Politics in Nicaragua: The Ugly

On the morning of November 5th, 2012, a group of protesters began to gather in front of the main voting center in the small northwestern town of Ciudad Dario, Nicaragua. A day earlier, on Sunday, the town had gone to the polls to vote for an alcalde. It had been a bright, sunny day, as usual, and the townspeople had woken up early to visit their local polling center, where they had waited patiently in line to cast their votes. Afterwards they had proudly showed off their ink-purple thumbs to their family and friends, proof that they had exercised their civic duty, as they went about their usual Sunday business. Though sporadic violence had become an unfortunate and regular part of previous elections in Ciudad Dario, on this day, it was almost dead silent—except for the soft, ominous murmur (like the sound of the first bubbles in boiling water) of people sitting in plastic chairs on the sidewalk in front of their houses.

I had thought that perhaps this election would be different. The run-up had certainly felt less tense than the run-up to the presidential election a year earlier. Maybe, I thought, the opposition in Ciudad Dario had resigned themselves to losing (even unfairly), like the opposition had in most other parts of the country. By nightfall, however, I began to witness the first signs of a potential battle. All the comedors were closed, which I found odd, but I managed to grab a bite at a place that had leftovers. On the way home, I passed the alcaldia building, which is on the corner facing the town square, and as I kept walking north I came across a group of hooded youth, their faces covered with bandannas. Not a good sign.

Marbles packed into mortars.

The explosions began at around eleven: the celebratory firing of homemade mortars into the air. In Nicaragua, celebrations and street battles are almost indistinguishable to the untrained ear. In both cases, the participants use mortars: when they celebrate they harmlessly fire the round up into the air, and when they do battle they shoot it directly at their opponents or pack the mortar full of marbles and rocks and shoot it over the target area. That night, the singing and chanting indicated that it was, in fact, people simply having a good time. Both sides celebrated throughout the night, and I had trouble sleeping through all the ruckus.

You could feel the anxious energy in the warm nighttime breezes. Any one of those mortar explosions could suddenly become a pitched street battle. It was also unusual for both camps to be celebrating their side’s victory hours before the results had been tallied. I lay in bed trying to make out the words shouted out by the crowds. I finally nodded off and dreamt of a childhood memory (or the memory of another dream) where I’m riding on a plane in the middle of a terrible thunderstorm. The pilot, in an attempt to avoid the lightning, steers the plane over the battling clouds. I remember looking out the window and seeing a large glowing ball of electricity in a state of convulsion shooting out electrical surges...

The next morning I awoke and texted a friend asking who had won. He wrote back saying no one knew. In the early hours of the morning, the rotund figure that embodies the head of the Electoral Commission had come on TV to announce the preliminary results. He listed the latest count for every municipality, except for Ciudad Dario. The omission, strange as it was, strengthened the resolve of the opposition that they had won. Meanwhile, the Sandinista were hardened in their determination to defend what they felt was their legitimate victory. By noon, both sides were still claiming they had won the election.

The Electoral Commission announcing
the results

As confusion over the results mounted, people began streaming into the center of town. The Sandinista supporters gathered by the alcaldia, while the opposition held an impromptu rally in front of the town’s private Catholic elementary school—the Colegio San Antonio—which stood behind the main cathedral and was serving as Ciudad Dario’s main voting center. As more and more people appeared before the elementary school, waiting impatiently for someone to come out and announce the results, the protesters began chanting for electoral transparency. A man climbed onto the roof of an old sedan, and started screaming into a megaphone demanding the right to see the votes that had been cast.

The rest of the town loitered on cobblestone roads in front of their homes, looking up and down the street for signs of activity. Tidbits of information circulated through the jittery town like blood rushing through a euphoric body, pumping rapidly out from the heart of the town square. ”Don’t go out, shits going down in the park,” a friend texted me. The families standing right outside their doorways exchanged opinions and impressions on the unfolding events. They did so, not in a state of panic or despair, but like an audience taking in a performance. They seemed to be enjoying the exhilaration of the moment.

