Granada: Singing with the Sandinistas by Brendan Sainsbury
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Growing up as a young politics student in the 1980s, distant Nicaragua always held an exotic and indefinably enigmatic allure. Caught in the crossfire of my adolescent imagination, I saw a country of impassioned politics and khaki-clad soldiers fighting to lay the foundations of a brave new socialist experiment. Fresh buzz words were quickly appearing everywhere - the Sandinistas and the Contras, “Irangate” and illicit arms deals, corruption and communism through the "back door."
The list was seemingly endless. And, floating somewhere in the middle of it all, amidst the cool cynicism of get-rich-quick Britain, dog-eared posters in student bars encouraged young and idealistic volunteers to go off and work for "coffee brigades" deep in the mosquito infested jungles of Central America. To my young and impressionable mind, it seemed as if Nicaragua was on the brink of a brave new world.
Twenty years later, and sitting in the relative comfort of an air-conditioned car, next to our nominal guide and driver Elvis, the brave new world was starting to look a little less ideal.
"Mira, amigo - look around you," Elvis boasts, bearing down on a battered-up old chicken bus packed to bursting point with an assorted mix of less-than-enthusiastic locals, “Internet cafes, Realty offices, gringos...Things are changing here, my friend - and fast." He’s right. Nicaragua 2004 is all the things you probably thought it wasn’t – safe, cheap, peaceful, culturally diverse, beautiful, and poised on the brink of a foreign-led property boom.
We are in bustling Granada, a rich colonial gem of a city, full of horse-drawn taxicabs and decaying neo-classical facades, which languish a few layers of paint away from their original Spanish-era splendor. Granada is the Nicaragua of romance and myth, a veritable museum piece that quietly contradicts the woeful hard luck tales of war, hurricanes and grinding poverty that have been the staple of the international news media for decades.
Nothing can prepare you for the gritty authenticity of its vibrant yet unthreatening streets - the rocking chairs in the doorways, the atmospheric hub of the central park, the warm nods of “Buenas noches” that greet you at dusk, the simple congeniality of the people - gradually tugging away at you, taking a hold, inviting you in.
History is not Granada's only positive draw card. Lapped by the waters of Lake Cocibolca and lying in the shadow of the imposing Mombacho volcano, this wealth of geographical beauty is equally hard to ignore. And, hidden somewhere in the small print are a number of other secrets: San Juan del Sur with its ruggedly appealing Pacific beaches, the salt water crater of Lago Apoyo, the legends that haunt the strange volcanic island of Ometepe.
In the circumstances, it's perhaps no small wonder that the city is crawling with inquisitive foreigners walking around with the words “Real Estate” quivering on their lips.
I had arrived in San Jose, Costa Rica, with my wife a few days earlier, intrigued somewhat by the path that lay ahead and armed with a million and one questions about communism, coffee cooperatives and passion-fuelled old Clash songs. Was Nicaragua safe? What had become of the Sandinistas? And what did the future hold for Central America’s most rebellious offspring?
The frontier was a mere four-hour bus ride to the north, we were informed as we brought our $10 tickets at the Transnica depot and chanced our luck with our bags. But, compared to the organized jungle treks and all-inclusive beach resorts of Costa Rica we might as well have been taking a rocket to the moon.
Disembarking tentatively in Granada, our first glimpse of Nicaragua's best-kept colonial secret was from the apocalyptic jaws of the Pan-American Highway. But as our bus drove off in a cloud of dust we quickly re-orientated ourselves and headed city central way.
We had heard that the operational hub for the shoestring brigade was the Bearded Monkey, an old colonial building turned guesthouse that acted as a contact point for gringos on local sightseeing missions or work/study programmes. You could learn Spanish here, they said, volunteer for an ecological project, or simply sit around in one of a multitude of unkempt cafes waiting for the ghost of Augusto Sandino to stroll in and re-ignite the revolution.
Elvis – like all good tour guides - finds us outside the Amigos Travel office, a fledgling tourist agency that operates out of the tastefully restored Hotel Colonial. As my wife and I sneak innocently past his doorway in search of accommodation, he quickly spots the guitar that has been glued to my hand ever since I left Costa Rica. The temptation is too hard to resist. We are promptly ushered inside.
