Police Noir in Ser­gio Ramírez’ Ya nadie llo­ra por mí 

ONE OF MY EAR­LI­EST rec­ol­lec­tions of 2017 Cer­vantes Award win­ner, Ser­gio Ramírez’ work, is that of a dis­tant mem­o­ry of when my beloved grand­fa­ther the poet, called him one of ‘these kids today’ as he awk­ward­ly fur­rowed through Mar­gari­ta How Beau­ti­ful is the Sea’s inad­ver­tent time­lines. In his lat­est work, his detec­tive nov­el Ya nadie llo­ra por mí, the read­er will not find the solem­ni­ty that his mag­nan­i­mous Rubén Darío required from lan­guage, nor the inescapable aris­to­crat­ic set­ting that bound the lit­er­ary plume when only the small­est of minori­ties knew how to read, and lit­er­a­ture could only see them and their strug­gles as wor­thy subjects.

In read­ing this nov­el, you would nev­er guess that this­re­sem­bles Ramirez was ever vice pres­i­dent of any­thing much less a coun­try. Per­haps it is because that’s exact­ly what every­body in Nicaragua always wants him to remem­ber, when­ev­er he does any­thing or is even men­tioned. This nar­ra­tor is a dif­fer­ent man. He is an artist, a bohemi­an of the old guard. The nar­ra­tor is an assid­u­ous stu­dent of our lit­er­ary tra­di­tion and has stepped into the work­shop where younger authors like Erick Aguirre, Hen­ry Petrie and Franz Galich bounce a ten­nis ball off the wall. In order to reach this new peri­od in his work, he has had to become a dif­fer­ent nov­el­ist, one who noticed when our tra­di­tion once again became a new literature.

Anoth­er thing he seems to have is a keen aware­ness of the gold­en age that Eng­lish-lan­guage tele­vi­sion is liv­ing, and who could blame him for want­i­ng a piece of the action? Ya nadie llo­ra por mí is the sec­ond book of an unfin­ished tril­o­gy or per­haps of a longer series in the works. It starts with a Wikipedia entry that sum­ma­rizes his main char­ac­ter’ life. Dolores Morales is a for­mer police offi­cer who bust­ed a drug car­tel and was reward­ed by being shame­ful­ly dis­missed. The real-life entry―that you can find in Wikipedia―reads like the begin­ning of a TV detec­tive dra­ma, it flows like a mon­tage of pre­vi­ous episode high­lights that’s enjoy­able and excit­ing even when you already read the first book―which is prob­a­bly also worth the read.

The sto­ry takes place in two very fast-paced and hec­tic days and then there is an epi­logue of events that hap­pen a few days lat­er, the author is more pre­cise on this, each of the three parts―or chap­ter groups―has a time sig­na­ture for a title. The first day, has ten chap­ters and the sec­ond eight. The third day one, it takes place a week after the first day and has an implied critique―or per­haps a geo­graph­ic retelling―of Bolaño’s econ­o­my in The Sav­age Detec­tives’ Sonora―in the sense that Nicaragua is much small­er than North­ern Mexico’s deserts and/or that per­haps the chap­ter is too long and tedious.

The way Ramírez plays with the detec­tive fic­tion genre most­ly relies on mak­ing his appro­pri­a­tions believ­able in the con­text of con­tem­po­rary Nicaraguan real­i­ty and cul­ture, these are adap­ta­tions to what he him­self calls a pro­found­ly cor­rupt soci­ety with very few reli­able insti­tu­tions. Among those small glim­mers of of opti­mism are Dolores Morales’ impov­er­ished and over-the-hill mis­fits that band togeth­er to fight for what they―and any­one who isn’t clear-cut igno­rant nor evil―think is right, regard­less of the reper­cus­sions, and to restore the sanc­ti­ty of their rev­o­lu­tion­ary San­din­ista val­ues in their own hearts and in the less than will­ing eyes of his clients―on this most cir­cum­stan­tial of affairs.

