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.