SONGS OF DIS­SENT: RESIS­TANCE, DIS­IL­LU­SION­MENT, AND REFLEC­TION IN SOMOCIS­TAS 78, SAN­DIN­ISTAS 88 & ASI ESTA­MOS DON TOÑO

IN THIS SELECT­ED MICROUNI­VERSE of octo­syl­lab­ic qua­trains that tell a three-chap­ter sto­ry set in a deeply per­son­al and for­got­ten Nicaragua and that spans 25 years, the poet is most cer­tain­ly express­ing exceed­ing­ly rea­son­able con­cerns about the polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in Nicaragua. The three poems unite in a rel­a­tive­ly mul­ti­voice macronar­ra­tive, that takes place very par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing key moments: the first is the Somoza regime’s demise, the sec­ond, is the first San­din­ista government’s clo­sure, both timed in sim­i­lar dis­tance before the plot reveals itself, and the third poem tells a sto­ry about the per­ver­sion of what Nicaraguan his­to­ri­ans of the day liked to call the demo­c­ra­t­ic tran­si­tion dur­ing Vio­le­ta Chamorro’s gov­erne­ment. The poems touch on themes of polit­i­cal oppres­sion, loss of free­dom, and the strug­gles faced by a lyri­cal speak­er and his folk, who at first sought lib­er­ty from vio­lence and oppres­sion; and lat­er on, jus­tice and coher­ence in pub­lic affairs.

In SOMOCIS­TAS 78, we wit­ness a stir­ring depic­tion that encap­su­lates a memo­ri­al­ized Day of the Dead dur­ing a year in an on-going civ­il war par­tic­u­lar­ly marked by height­ened polit­i­cal vio­lence and the zenith of Marx­ist-Lennin­ist guer­ril­la war­fare. The lyri­cal speak­ers, are like­ly com­mon peo­ple tunred com­rades or sim­ply com­bat­tants, pur­pose­ful­ly eschew the con­ven­tion­al act of bring­ing wreaths to the local ceme­tery. Instead they plan to scat­ter flow­ers near the homes of the fall­en, who for the most part live in the out­skirts or the slums, and died on the river­banks, in the cot­ton fields and in the dirt paths, this rit­u­al­ized act at first glace, is an iron­ic metaphor of rich sym­bol­ism that rep­re­sents pop­u­lar unrest and protest.

Prag­mat­i­cal­ly speak­ing, this devi­a­tion is most obvi­ous­ly a strate­gic, and cal­cu­lat­ed response to the like­li­hood of height­ened sur­veil­lance on behalf of Somoza’s Nation­al Guard against pos­si­ble attacks and the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of mar­tyrs and rebels in ceme­ter­ies. Instead, those pay­ing homage opt to strew flow­ers near the unpre­ten­tious abodes of those fall­en on the peripheries—the tac­ti­cal depar­ture from cus­tom­ary obser­vances, remains a delib­er­ate protest res­onat­ing against the repres­sive domin­ion of Anas­ta­sio Somoza. The ref­er­ence to youth­ful seek­ers of free­dom, who trag­i­cal­ly dis­cov­ered their final rest­ing places at the per­son­i­fied behest of the mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship’s Gen­er­al, elic­its a somber con­tem­pla­tion into the lethal toll exact­ed by the pur­suit of resistance.

The poem unfolds against the back­drop of con­se­quen­tial his­tor­i­cal occur­rences, most notably the assas­si­na­tion of Pedro Joaquín Chamor­ro in Jan­u­ary 1978, an event that trig­gered soci­etal unrest. The poten­tial impli­ca­tion of Somoza in this crime ignit­ed wide­spread demon­stra­tions, prompt­ing coor­di­nat­ed respons­es from the San­din­istas and civ­il soci­ety sec­tors that includ­ed the church in major urban cen­ters. In the midst of this tur­moil, Pres­i­dent Carter sought reme­dies to quell rev­o­lu­tion­ary forces and pave the way for a demo­c­ra­t­ic meta­mor­pho­sis. A pro­posed polit­i­cal medi­a­tion, spear­head­ed by the U.S. and embraced by both Somoza and the mod­er­ate oppo­si­tion, mate­ri­al­ized in the form of an Inter­na­tion­al Com­mis­sion of Friend­ly Coop­er­a­tion and Con­cil­i­a­tion. Yet, despite these endeav­ors, Somoza remained obsti­nate in resist­ing the tra­jec­to­ry towards free elections.