The inven­tion of Detec­tive Fic­tion is attrib­uted to Edgar Allen Poe, yet the genre’s arche­type and thus its tran­scen­den­tal sig­ni­fied can evoke Daniel’s Susan­na and the Elders, in the Old Tes­ta­ment as a pur­er orig­i­nary moment in antiq­ui­ty. Like most recur­ring con­cepts and per­spec­tives in a longer lit­er­ary his­to­ry the sub-genre is cul­ti­vat­ed with­out a prop­er self-aware­ness for the most part. It’s valu­able to 

note that the con­cept of a detec­tive is a prod­uct of moder­ni­ty and that the term is born in West­ern lit­er­a­ture. If we are to explore the his­to­ry of a tran­scen­den­tal sig­ni­fied of the form, then it is impor­tant to note that detec­tive fic­tion is most­ly cat­e­go­rized as a sub-genre of the mys­tery nov­el and of police fic­tion. In this case Dolores Morales is clear­ly defined as a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor so the dis­tinc­tion is made with com­plete precision.

Susan­na and the Elders is cit­ed in Shakespeare’s The Mer­chant of Venice, when Shy­lock and Gra­tiano praise Portia’s good judg­ment and refer to her as a sec­ond Daniel, because if his acute wit­ness inter­ro­ga­tion tech­niques. In Ara­bi­an Nights’ Tale of the Three Apples the Caliph Harun al-Rashid assigned Ja’afar the task of inves­ti­gat­ing the death of a woman they found slain and cut into 19 pieces in a chest. When the woman’s hus­band presents him­self as the mur­der­er it makes per­fect sense in text­book crim­i­nol­o­gy because assas­si­na­tions are usu­al­ly com­mit­ted by those clos­est to the vic­tim. When he reveals the motive, anoth­er impor­tant detec­tive fic­tion con­ven­tion is effec­tive­ly ful­filled. Both these sto­ries coin­cide with Ramirez’ sto­ry, because all the vic­tims are women, and they are all oppressed by gen­der-based violence.

“But in my view, that skin­ny girl is a fool.” “Why is that” inspec­tor Morales asks.

“Why is she so bent on mak­ing a big deal about her step­fa­ther bust­ing her lit­tle ass?”

[…]

“So you agree with him rap­ing her, you fuck­ing cuckold?”

“Rape? What­ev­er you want to call it makes no dif­fer­ence, boss.” Ram­bo answers. “It hap­pens all the time among the poor and at the very top, it’s not a mat­ter of rich and poor, but rather of the instru­ment, that when it gets hard there’s no rea­son­ing that it can obey.”

“I nev­er imag­ined that you were such a per­vert, Ser­afíín.” Inspec­tor Morales says.

“And you think that skin­ny lit­tle girl is a saint?” Ram­bo answers. “Women like to tease men, boss, they go bra-less to make their lit­tle tits more vis­i­ble, they wear real­ly short miniskirts and show half their ass, and they even go to church like that to make even the holi­est of priests suc­cumb to temptation”.

And it goes on like that for pages…

In Tale of the Three Apples, every­body has Rambo’s cav­a­lier atti­tude towards gen­der-based vio­lence, once the victim’s hus­band con­fess­es and explains that he slaugh­tered her in a fit of rage because an evil slave made him believe that he was her lover. the Caliph for­gave the deceived spouse, and ordered to have Ja’afar hunt down the slan­der­ous slave in three days or he will be exe­cut­ed instead. Many also cite Sopho­cles’ Oedi­pus Rex as a pro­to­type of the detec­tive sto­ry because of the way the pro­tag­o­nist goes on clues and inter­ro­gates wit­ness­es in order to dis­cov­er the truth about him­self and how the ora­cle prophe­cy is ful­filled despite his best efforts. In Ya nadie llo­ra por mí the psy­cho­log­i­cal aspects per­tain to an Elec­tra complex―a young woman is miss­ing and her adop­tive father hires Morales to investigate―the ancient myth is trans­mut­ed in the con­tem­po­rary chrono­tope and has real impor­tance in deter­min­ing sev­er­al char­ac­ters’ moti­va­tions and the course of the story.

It’s not dif­fi­cult to imag­ine why the incest plot metonymizes the most dread­ed and unspeak­able polit­i­cal scan­dal in recent Nicaraguan his­to­ry. Why wouldn’t Ramirez want to stick it to his old boss and show the world that he has bronze balls while he’s at it? Hell, I say he should even rant about it on Twit­ter like a work of book per­for­mance art. I will say that author’s loy­al­ties lie with his craft when he

even allows six­ty-some­thingish Morales to think he has a shot of being with the girl, and she lets him down gen­tly. There are oth­er per­son­al­i­ty and his­tor­i­cal­ly cir­cum­stan­tial traits―aside from incest allegations―that would make Soto sim­i­lar to Orte­ga in the eyes of the once vice-pres­i­dent turned founder of the MRS (San­din­ista Ren­o­va­tion Movement).

