The Vision that Lived On

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
Carl Jung

Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary


Last June, while in Nicaragua, I visited the town of Cuapa. It was my first time back in seven years. This small Chontales community, nestled on the foothills in the Sierra de Amerrisque, serves as the setting of my first novel, Bernardo and the Virgin.

Back in 1980, only a few months after the Sandinista rebels overthrew the fifty year old Somoza dynasty and assumed power, Cuapa, then a village unknown to the vast majority of Nicaraguans, witnessed a series of events that altered the lives and the identities of everyone that lived there: the Virgin Mary appeared on four occasions to a forty-nine year old tailor named Bernardo Martínez.

The apparitions became the axis, the central point of contention, in the grave conflict of the 1980s between the Catholic Church and the Sandinista government. The traditional wing of the Church used Bernardo’s visions to help rally the faithful against the growing power of liberation theologians and the “Popular Church,” both strongly aligned with the Revolution. In turn, the Sandinista government did everything within its power to discredit the seer.

In writing Bernardo and the Virgin, I was not interested in proselytizing; that is, it was never my intention to convince readers the Mary had descended from the heavens to deliver messages for the faithful through Bernardo. I left that decision up to each reader. Instead, I wanted to explore two things: one, the history of Nicaragua in the latter half of the twentieth century and, two, how Bernardo Martínez unwittingly placed himself at the core of a bitter confrontation. The tailor became the rope, if you will, in a ferocious tug of war between the traditional wing of the Church and the adherents of the Revolution.

At present, however, in Cuapa, the only vestige of that tense era is the glass case—kept in the old church, where the initial signs of the apparitions took place—containing the broken fragments of the first image of the Virgin of Cuapa: the statue was the victim of a hail of bullets fired by Sandinista sympathizers in the late 1980s.

The peace that reigns in this rural town today reflects the current truce between the Sandinista party and the Church. But as I traveled through the country, keeping an attentive eye open, I saw that devotion to the Virgin of Cuapa has spread considerably among Nicaraguans since the last I lived here, six years ago. Images based on the description Bernardo gave of the Virgin now adorn the entrances of many small towns, and not only in the department of Chontales. What’s more, a statue of the Virgin of Cuapa is in every Cathedral of the nation—a clear sign that the Nicaraguan Catholic Church has fully embraced Bernardo Martínez’s story.

In the town of Cuapa, wherever I went, I saw evidence that Bernardo’s mystical visions of twenty-eight years ago are now an integral part of the townsfolk’s identity. What’s more, Mary’s visit to Cuapa—in which she urged Nicaraguans to work for peace rather than wage war—is rapidly becoming an integral part of the identity of Nicaraguan Catholics.

And this, I believe, indicates that spiritual visions, those revelations that makes us look deep into our souls, endure far longer than the political ideals and dreams of any revolution, regardless of how well intentioned these may at one time have been.

The Publication of Meet Me Under the Ceiba: A Done Deal

When one is writing a novel in the first person, one must be that person.
Daphne du Maurier

The building of the architecture of a novel—the craft of it—is something I never tire of.
John Irving


The contract is in the mail.

Well . . . sort of.

Over a week ago I received from Arte Público Press, University of Houston, the paperwork necessary to begin the process of publishing Meet Me Under the Ceiba. What has delayed the contract’s prompt return is the author’s questionnaire—six pages of questions I need to answer in order to help Arte Público Press publicize the book. After my experience with the publication of Bernardo and the Virgin, I’ve come to understand the importance of promoting one’s work, and this time around I will pay much closer attention to the business aspect of the writer’s life.

But the great news is that Meet Me Under the Ceiba, after experiencing an odyssey worthy of a book itself, will at last make it into print. (Someday the manuscript’s journey will become the subject of a blog entry.)

Arte Público Press has yet to set a release date, but as soon as they do I will announce it here.

In the meantime, here’s the tentative teaser (this is the feature usually found in the back cover of a novel):

One Christmas evening, Adela Rugama, a woman known for her “scandalous lifestyle,” is murdered. The circumstances surrounding her death alters the lives of the residents of the Nicaraguan town of La Curva and the surrounding communities.

Three and a half years later, a US college professor arrives in Nicaragua, the homeland of his parents, on a summer lecture assignment. After learning about Adela’s death, whom he had met four years earlier, he promises Mariela, the surviving sister, to unravel the truth behind the woman’s final moments.

