Nicaragua: Acción 10

The teaser for the news report was: “The Nicaraguan Mike Tyson?”

Was it a report on the rise of a promising but temperamental young Nicaraguan boxer?  No.  Was it a report on a meaningless drunken bar fight between two insignificant drunks, where one happened to bite off the nose of the other?  Yes, yes it was.  Numerous shots of the noseless individual followed, along with exquisite close-ups of the severed chunk of skin and cartilage that had been delicately preserved in a plastic bag.  The lighthearted report narrated the entire incident, with a few interruptions to listen to the victim’s drunkenly slurred account.  Synopsis: A fight had broken out, and the attacker had bitten off the victim’s nose.  Back to you, large breasted anchorwoman at the studio.

This is Accion 10 Noticias (Action 10 News).  Sensationalism to its goriest extreme.  The image that encapsulates this programming, the one that should be the background of every Accion 10 logo, the one that should appear on every commercial is the scene of a fatal car accident, the lifeless body of the victim strewn out in the middle of the street (no one having had the decency to place a sheet over it), the anchorwoman filing her report (standing to one side, so as to leave the cadaver in the shot), and young, screaming, laughing, joyous children running towards the camera, smiling and waving, jumping with their hands in the hair so as to get on television.  You see this image at least once in every evening newscast.

There are apparently no laws in Nicaragua prohibiting the broadcast of images of the dead.  There are also no moral qualms about doing so; nor do they seem to care whether the family has been notified.  (In every other country I have visited, it is rare [even unheard of] to see the dead bodies of people of the local nationality on television [the dead bodies of foreigners in foreign lands is another issue].) Channel 10 specializes in finding these dead bodies.  They aren’t ambulance chasers, because by the time the ambulance gets there, they have lost their shot.  No, ambulances chase them.

The Accion 10 Noticias broadcasts around dinner time, and it is not strange to see young children (ten year olds) sitting eating dinner as they watch close-ups of the vacant stare of the body of a driver whose head has been impaled against the steering wheel.  The child gets up from his seat and runs off, and I imagine him running to his mother and hiding his face in her dress.  As I am imagining this I realize he has already returned to his chair with a second helping of rice and beans.