The loads of ripe cof­fee would rot in the farm gates, and only he knew the logis­tics to get them to the col­lec­tion centers.

Ramirez’ polit­i­cal move­ment lost the pop­u­lar­i­ty con­test in the Nicaraguan countryside―perhaps because it nev­er had the resources to dri­ve peo­ple from every last farm in the moun­tains on bus­es to Man­agua, and host mas­sive polit­i­cal ral­lies that include free food and bev­er­age, live music and awe inspir­ing polit­i­cal speech­es. It’s hard to say who holds more influ­ence abroad, but inside the coun­try there’s no con­test. There are a num­ber of rea­sons of why this is, and many trag­ic anec­dotes that derive from the polit­i­cal divorce that the author choos­es not to get into and thus, aren’t rel­e­vant to this paper.

Soto who he also calls Agnelli―because giv­ing peo­ple nick­names is the unof­fi­cial Nicaraguan pastime―is a hybrid. He’s your basic every­day super rich busi­ness man who reg­u­lar­ly hops on his pri­vate heli­copter for busi­ness meet­ings abroad. The nick­name comes from a resem­blance that inspec­tor Morales spots, this would be the sec­ond ingre­di­ent in the character’s hybridiza­tion, the first if we were to go in the sto­ry order and note that Soto’s phys­i­cal appearance―that also resem­bles Car­los Fuentes or a clean-cut Nicanor Parra―was the first impres­sion he made on Morales.

It was a six-sto­ry build­ing cov­ered in bot­tle green pan­els bound by riv­ets that tow­ered over the slums in the sub­ur­ban high­way, that went to south road. Behind it there was a set­tle­ment with squat­ters, at one side there was a yard where cars were dis­man­tled and a weld­ing shop, and a Pali Super­mar­ket on the oth­er side and a sor­did gam­ing casi­no dec­o­rat­ed with tin domes that were sup­posed to make it look like an east­ern palace […]

For those poor souls that lose years’ worth of hours com­mut­ing in Man­agua, this descrip­tion sounds more like a synec­doche of anoth­er much larg­er part of town than the begin­ning of a weary grid­lock in peak hour traf­fic. It’s where where all the new build­ings were being con­struct­ed back in the late 90’s. All the oper­a­tion needs for you to do is change the name of the super­mar­ket chain, give the casi­no an Egypt­ian theme and bright­en up the tint on the building’s glass pan­els and you have revealed the last third of the Soto/Agnelli hybrid―a trim, tanned and inces­tu­ous Car­los Pel­las, CEO of the Pel­las Group.

Many people―especially Nicaraguan aca­d­e­mics and politicians―would say that the Pel­las fam­i­ly wield the real pow­er in Nicaragua. They have owned THE rum refin­ery since the 19th cen­tu­ry, their present-day mul­ti-nation­al con­glom­er­ate accounts for a third of the country’s GDP and they’re always back­ing every side of every polit­i­cal debate. In the eight­ies many peo­ple referred to Car­los Pel­las as the 10th Coman­dante. Although Soto’s com­pound­ed with the phys­i­cal appear­ance of one man, the alleged weak­ness­es of Ramírez- favorite third-world dic­ta­tor and the par­al­lel office build­ing of a cor­po­rate over­lord, he is still small pota­toes com­pared to any of them. Soto’s just anoth­er impune crim­i­nal in Nicaragua who hap­pens to have money.

Soto, back­wards can be decon­struct­ed in a syn­tag­mat­ic for­mu­la that reads zero‑t (cerote, turd in Nicaraguan Span­ish) and the os trans­lates to sicle as in the ham­mer and the sicle. In Nicaraguan Span­ish when some­one rips you off you’d say that they hit you with a ham­mer, sicle works as a metonymic game of inter­change­abil­i­ty. And in Eng­lish, Tur­d­ci­cle is an added accep­ta­tion that the Eng­lish lan­guage trans­la­tion gives the nov­el character’s name as a present.

