Mi Viejo Barrio de San Sebastian

Amor perdido, si como dicen es cierto
Que vives dichoso sin mí.
Vive dichoso,
Quizás sus besos te den la ternura que yo no te di.
Night after night Olguita heard the woman sing about her lost love, how she was managing to cope with her new-found independence, and every single time, the singer would reiterate how she bore her former lover no ill will. This unwanted soundtrack was provided by the jukebox at Julio Culito’s, a cantina located directly across the street.
Ever since Mami had moved to los Estados Unidos, Olguita and Mita Tina, her abuelita, had moved into a small two-room adobe house in el Barrio San Sebastian, not far from the San Antonio church. This neighborhood, one of the oldest in the capital, was located several blocks from Managua’s downtown. Mita Tina had chosen this area because it was near the house she worked in as a maid. At first Olguita hated San Sebastian, partly because it was old and noisy, but mostly because she was far away from her cousins Lourdes and Thelma, who lived all the way in the Colonia Centro America, out on the road to Masaya south of town. Olguita didn’t much care for the house either; here in this popular barrio, all the houses were made of adobe with red tiled roofs, and they all bore the same beige color on their facades. The house that they found had two high ceiling rooms, one with a big wooden door that opened out onto the street, a window that also faced the street, and then a door that led to a communal back courtyard that was shared by several other houses. The only furniture they had brought along from La 27 de Mayo, where they lived before Mami had left for los Estados, was a small couch, a dining table with two mismatching chairs, one bed that she shared with Mita Tina, and a small wooden entertainment center that Mami had purchased a couple of years earlier in Masatepe. The walls were painted pale yellow, and the only decorations were a lithograph of la Virgen del Socorro, Mita’s favorite saint, and a wooden crucifix that had been a gift from Mami when Olguita did her First Communion.
At first it was difficult to get acclimated to this part of the city, especially with a cantina so near, and every night of the week was punctuated by the strains of some song blaming women for being the cause of men’s unhappiness, or some woman asserting her right to love whomever she wants. At first Olguita hated it, for the noise of the music made it impossible for her to sleep, not to mention the noisy patrons of the cantina, who would exit the bar in the wee hours of the morning either loudly singing some heart-wrenching ranchera by Pedro Infante, or kicked out by Don Alfonso, the owner, after fighting and disrupting the other patrons. Soon she began to memorize the lyrics to the songs that were played most often on the old jukebox, which stood near the entrance, and could usually be heard all the way down the street. Sometimes she would even sing along as she lay in bed, and one day, on the way home from school; she paused in front of the door and was tempted to run inside to see for herself what the inside of a cantina looked like. But, remembering Mita Tina’s admonition that nice girls never set foot in that type of place:” If I ever see you set foot in that place, te cachimbeo,” warned Mita Tina, so Olguita’s curiosity would have to remain unsatisfied, for getting the crap beat out of her by her grandmother was not something she looked forward to, so she just stood there and imagined what it would be like to be one of those women that she saw there on occasion; those tall women that wore pointy heels, tight dresses, and too much makeup. Sometimes Olguita could actually smell the perfume they wore as they passed near her house. She was devoured by curiosity about those women who dared to enter Julio Culito’s; what they did, if their mothers knew that they frequented that type of establishment; if they had a novio, or even children. Instead she would listen to the boleros that played every night, and she imagined it was her voice that serenaded those men sitting at the bar or playing pool, she pictured herself dressed in the latest fashions, driving men crazy. Despite her abuelita’s threats, she had vowed that one day she would be the one controlling men; not the other way around. She didn’t want to become like one of those pendejas who completely surrendered to men, and were usually left at home to care for babies, while their husbands were getting drunk at Julio Culito’s. Even at this early stage, Olguita was clearly able to observe the way her Mami became when her father, Pedro, made sporadic visits to them in Managua. It was after these encounters that she vowed not to become what her mother had because of her father.
