Uplifted at a President’s Funeral

It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles.
Niccolo Machiavelli

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.
Socrates

Make friends with the angels, who though invisible are always with you.
Saint Francis de Sales

For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
Alexander Pope


In the old Managua—destroyed during the December 22, 1972 earthquake—the Presidential Palace was located in the highest point of the city: on the hilltop ridge next to the crater lake of Tiscapa. The wide, majestic building could be seen from virtually anywhere in the capital. When my family moved to Nicaragua, in 1964, the residence reminded me of a beacon of hope—that’s because the man who occupied it then was a compassionate, caring person.

Rene Schick’s presidency is remembered as a time of peace, stability, and respect for human rights; and I believe his life-affirming leadership is one of the primary reasons that my adolescent memories of Nicaragua are so idyllic. His presidency was a oasis in the midst of the long years of political turmoil that preceded him and the popular uprisings that would follow. And President Schick’s calming influence over Nicaraguans became possible, I believe, because he identified with the common man and woman, and they, in turn, completely identified with him.

Rene Schick had been the nation’s Minister of Education during Luis Somoza’s presidency. And the elder brother of the dynasty saw something in Schick that few others did: an ability to lead in a composed, positive manner. When Luis Somoza declared his preference for Rene Schick to be his successor, protests surged from within his party. The leader of this subversion was Julio Quintana, Minister of Government and Justice and a hard-line supporter of the Somoza regime who, in addition to seeing himself as the logical successor, took exception to Schick’s humble beginnings and troubled past.

And the truth was that Rene Schick’s past was susceptible to criticism. A native of Leon, he studied law in the local university, obtaining a degree in spite of a serious affliction: alcoholism. The people of Leon told stories of the many times they saw the young attorney stumbling drunk through the city streets or, worse yet, passed out on the sidewalks. Schick’s erratic behavior reached such an extent that many Leoneses gave up on this bright young man who, unfortunately, seemed incapable of holding down a steady job. Yet those who did so would be proven wrong.

Desperate to redeem himself, Rene Schick turned to Alcoholics Anonymous. He became a fervent convert and before long he was preaching the virtues of sobriety with missionary zeal. His speeches were so moving that attendance at AA meetings soared, and he was credited with convincing many others to abandon alcohol. A school principal, a regular at the AA meetings, impressed by the young man’s charisma, offered him a position as a sixth-grade teacher. Schick accepted the job and found his life’s calling in education. Shortly thereafter, he also started to become involved in local politics.

Years later, during the Liberal Party convention in which Luis Somoza officially announced Schick as his nominee of choice, Quintana’s strategy was to belittle Schick, suggesting that he was a working-class alcoholic who was barely fit to be in a school. In spite of the attacks, Schick won the nomination, and when word leaked out about what had been said about him, instead of rejecting the former teacher, the common folk of Nicaragua embraced him as one of their own. Schick responded in kind, working diligently to become “El Presidente del Pueblo,” (The President of the People).

As President, in a practice that Schick’s own ministers criticized as an improper use of government funds as well as preserving age-old Latin American paternalistic practices, poor Nicaraguans would stand in line for hours to share their troubles with their leader, and he’d hand out money to help alleviate their plights. Through this ritual, Rene Schick, among Nicaraguans, became a symbol of kindness and compassion.

But the presidency’s generosity came to an abrupt end on August 3, 1966, when Rene Schick died of a heart attack while working in his office. The news of his sudden death shocked every Nicaraguan, but none more so than the working class, who in this President had found a hero.

Only six days before President Schick’s death, Pedro Joaquin Chamorro wrote the following in an editorial of La Prensa: “We must acknowledge that during the three years of Schick’s administration Nicaragua has experienced an era of tranquility. From that tranquility, everyone has benefitted.”

And on the day after Schick’s death, a new editorial issued a prescient lament: “Neither bloodshed, nor imprisonments, nor forced exiles took place during Schick’s administration.”

* * * *

In Managua’s old Mercado San Miguel, my mother owned a small store. Although the enterprise was never very profitable, running it entertained her. Twelve-years-old at the time, I’d often spend the day with her, helping out whenever I could but mostly studying the vibrant community of this vast open-aired market.

On the day before Rene Schick’s funeral, his body was scheduled to lay in repose in the Palacio Nacional for the public to view. This building, where the Nicaraguan congress used to meet, was an eight block walk from my mother’s business. Around noon, curious to witness the event, as well as wanting to pay my respects, I received my mother’s permission to go there on my own.

It was a sweltering tropical day. The sun beat down relentlessly upon the thousands of working-class people who skipped their siestas to pay homage to their dead leader. Outside the National Palace, in the middle of a narrow street, two rows of cadets from the Academia Militar stood at attention, facing one another. A cadet had fainted because of the heat, and he looked tragically young, even to me, as he lay with his face flat on the steaming pavement. His fellow cadets stared straight ahead, as if a prostrate body in the middle of their formation was the most natural thing in the world.

I got in line and waited under the scorching sun for my turn to enter the building. When it finally arrived, I sighed, relieved to be indoors. Almost instantly, however, the sound of women wailing startled me back into the moment. Inside the National Palace, two long orderly rows of mourners filed slowly alongside the president’s casket. There were no restrictions; people passed so close to Schick’s remains that they could have touched him. But no one did. Instead, a deep feeling of loss bonded everyone there, a dense solemnity that commanded respect.

The former president appeared to be sleeping, peacefully at rest. The sounds of crying became more intense the closer I came to the casket, and even in my twelve-year-old mind it was evident that the poor of Nicaragua had lost someone important, someone they had loved and trusted.

Shortly after I had stepped outside of the viewing room, and I was on my way toward the exit, something frightened the people walking in front of me. What happened, I’ll never know. Did a member of the Guardia Nacional brandish a weapon menacingly? Did one of the guards, feeling suddenly threatened, make a gesture that alarmed the crowd?

The human wall in front of me turned abruptly, trying to find another exit. I failed to respond properly; instead, I attempted to push my way toward the original exit, against the flow of the crowd. Within seconds I was being bashed around by a throng intent on getting out of the Palacio Nacional.

I started to have difficulty breathing, trapped in an increasingly airless cocoon of adults. I was also being crushed, my ribcage hurting from the pressure of the throbbing mob. I was about to surrender to a spreading wave of panic when an unexpected occurrence took my mind off of the dangerous situation: my feet left the ground. In the tight weave of the crowd, I had become weightless. Suddenly I was advancing with them, without effort.

Then something inside of me, something I can only describe as an angelic instinct, told me to relax—and upon doing so, in spite of the peril, the ride became enjoyable. As the huddled mass of people made its way to an alternate exit, I glanced around me, scanning the faces and feeling an inexplicable kinship with every one of them. Although the experience of being carried lasted twenty seconds, at the most, it felt like I was suspended amid the humanity for hours.

As we at last approached an exit, the crowd thinned somewhat, and as gently as I had been lifted, my feet were back on the ground. As soon as we passed through the stately doorway and were once again in the dense tropical heat, we scattered—everyone rushing in different directions. I moved to one side, leaning against an outer wall of the Palacio Nacional, utterly relieved to be safe and free.

In the more than forty years that have passed since that mournful event, the experience of that day has become a haunting metaphor for me: after the death of Rene Schick, Nicaragua entered a period of unparalleled turbulence, a time when every Nicaraguan would be in need of angels and luck to deliver them safely from harm.