The Nicaraguan Presidential Election—Or, How Did it Ever Come to This?

The triumph of the Sandinistas will raise the morale of Latin America. Other countries will say—'look, that small country got away with it—so can we!' We will spread the revolution. There is an alternative to succumbing to the American Empire.
Daniel Ortega, 2006 Campaign Speech


How did it ever come to this?

The December 4, 2005 issue of The Panama News included my opinion piece titled “A Time to Step Aside.” In this article, I predicted that Daniel Ortega would not be reelected. I argued that the Nicaraguan people would never return the former Sandinista Comandante to power simply because he had run out of things to say. And as the quote that appears at the head of this entry indicates, Ortega’s political rhetoric still retains a Cold War tenor.

And yet polls suggest that on Sunday, November 5, Daniel Ortega may win the Nicaraguan presidency in the first electoral round.

How did it ever come to this?

The past few days I have been corresponding with Mr. Steve Kelley. He had read “A Time to Step Aside” and wrote to me wanting to know if I still maintained that Daniel Ortega couldn’t win. Steve’s an American expatriate and baby-boomer (which I am as well) who moved to Nicaragua six months ago to live and invest in the country. Today, understandably, he is quite nervous. Daniel Ortega’s record is bound to send shivers through the spines of foreign investors. If the former Comandante is reelected, they fear that Nicaragua will go the way of Venezuela and Bolivia, where the pulses of business owners beat erratically thanks to the populist policies of Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales.

How did it ever come to this?

Nicaraguans have their former president, Arnoldo Alemán—once a staunch US ally—to thank. His blatant corruption spoke louder than Ortega’s obsolete words, drowning out the former Comandante's aged discourse. What’s more, Alemán’s criminal acts said to the poor—and loudly—that Nicaragua’s upper class didn’t care about their plight. And then, in a desperate ploy to avoid a prison sentence, Alemán made this pact, among others, with Ortega: the percentage of votes necessary to win an election was lowered from 45% to 35%. The latest polls place Ortega at 33% of the intended vote. His closest challenger is Eduardo Montealegre, with 24%.

Not surprisingly, the Alemán-Ortega deal divided the opposition. Torn apart, as they currently are, neither candidate from the Liberal parties will win in the first round. Thus, Nicaragua stands at the brink of yet another political crisis: Ortega may get 35% of the vote and regain Nicaragua’s presidency after a sixteen year absence; and Alemán then will likely be pardoned.

Daniel Ortega is a relic of the 1980s—the bloodiest decade in Nicaragua’s history. As such, he belongs in the gloomiest of museums. And in ruthlessly holding on to the reins of the Sandinista party for the past three decades, he and his cronies have strangled the noblest ideals of Sandinismo. Moreover, as his campaign speeches show, he still has nothing new to say or to offer.

But, in reality, the political crossroad Nicaraguans currently face comes courtesy of Arnoldo Alemán and his greedy associates. The country’s bleak political scenario is lamentable because the good people of this nation, who have already suffered enough, deserve far better than to be trapped in the covetous, power-hungry grasps of two leaders with dismal records of failure.

In Defense of Mario Vargas Llosa

For reasons that elude me, anyone defending freedom of expression, free elections and political pluralism in Latin America is known as a right-winger among the area’s intellectuals.
Mario Vargas Llosa


In public forums about Latin American culture and politics, Mario Vargas Llosa, one the world’s most versatile writers today, is often described as a right-winger.

I confess that for many years I subscribed to this categorization. Vargas Llosa’s comments about the Sandinista government during the turbulent 1980’s aligned him, in my mind at least, with President Reagan’s policies toward Nicaragua, which I found highly objectionable.

In recent years, however, I’ve learned to read Vargas Llosa’s essays dispassionately, without prejudging his personal or political motives. I can only dream of writing so well and so prolifically. What’s more, the depth of his knowledge, on a seemingly infinite range of topics, makes me envious.

Last Christmas, as a gift, my friend Benjamin Murphy gave me a copy of the April 28, 1985 edition of The New York Times Magazine. A true collector’s item, he found it in a local bookstore. The magazine’s cover features a young girl strolling along a street in revolutionary Nicaragua. On the walls behind her, graffiti and posters extol the virtues of the Sandinista government. Also on the cover, in large, bold letters, is the title of the Vargas Llosa article that is the edition’s centerpiece: “In Nicaragua.”

Reading Vargas Llosa essay more than twenty years after its original publication, I am amazed at how prescient and balanced his observations were. Back in the 80s I had read excerpts of “In Nicaragua” and, frankly, I was outraged that the Peruvian had not produced an outright condemnation of President Reagan’s Contras. That alone, in my view at the time, made Vargas Llosa a rabid right-winger.

Today, however, I can state in all honesty that Vargas Llosa’s report on Nicaragua is fair and unbiased. In the article, the author expresses his surprise at the Sandinistas’ political openness. He expected a repressive regime, akin to what he claims he encountered in Castro’s Cuba. Instead, the political pluralism he witnessed in Nicaragua pleased him, and he was impressed that Sandinista officials allowed him to roam the country at will and to speak freely with their opponents. The nation’s lax security also surprised the writer, as did the apparent normalcy of life in the midst of a growing counter-revolution.

