Nicaragua: The German Century

Founding members of the Deutsche Club in Nicaragua  1901

When one thinks about foreign powers that have changed the course of Latin American history, the two countries that immediately come to mind are Spain and the United States.  Others that make the list might be Great Britain with its influence in the Caribbean and along much of the region's Atlantic coast during the 19th and 20th century, or France with it's former Caribbean colonies and that one quixotic adventure into Mexico.  A country that doesn't come up very often is Germany; but the German footprint--the result of a wave of immigration in the 19th century--can be seen from the Oktoberfest celebrations in Nuevo Hamburgo, Mexico to the German museums in Valdivia, Chile.  Germany's impact in Nicaragua has been particularly consequential.

Nicaraguan history has been marked by three great power shifts.  The first was independence, which was thrust upon Nicaragua in 1821--no battles were fought, no dilemmas faced.  A few flags and people were swapped.  The power vacuum left behind by the Spanish, however, unleashed a feud between the country's two major cities--Granada and Leon--for control of the newborn state.  The dispute culminated in a civil war, where the Leon faction (the liberals) requested the help of a group of American mercenaries, led by the southerner William Walker.  Walker, after helping to beat the Granada faction (the conservatives), turned his guns on his allies the liberals, and proclaimed himself president.  So, it wasn't until the 1850s that Nicaragua actually had to fight and die for its independence; and it was not against the Spanish, but against a group of slave-state proponents from the United States.*

The second major power shift was the rise of Jose Santos Zelaya, the dictator responsible for the actual establishment of a Nicaraguan political state.  Gaining power through a coup in 1893, Zelaya began building railroads, establishing steam lines, and strengthening public education.  He enacted a number of seminal constitutional rights, introducing habeas corpus, compulsory education, the separation of powers, and property guarantees.  He also took control of the entirety of the Nicaraguan territory by expulsing the British from the Atlantic side of the country, and creating a new department, named (naturally) Zelaya.

The final shift was Anastasio Somoza, who transformed the country into his personal estate.  He is the founder of a very particular political culture: the modern clientalist corrupt authoritarian dictatorship.  A political culture that sees politics as a winner-take-all game, and the presidency as the pinnacle of power, fame, and wealth.  A political culture which became so entrenched that even a popular revolution could not shake it.

Germans, I'll argue, played a critical role in both the appearance of Zelaya onto the national political scene and in cementing Somoza's legacy. All in all, a small group of German immigrants were responsible for much of what happened politically in Nicaragua in the twentieth century.

Nicaragua: Race

In Nicaragua, there is a direct correlation between skin tone and income level.  The lighter your skin tone, the richer you are, the darker your skin tone, the poorer you are.

Unlike countries like Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, or Bolivia, Nicaragua does not carry the burden of an indigenous underclass.  Native American minorities (and in Bolivia’s case, majority), and their accompanying distinct ethnic identities, historic traditions, cultural practices, and surviving languages, do not exist in Nicaragua. Nor did the African Diaspora leave a mark on Nicaragua as it did the in the Caribbean nations, Panama, Columbia, Venezuela, Brazil, and Ecuador. (At least not on the western side of the country, where the majority of the population lives.  Significant indigenous and black-African minorities and majorities do exist in the geographically segregated and sparsely populated Caribbean coast. In this post, however, I will deal exclusively with the western half.)

Nicaraguans are a homogenous bunch, in so far as they can all be described as Spanish-speaking Mestizos.  But within this Spanish-speaking Mestizo category there is an immense variety of skin-tones, accents, and social classes.  In this post I will explore the racial dynamics of a country where there are technically no racial minorities, but where skin-color still plays an important role historically and in the day-to-day life of the average Nicaraguan.

Lets begin by stating that Nicaraguans, perhaps due to this lack of a festering racial minority, are incredibly open and blunt about the skin color of their friends, relatives, and casual acquaintances.  I already discussed bluntness in Nicaragua as it regards to physical attributes, but what I did not mention is that skin color is by far the most popularly used distinguishing descriptor for a person.  Chele (loosely meaning whitie, but without the racist implications) and Negro (loosely meaning blackie but, again, without the racist implications) are the two most common nicknames in Nicaragua.  They are not only nicknames, they are also used in situations where a person needs to get the attention of a light-skinned or dark-skinned stranger or when a person decides to give a friendly “Hello” to a random passer-by.  Americans, such as myself, are well acquainted with “Oe, chele” (“Hey, whitie”), the salutation every gringo receives from any passing stranger. (Rural folk are especially friendly, as one would expect from people who live in tiny towns and are used to greeting anyone that walks by.  They will undoubtedly offer up a “Oe, chele” any time they cross your path.)