The curious thing about extraordinary events, even violently tragic ones, is that they can cause a collective adrenaline rush, which makes people want shit to go awry. Crowds (like individuals) can become addicted to the high, especially if the event is rare enough that the effect doesn’t wear off, but routine enough that the body expects it, and even desires it. I once heard on the radio a man say that in Turkey (or Iraq, I forget), there’s a saying that goes, “It’s not a good wedding party unless there’s at least one death.” This sounds morbid, but is, at some level, completely relatable. (Something akin to, “It’s not a good hockey game, unless there are a couple of fist fights”) In Ciudad Dario, the feeling one gets from talking to people is, “It’s not a good election, unless there’s at least one street battle.” The townspeople sounded more like movie critics than victims in the middle of crossfire. They didn’t say it outright, but the general tone of their statements was: “After a great build-up of tension, it’d be rather disappointing for nothing to happen.”

A new rumor reached the people living on my block. The delay in the announcement of the results was due to an intransigent elections official who was refusing to sign off on the ballot count of his voting station. It wasn’t clear whether the official was a Sandinista refusing to sign off on an opposition victory, or an opposition official withholding the authorization of a Sandinista victory. The people on my block seemed to think it was the latter: an opposition official who felt that fraud had been committed and was refusing to sign off on the final outcome. Apparently, parish officials had been called into the Catholic school to mediate the standoff. But as midday approached, the face off continued.

Meanwhile, the crowd in front of the Catholic school had grown large enough to cover half the block: people waved opposition flags; elderly women formed a human chain at the entrance of the school; people shot celebratory mortars. The crowd became more emboldened and more confrontational. A woman rambled on and on into a megaphone about the “sin verguenzas” at the alcaldia.

It was then that the riot police, which had been called into town days earlier in anticipation of street violence and had been, up to that point, observing the demonstration from down the street, closed in on the people gathered in front of the Catholic school. They approached the opposition protesters in line formation, their riot gear making them look like Kafka-esque insects... a loud metallic “Clunk!” was heard, like a large Coke can dropping down a vending machine; a tear gas canister bounced into the crowd, a cloud enveloped the crowd. Then another “Clunk!” and then another, demonstrators ran down the street and around the corner, screaming.

A free-lance video reporter was able to capture the moment. In the video you can see an officer aim a canister directly at a protester at close distance. Following the dislocation of the protesters, a pitched street battle commences. Young protesters, some using their shirts to protect themselves from the toxic fumes, throw rocks and cobblestones at the riot police at a distance of about fifty yards down the street. The police respond with rubber bullets and live ammunition using shotguns and AK-47s. (Warning: the following video contains graphic images. Starting at minute 10:35, there are several close-ups of a dead body.)

Elsewhere in town, regular citizens take up arms. A mind-boggling array of weapons suddenly see the light of day. People start roaming the streets with their posses, battling their opponents, street corner to street corner, as if in some apocalyptic zombie movie. The free-lance cameraman follows one such street warrior, in a sleeveless camo-shirt, jean shorts, a Crocodile Dundee hat, and flip-flops (!!!) strolling around with a 9mm in his right hand. The street battle participants are a complex milieu of people. There are the regular town police officers (less than ten in total), the riot police reinforcement units (probably around two dozen), and a unit of army foot soldiers (perhaps thirty in total) all representing the official state. Then there are ordinary citizens from Ciudad Dario, some fighting for the opposition others for the Sandinistas. There are also groups from the outskirts of town, who have arrived to take part in the battle. Finally, there are street thugs from the worst neighborhoods in Managua who have been shipped in by the local Sandinista leadership to “join” in the party’s “celebration” of their victory. It has become a common Sandinista strategy to get these thugs to come in and enforce rough justice on the opposition. These thugs represent a sort of populist Sandinista army, at hand for contentious street battles.

Opposition candidate for alcalde
holding a AK-47 shell

From my window, I see ambulances zoom by my street. A couple blocks east, large crowds are running down the street; they look back and then run, look back and run, as if they were in Pamplona). I see a pick-up truck with an unconscious elderly woman lying on the bed; other pick-up trucks with ruffians crouching in the back; and every once in a while (randomly) a person who seems to be going about his regular business, completely indifferent to his surroundings (a local salesmen carrying around the picture frames he’s selling).

Rumors pour in: “The local police chief has been shot, and is in the hospital;” “They’ve burned down Mr. A______’s house, a known opposition voter;” “They’ve burned down P______’s house, a known Sandinista voter.” “They’ve burned down one of the voting centers.” “The death toll is at seven.” (All these turn out to be false.)