In the months that followed Mami’s departure Olguita started to warm up to this noisy part of Managua, for while she was far away from her favorite cousins and playmates, living in San Sebastian had it’s definite advantages: on Sundays after church, Mita and her would sometimes take the bus over to la Plaza de la Republica so that they could watch a band play in the bandstand, or take a stroll along El Malecon, Managua’s lakefront amusement park, and sometimes, if she was especially good, Mita would take Olguita to La Hormiga de Oro, the popular ice cream shop on Calle Momotombo, where she could enjoy her favorite raspado de albaricoque. Also, just down the street right next to la Iglesia de San Antonio was one of the best fritanga stands in Managua, which served, in Olguita’s opinion, the best gallo pinto and maduro frito she had ever tasted. Being so near to downtown Managua, it seemed like there was more action in San Sebastian than out in La Centro America. For instance, the day that Silvio Parodi, a local teen and member of an underground opposition movement, was killed by Somoza’s Guardia Nacional, it stirred up a lot of activity on her street, so much that Mita forbade her from stepping out on the sidewalk. A couple of days later, Olguita and her cousin Lourdes slipped out and joined the funeral procession as it passed in front of their house, saying they were going to a neighbor’s birthday party. Everyone was enraged about the way poor Silvio had been murdered out of cold blood, and several people shouted “GUARDIAS ASESINOS!” in unison as they made their way to the cemetery. Olguita and Lourdes didn’t know much about what had happened but they were excited to be part of the commotion, somewhat surprised that they managed to get away from Mita’s watchful eye so easily. Unfortunately for them, there happened to be a photographer from La Prensa, Nicaragua’s premier paper, who snapped a photo of the group that gathered around Silvio’s coffin at the cemetery, and Olguita and Lourdes just happened to be standing in the front row. The next day, Don Gustavo, Lourdes’ father, opened the paper to see none other than his youngest daughter and his niece on the front page. Needless to say, that news travelled quickly up the road from La Centro America to el Barrio San Sebastian, so when Olguita got home form school the next day she was very surprised to find Mita waiting for her with the belt, and she was even more surprised when she saw herself and Lourdes on the front page of a newspaper that Mita Tina angrily shoved at her.
Yes, life in that part of Managua could be very exciting indeed, and looking back on those years, Olguita felt that the time she lived in San Sebastian was the happiest of her adolescence. In fact, it was the last place she lived in before leaving Nicaragua to go join her Mami in los Estados Unidos. When she left that summer of 1971, she couldn’t have realized that she would never see that little house again, for less than two years after her departure, el Barrio San Sebastian would cease to exist as she knew it, for in a matter of seconds, that little house where she had spent so many happy moments would be reduced to rubble, trapping Mita Tina and her brother Rolando, who had now come to live with her, inside.

Managua, Nicaragua is a Beautiful Town,
You buy a hacienda for a few pesos down
Managua, Nicaragua is a heavenly spot
There’s coffee and bananas and the temperature’s hot.
The lyrics to that 1930’s song by Irving Berlin hummed monotonously in my brain in the weeks approaching my first visit to Nicaragua. I was 20 years old in that summer of 1996 when my Mother and Abuelita decided to break their 15-year self-imposed exile and revisit the old country. Due to the relative stability the country had enjoyed since the Sandinistas had been voted out of power six years earlier, Mama and Abuelita decided that it was finally safe for me to come along. In the time that led to that first “pilgrimage” I started to mentally revisit the images that haunted my childhood when Nicaragua was little more than a mythical place that I heard the adults talk about with longing: …te acordas de cuando ibamos en lancha a San Miguelito…cuando viviamos cerca de la Iglesia San Antonio???...cuando jugabamos beisbol en la explanada... I used to spend hours perusing my Abuelita’s photo albums with faded black and white photographs of Managua, a city that was virtually destroyed by an earthquake on 23 December 1972 and was now a mere shadow of its’ former self. As a child I frequently heard the word terremoto come up in conversation amongst my parents and uncles and aunts but it wasn’t until much later when I realized what the word meant: earthquake. And it was a little bit after that when I learned what an earthquake can be capable of doing. When I found out that one of my uncles had been trapped under rubble for hours before being pulled out the following morning by other relatives, I was captivated and thereby determined to get him to describe every minute detail, as well as he could remember, so that I could come one step closer to understanding what it was like to survive the cataclysmic tremor that killed 10,000 people and flattened Managua in a matter of seconds. As a child I would ask Tio Rolando, with morbid curiosity, to describe that night over two decades earlier. While he talked I would listen intently and try to imagine myself in that environment as he described the events of the previous day, the oppressive heat, the preparations for el 24, the chickens that were set on top of the refrigerator so that Mita Tina could make Gallina Rellena for Christmas Eve dinner, his going to bed on the night of the 22nd, his being yanked from sleep, his being thrown on the floor and immediately being buried under the remains of his home. He would tell me about the shouts and moans of others trapped under fallen debris and how finally after dawn Tio Frutos and Tio Mario came along with shovels to rescue him and Mita Tina. While he described that long night under the rubble, wondering if he would make it to sunrise, I was moved to tears by the thought that these people should have had to suffer so much right before El Niño Dios was supposed to deliver presents…