Wit­ness­es are ques­tioned with as much per­sua­sion as intim­i­da­tion and their trust has to be earned when they’re on the right side of the story’s moral­i­ty. They are grad­u­al­ly revealed as a prop­er indi­vid­u­als with their own nature and per­son­al agen­das, and the crime―usually a murder―is solved by find­ing rel­e­vant clues and doing mas­ter­ful detec­tive work. The immense­ly pop­u­lar sto­ry telling tech­nique is a brain child of the Enlight­en­ment and com­bines intu­itive rea­son­ing, close obser­va­tion, induc­tive and deduc­tive log­ic, and the detective’s cal­cu­lat­ed inter­ven­tions. In the past two cen­turies the genre has only become more sophis­ti­cat­ed with the nuance and sub­tle­ty of its con­ven­tions and even­tu­al con­ver­gence with cin­e­mat­ic lan­guage. This nov­el is the heir of the soft­ened form.

Dolores Morales (trans. Moral Pains), is a ded­i­cat­ed detec­tive, his meth­ods dif­fer great­ly from Poe’s Dupin or Doyle’s Holmes, he relies on wit­ness accounts―gossip―more than on his own deduc­tions. Which is not to say that he doesn’t make pic­ture per­fect guess­es that are usu­al­ly vent­ed invol­un­tar­i­ly in a sar­don­ic tone. He talks to Lord Dixon, the ghost of his deceased police part­ner, (or a reces­sive trau­ma that adopts a schiz­o­phrenic voice) his neigh­bors from the bar­ber shop (Ovidio and Apolo­nio), the bill col­lec­tion agency (Dr. Celesti­no Car­mona AKA Vade­me­cum), Mrs. Sofia, his cur­rent assis­tant and his for­mer assis­tant Mrs. Fan­ny who now works for the phone com­pa­ny, Claro. The detec­tive agency is an inad­e­quate­ly kept unit locat­ed at the Gua­nacaste Shop­ping Cen­ter, a fic­ti­tious strip mall that like every­thing in old down­town Man­agua, has seen bet­ter days.

Age is one of the uni­fy­ing fac­tors in these rela­tion­ships. They were all young in the 80’s when the first San­din­ista gov­ern­ment was in pow­er and they all retain sim­i­lar social­ist val­ues sys­tems of the time. Many peo­ple see the pol­i­tics in the nov­el as an impor­tant fac­tor and when you’ve been exposed to this gen­er­a­tion of Nicaraguans, you know these char­ac­ters are much more than mere pro­jec­tions of the author’s dream­scape. In real-life is it also know that Ser­gio Ramírez’ neigh­bors are Queen Sofia Ibero- Amer­i­can Poet­ry Prize win­ners Ernesto Car­de­nal (2016) and Clari­bel Ale­gría (2017). Ale­gría passed away while this cri­tique was being writ­ten and on the day of the announce­ment, Ramírez tweet­ed two pho­tos of the three togeth­er, that Cardenal’s office had post­ed just min­utes before. In the sec­ond pho­to, the three of them are sit­ting on rock­ing chairs in Car­de­nal’s liv­ing room. The style of the space is some­what evoca­tive of the author’s descrip­tion of Car­mon­a’s debt col­lec­tion agency’s office―and of every oth­er sit­ting room from the eight­ies and ear­ly nineties in Nicaragua.

Dr. Car­mona, OBG­YN, had his license to prac­tice med­i­cine revoked after being accused years before of prac­tic­ing an abor­tion on a raped 13 year-old girl, he’d earned the nick­name of Vade­meí cum because of his par­tic­u­lar reten­tive­ness of oth­er peo­ples’ lives that he stores in his mind in alpha­bet­i­cal order.

The space where the Effec­tive Elf was had pre­vi­ous­ly been occu­pied by a Pay­less Shoe store. Vade­meí cum had no desk and took care of his mat­ters seat­ed on reed-woven rock­ing chair that was part of a four-piece set. Behind him there was a safe that opened with a wheel that looked like a ship steer. From some nails hung the elves’ jumpsuits.

