Book Review: How to Make a Nicaraguan Quilt

Rigoberto Lopez Perez

On September 21, 1956, Anastasio Somoza Garcia visited the city of Leon to accept his party’s nomination to (once again) stand for reelection in the upcoming Presidential contest. The act was merely a formality; Somoza had already been ruling the country for twenty years and through land expropriations and the personal control of several national industries had become one of the richest men in Nicaragua. Dictators, however, like all leaders, require the appearance of legitimacy, even if it’s through rigged procedure. So, Somoza Garcia made the trip north.

Days earlier, Rigoberto Lopez Perez, a young aspiring poet, landed in Nicaragua, after an ambiguous stint in El Salvador. He immediately headed for his hometown of Leon, carrying a cardboard box filled with his belongings, which included a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson. On the evening of the 21st, he sneaked into a town party thrown in honor of the visiting President. It is said, that when he took out the .38 caliber Smith & Wesson and unloaded it into Anastasio Somoza Garcia, the dictator looked straight at him and remarked (like a father reprimanding his child), “You fool! What have you done?”

Margarita, está  linda la mar by Sergio Ramirez tells the story of this extraordinary event, which led to the death of the first Somoza and the consecration of Lopez Perez as a martyr (you can find his bust next to the cathedral in Leon). As Ramirez retraces the assassin and his victim’s steps up to that fateful party, he flashes back a half-century to tell the story of Ruben Dario, by that point an international literary sensation, and his triumphant return to his hometown of Leon after decades of roaming around the metropolises of the world.

The two narrations mirror each other: as Lopez Perez arrives on a boat to the port-city of Corinto, Dario is also arriving on a boat to Corinto; as Leon throws a parade in honor of Somoza, the city is also throwing a parade in honor of Dario; as Somoza lays dying, Dario lays dying. Even some of the characters are present in both narratives. Dario writes what would become one of his most famous poems, “A Margarita Debayle,” on the side of a little girl’s fan; that little girl grows up to marry Lopez Perez’s victim, Anastasio Somoza Garcia.