Fulfilling the pledge leads the narrator through a labyrinthine entanglement of love, lust, deceit, jealousy, prejudice, greed, mystical visions, and passions gone awry while offering readers an enthralling look into everyday Nicaraguan life.

Inspired by a true incident widely reported in the Nicaraguan press, Meet Me Under the Ceiba will remind readers of Gabriel García Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold. The tale of Adela Rugama’s murder and its aftermath makes for a mysterious, haunting, and harrowing novel that’s destined to remain etched in the minds of readers.

* Winner of the 2006-2007 Chicano/Latino Literary Prize—University of California, Irvine.

When the People Stop Listening: On Daniel Ortega's Predicament

Every hero becomes a bore at last.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Bore, n.: A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary


After only a couple of days back in Nicaragua—following a four year absence—the quality of life seemed far better than friends and relatives had led me to believe. My first impression was that Nicaragua had prospered under Daniel Ortega’s presidency. Commerce, by all appearances, was vibrant. The dynamism on the streets made me think that Ortega’s year and a half of rule was benefiting Nicaragua’s economy, the contrary of everything I had been told.

But one just needs to talk to people, ask a few questions, watch the news for a couple of hours, and read the newspapers to realize that things are not as rosy as they seem.

On my first day back—in the company of my mother and my sister, Sandy—we drove by the roundabout (“rotonda”) near Metrocentro, in the heart of Managua. On an empty lot on the northwestern corner opposite the mall, protesters had erected temporary shelters. They were camped there to support Dora María Téllez’s hunger strike. A former Sandinista leader—Dora María was the second in command during the rebel’s daring and dramatic seizure of Nicaragua’s congress, in August, 1978—she had been at that spot, without food, for ten days to protest the Electoral Council’s decision to ban the political party she heads, the Movimiento de Renovación Sandinista, from participating in this year’s municipal elections. (The Electoral Council, not surprisingly, is controlled by subscribers to “El Pacto”—that is, the alliance between Daniel Ortega and Arnoldo Alemán and their followers that allows the former opponents to share and yield considerable political power. This partnership also helps them avoid prosecution and extended prison sentences for past crimes.)

“Daniel Ortega is closing the doors to democracy and trying to establish another dictatorship,” Dora María Téllez said to the news media.

Ambassadors from several countries agree with Téllez’s assessment, and the countries they represent are considering withholding aid to Nicaragua.

“In my view,” a former student who now works for a well known international organization said to me, “Ortega’s presidency has reached its most critical stage.”

* * * *

My first weekend in Nicaragua, the government television station broadcast the inauguration ceremony of an electrical plant that Hugo Chávez donated. The centerpiece of the event was a speech by Daniel Ortega. His talk, sated with anti-imperialist rhetoric, condemned the United States and the practices of neo-liberalism. These, he argued, are the culprits of all of the world’s evils.

His discourse harked back to the 80’s, the height of the Revolución Sandinista, which many Nicaraguans, of all social classes, call the nation’s darkest decade.

“Daniel is stuck in the past,” is a phrase I heard often during my visit, always uttered as a lament.

* * * *

Everywhere one travels in Nicaragua one encounters enormous billboards with Daniel Ortega in various poses, proclaiming: “Long live the poor of the world,” “The people’s presidency,” and other, similar slogans. What these have in common is that, once dissected, they’re hollow and devoid of substance.

“What ‘people’s presidency’?” said a former high school classmate of mine who now owns a small business. “You think Daniel cares what anyone other than Chayo has to say?” (“Chayo” is Rosario Murillo, Ortega’s wife who, everyone seems to agree, is the power behind the throne.)

A sign of the growing disillusionment among Nicaraguans is that the billboards are being vandalized. In several announcements, during my travels, Daniel’s face was splattered with paint.

While visiting friends in Granada, a neighbor excitedly came into the house to announce that the billboard of Daniel that greets people at the city entrance had been defaced the night before.

“That’s a good sign,” said the grandmother of the family. “It shows that no one is afraid of the Sandinistas anymore. They can no longer lock up opponents or spy on them around the clock like they did in the 80s in the name of national security. Daniel can’t control us this time around.”

The recent and massive protests in Managua demanding Ortega’s resignation support the elderly woman’s assertion that the citizenry is unafraid. Also, current polls show that close to 80% of Nicaraguans disapprove of his leadership. What’s more, many who voted for him are openly stating that they made a mistake.