Car­mon­a’s usu­al­ly the first to know all about the oth­er char­ac­ters’ back sto­ries and has a pool of human assets that keeps him well-informed. Despite being a debt col­lec­tor he’s very gen­er­ous with his knowl­edge and time, con­sid­er­ing all the pro-bono work he does for Morales’ agency as an expert wit­ness. Dixon and Vade­me­cum are the most Wat­sonesque when it comes to their dia­logues with the inspec­tor. Lord Dixon’s advice appears to be fal­li­ble and more geared towards mak­ing wise cracks than

any­thing else. At times it seems as if his soul will final­ly attain an after­life of peace­ful rest once his part­ner joins him in death. Per­haps a read­ing of ill will is real­ly con­tempt for the deceased police­man’s brand of humor that’s timed to the nar­ra­tive’s worst moments of ten­sion. Even­tu­al­ly his lack of con­cern for death proves to give his part­ner the extra patience he needs to solve the case.

The Gua­nacaste strip mall retains a small town can­dor that is too eas­i­ly lost in the macro­cosm of the city and it serves to inform the read­er of cir­cum­stances that Morales still has to uncov­er for him­self, because even when his accom­plices want to let him to know what the read­er is eager for him to dis­cov­er, the poor man just hap­pened to leave his phone at the office, like any nor­mal every­day per­son does at any giv­en time. Car­mona and Wat­son are physi­cians and that’s about all that they have in com­mon. His knowl­edge base and freak­ish mem­o­ry makes him more sim­i­lar to Sher­lock Holmes than Morales. The Nicaraguan detec­tive does his work out of neces­si­ty he is not cere­bral, or per­haps the nar­ra­tor is more con­cerned with high­light­ing his mod­esty and decen­cy, rather than reveal­ing his cold­er assess­ments of real­i­ty and of the peo­ple around him and thus himself.

For Morales, this case starts with the eco­nom­ic appeal of being able to sus­tain him­self and his assis­tant Sofía for the short to medi­um term. A man like Car­mona needs the false sense of secu­ri­ty that only straight-up mon­ey chas­ing can give him. Vademécum, trans­lates to ‘walk with me’ which is a phrase that Nicas use to indi­cate that two peo­ple are friends who reg­u­lar­ly hang out togeth­er. In Eng­lish, Car­mona trans­lates to Carmonkey―the mon­key in fem­i­nine. It seems that once he’s out of his lit­tle elf/goblin/troll game there is lit­tle else that inter­ests him more than shoot­ing the breeze and vent­ing what­ev­er it is he has on his mind—prompted or unprompt­ed. He also does some dri­ving around in a worn pick­up with small town adver­tis­ing mega­phones on the roof―along with some addi­tion­al schmoozing.

In the pre­vi­ous­ly cit­ed descrip­tion the nar­ra­tor goes on to men­tion the pres­ence of a bot­tle of Old Parr as an aes­thet­ic arti­fact that the unli­censed physi­cian can no longer enjoy because of his cir­rho­sis. The book takes place in a two-day time peri­od and it’s log­i­cal to imag­ine that it lim­its itself to the sto­ry for the most part, with that said, it wouldn’t sur­prise if these char­ac­ters were an over-the-hill clique of drunk­ards. After all, the third chap­ter ends with him buzzed after drink­ing two Irish cof­fees before noon.

What is the use of hav­ing brains in our pro­fes­sion? I know well that I have it in me to make my name famous. No man lives or has ever lived who has brought the same amount of study and of nat­ur­al tal­ent to the detec­tion of crime which I have done. And what is the result? There is no crime to detect, or, at most, some bungling vil­lainy with a motive so trans­par­ent that even a Scot­land Yard offi­cial can see through it.

It would seem that in this nov­el the police forces have had their revenge from Holmes’ pedantry. Ton­golele, whose alias is chris­tened after the 1950’s Mex­i­can car­ni­val diva with a white lock in her hair a la Cruel­la DeV­ille, is a far cry from the Mr. Greg­sons of yes­ter­year. He’s more of a Deep State shad­ow in the Policía Nacional. He holds no offi­cial rank, yet he has his own assigned men and access to all the police resources at com­plete dis­cre­tion. He also has a pri­vate region­al car­go truck busi­ness­es reg­is­tered under a straw man’s iden­ti­ty. It would appear to be a nar­ra­tive flaw that both Tongolele―who’s real name is a plot twist in which Somoza, Nicaraguan lit­er­ary crit­ic Anasta­cio Lovo, et. al. are the butts of the joke―and Soto just hap­pen to have made their mon­ey in trans­port and logis­tics, and it makes per­fect sense when you con­sid­er how drug traf­fick­ing has per­vert­ed and cor­rupt­ed every insti­tu­tion in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, that leav­ing their pos­si­ble involve­ment in the activ­i­ty unsaid makes both vil­lains out to be more ter­ri­fy­ing and sinister.