Nicaragua: Blunt Objects

Bluntness would seem to come naturally to Nicaraguans.  I once heard, on a bus, a passenger call out, “Hey, piggy,” to a plump vendor, who turned around unscathed and politely attended the customer.  Frank nicknames (apodos) are the norm and tend to completely replace one’s real name.  Baldy (Pelon), Fatty (Gordo), Shorty (Chaparro), and Big-Eared (Orejon) are such common nicknames that people normally have more than one friend that is referred to by the same apodo. (“I talked to the Big-Eared one.” “Which one? Ronald?” “No, man, Franklin.”) In the US, such nicknames, when used to address the person the nickname refers to, would result in either a severe reprimand, a lawsuit, or a beating (depending on the situation). But in Nicaragua, nicknames don’t seem to bother anyone.

So, based on these examples, a person might assume that Nicaraguans are inherently more crass and open than Americans.  I believe they are in terms of physical appearances.  I mean, social norms in the United States strictly prohibit using physical “flaws” as descriptors in public settings.  Just think of those situations when you are describing a common workplace acquaintance whose name you do not know or cannot remember.  The obvious strategy to get the others to realize who you are referring to would be to list the acquaintance’s most striking and distinguishing characteristics.  The problem is that distinguishing characteristics, when viewed as flaws, are taboo in American society.  You cannot say, “I am talking about the fat guy,” because it is viewed as insensitive and insulting.  So, people tend to go for the beat-around-the-bush strategy.  The, “Oh, the one who always listens to Sinatra. Oh, the one who likes to wear blue,” strategy.  Once it is clear that nobody knows who you are talking about, you drop the sensitivity act and say (displaying the appropriate amount of frustration at having to stoop so low), “You know…the fat guy.”  “Oh yeah! Ted!”

In the United States, this tendency towards non-judgment, this abhorrence of discrimination based on physical attributes, became the political correctness movement.  A movement of compassionate judges and executioners, eager to crucify one in the name of the few.  Inevitably, as the PC movement has become more entrenched in American society, it has engendered a counter-movement.  This counter-movement is characterized by people making shocking and uncouth remarks in a deliberate attempt to offend others, with the ultimate goal of mocking the oversensitivity (and perceived hypocrisy) of the PC movement.  Essentially, they say the unsayable, because they know they aren’t supposed to say it, and those offended know that they know that they aren’t supposed to say it.  It’s an easy way to be the “cool rebel,” challenging authority.  Examples of this counter-movement in American popular culture abound; from right-wing shock-jock talk radio stars (Rush Limbaugh), to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, to Sasha Baron Cohen. (You’ll notice it also spans the ideological spectrum.)  More importantly, you see it in every day life, in educated friends who spout off sexist clichés for the sake of irony (supposedly lampooning both people who really are sexist, and people who don’t get the irony).

Nicaragua: Names

Birth names, on the whole, are interesting cultural indicators.  They can reflect entrenched cultural values (as in the prominence of Biblical names), migration patterns (Irish names, Italian names, Polish names), and even pop culture trends (children named after sports figures and celebrities).  With regard to birth names, Nicaragua represents a curious case.  A person’s name does not seem to reveal a cultural identity, as much as a decision based on whim and fancy.  In many cases, names in Nicaragua seem to be the result of a game of Scrabble gone terribly awry.  How else to explain the following names: Joxe, Jocasta, Axel, Exel, Lubianka, Mayerling, Esquiam, Yen.

In spite of the randomness, many names do fall into certain categories, though some categories are more esoteric than others.  As is to be expected, names of Spanish origin are popular, but not to the degree of other Latin American countries.  Whereas, in other countries “discovered” by the Conquistadors, Spanish names account for around ninety percent of the birth names, in Nicaragua it is probably closer to sixty percent.  Pre-Colombian Aztec names such as Xochilt, Itzachelt, and Cuatemoc are less common, but still typical (especially Xochilt).

The end of the Spanish colonial period, and the rise of the United States as the regional hegemonic power, made a greater mark on birth names in Nicaragua than in many other Latin American countries I have visited.  Anglo-Saxon names such as Karen, Hazel, Helen, Jennifer, Kathy, Katherine, Lucy, Marjory, Jason, Walter, Kenneth, Gary, Bryan, Andy, Michael, Edwin, Sammy, Franklin are unheard of in other Hispanic American countries (to say nothing of Spain itself), but in Nicaragua they are about as common as standard Spanish names like Jose, Luis or Maria.  An odd situation, given the difficulty Spanish speakers have in pronouncing these names (between the English and Spanish languages there is a noticeable deviation in the pronunciation of the letters H, J, and R as well as in the sounds made by the combination of “th” and “ca”).

