Relying on the revolver

Patrick Marn ham

Managua, Nicaragua The journey to the Sandinista Peoples' Republic of Nicaragua started in Panama, and before I set out I had a con- versation with Cervantes, my new Panama- nian friend. Cervantes (he has heard of the book but has not read it) is a man of violent opinions, and conversations with him are quickly reduced to two subjects. One is the beauty of the houses in the US Canal Zone, all of which property will become Panama- nian in the year 2000. The other concerns the various national and racial groups in the world who are despised by Cervantes.

'Mee bin een Los Angeles. Dey godd a lodd of blacks there. Aiee doan like blacks. Once we have a president who want to kick all the blacks out of Panama.' Then he gives his dreadful laugh which sounds like a very angry man who is being throttled. It seems that Cervantes was born in an Indian village in the west of the country. When he was orphaned as an infant he was taken in by German Lutheran missionaries. One can only hope that the good couple never lived to see the result of their kindness. 'Mee doan like Spanish people. Thouse bastards. My grandfather was a Spanish sonofagun.' Again, 'Once in Chicago aiee see American Nazi demonstration, maybe the Germans were cruel to the Jews and kill a lodd of people. But the Spanish come over here and kill most of the Indians. Dats life.' Later, 'Ake doan like Cadoliks. Aiee doan like the Pope. No. Aiee believe in Christ.' I told him that Catholics did not need Christ because they had the Pope, but all Cer- vantes said was, 'Oh jer?' High on the list of people Cervantes did not like were 'the Nikarawans — dose crazy bastards. Dey all a bunch of commies. Dey should all get shot.' Not all Panamanians would put it like that, but many might agree with the general sentiment.

After a few days of Cervantes, by now

my very old friend, it was a relief to arrive in Nicaragua, the first mainland American state to be governed by Marxists since the CIA shot Allende in Chile. And there to greet us in immigration was my first San- dinista. She was wearing a Fidel Castro hat and battledress. She had a gun on her hip, she was aged about 20, she clearly felt herself to be a power in the land, and she seemed completely humourless. She was therefore a typical Sandinista. As I was to discover.

It is hard to withhold sympathy from a country which has faced the problems of Nicaragua in the last ten years. In 1972 the earthquake razed the capital city, Managua, to the ground, and so far no one has found the resources to rebuild it. There are only two tall buildings in Managua: one is the Bank of America and the other the In- tercontinental Hotel. The fact that these two gringo structures still tower over the devastation of ten years ago is rather unfor- tunate. They face each other across an ex- panse of roads and grass about half a mile wide, which once contained the centre of the city. Everything else just disappeared one day in December 1972. The blocks that used to mark out the houses are now mostly overgrown patches of scrub. An entire four-sided block may have nothing but one shack marked Rank-Xerox, or a hovel specialising in wire bird-cages. That is all that remains of the original commercial life of Managua.

In the civil war between General Somoza and the opposition, led by the Sandinistas, it is estimated that 30,000 people were killed in 1978-79 alone. By the time it was over the society and economy of Nicaragua were in ruins. Then, in the week before my arrival, a cloudburst that lasted six days caused two hundred million dollars worth of damage, destroying the homes of thousands of peo- ple, and cutting large towns in two where

the bridges were torn away or where the tor- rent had washed out entire streets. It was like another earthquake, but since the dead were only counted in hundreds it did not receive the same publicity.

I toured the devastated area around Leon, the country's second city, with an of- ficial party from the diplomatic corps. We were conducted around most efficiently in air-conditioned buses. Periodically we descended from these into the steamy world outside and paddled about cautiously in the mud which had drowned these people's lives. One stinking house was being cleared by four small boys who wore handker- chieves over their faces to hold back the smell. There had been a government warn- ing about the dangers of hepatitis but no one was going to help these children if they did not do it themselves. Their parents, who had been trying to rebuild a house further down the street, arrived and with a touching faith started to list all the things they had lost which they hoped the diplomats would be able to replace. There was no representative from Britain since Nicaragua is now dealt with by our embassy in Costa Rica. Whether this absence substantially diminished the international response is uncertain, but it has certainly made it less colourful. After the earthquake in 1972 the British relief column which set out for Managua from a neighbouring country carried among other supplies 50 lbs of dog biscuits for the British Ambassador's dogs.

In fact the only envoy likely to do anything useful was the man from the US embassy, and the United States has already paid for most of the people's needs in the way of food, seed and medicines. But he , was the invisible man as far as the San- dinista authorities were concerned. The USSR, Cuba, Mexico and Spain have all sent relatively minor aid and have been thanked for it, but there has been no public acknowledgement of US assistance.

That the Sandinistas should find it dif- ficult to acknowledge that they need help from the United States is not of course a unique characteristic. It is galling for any government to concede that it is 'unable single-handedly to respond to the desperate needs of its people. But in Nicaragua the United States is almost always identified in official statements with the CIA. There is a lively guerrilla war on the country's borders and in response to US accusations that the Sandinistas are getting arms from Russia and Cuba they say that it is the CIA who are organising this war. They do, of course, have rather numerous precedents for US armed interference in Latin American af- fairs to support this suspicion: the much hated Somoza family regime came to power in 1934 over the dead body of the original Cesar Augusto Sandino and with the help of US Marines. The present leaders of the country are sincerely convinced that sooner or later they will have to face a coup mounted by the CIA, and no doubt this has a lot to do with nervousness and ill humour. But it is not the complete explanation.