Back in those days it was rather hard to come by any literature about Nicaragua in the United States, much less about the earthquake. Most of what I came across in libraries or bookstores consisted of news articles from the 1980’s that played out the Contra/Sandinista drama that crippled Nicaragua during that decade, and any mention of the 1972 earthquake was in reference to Anastasio Somoza Debayle’s illegal siphoning of relief funds---but little else other than that, let alone any photographs of the old city center. Therefore, my imagination was primarily dependent on my Abuelita’s photos and the memories of my elders: “…Managua era muy bonita, ahora no es ni sombra de lo que era antes…” I relied greatly on the names of streets such as Avenida Roosevelt, Calle Colon, la Calle Momotombo, and names of neighborhoods, or colonias like La Salvadorita, Barrio Frixione, and La 27 de Mayo to feed my active imagination. I imagined what the city’s grand cathedral of Santiago de los Caballeros looked like when it was still intact with its marble altars and stained glass windows, before street kids started using it as an indoor baseball field. I envisioned walking along Managua’s crowded narrow streets and peering into shops that no longer exist, or stopping to admire the neoclassical architecture of El Palacio del Ayuntamiento and El Club Social Managua. I dreamed of stopping at La Carne Asada del Gran Hotel, Managua’s best known sidewalk fritanga of yesteryear for some good old street fare of gallo pinto and maduro frito. Or maybe I would wander into the Gran Hotel itself and take a dip in the swimming pool with all the other “chicos bien”. One night I even had a vivid dream in which I wandered through this mysterious city on that hot and balmy December night in 1972, as its denizens prepared to celebrate another Christmas and New Years, before many of them, along with their city, passed into eternity.
These were the souvenirs that I guarded that were not even my own but someone else’s, a “golden era” that was as dead as those 10,000 who died with “La Vieja Managua”. Memories I could never claim as my own but to which I clung with the devotion of a grieving mother who laments the premature death of her child. I always felt disappointed by the fact that this “wonderful town” was now history and that I would never experience those swinging days of the 1940’s and 50’s, when Latin American superstars like Maria Felix, Jorge Negrete, and Celia Cruz would descend on Managua to perform at El Teatro Gonzalez or frolic poolside at El Gran Hotel and shop at the Carlos Cardenal department store, or to rub elbows with the capital’s social elite at El Club Terraza. The fact that I was so fascinated by Managua’s troubled past was compounded by my desire to have been a native son of “La Novia del Xolotlan”, or Bride of Xolotlan, as some Managuas refer to their capital.
Nowadays the pretty bride that had once been Central America’s most modern capital was an overgrown conglomeration of neighborhoods, shanty towns and markets; hardly worthy of any capital city and no doubt a result of Daniel Ortega’s “Revolution of the People”. Managua, having been victim to both natural and man-made disasters bore the scars like no other Nicaraguan city. I would always see the same thing on the news (when the American media even bothered to talk about that troublesome Central American country: red and black Sandinista flags, green military vehicles, spray painted political slogans scrawled on walls peppered with bullet holes, lines of people waiting to receive their daily ration of rice and beans….In other words: I was being fed the North American vision of Nicaragua, but all of these setbacks did little to diminish the fairy tale land I had conjured up in my mind.
All of these images haunted me and followed me through my youth…all to climax on 10 August 1996 as the airplane descended over Managua, a black carpet of twinkling lights. My first trip to Nicaragua; I was 20 years old. My feelings were a mixture of excitement and nervousness that my childhood fantasies were about to come face to face with reality-- a concept I wasn’t too crazy about.
Would Managua live up to my expectations or had I merely set myself up for disappointment? Certainly I knew about the poverty and the corrupt government, but being the closet optimist that I am, I still harbored the fantasy in a small corner of my mind.
So I stepped off the plane onto the runway and the first thing that hit me was the extreme heat and humidity. For some reason my imagination had omitted this detail…we were in the midst of the tropics after all. Suddenly there was an added detail to my Nicaraguan fairy tale. Another detail, one that pleased me, was the strong scent of firewood that I would later come to associate with Nicaragua. A smell that would follow me anywhere I went: whether it be the a cobbled street in Montmartre, a housing tract in Orange County, or a tube stop in Hampstead Heath, I would be flooded with memories of the Motherland.