Vargas Llosa does note that external political and economic pressures had forced Nicaragua’s leftist rulers into becoming pragmatic. In order to survive, the Sandinista leaders had to make considerable concessions, and in the process set aside their stated goal of creating a socialist utopia. But the Peruvian also found the opposition utterly disorganized, unable to agree on how to best confront the Sandinistas. And he judged , quite accurately, that the Nicaraguan Catholic Church constituted the Sandinista’s most formidable and effective opponent. (The political struggle between the Catholic Church and the Sandinistas is, incidentally, an important theme in my novel Bernardo and the Virgin).

According to the Vargas Llosa, the most significant fault with the Sandinistas was that although they were willing to bend, they were determined never to surrender power.

My recent reading of “In Nicaragua” has assured me that readers can always count on Vargas Llosa to write the truth as he sees it. Moreover, in his essays no one is exempt from criticism. While it’s true that he has barraged Fidel Castro through the years—and now Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales can be added to his list of favorite targets—readers must also take into account that he just as readily condemns the Bush administration, and that he has taken on the Vatican on several occasions.

Like baseball umpires, Mario Vargas Llosa “calls them as he sees them”—all the time unconcerned about being “politically correct.” Thus, if being honest makes him a right-winger, then that’s a badge to be worn with pride, and deservedly so.

Julia Alvarez and Oscar Hijuelos: Putting and Keeping Fellow Writers in Touch

The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and thus the novelists’ discoveries, however old they may be, will never cease to astonish.
Milan Kundera

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.
James A. Baldwin

Every writer has to find their own way into writing.
Margaret Mahy

In February of this year, I reprinted a review of Julia Alvarez’s novel, ¡Yo!, in my weblog. The piece had been originally appeared in the Fall 1997 issue of Cold Mountain Review.

Several days afterward I received a charming reply from Glendaliz Camacho, a young Dominican-American from New York City who is, I believe, taking the right steps to become a successful author in her own right. Glendaliz is a creative, hard-working, and candid person. I predict that some day, and relatively soon, she’ll master the craft and readers shall then be delighted by the stories churning inside of her.

A couple of days ago, Glendaliz responded to my entry on Oscar Hijuelos’s The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. In her reply, Glendaliz wrote:


Dear Silvio,

I enjoyed your recent post. I have been reading American literature all of my life—a byproduct of schooling in the States. I started reading Latin American literature a couple of years ago during a confused phase of my life. I wanted to write but I didn't have the guts; I didn't think I had the ability or talent and my private life was in shambles. My father lent me a copy of ¡Yo! by Julia Alvarez and I read it while I stayed at his house trying to decide what to do for the rest of my life. I loved the novel. I was so proud to be reading something by a person with a similar cultural background and telling the types of stories that make the rounds at my house. My father told me, “You can do this,” pointing at the novel. He didn't mean that I could write as well as Alvarez; he meant that I could tell our stories.

The editorial director at the literary agency where I've been interning has been strongly recommending The Mambo Kings to me, as well. I can't believe I haven't read it before. Needless to say, I'll be picking it up at the bookstore. I read a short while back that Oscar Hijuelos graduated from City College in NY. City College is a city university, not private or Ivy League. This fact jumped out at me because I was fretting over finishing my degree at a large university, regardless of the cost.

Anyway, your posts are great and I hope all is well with the work on your new novel.

Glendaliz


I urge everyone to visit Glendaliz Camacho’s entertaining weblog titled The Brain Bombs

On The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

If I could always read, I should never feel the want of company.
Lord Byron

I read, therefore I'm interested in writers.
Philip Kaufman


After completing the doctorate, I was at a loss regarding where to devote my scholarly energies. For a brief period I considered continuing along the path of Cervantine studies—the result of several years of work on Don Quijote de la Mancha, the subject of my dissertation. However, after my contacts with Spanish Golden Age scholars, I found them, to be honest, all living on the highly rarified clouds of literary theory.

I then looked back toward Latin America, but that literature, although beautiful, seemed too distant from where my interests lay at the moment, which was sorting out my own identity as a Nicaraguan-American. Then, one day, as I entered a used bookstore in Boone, North Carolina, (I was teaching at Appalachian State University at the time), I ran across a copy of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. I knew that the novel had won a Pulitzer Prize, and I also knew that the author, Oscar Hijuelos, was a Cuban-American born and raised in New York. Those reasons were good enough for me to give The Mambo Kings a try.

Hijuelos’s work had a similar impact on me as did Cien años de soledad. I perfectly understood Hijuelos’s characters, their situation, and their frustrated dreams of succeeding in the United States. I had personally witnessed how several relatives, friends, and acquaintances, just as talented as the Mambo Kings, had come close to grabbing hold of the American Dream only to fall painfully short in the end.

The Mambo Kings hooked me forever on U.S. Latino and Latina literature. From that point on, my all-consuming passion became the literature produced by those who, like me, are of Latin American heritage yet express themselves, creatively, in English.