When the Sandinistas first came to power they pledged themselves to a 'fundamental statute' which guaranteed a plural society, democratic elections, a mixed economy and freedom of expression. It is generally agreed that they have failed to keep this pledge and recently their most important commandante, Daniel Ortega, said that people might as well forget about the 'fun- damental statute'. To find out what this meant in practice 1 spoke to Pedro Chamorro, the editor of La Prensa, which is the only opposition newspaper in Nicaragua.

La Prensa is the biggest selling daily paper and is owned by the Chamorro fami- ly. Under the Somoza regime it was also in opposition and was detested by the general and his colleagues. In those days it was edited by Pedro Chamorro's father, one of the leading figures in the country and a man generally considered to be untouchable. On 10 January 1978 Mr Pedro Chamorro senior was gunned down in the street, and the beginning of the end of the Somoza regime is frequently dated by that outrage. The men who killed him were gunmen who were hired by the Somozista, but the identi- ty of those who planned the murder has never been discovered. In any case no one can suppose that La Prensa was ever sym- pathetic to the previous regime. Nonetheless it is now subject to daily cen- sorship.

Until last March there was no censorship but the paper was banned if it printed news items which the Sandinistas considered unacceptable. It was closed five times and on the last occasion Pedro Chamorro was warned that the next closure would be per- manent. This led to a system of self- censorship under which many stories were never even considered for publication. At the same time the security police infiltrated various informers on to the staff. San- dinista mobs gathered outside the building threatening to burn it down and to kill the editor. Mr Chamorro's family were also threatened at home. Then in March the government declared a state of emergency and a system of pre-censorship was impos- ed. In many ways this has turned out to be preferable. The contents of the paper are all submitted to the censor and anything that gets past her is safe. Of course she removes most of the interesting political news, but sometimes she lets something through that La Prensa would never have considered printing before pre-censorship provided them with a form of insurance.

Not all the censor's objections are predic- table. A picture of Brezhnev looking sick was removed; so was a substitute picture of Sarah Miles looking beautiful. Then a pic- ture of an elephant waterskiing in Florida was removed. Because of the censorship the paper is always two hours late and it now reaches some distant towns at night. Its sales have fallen • from 74,000 to 55,000 copies partly because the censorship makes it less interesting. But it still sells more than twice as many copies as Barricada, the of- ficial Sandinista paper. The infiltration has also continued. Recently Pedro Chamorro became suspicious of his 17-year-old office boy, who had access to all editorial files. He moved him to another department, and the office, boy immediately resigned and has since taken up a senior security job at the Sandinista television station. Mr Chamorro is clearly working under considerable strain, but he continues courageously to produce the most interesting and indepen- dent newspaper in Nicaragua.

'Perrier water! Perrier water!' It would not be right to. say that the citizens of Nicaragua openly fear the Sandinistas, who can still count on quite widespread support among the army, the bureaucracy and those who suffered under Somoza. But people do tend to treat the authorities with considerable caution. On one occasion, at least, I saw this caution thrown to the winds.

All over Latin America there is a popular style of singing practised by 'Mexican' bands. The bandsmen are not Mexican, though they dress correctly in enormous sombreros and embroidered waistcoats. The band has to include trumpets, violins and guitars, and one of the most popular Mexican songs is called 'My Revolver'. As this song reaches its climax the expressions on the faces of the men in the audience become almost mystical. Freely translated, the words howled out by the singer are that it does not matter when things go wrong in life, it does not matter if a man loses his job, his house, all his money and even his girl, it does not matter if he ends up destitute and alone because, and here the trumpets wail out more loudly than ever, he will always have his reevolverr-err-er-err-er. I rather enjoy this little song — it is the sort of thing you can find yourself humming in the bath — but for some reason its climax invariably produces mocking laughter from the women in the audience.

Anyway, on this occasion a Mexican band was playing in a restaurant more popular with the remaining members of Managua's oppressed bourgeoisie than with the country's Marxists. But one table was occupied by three Sandinista army officers correctly dressed and, as usual, armed to the teeth. I do not know whether Fidel himself eats with his cap on but these peo- ple did, and their presence in the corner of the room cast a slight pall over the pro- ceedings. It was the custom of this band to go round the tables and persuade the male customers to take the microphone for a few hoarse warbles in the middle of a song, but when they reached the Sandinista table the three officers refused to join in. Promptly the band went into its next song, 'My Revolver'. This time the whole audience joined in with the howling and with the- mocking laughter at the end. It was too much for the Sandinistas who rose and left the room.

It is sad to see so many energetic and in- telligent people, who want to help their fellow countrymen, pinning their faith on the turgid rhetoric and dubious assump- tions of the commandantes, with their endless committee meetings and doctrinal arguments. As one drives to the airport one reads the slogans scrawled up everywhere: 'After 20 Years of Struggle We have to De- fend the Revolution'. And another one straight from the Spanish Civil War: 'No Pasaran' (They Shall Not Pass). This is the romanticism of the Marxist Left. It was replaced at immigration by Marxist reality. There she was again, still unsmiling, trying to persuade a French passenger to translate his home address into Spanish.