Es Verdad Sandinista

Early night again – we know how to party – so we’re up early. Florence is feeling a bit under the weather so I’m on my own this morning. Go out in search of breakfast but it’s Sunday and nothing is open yet, grab a snack – scrambled eggs, rice and beans – and a coffee in the hotel then meet Henry my guide for a walk around Leon.

Henry starts by telling me that the market next to the hotel is the Mercado Estacion because it’s where the station for train from Managua used to be. The railways became more and more run down during the first half of the last century until the government decided they were too expensive to repair and closed them. Leon streets do have names but nobody uses them, our map has no street names and there are almost no street signs, the locals navigate using churches or other landmarks. One exception is Calle Juan Pablo, named to commemorate the two visits of the former Pope to Leon.

Henry explains that the Nicaraguan diet is generally made up of heavy, starchy food like potatoes, casava and corn – he is a testament to this. We walk through another market, there are tamales – stuffed corn husks or banana leaves – cooking in a vat of dark bubbling liquid, not very appetising to me but he is impressed.

First proper stop is the Heroes and Martyrs monument to those killed by government forces during the revolution. Behind the monument a large mural tells the story of the country from the early meso-americans through the conquistadors, independence from Spain and then Mexico, a letter from the assasin of Anastasio Somoza García, to his mother and the revolution. Every scene shows death, war and destruction. After all this, it finishes with an idealistically upbeat image of two children playing in sylvan surroundings by a lake.

The Sandinista National Liberation Front – FSLN – now a socialist political party took their name from Augusto César Sandino, the leader of the rebellion against the USA backed government of the Somoza dynasty in the early 20th Century. Their red and black flag was adopted after it was used by protestors against the massacre of a number of students; it represented blood and death. The Sandinista played a larger part in the overthrow of the Somoza government in 1979 and assumed power soon afterwards. The stayed in power until 1990 despite the Contras, a right-wing counter revolutionary force backed by Reagan’s USA trying to destabilise them. Daniel Ortega, a former revolutionary leader and prisoner of the Somoza regime was president from 1979 to 1990 and again from 2006 to the present. A fact for the rock-trivia fans – The Clash album Sandinista has the catalogue number FSLN1.

Next stop is Prison 21 – opened in 1921 by the Somoza government and liberated during the revolution. It’s now a museum, there’s a photo in the entrance of a tank on the street outside with a rabble of revolutionaries. The tank is also in the museum – it was second hand from Russia and must have been 30 years old when it arrived. The museum is a strange blend of the horrors of the conditions and the torture prisoners underwent along with a number of almost grotesque figures depicting folkloric tales. The tortures are graphically illustrated on the prison walls, a cell not much bigger than our hotel room held 50 prisoners. The folklore tales include the ‘Headless Priest’, the ‘Pig Witch Woman’ and ‘Grab My Tit Woman’.

Final stop is the art museum. This has grown from the private collection of one of Leon’s wealthiest families, they bought a large house to hold it then had to buy another larger one opposite to hold more. It would take most of a day to do it all justice. There are many highlights from Central American artists I know nothing of along with better known European artists including Braque, Picasso, Sonia Delauney and Henry Moore.

Head back to the hotel to revive Florence and get our bags ready to depart for our next stop, Granada. It’s a two and a half hour drive, the countryside is initially hilly, dry and barren. When we pass the capital, Managua, it becomes flatter and more built up. It seems to be a quirk of this trip that we never visit capital cities, Mexico City is the only one so far.