“But what hap­pens to the rapist is some­thing else” Cabr­era says look­ing a Fan­ny. “We’re not talk­ing in any way about impuni­ty. Quite the con­trary, we’re going to expose his behav­ior with chap­ter and verse, no mat­ter how pow­er­ful he is. We can at least expect a moral heal­ing for society.”

“With the [pub­lic] denounce­ment the chain link is bro­ken and the aggres­sor is unable to reof­fend after being exposed” Dr. Nuñez intervened.

In Span­ish Cabrón means cuck­hold and era is homony­mous to ‘used to be’. Per­haps the author is try­ing to expose the use­less NGO chat­ter that the psy­chother­a­pist and the famed Nicaraguan attor­ney employ when­ev­er shit hap­pens. Dr. Vil­ma Núñez exists in real life and she is the direc­tor of CENIDH the human rights Non-Prof­it that stands in for the police in the nov­el and too many times in real life. When they can do some­thing for a vic­tim, it’s usu­al­ly hold a press con­fer­ence, post a few tweets and upload the video to their YouTube chan­nel and lit­i­gate when it‑s safe. When their finan­cial backers―the West­ern intel­li­gence agen­cies’ hyperdictatorship―have some­thing to gain or an inter­est to pro­mote, their wor­thy cause can make it all the way to the inter­na­tion­al court sys­tems. But good luck on try­ing to pros­e­cute a for­eign gov­ern­ment for human traf­fick­ing, child pornog­ra­phy, or when their black ops drug lords, mon­ey laun­der­ers or any of their oth­er depraved and thor­ough­ly cor­rupt insti­tu­tions get into some ridicu­lous flub. When that happens―and it always does―the San­din­ista gov­ern­ment will be the first to turn a blind eye in hopes of going on with their affairs and steal­ing more elec­tions in peace.

Ger­ry­man­dered elec­tions are the least of my wor­ries in this troll-infest­ed sur­veil­lance dystopia in which the Nicaraguan State is lit­tle more than a hostage. The bour­geois for­mal­i­ty that was thus defined by Marx­ist the­o­ry serves any­one who can thrive in a fouled soci­ety of extor­tion­ist exploitation―that’s uni­ver­sal­ly inclu­sive for the scum of every sign. Per­haps a future series of books about Vademécum (more like Ver­ba­tim) could elic­it a solu­tion for the mys­ter­ies of our time. Or at least shed some light on the modus operan­di of the bina­ry pol­i­tics that play keep away with the liveli­hoods of fam­i­lies, the devel­op­ment of sound indi­vid­u­als, and jus­tice for those of us who are wronged con­sue­tu­di­nar­i­ly by rent­ed peo­ple on twit­ter who indoc­tri­nate the most mind­less of mass­es into harass­ing you with bull­shit sto­ries about your 9 year-old son, your wife, your mom, your friends, any­one who retweets you, calls on the phone, sends an email, or what­ev­er. And why is that? My guess is that the pow­ers that be feel that attack­ing high cul­ture is the classy drug war gravy train.

Aside from the authen­tic San­din­ista val­ues in Ya nadie llo­ra por mí that even the author ridicules at times―a good sense of humor will get you by in Nicaragua. One exam­ple of this for­tu­nate sym­bio­sis from hell is the dilem­ma that Morales has with the mon­ey Soto paid him in advance. The idea that he would even con­sid­er not keep­ing it is com­plete­ly ludi­crous and makes every word writ­ten in rela­tion to the top­ic taste like sar­cas­tic gall. The only rea­son I can imag­ine for why the nar­ra­tive voice would ever want to touch on the sub­ject is to make excus­es for the shady mon­ey he may have accepted―or maybe even brag about it. To make things worse for inspec­tor Morales, the only oth­er busi­ness deal in the hori­zon is a Niger­ian scam­mer email that Vademécum received, and that nobody who hears the sto­ry about it seems to see through.

