Nicaragua: Books

A warm night, a full moon wearing a scarf of clouds.  A large stack of donated books. Cigarette in hand, I look through the titles, like old pictures, and almost instinctual start to order them:

The books published by the Nueva Nicaragua Editorial press company, all dating back to the early eighties; those books from a time when writers spoke of the artistic revolution that would accompany the political one. The skinny La tierra es un satelite de la luna (The Earth is a Satellite of the Moon) by Leonel Rugama: the complete works of the young martyred Sandinista poet famous for yelling out “Que se rinda tu madre!” (literally: “Let your mother surrender!”) when, after his safe house had been surrounded by hundreds of military guards, he was given the option of surrendering or being killed. Books by Ricardo Morales Avila, another Sandinista poet with an equally gruesome fate, and Carlos José Guadamuz’s Y las casas quedaron llenas de humo, a chronicle--written in a prison cell--of a Sandinista insurrection as told by one of its leaders. Guadamuz would, in later years, defect from the Sandinista movement and become one of its most outspoken critics, until one day as he arrived to work at the radio station where he hosted a anti-Sandinista political program he was shot dead; the motive for the murder never to be established, allowing rumors that it was all orchestrated by the FSNL.

Several historical novels written by Sergio Ramirez, and a book with his thesis on the literary history of Nicaragua. A strange historical novel by the poet Julio Castillo-Valle that focuses on the life of Pedrarias, the first colonial ruler of Nicaragua (a true thug). Two books by the poet and literary critic Beltran Morales (Roberto Bolaño sings his praises on the back of one of them). Gioconda Belli’s memoirs on the revolution (apparently, mostly sex with revolutionary leaders in exile). Opening a book by Guillermo Rothschuh Villanueva, a well-known modern poet, I come across an inscription on the first page addressed to the donor: “To my dear friend,” signed…Guillermo Rothschuh Villanueva! In an anthology of poems by the great Joaquin Pasos, I find postcards from the first anniversary of the revolution; one, a vintage photograph of Augusto C. Sandino in his standard rugged, cowboy pose, the second, a painting of a village with housewives and children celebrating the victory by running onto the streets with red and black flags.

Several thick books on Ruben Dario, and one slim book by him. The books are dense academic investigations into literary theory with titles like Ruben Dario el Criollo and Ruben Dario en Ecuador, and his autobiography. (Or at least, the short, hundred-page, abridged school version of his autobiography. I have yet to find the unabridged version anywhere in this country.) Strangely, none of Nicaragua’s poetic prophet’s classic works are to be found in the stacks.

In terms of non-Nicaraguan Latin American authors, I find Eduardo Galeano’s three volumes on the history of the conquest of the continent by the Spanish (written in Galeano’s short, blog-like, literary entries). Three volumes of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara’s complete works. Also, separately, Che’s diary entries from Bolivia. Julio Cortazar’s early book of short stories, Bestiario. Poemas Clandestinos by Roque Dalton, the renowned Salvadorian poet that would (against the advice of even revolutionary leaders at the time) join the ranks of the revolutionary fighters in the 1960s, only to be murdered by his own brothers in arms who came to suspect him of being a CIA agent (or so goes one of the many versions of his death). A hardcover titled, Los Curas Comunistas (The Communist Priests), by an author I have never heard of, maybe Cuban. Then there is a copy of Adan Buenosayres, a book I recognized because on the back of my personal copy of Los Detectives Salvajes, a critic lists the book (along with Cortazar’s Rayuela) as one of the classics of Latin American writing. Sure enough, on the back of Adan Buenosayres there is a extended exert of Cortazar’s review of the book.

International authors: four or five books by Hermann Hesse, including Mi credo (My credo).  Hesse is a curious figure in Nicaragua. An obscure (at least in the United States) German Nobel prize winner from the inter-war period, he is surprisingly popular (or at least, his books are well stocked in libraries and book shelves) in this country. Perhaps, his books were brought to the country by the coffee growing German immigrants that flocked to Nicaragua in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The question is: why is Hesse the only German author that made the transatlantic trip?

There are a few classics, such as Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. A book of poems by Gustavo Becquer, and, randomly, Amadis de Gaula, the popular Spanish adventure novel from the sixteenth century that is considered to be the main target of Cervantes’ spoof on the genre, Don Quixote. There are also around twenty issues of a literary magazine on Soviet Literature.

There are no books by American authors.

I finish off another cigarette, I start in on the numerous books on art theory. The moon is now high up in the sky, a lonely figure surrounded by millions of stars, each with a story. Meanwhile, I continue my portrait of a Nicaraguan intellectual.