As if in a dream, I walked toward the small terminal, a 1960’s structure that I recognized from photos that were taken at arrivals and departures of my family in years gone by. The further I walked the more my clothes stuck to my body and the more I hoped my uncle had central air conditioning at his house. Somehow, this idea seemed farfetched. I tried to keep my feelings in check, I knew that this was only the airport and it would be unreasonable to make any harsh criticism at this point.
I cleared customs and claimed our luggage off a carousel that surely was the same one my Abuelita found her suitcases on when she visited from the States back in the ‘60s. My boat was rocked further when the luggage started to emerge and the passengers began to scramble like children around a piñata. My mother urged me to jump in if I wanted to reclaim our suitcases in one piece. If anything the whole baggage claim experience got points for quaintness…
As we made our way into Managua I was reminded of what Tia Salvadora told me a few weeks earlier: Managua no tiene centro; todo se cayo en el terremoto…Managua has no downtown; it all came down in the earthquake…and it all started to make sense, for all I saw were shantytowns that led to more shantytowns…Despite my aunts’ warning I tried to find some semblance of a center, an agglomeration of shops, offices, whatever, but all I saw was a pharmacy here and there and a handful of general stores advertising Coke and Flor de Caña, the local rum. After several left and right hand turns that made me lose my bearings, we went deeper and deeper into what appeared to be a working class residential area. One thing that seemed uniform about Managua was that all the homes were behind bars…Although I knew my sheltered American upbringing was making itself obvious, I had expected tiled roof homes with flowers spilling out from windows and horse drawn carriages, not this prison row of flat roofed houses. My Mama tells me now that she remembers worrying about what I was thinking during that drive from the airport to El Dorado, the Colonia where my uncle Luis lived. I was so silent and my face had become an unreadable blank that she was afraid I was too much of a Gringo to have any appreciation for the Motherland. She needn’t have worried, for while I was very quiet and observant at first, I was thrilled beyond words to finally be in the mythical country that inhabited my childhood fantasies. Little did she know, or anybody else for that matter, that a love affair was being born…
After hearing all of these tales of destruction and former glory I expected to find a wasteland that was once Central America’s most modern capital. What I didn’t realize, along with my Mama and Abuelita, who themselves hadn’t been back in years, was that Managua was a city that was very full of life indeed. Her former arteries like Avenida Roosevelt and la Calle del Triunfo had been severed, but new ones had either been formed or recovered new life, like La Carretera a Masaya, which may have once been a mere two-lane road leading out into the countryside south of Managua and was now “El Nuevo Centro” Managua’s new hub, lined with gleaming new shopping centers à la Orange County and several big name chain hotels; maybe not a Spanish style town like Granada or Leon, but a city that was determined to grow and move ahead. While not the swinging Havana-like city I imagined, I was happy to see that my capital city was not dwelling on the past and diving head-first into the future. After that first visit I grew more familiar with this chaotic city that was home to nearly two million Nicaraguans and I grew to love her and be proud to be her son. Soon after arriving at my uncles’, I was introduced to my primos Isaac, Milton, and Francisco, cousins that I didn’t grow up with but with whom I forged and profound friendship. Many a night was spent with them and some other amigos bar hopping in Altamira and Los Robles. It may not have been El Country Club Nejapa, but I was sure having a grand old time at places like El Chamàn or La Taberna…living up the joys of partying in my capital city…Now I could sing with more conviction:
Managua es maravillosa, con su lago de cristal;
Por algo estoy orgulloso de mi linda capital!
Once I became more familiar with modern-day Managua, I started to seek out pieces of the old city that stood lonely and forgotten near el Lago Xolotlan. Like most Managuas of my parents’ generation, I was filled with cavanga, or longing for this past that constantly seemed to beckon from just over la Loma de Tiscapa, away from activity of Metrocentro, far from el Mercado Huembes, and light years from the trendy nightclubs along Carretera a Masaya. Frequently I would beg one of my primos to drive me down Avenida Bolivar so that I could try to imagine what this street was like three decades earlier, before Mother Nature and El Gobierno had taken their toll. When we would arrive at the Plaza de la Revolución, I would descend from the car and stare in awe at the vast emptiness of what was once Managua’s epicenter. La Catedral de Santiago de los Caballeros looming before me, empty and desolate, El Teatro Nacional Ruben Dario, constructed in the late sixties, was like a reminder of what Managua could have been, and here and there a two or three-story building that had survived the quake was now a shelter for squatters. These avenues and plazas that were once populated by everyday people going about their daily business were now trampled on by some glue-sniffing homeless teen or the occasional tourist, no doubt trying his or her best to imagine the past like I was.