Nicaragua: Poor Places

The bus stopped near a dirt path that veered off the Panamerican highway.  Up the dusty road stood a small community, similar to others one sees along the great transcontinental artery.  A collection of grey one-room zinc-roof cement houses, that must have started as a single house along the road and expanded outward along an improvised trail; each new house making the trail a little longer.  The dirt trail now led deep into the forested hills, and the steep inclines and waterways where it proved impossible to build marked the spot where one community ended and another one began.  These communities have no “center,” and the schools and churches simply mark the spot along the trail where a group of homes turned into a village.

The further one travels along the dirt path, the poorer and poorer the villages become.  The community closest to the Panamerican has small convenience shops (called pulperias) that sell snacks, drinks, sliced bread, salt, and other household consumables (soap, detergent, toilet paper, ect.), that are purchased from a bigger town nearby (which is still a pretty small town) and resold at their makeshift shop (their home).  Individuals also go around selling other products; the person who owns cattle sells the milk in the morning, while the people with farmland sell vegetables.  The community lacks running water, which means that people walk daily to the closest well to fetch water; there are several wells, with varying degrees of water quality.  There are “drinking wells,” which are the wells that are chlorinated to allow the villagers to drink from them; and there are “non-drinking wells,” which are wells that used to be drinking wells until a frog was found in them.

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.

Nicaragua: The Rainy Season

The morning is hot.  The sun rises and stares down at the women sweeping their part of the sidewalk in front of their houses.  It rises, and reaches its peak by lunch time, when its glare glazes over the hillside.  By lunch, the ominous clouds have begun to form in the horizon.  The pungent, yet fresh smell of wet pavement hits you like a premonition.  The wind dances through you with arrogance; the swinging trees, the ruffled hair.  Ocean blue clouds swallow up the sky like a wave.  You see a flash crack the sky or reach down and touch the mountain tops.  Or sometimes the lightning is hidden behind heaps of clouds, and the sparks make the sky look like a nineteenth century European battle painting.  The rain falls suddenly on the streets and zinc roofs; the noise of a large crowed giving a long round of applause in honor of the far off light show.  At night, the lighting makes the sky flicker like the walls of a darkened room with the television on.

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.

Nicaragua: The Zombies

They reach out and grab you as you walk down the streets.  Their faces strained, their eyes squinting, their lips dry, their mouths stretched like a rubber band pulled horizontally to its limit.  Their clothes--stained, ripped, soiled--sag from their bodies; their skin--beaten, bruised, dirtied--sags from their bones.  You feel the force of their strength as they squeeze your forearm.  You taste the stench of urine.  They start making guttural sounds in strange intonations.  You shake them off, but they follow you; as they walk, each limb makes movements independent of the rest.  Their gait is like that of a person in Carnaval carrying a huge papier-mâché head on their shoulders.

We are walking to a friend’s house a couple of blocks away, and we cross through the central park.  We run into an old drunk there, and as we walk Peliguey starts toying with him.  Peliguey asks the drunk for some change and then for some cigarettes, turning the usual exchange with street drunks on its head.  The drunk recognizes Peliguey and starts rambling incoherently about sports.
“I taught this guy how to bat!  I even taught him how to play soccer, even though I have never played soccer!” He says, laughing loudly at his own cleverness.
Once we get to the corner of the park, the drunk starts getting clingy, as drunks will tend to do, desperate as they are for anything tangible, and Peliguey pushes him aside and we keep walking.
“Do you know that guy?”
“Yeah, he used to be my baseball couch.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I used to be pretty good at baseball.”
And that was all that was said about the old drunk at the park.

Nicaragua: 3:47a.m.

I wake up suddenly, for apparently no reason.  I toss and turn a little bit, finally ending up laying on my back.  I close my eyes, hoping to float away inside that helium balloon we call sleep.  That is when you hear it, like a weak signal on the radio--that hidden station you always turn past: the distant cries of hundreds of roosters like a brass band of condemned sinners marching their pathetic march to the gates of hell, accompanied by the endless wretched barks of dogs already burning.  Enough to raise the hair on the back of your neck, and leave you awake, praying, for the rest of the night.