“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.