Managua es mi Linda tierra, la Novia del Xolotlan
De Terciopelo es su Sierra, y su Laguna de Celofan… Managua is my Beautiful Land, The Bride of Xolotlan
Her Mountains Are like Velvet, Her Lagoons like cellophane...
As my first trip to Nicaragua reached its end, my primos took me to el Mirador Tiscapa, a restaurant overlooking the Crater Lake just south of Managua’s old center. My cousin Isaac, who seemed to know me very well, chose this location as the setting for my despedida because he knew it would please me with its vintage atmosphere, with its strolling mariachis and trios, he knew that this would be a small piece of the Managua that I loved, a memory I could take with me that would leave the perfect impression. As the evening wore on and more and more bottles of Flor de Caña passed through our table, I realized that I could definitely concur with Irving Berlin’s song and say that Managua was, indeed, a beautiful town.
Yo se lo aseguro! No Tiene Rival!
En la América Central!!!

“QUIEN CAUSA TANTA ALEGRIA?” shouted everybody as they entered Tia Tina’s place for the “Purísima”, the commemoration of Nicaragua’s patron saint. By six thirty the guests began filing into her tiny apartment in Los Angeles and filling the chairs she had lined up in rows before the altar that proudly displayed her most treasured possession: a Spanish-made statue of the Virgin that had survived earthquakes, a revolution and exile.
Purísima is the highlight of Nicaragua’s Roman Catholic calendar. It is the feast honoring the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, or as she is simply known in Nicaragua: the “Purísima” (the Most Pure). Traditionally this feast is celebrated on 7 December in Nicaragua, but since it isn’t a holiday in the US, my aunt would always plan it for whatever weekend in early December fell closest to the seventh. This is the happiest time of the year in Nicaragua, as it kicks off the Christmas festivities with everyone decorating their homes with makeshift altars in honor of the Virgin. While technically a Catholic celebration, it actually has many pagan elements, as do many “religious” celebrations throughout Latin America. Children and adults alike take to the streets on the evening of the seventh going from house to house shouting: “Who causes so much joy?” with the hosts responding “The Conception of Mary!” The visitors are then required to sing before the altar one of the many hymns that has been engrained in the Nicaraguan subconscious like: “Tu Gloria, Tu Gloria! Gozoso este día…” or “Por Eso el Cristianismo con grata melodía….” For which they are rewarded with a basket of candy, fruits, and a drink of cacao or chicha. This ritual usually begins around six or seven in the evening and lasts until the wee hours of the morning, all the while punctuated by a continuous display of fireworks. Mi Tia Tina had been following this tradition for decades, following her mother, who had passed away years earlier. My Tia would decorate her living room with Christmas lights, plants, flowers, and candles and of course her small statue of the Virgin that had been a gift from one of her many son-in-laws.
This was always the most exciting holiday of the year for me, and la Purisima was the highlight of my own personal calendar, as I looked forward to this feast the way most children look forward to Christmas morning, but I was much more excited about Purísima than I was about Christmas. I still don’t why that is; We didn’t receive gifts from the Virgin, unless you counted the baskets of sweets that were handed out during the prayer, we weren’t off from school either, therefore my fascination with this Pagan (I always thought of it as a pagan ritual…) feast was purely a result of my strange fixation with the mother of Jesus. Maybe it was the combination of both Christmas and Purísima that I liked. On top of that, a few days after Nicaragua’s Virgin feast is Mexico’s: the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe on 12 December, which for me only added to the fun and made December my favorite month of the year.

Strangely enough, as I grew up and struggled with faith, I continued to harbor a special place in my heart for this celebration. Thanks to my “Holy Trinity” of Abuelita, Mamita Aida, and Tia Tina I grew up devoted to La Purísima, and I never doubted that she loved me and was always watching out for me. Hence the reason I was so excited about this day, for me, celebrating La Purísima was like celebrating the birthday of a loved one, and the preparation that went into this day was more exciting to me than planning my own birthday, which I actually hate doing. It was the opportunity for me to repay the favors I felt she granted me throughout the year, so by planning an elaborate party for her would ensure future protection. Most people would consider this belief heretical, or pagan, but I never cared. I always disliked putting labels on religious beliefs, or lack thereof, for that matter. As a teenager growing up in Orange County, I was rather apologetic about my devotion to La Virgencita, even secretive about it. The main reason was that most of my classmates were some brand of Protestant Christians, or “Jesus Freaks”, and since I craved acceptance in those years, I adjusted my beliefs to theirs and kept mine to myself. After I graduated from high school, went to college and starting meeting different types of people, I gradually began to embrace my unorthodox beliefs and not care what others thought. La Virgen was my Pagan Goddess and I was proud to let people know it, even if it shocked some when I told them that I like her better than anyone else in the Bible, even, horror of horrors, Jesus.