In SOMOCIS­TAS 78, the spot­light through which the poem views the poor is one of poignant defi­ance against not only the oppres­sive regime of Anas­ta­sio Somoza, rather also from the oppo­si­tion and the polit­i­cal class gen­er­al and their hege­mon­ic nar­ra­tives that end up for­get­ting and anonymiz­ing the poor who sac­ri­ficed their blood and opt for a direct empha­sis on more notable mar­tyrs like Pedro Joaquín Chamor­ro. The speak­ers in the poem, are anonymized and pre­sum­ably every­day San­din­ista com­rades or oth­er sim­ple com­pa­tri­ots from any of the oth­er sec­tors in Nicaraguan soci­ety. The per­ished in the slums and out­skirts rep­re­sent what was prob­a­bly for­got­ten for the most part fea­tured in the news­pa­pers and news broad­casts, and what actu­al­ly was over­whelm­ing­ly pre­dom­i­nant in the mind of every­day peo­ple and in the his­tor­i­cal registry’s atten­tion dur­ing the last days of the Somoza dynasty.

This over­shad­ow­ing is an inten­tion­al omis­sion on what end­ed up becom­ing the endur­ing fig­ure of La Prensa’s slain direc­tor, Pedro Joaquín Chamor­ro as a cen­tral per­sona in that fate­ful year, and of the most tran­scen­den­tal con­se­quences lat­er on. He’s left aside in the poem’s meta­text to be redis­cov­ered in the investigator’s research into the blood­shed of 1978 as a whole, like a clue that lat­er aris­es at a more sus­pense­ful moment in a detec­tive novel’s plot. SOMOCIS­TAS 78 , in this man­ner, becomes in the fore­most a pow­er­ful com­men­tary on how the col­lec­tive strug­gle against tyran­ny and the resilience of the dis­en­fran­chised that were what is most eas­i­ly for­got­ten in hege­mon­i­cal dis­course, also mat­ter, or per­haps mat­tered most to the con­sen­sus at the time, and it serves as a state­ment of remem­brance that effec­tive­ly tran­scends indi­vid­ual per­son­al­i­ties from the priv­iledged classes.

In“SANDINISTAS 88,” the mood takes a deeply melan­cholic and per­son­al turn to the point of para­dox when the lyri­cal speak­er con­fess­es to feel­ing like he’s not alive, despite being aware that he can­not know what death feels like. The speak­er artic­u­lates a pro­found­ly pol­y­semic sense of sor­row devoid of an overt cat­a­lyst, por­tray­ing a sen­sa­tion of cap­tiv­i­ty and resis­tance akin to that of a caged mock­ing­bird that also ful­fills oth­er func­tions in the poem’s his­tor­i­cal meta­text. The metaphor of the cen­zon­tle (mock­ing­bird) com­mu­ni­cates a pal­pa­ble sti­fling of self-expres­sion, under­scor­ing the sup­pres­sion of both per­son­al and polit­i­cal lib­er­ties on mul­ti­ple lev­els. The allu­sion to being sub­ject to con­trol not only by a guardian, but also by rep­re­sen­ta­tion as we will see in this brief reflec­tion, with denied rights and the polit­i­cal dynam­ics in Nicaragua that change very lit­tle. This first glance, con­jures an image of a soci­ety under strict sur­veil­lance and poor socio-cul­tur­al cir­cum­stances, where rep­re­sen­ta­tion and indi­vid­ual free­doms are con­front­ed by severe constraints.

In the back­drop of this explo­ration lies a cease­fire agree­ment inked by lead­ers of the San­din­ista Gov­ern­ment and Nicaraguan rebels. The accord, a result of dis­cus­sions held in Sapoa, Nicaragua, amid the frame­work of the Esquip­u­las II Accord, it encom­pass­es var­i­ous stip­u­la­tions aimed at fos­ter­ing nation­al rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. Wit­ness­es to this agree­ment includ­ed Car­di­nal Miguel Car­di­nal Oban­do y Bra­vo, pres­i­dent of the Nicaraguan Epis­co­pal Con­fer­ence, and a because of his zoomor­phic sur­name he is also a good metonym for the mock­ing­bird cit­ed at length as the pro­tag­o­nist in the poem, along with his coun­ter­part, Joao Clemente Bae­na Soares, Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the OAS at the time.

The cease-fire agree­ment, extend­ing for 60 days com­menc­ing on April 1 of that year, sought to ini­ti­ate a com­pre­hen­sive nego­ti­a­tion process for a defin­i­tive cease-fire and the con­clu­sion of the ongo­ing war that in a very seri­ous sense did have every inhab­i­tant in Nicaragua impris­oned whether that be in their homes, or wher­ev­er they could take shel­ter. Both fac­tions agreed to con­vene in Man­agua on April 6 for fur­ther nego­ti­a­tions. Dur­ing the ini­tial 15 days, the US-backed Con­tra forces pledged to posi­tion them­selves in mutu­al­ly agreed-upon zones, with the details to be ironed out through spe­cial com­mis­sions in Sapoa. The Gov­ern­ment of Nicaragua, in turn, com­mit­ted to insti­tut­ing a gen­er­al amnesty for those pre­vi­ous­ly tried and con­vict­ed for pub­lic secu­ri­ty law vio­la­tions and for mem­bers of the Somoza regime’s army.