But what most impressed me during my visit is that the political passions that historically have spilled over into violence remain at low ebb. I believe this is because the overwhelming majority of Nicaraguans are turning a deaf ear to Ortega’s confrontational words.

“We don’t listen to him anymore,” a raspados vendor told me in the city of Masaya. “He and Chayo are crazy. What we’re doing instead is working hard to keep the country afloat in a world economy that each day seems to be getting worse. Who has time to pay attention to the foolish things coming out of Ortega’s mouth? We’re concentrating on truly important things: like working and helping others who want to work.”

Back in 2001, I was present at a sparsely attended speech Ortega gave in the plaza of the town of San Marcos during the electoral campaign that he lost to Enrique Bolaños. After listening to Ortega’s long and uninspiring talk, I surmised that the former Comandante de la Revolución had run out of things to say. And this time around, in a clear sign that Daniel Ortega’s presidency is quickly losing respect among Nicaraguans, people have stopped listening to his threadbare and antiquated view of Nicaragua’s place in today’s world.

Balboa Academy: Year Two

The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn when teachers themselves are taught to learn.
Bertolt Brecht


A year ago, as I was getting ready for my second year at Vasco Núñez de Balboa Academy, I wrote the piece Balboa Academy: Year One. Revisiting this entry took me back to the initial shock of returning to the high school classroom after teaching college for many years.

The transition was difficult, but I overcame the hurdle with the help of a mantra my dear friend, Bill Madonna, gave me—a mantra I repeated for weeks during my morning shower: “Today, I’m going to make a difference.” Before long, as I mentioned in last year’s entry, my outlook changed and I began to enjoy the high school experience thoroughly.

Last year—my second year at Balboa Academy—although I still encountered the usual challenges every high school teacher faces, I had a terrific time. (And repeating the mantra is no longer necessary: it has become a mindset.) First of all, much of the credit for the fun I’m having goes to Jean Lamb, School Director, who understood that I needed time to write. She allowed me to teach part-time and this has made an enormous difference. Thanks to Jean’s flexibility and giving character, my teaching load went down from five to three classes: two ninth-grade Spanish courses for native speakers and the Introduction to College Writing.

The ninth grade Spanish classes had many superb moments last year. At times, the class discussions reached levels that matched any college course I taught in the past. As part of the curriculum, we read the fiction of many noted writers. Among them: Ricardo Palma, Emilia Pardo Bazán, Horacio Quiroga, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Juan Rulfo, Ana María Matute, Gabriel García Márquez, Elena Poniatowska, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Isabel Allende.

Also, in the Spanish course, we studied several gifted poets, including: Garcilaso de la Vega, Santa Teresa de Jesús, San Juan de la Cruz, Luis de Góngora, Fray Luis de León, Francisco de Quevedo, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Rubén Darío, José Martí, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Vicente Huidobro, Alfonsina Storni, Federico García Lorca, Octavio Paz, and Pablo Neruda.

Although the works we read were complex, the students plunged into them with enthusiasm. In fact, now that I have learned quite a few lessons about the importance of pacing in the high school classroom, I’m looking forward to teaching this class again. I expect this upcoming year’s ninth-grade Spanish course to be much improved.

At mid-year, I wrote The Pleasure of Guiding New Writers. The entry explores my experience teaching the Introduction to College Writing course. That class, taught under the auspices of the University of San Diego, went well. More importantly, to date, every student who’s gone on to attend college in the United States has reported that their university of choice has accepted the course’s three credits. There are several things I will do differently this year. Again, the changes will be mainly in terms of pacing. But teaching this course in a high school setting for the first time (I taught freshman English in college on several occasions) was, for me, a great learning experience. With the help of the book Creating Writers: Through 6-Trait Writing Assessment and Instruction, I implemented and conducted energizing workshops that taught and encouraged students to become effective critics and editors of essays.

At year’s end, I was pleased with the substantial improvement the students made as writers. Moreover, I’m proud of Words of a Dragon—the student-published anthology that contains their best writings. This year, the quality of my teaching in Introduction to College Writing is bound to improve thanks to the lessons I learned last year.

When June rolled around, and everyone was saying farewell as they left for summer vacation, I was surprised that I didn’t feel the least bit tired. The 2007-2008 academic year was, for me, a decidedly enriching and rewarding experience.

As a result, with one day left before the students report back, I’m eager to begin year three.