I planned my second trip to Nicaragua to coincide with La Gritería (another name for this feast), for I wanted to experience firsthand what this celebration was all about, and I think La Conchita worked overtime in order to make it special for me. I arrived in Managua on December seventh, and as soon as our plane touched the runway, several people in the front of the aircraft shouted: “QUIEN CAUSA TANTA ALEGRIA?” to which most of the other passengers happily responded: “LA CONCEPCION DE MARIA!!” This exchange was followed by cheers and shouts, as for me, my heart almost exploded out of my chest, and I had to fight to blink back the tears of joy for fear of looking like a complete idiot, but my welcome was complete. A bit later that afternoon, driving through the city from the airport I was mesmerized as I saw people setting up makeshift shrines outside their homes in preparation for the festivities that evening. I felt like Charlie Bucket visiting Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory, and I was thrilled to see the altares all over the city, as opposed to a single one in my Tia Tina’s living room in Los Angeles.
Later that evening one of my cousins picked me up so that we could go “Purísimeando” a Nicaraguan verb that describes the act of roaming the streets and visiting various homes that host Purísimas. “Vamos a Purísimear” now became part of my vocabulary. As we walked from house to house and collected candy and gifts, my cousins and their friends were surprised at how I could sing all the cantos; how I knew the melodies and most of the lyrics that they had grown up with. What surprised them, in fact, was that Nicas in los Estados Unidos also celebrated La Purísima, so even a gringo like me could be a devoto of La Virgen.
It was Saturday, December 06, 1985, and my Tia’s living room was all decked out in honor of the Virgin Mary’s Immaculate Conception. My aunt always had one of the best Purísimas that I can remember, next to Mamita Aida’s, of course, for she always gave out the best candy, she would even let me help her decorate the altar, and once, she let me place her treasured statue on the shrine, which to me was the biggest honor. This was usually the final touch, like placing the bride and groom statue on a wedding cake. With great ceremony, my Tia would hand me the statue so that I could place her amid the flowers and twinkling Christmas lights. The statue, about 14 inches tall, had been a gift to Tia from Edgar, a former son-in-law. From the little that I know, she had had that statue since the early 1950’s, and that Purísima had survived two earthquakes, one in 1968, and of course the other one in December of 1972, which left visible scars on the statue. I also knew that in the summer of 1979, when Tia Tina and Papa Tavo had to leave Nicaragua to escape the Revolution, the Virgencita was carefully packed into her makeup case for her trip to exile in los Estados Unidos. Whenever mi Tia let me handle her statue, I examined her every detail: the glass eyes that produced a rather haunting stare, the tarnished halo with tweve stars, the chubby faces of the cherubs, and the cracks and imperfections that were a product of her tumultuous existence traveling between Nicaragua and los Estados Unidos. Abuelita would always bring her own little Purisima statue, less grandiose than Tia Tina’s, but just as loved, along so that we could place on her on the altar as well, so that she could enjoy her party.
The day had started out early for Mama, Abuelita, my sisters and I. We arrived at Tia Tina’s early to help her set up. My sisters usually had the duty of filling up the baskets with the different cajetas that Tia made and “Leche Burra”, these little brown candies that to me resembled wrapped up turds. My sisters and I were always somewhat bewildered by the fact that a lot of the candies that went into these baskets were the same ones we had gathered on Halloween night. After returning home from trick-or-treating, Mama would always let us have a few pieces of candy before confiscating the rest. On this day over a month later, all of our hard-earned Milky Ways and Sweet Tarts would mysteriously turn up and then be given away in honor of Purísima…While we worked on the baskets, Mama would make dinner, which usually consisted of chancho con yuca, or fried pork and steamed cassava, and Abuelita and Tia Tina would do the final taste tests on the chicha and the cacao, checking the tanginess of the chicha and the sweetness of the cacao. My Abuelita would always tell me how mobs of people would show up at Tia Tina’s house in Managua on the day of the Purísima, not only to partake in the festivities, but to receive their prize basket of cajeta and their glass of cacao or chicha (known as “corn juice” in some Nicamerican circles). The latter was not a favorite for one of my sisters, who felt that chicha “smells like throw up” I admit, even after all these years, chicha is an acquired taste that not even all Nicaraguans can handle.