The text also out­lines pro­vi­sions relat­ed to the release of pris­on­ers, human­i­tar­i­an aid, free­dom of expres­sion guar­an­tees, and the return of polit­i­cal or oth­er exiles to Nicaragua with­out reper­cus­sions. In ret­ro­spect, these agree­ments led to elec­tions that the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty of the time deemed accept­able, and the San­din­ista gov­ern­ment hon­ored the election’s results and trans­ferred pow­er to the new UNO (Nation­al Oppo­si­tion Union) gov­ern­ment, in what his­to­ri­ans of the day called a demo­c­ra­t­ic tran­si­tion. The events in SAN­DIN­ISTAS 88. take place ten years after SOMOCIS­TAS 78, and both poems speak about moments when his­tor­i­cal out­comes are uncertain.

In the last poem of this tryp­ti­cal review, ASI ESTA­MOS DON TOÑO, the poet con­tin­ues his scathing cri­tique of the polit­i­cal land­scape and it makes lit­tle dif­fer­ence to him that the way peo­ple are being killed by The State has mor­phed from civ­il war into abject pover­ty and aban­don­ment. The vers­es lament the fate of those who fought and died in the moun­tains of the north and through­out the the­atres of guer­ril­la war­fare across the coun­try. The dead are por­trayed as the soul and sup­port, the roots and body of the peo­ple who vot­ed and should have won in elec­tions against deceit­ful lead­ers. Despite these vic­to­ries, the poet argues that noth­ing has real­ly changed, he uses the word cuadro that means paint­ing, the polit­i­cal land­scape but also in Nicaragua is also a word that’s used to say spy or covert agent. Over­all his per­cep­tion of polit­i­cal real­i­ty remains dom­i­nat­ed by cyn­i­cism avarice and unpleas­ant sur­pris­es that under­mine democ­ra­cy. The names men­tioned, includ­ing Anto­nio Lacayo, Vio­le­ta Chamor­ro, and the Orte­gas, sym­bol­ize the con­ti­nu­ity of per­vert­ed pow­er struc­tures and the per­sis­tence of corruption.

As far as the form of this poet­ry, it devi­ates rad­i­cal­ly from the poet’s more clas­si­cal forms, in the sense that the mod­ernist and postruben­dar­i­an met­rics are lib­er­at­ed to an extent and the poem moves slight­ly towards more con­tem­po­rary forms. The poem’s three ten line stan­zas have ABBAAC­CD­DC rhyme schemes. This free­dom in the way the lyri­cal speak­er breaks with met­ric dis­ci­pline can be inter­pret­ed in many ways, per­haps democ­ra­cy, espe­cial­ly cor­rupt democ­ra­cy with cor­rupt con­sen­sus is bet­ter reflect­ed with imper­fect meters, or imper­fect meters are the begin­ning of a new free­dom, or per­haps it’s both of these and oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties at the same time. When we look at the ori­gin of the avant-garde in Europe it is traced back to the post-war and asso­ci­at­ed with trau­ma and inno­va­tions that appeared dur­ing that peri­od. Per­haps some­thing sim­i­lar hap­pened in this poet’s heart.

The vers­es in all three poems reveal a per­son­al his­to­ry of polit­i­cal obser­va­tion at key moments in the life of a man who along with deep dis­il­lu­sion­ment with the polit­i­cal elites and lat­er a sense of betray­al by those who were elect­ed to bring about pos­i­tive change. When you read this poet­ry it’s impos­si­ble to not notice that the speak­er is inca­pable of escap­ing the beau­ty of life and the play­ful­ness and humor that inevitably sur­round every­thing, regard­less of how sad the tragedies we endure as human beings are. The poet uses vivid imagery and rhetor­i­cal tropes to show the emo­tion­al weight of polit­i­cal oppres­sion, loss, and the ongo­ing strug­gle for a bet­ter Nicaragua. At the same time, for him to con­vey true mean­ing and val­ue, he needs to acknowl­edge the beau­ty of the land­scape, poke fun at the Cardinal’s role in the Sapoa agree­ments and use the satir­i­cal image of Anto­nio Lacayo wip­ing his ass as a metaphor, because oth­er­wise it would be impos­si­ble to see how life pass­es in a heart­beat for a man, from when he’s 55 to the age of 70 years, in his beloved Nicaragua.