A friend calls me up: there’s a man lying dead in front of his house (from my house, this friend lives four blocks east and one block south). According to what he’d heard, a group of Sandinistas had attempted to burn down the house right in front of where he lives, where the owner was a card-carrying Sandinista who everyone knew had voted for the opposition this time around. An opposition posse was hanging out on the corner down the street and saw what was going on; they rushed over in defense of the home owner. A fight ensued (whether it was a fist fight, a rock fight, or a gun fight is unclear) and in the middle of it, the army appeared and began shooting. Someone was hit and killed.

The hysteria started by the confrontation in front of the voting center lasts a couple of hours. During that time, groups of young men stand opposite each other on a street, at a distance of approximately two blocks, throwing rocks, shooting mortars, occasionally using their shotguns (shot mostly into the air as a threat). Factions challenge each others’ positions or initiate confrontations by entering neutral zones and threatening to destroy property. The frenzy spreads from the center of town to the neighborhoods, where local gangs go out on hunting expeditions for members of the opposing party. By three o’clock in the afternoon, however, the town is back to a tenuous state of calm: the mania on both sides having died down, each faction’s positions having become more entrenched, and everyone kind of having gotten tired of throwing shit. It is like a tropical thunderstorm. Everyone knows it is coming based on the warnings (the black clouds on the horizon, the gusts of wind), but the exact moment of when it will start to pour is anyone’s guess. And it ends just as abruptly as it begins, and then the sun shines once again.

Sandinista hooligans.

The streets within a four block radius of the town square were littered with rocks, cobble-stones, marbles, tear-gas canisters, trash, and bullet shells. Tall, shirtless, emaciated Managua hooligans taunted onlookers with hollow eyes and wasp-colored grins, holding up the victory sign, which in Nicaragua is the symbol used in support of the Sandinistas (due to the fact that it represents the number two, and that the Sandinista’s casilla, or slot, on election ballots is always the second).

As sundown arrived and the cease-fire continued, the town remained hyper-alert. Rumors continued to stream in. By nightfall, the town would be a war zone, it was said. But the streets remained quiet, except for sporadic mortar explosions heard throughout the night, which people were unable to categorize as celebratory, violent, or simply for the sake of intimidation. Dawn broke and the dust began to settle. News reports now confirmed the death of two people, seemingly bystanders (one of them, a poor shoe-shiner with a family). I knew how the rest of the story would unfold from witnessing the previous election violence in Ciudad Dario: rumors would continue to spread about imminent violence as people quickly got back to the business of everyday life. (There is always the post-violence rumor about the opposition going and burning the alcaldia down. You’ll hear “I heard tonight, they are going to burn the alcadia down,” for about three or four consecutive nights, until it just basically becomes a joke.) The episode, rather than sparking a sustained, town wide revolt, would end up as a momentary fit of collective rage. Little would come of it. People would go back to behaving as they normally did, and would continue to passively tolerate their condition until the next opportunity presented itself to throw a futile and destructive tantrum.

All that was left was talk.

“What did they expect?” my Sandinista barber exclaims. “The election authorities were on their way to pick up the ballots, and those people were holding a manifestation in front of the main voting center. They had to be cleared away so that the national election authorities could collect the ballots! Plus, you know what they were doing was illegal, right? You can’t hold a protest in front of the voting center the day after an election. Imagine if every political group who lost an election did that.”

When I told a friend and local businessman, an opposition supporter, of this interaction, he just looked at me with a disappointed smile. “He knows exactly what happened. He knows they stole that election. He knows that the protesters were just trying to stop them from getting away with it. They were forcing them to be transparent. If the Sandinistas actually won that election, then why not announce it? Why not show everyone the ballots? Why use tear gas and bullets? The friars were still in the colegio trying to reach an agreement between the two sides when they tear gassed the place! Then, when they had everyone scurrying about, running from the riot police and the military, they snuck in a drove off with the ballots. How convenient.”

In the end, the national Election Commission released the results for the department of Ciudad Dario. Despite the fact that the two main opposition parties in Ciudad Dario had decided to present a united front against the Sandinistas for the first time in almost a decade, and despite the fact that most observers believe Ciudad Dario is predominantly supportive of the opposition (the town had had a Liberal alcalde from 1990 until the current Sandinista alcalde was elected in 2008, in an election that was widely held to be fraudulent), the Sandinistas won again in 2011.

“It’s interesting,” a person from Managua I met commented to me. “In Managua, you couldn’t even tell it was Election Day. No one even went to vote. People are so disillusioned. It’s in those small towns where people still think things can change.”