“You play Carlos Mejia Godoy?” “Er… Well, no, actually.” "Ah - then I will show you, amigo”, says Elvis philosophically, cradling my guitar beneath his shoulder as if it were an extension of his arm, “Ruben Dario, Ernesto Cardenal, Gioconda Belli… Nicaragua is a country rich in artistic tradition. You just have to know where to look.”
He isn’t a million miles from the truth. “In Nicaragua,” ex-President Daniel Ortega once said during a conversation with the writer Salmon Rushdie, “Everyone is considered a poet until he proves to the contrary.”
A musical bond of sorts is quickly formed between us and the next day, taking me under his wing, Elvis spirits us quickly out of Granada along a rather pot-holed road on a kind of magical mystery tour - guitar poised strategically in the back seat.
Granada is Latin America’s oldest surviving colonial city. In the 1850s it was unceremoniously razed to the ground by the American filibuster, William Walker, in an early show of US muscle-flexing, but it arose defiantly from the ashes. And today it’s rising again, albeit with another rapid flurry of foreign intervention. Except that this time the invaders are dressed up, not as Contra rebels, but as Real Estate agents.
The landscape is green and verdant and, from the relative comfort of Elvis's Toyota, we are able to glimpse Arabica coffee bushes planted strategically underneath the shade of the tall cedar trees that pepper the roadside.
Coffee is Nicaragua's biggest export. For years its cultivation was administered through the iron grip of the country's ruling family, the Somozas, but the Sandinistas changed all that. Farms that had once been the monopoly of rich absentee landlords were promptly confiscated and redistributed amongst the local people. The new workers formed cooperatives and started to organize their affairs themselves with a little more autonomy and dignity.
But the honeymoon didn't last. The Sandinistas – in common with many erstwhile revolutionaries before them - quickly discovered that governing a country was not quite the same as winning a war. Wracked by external opposition, weakened by trade embargos and taunted by the omnipresent threat of a US-backed Contra army, the revolution was strangled in its infancy. Desperately trying to keep their heads above water, the government struggled on regardless. They sponsored literacy and healthcare programmes. They made a stab at democracy and called for free elections. And then, quite suddenly, they were rather ignominiously voted out of office - hoist, it seemed, by their own petard.
"When Violeta Chamarro took over in 1990 the people were afraid of what might happen," explains Elvis. "They feared fines and taxes. They sold their land back to the government.” The Sandinistas, meanwhile, reformed and re-grouped. In the municipal elections held the previous Sunday the party – Elvis proclaimed – had made some significant gains. Nicaragua is at a crossroads, it seems. It’s just a question of which way it will turn next.
Rather belatedly we arrive in the nearby ‘white town’ of Catarina, just in time for lunch. The small, thatched restaurant is perched like a look-out post above the enormous crater of Lago Apoyo. The view of the surrounding lakes and volcanoes is breathtaking.
Inside, a band of musicians are stalking the floor knocking out rather cheesy renditions of Guantanamera to a group of travellers with north American accents who sit clustered around a nearby table talking property prices.
Meet Des and his colleagues from Alaska, fresh from a hike up Volcan Mombacho and still brimming with superlatives for Nicaragua, the country, its people, its prices and – perhaps more importantly for them – its property buying potential.
“Va entonces”, says Elvis as if to attract our attention, “Time for a little concert, don’t you think?” He summons the group forward with a wave of the hand and noisily clears his throat. There is a kind of automatic and respectful silence. “Senores y Senoras, I give you - the music of Carlos Mejia Godoy.”
To the uninitiated, Carlos Mejia is the proverbial John Lennon of Nicaraguan song-writing. In the 1980s he created the musical soundtrack to the Sandinista revolution almost single-handedly and his songs are no less relevant or popular today. As if to encapsulate the point, the sweet sound of Elvis’ voice quickly fills the air, the melodies clear and lyrical, the words rapt in their expression of passion and loss, destruction and rebirth. "Now that you are free Nicaraguita, my love for you will blaze out like fire."
And it seems like a fitting finale in the circumstances – a free Nicaragua - because wasn’t that what the world had always wanted? The gung-ho Reagan administration, the idealistic coffee brigade volunteers, the misguided students, the Real Estate agents, the revolutionaries, the war-weary Nicaraguans caught up as ever slap-bang in the middle of it all.
Meanwhile, somewhere outside, in front of the dark grey outline of Volcan Mombacho, a red and black Sandinista flag still flutters defiantly in the breeze.