While this book con­tains a very inci­sive cri­tique about Nicaraguan soci­ety, the Nicaragua inside is lit­er­ary and feels like a par­al­lel uni­verse where per­haps the San­din­ista par­ty exists but maybe not the peo­ple one would nor­mal­ly asso­ciate with it. Somoza, how­ev­er clear­ly did exist and con­tin­ues to, as a trans­mut­ed slay­er allowed to stalk prey in the San­din­ista State. Tongolele’s meth­ods are the same as the old mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship and there’s no rea­son to imag­ine how or why that would change any time

soon. Ramírez has the first­hand account of those years and his art requires him to keep his own his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry alive, and to assign an orig­i­nary respon­si­bil­i­ty to the vio­lence and blood­shed that nev­er stopped.

“Yes, it’s the feath­ered ser­pent of our abo­rig­i­nal ances­tors, that from the dark­ness of the under­world is born to die and then be reborn again in a per­pet­u­al cir­cle” Nar­ciso answered. “A sym­bol of transcendence.”

Much has been writ­ten about Nicaraguan poet / first lady / vice-pres­i­dent Rosario Murillo’s flare for sym­bol­ism, in dif­fer­ent gen­res of jour­nal­ism that range from rur­al oppo­si­tion pam­phlets that accuse her of secret eso­teric dev­il wor­ship­ing and witch­craft, to for­eign op eds that describe the new Man­agua as bat­shit crazy, but in a good way. As a philol­o­gy stu­dent I can appre­ci­ate the deep­er mean­ing of tran­scen­den­tal sig­ni­fieds and am com­plete­ly in favor of mon­u­men­tal art that is diverse and dif­fer­ent. What every­body com­plains about is the giant met­al trees that Nar­ciso breaks down into eco­nom­i­cal­ly unfea­si­ble mea­sure­ments and costs that are very tedious to read and extreme­ly out of char­ac­ter for the shame­less pro­pa­gan­dist, but engagé in impor­tance. Per­son­al­ly I would have pre­ferred the mon­ey be used to plant man­go trees and trop­i­cal figs like the ones that lined the high­way to Masaya before extra lanes start­ed being put in the 1990’s and like the ones that are still there all over my UNAN-Man­agua campus.

[…] They unite heav­en and hell, order and chaos, life and death, and rep­re­sent all the forms of cre­ation in the cos­mos, accord­ing to Sai Baba, the East­ern guru; but above all they pro­tect those who gov­ern us from being stalked by their evil enemies.

With that said, no trip to Man­agua is com­plete with­out tak­ing a self­ie with one or sev­er­al of these mon­strous Venezue­lan petrodol­lar abom­i­na­tions of man. I just hope to god that the bit about the 15,000 bulbs a piece being LED’s is true. In Nicaragua, everything―not just detec­tive work―is tied to pol­i­tics and Ramirez’ brand of detec­tive fic­tion nec­es­sar­i­ly reflects the insti­tu­tion­al state of soci­ety and so do all the oth­er canon­i­cal works whether they set out to do it or not. The hue that the author choos­es is not as dark as the sub-genre is for the most part. Poe’s detec­tive mys­tery mur­ders include har­row­ing descrip­tions of med­ical foren­sics and vivid descrip­tions of pos­si­ble death sce­nar­ios. Where­as Ramirez’ foren­sics are lim­it­ed to retriev­ing cell­phone records and review­ing secu­ri­ty cam footage that he bought on the down low.

In this stage of his writ­ing he’s tak­ing on the con­tem­po­rary day with all the com­plex­i­ties and con­tro­ver­sies it can stir. The Ramírez that the Eng­lish-lan­guage read­er can get to know is still the one from Devine Pun­ish­ment, his famed 1988 crime nov­el, his mem­oir Adios Mucha­chos (1999) and his oth­er three trans­lat­ed works: To Bury Our Fathers (1984), Mar­gari­ta How Beau­ti­ful is the Sea (2008) and A Thou­sand Deaths Plus One (2009). Hope­ful­ly being award­ed the 2017 Cer­vantes Prize will pri­or­i­tize him in the inter­na­tion­al trans­la­tion queue and give his oeu­vre the impor­tance it deserves. With that said, nobody should be cry­ing for Ser­gio Ramírez―because he’s beat all the tur­d­ci­cles at their game, and is now exiled in Spain win­ning most of the MRS’ lit­er­ary prizes.