I always like the aroma of the cajeta de leche and cajeta de coco mixed together in the colorful straw baskets that some relative had sent from Nicaragua, and the smell of the incense, the dim glow provided by votive candles and Christmas lights in the room as the old viejitas grouped around the altar to pray the rosary. I also liked the scratchy sound of the LP with Purísima songs that one of my tios had sent from Nicaragua. All of these factors made me happy, as if I were getting ready to celebrate my own birthday party. Once the altar was completed I would sit in front of it and stare at the blinking lights while La Purísima stared down at me from her place of honor, silently giving me her blessing and thanking me for helping prepare her for her big day.

MI GRANADA

As a child I used to wish that I had been born in Nicaragua, and I remember actually being angry at my parents for not having had me there. When I would see my cousins Raquel, Kenneth, and Susana Gabriela I would be devoured by envy because they had all been born in the Motherland and I hadn’t. I believe I actually yelled at my mother once for not having given birth to me in a different place and all I got for my pains was an admonition and the threat of a slap for raising my voice at her. Whereas some children of Latin American parents usually grew up ashamed of their parents’ heritage, to me it was always a source of great pride; so much that I would always classify myself as Nicaraguan, not Nicaraguan-American, but a Nicaraguan who just happened to be born in the United States. As I grew up, however, I began to see the advantages of being an American, and I eventually learned to embrace my bicultural identity and tried to find different ways to find harmony between the two. By my early teens, I was an American and proud of it, and my Nicaraguan heritage took a back seat to my Gringo persona. In August of 1996 all of that changed when I finally visited the homeland of my parents and was able to experience firsthand the things I had dreamt of all through my childhood. For the first time I felt the stifling tropic heat of the Motherland, I finally tasted authentic fritanga, I even finally heard the words “hijo de la gran puta” uttered with true Nicaraguan gusto by a complete stranger on the street. When I came back to the United States ten days later, I was different person and was convinced that I had been cheated of my birthright.
I so thoroughly embraced my Nica roots that in the months that followed that first trip I decided to rewrite my life story in order to suit my desires, so I dreamt up a scenario in which my parents had met in New Jersey in the early 1970’s, married, and then decided to begin their life as a couple back in the home country, despite the looming threat of a revolution. Thereafter I would have been born in Managua (at the Hospital del Retiro, to be exact) a couple of years later, at a time when one crisis followed another and the possibility of war was imminent. By 1979, when the Guerra had broken out my parents, along with the rest of my extended family would have decided to leave Nicaragua once again and resettle in the United States. Yes, that was the life story that I created for myself, a tale that was actually a far cry from the truth, which was that my parents had both voluntarily left Nicaragua in the early seventies, long before all hell broke loose with the Revolution and even before the Managua earthquake in ’72. I would recount my new life story to anyone willing to listen, sometimes going so far as to tell with harrowing detail exactly how my we managed to escape the country amid a hail of bullets and finally made it to the safety of an airplane that would fly us to exile in Miami. I had had quite an interesting life, I was frequently told by my captive audience. I certainly agreed, for this story was much better than the real version, which had me being born in some sterile hospital in New Jersey and growing up in a suburban housing tract in Southern California.
Several more trips followed in the late 1990’s, during which my love for the Homeland became something of a religion to me; Since I wasn’t actually born there, I wanted to become the most Nicaraguan of Nicaraguans and I would impress the grownups with my knowledge of the Motherland. I learned the words to songs by Carlos Mejia Godoy, poems by Ruben Dario, learned the history of the country, and could even rattle off Managua addresses like any seasoned local: de la Rotonda Bello Horizonte dos cuadras al lago y una abajo…I lived and breathed Nicaragua., but as I learned more and more about my beautiful country my story began to change. In the first version of my “autobiography” I had chosen Managua as my birthplace, but with time my story changed and my preference switched to that elegant colonial town on the shores of Nicaragua’s Lake Cocibolca: Granada.
