camera taping the historical event in question, nothing more, nothing less. In order to write good history you need a data base of primary materials, and the ability to sort through a lot of written documents that may or may not contain primary information, organize them, and try to make the written product interesting to the reader. Ideology has nothing to do with it. The historian should go where the proofs lead, regardless of the result. Regarding Nicaraguan history, the first works were compiled in the late 19th century, one by a conservative, who genuflected to the Hispanic tradition and the Spanish kings, Tómas Ayón. A bit later, a liberal, José Dolores Gamez, wrote his history of Nicaragua, and reviled almost completely the Hispanic tradition in Nicaraguan society, culture, and politics. Of the two Ayón tended to be a bit more careful with his facts, but both were in some sense political hacks to their respective political beliefs and quite predictable in their conclusions. In the 20th century, there are also two distinct schools of thought, one represented by the work of intellectuals who were quietly or not so quietly enamored of Phalangist beliefs and works of General Primo de Rivera and Francisco Franco. It was at this time that Nicaragua had a small fascist movement of the Blue Shirts, based upon some of the practices of Benito Mussolini. And ironically, the major force in stopping some of this thought was Anastasio Somoza García. Later, in the 1960's, neomarxist thought came into vogue among young university students, intellectuals, and students studying or living overseas. For example, Luís Velazquez, in receiving his Master's Degree in Great Britain, fell under the influence of Gramschi's version of Marxist analysis of development. Later, in the 1990's, when he rejected the Sandinista revolution, the Nicaraguan Central Bank published his Master's thesis on the economic development of the Nicaraguan nation state. In the preface he rejects Marxism, but in the body of the work it is pure Gramschi in its analysis. Another writer is Oscar René Vargas, who became a disciple of Cuban Marxism, lived in Cuba for a time while Carlos Fonseca was there, and supported the Sandinista Revolution completely until it ended in 1990, when he split from the intellectual straitjacket of the Sandinistas. As noted earlier, he still writes history by citing Marx like a hard shell Baptist cites the Bible. In the teaching of history, not nationalism or mythology, some warts appear. In the teaching of United States history, since the time of Charles A. Beard, and his economic analysis of the United States Constitution, American history has been shredded, reconstituted, reshredded, rewritten, and rewritten again, so that all possible schools of thought are amply represented, from Charles A. Beard to Howard Zinn. In Nicaragua that has not yet occurred, so that mythology and fact are taught all mixed up together. I give you a couple of examples.
The battle that broke the back of Walker's forces and used up his military provisions was the four day Battle of Masaya in November of 1856. No one celebrates that battle, nor is its existence known except to a few historians who study primary documents. Something is wrong with the teaching of history in Nicaragua when the Battle of Jacinto gets plenty of praise and the Battle of Masaya is completely unknown. And the 20th century has all kinds of myths and historical ghosts floating about. The real relationship between José Santos Zelaya and the church, the aristocracy of Granada, and loose cannons such as Emiliano Chamorro need to be de-mythified. Ditto with the whole complex of actions that resulted in the Constitutionalist War of 1926, and the relationship between Jose María Moncada and Augusto Sandino. In more modern terms, the role of Anastasio Somoza García in building the modern Nicaraguan nation state needs to be examined, as well as where all the Sandinistas went who supported the revolution in 1979 and who later changed their minds. On this there has been a collective silence that is deafening. But no former Sandinista, particularly if he or she is of the criollo class, will say anything. Perhaps that is part of the problem of novelists trying to write historical novels—they don't have sufficient knowledge of what actually happened to enable them to break out of their collective belief systems and so, do some reality testing. I would dearly love to read a novel by a Marxist that does not portray the evils of the class system of Nicaragua or the evils of United States military and cultural imperialism (after all, a Burger King finally just opened in Managua this month and I have seen many dedicated Marxists eating whoppers there). I would also love to read a novel written by a criollo that takes an honest look at some of the sub-human excesses of the early Spaniards or of the Somoza regimes. Hopefully, in this post-revolutionary period some new writers will come forward who will break new ground and write something truly Nicaraguan that shatters the old molds. I note in passing that over the past 15 years I have had a couple of students who impressed me with their completely original approach to the human condition in Nicaragua. Both are women. One is now working as a television anchor person, Milena García, who is also an excellent writer; the other is Cynara Medina, who is also an excellent writer and poet who merits national recognition for her brilliant work.
*Dirección: Associate Professor Mary Addis* *Realización: Cheryl Johnson* *Modificado10/20/02* *? Istmo, 2001* |
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