In my opinion, Granada was more suited to my personality than the capital, and after my first visit there I decided that in the biography of my fabricated life Granada was a better setting for the birthplace of Carlos Alberto Quadra, and I liked to think that Granada and I were alike in many ways. Managua was the capital and largest city, but it was a far cry from the “beautiful town” that Irving Berlin had once described in his 1930’s hit song. Since the 1972 earthquake, Managua had grown into a sprawling mass of colonias, barrios, and markets that robbed it of any venerable qualities required to give a capital city its stature. I had been haunted by stories of what a charming city Managua had once been in the 1940’s and 50’s, and although I tried to find bits and pieces of that former splendor on my frequent forays into the old center as time went by I finally realized that La Vieja Managua was as dead as the 10,000 souls that perished on that fateful December night of 1972. To my California-bred mind, Nicaragua’s capital was like Medusa on a bad hair day: a big mess, and had I had the right to choose my birthplace, Managua would not have been it.
Granada, however, was a different story. La Gran Sultana del Lago, the Great Sultan of the Lake, as she has been named in reference to her Moorish namesake across the Atlantic, is a city that exudes class and historical importance. Once the most important Spanish outpost on the Central American Isthmus, Granada has fallen prey to pirates and profiteers that have no doubt wanted to subdue this once rich and prosperous city. Despite these setbacks, the city has managed to survive looting and a burning at the hands of filibuster William Walker by building back better than ever. Nowadays Granada has attracted a new kind of profiteer, mostly in the form of entrepreneurs of different sorts and expats looking to re-stake their claim in the old country. As the twentieth century came to a close and Nicaragua’s political climate remained relatively stable, people from all over the globe arrived to get their little piece of Granada, thereby accentuating her elegant charm with a bit of worldly eccentricity. Each time I went, I would notice more and more gringos and Europeans sauntering about, not as tourists but as locals. While part of me part of me admired them, another part was deeply envious because I felt that as a Nica it was I who should be living here. Certainly these people felt the same way I did and wanted to make their imprint as myself and become one with one of the oldest settlements of the New World.
On each trip to Nicaragua I would make day trips to Granada, never tiring of the opportunity to revisit this colonial gem. With each visit, I discovered new corners that gave me more insight and deepened my sense of affinity for this town. I quickly became enamored of her narrow streets, her beautiful churches, and her stately homes with their intimate courtyards, but most of all what really captivated me was the quiet elegance radiated by this town and her people. Elegance, I felt, that was a particular blend of Old World sophistication and Nicaraguan brashness that contained just a splash of poorly disguised eccentricity. In other words, Granada was perfect for me and therefore my spiritual home.
Every time I find myself in Granada I try to savor every single sensation: the cool interior of her bright cathedral, the bright colors of the buildings surrounding the Plaza Colon, the chocolaty taste of ice-cold cacao at La Gata’s vigoron stand, the sound of horses hooves trotting down one of the narrow streets, the sounds of schoolchildren’s laughter outside El Colegio Maria Auxiliadora, even the satisfaction I get from negotiating down the price of rosquillas at the market. This is one of the few places on earth that I don’t try to hurry through; every second is important. My encounters with Granada usually begin or end with a visit to "La Conchita", the city’s patron saint, so I can thank her for giving me opportunity to once again find myself within her realm. After a few hours of being there, I start to revel in the fact that I can navigate the streets like a Granadino, enthusiastically embracing my inner Nica while placing the American part of me on the back burner.
One morning I decided to climb the bell tower of the Merced Church, and as I looked over the red tiled rooftops I felt a supreme sense of happiness and peace. I wished I could have frozen my senses for that moment; there seemed to be too much to absorb. No matter how I tried, as I snapped away with my camera I knew that no photograph would be able to capture the sounds of the ice cream vendors’ bell that floated up from the street below, the clouds that hugged Mombacho Volcano off to the south, surveying Granada like some jealous lover, the church steeples that stood at various points in the city, the isletas off in the distance... There was an instant in which I felt Granada’s warm embrace engulfing me, as if the lake breeze was a caress created especially for my benefit, as though she herself was telling me in her own quiet way: “Yes, you and I are alike.” At that moment I suddenly realized that it no longer mattered where I had been born, for the land that surrounded me was part of my very being, the blood of these people was the same blood that flowed through my veins, even if our lives has followed completely different paths. I was no longer concerned with the fact that it had taken me twenty years to discover this corner of the planet, twenty years to breathe this air, twenty years to revel in a Flor de Cana-induced intoxication, and most importantly twenty years to connect with these people I so greatly admired, these people to whom I wanted to belong, so much that I went so far as to reinvent a life that would have made my sufferings equal to theirs. I discovered that I didn’t need to tell stories that were a product of my overly active imagination, and that the most important thing was that I was inexorably bonded with this land of my parents and ancestors, even if I was born in a hospital in Jersey City, New Jersey and not on some kitchen table in Granada, Nicaragua.