The Exiling of Respectability: The Case of Granada, Nicaragua

I have to live for others and not for myself; that’s middle-class morality.
George Bernard Shaw


The Granada in which I spent my adolescence was a cultured, genteel community. One of Nicaragua’s largest cities—as well of one of the oldest on the American continent, founded in 1524—Granada was a place where courtesy, honor, respectability, and education were held in high esteem. In the mid-1960s, when my family moved there from Los Angeles, California—after I had just turned eleven—I felt as if I had stepped back a couple of centuries to a place and time where civility, good manners, being cultivated, and preserving one’s good name mattered immensely.

Of course, the majority of Nicaraguans lacked access to an education of quality, to the schooling vital for improving one’s condition in life. As a result, moving up the ladder of respectability—and, if a person was fortunate, moving up the economic scales as well—was something only the most diligent, persistent, and resourceful among the poor could achieve. Nevertheless, the majority of Granadinos and Granadinas, regardless of social class, recognized and admired the men and women who lived their lives by strict codes of public conduct while at the same time pursuing lofty educational and personal goals.

Oddly, or at least it seems so in my memory, the folks that inhabited this refined civic echelon came almost exclusively from the middle-class. The wealthy led lives separate from their fellow Granadinos and Granadinas. The elite seldom ventured out of their majestic colonial homes; few outside this closed society knew what the city’s aristocracy did behind locked doors. As a result of this isolation, with the upper-class’s lives being utterly private, it was up to the middle-class to carry the banner of sophistication and good breeding out in public, to be the standard bearers of refinement. Middle-class morality, that life lived for others which George Bernard Shaw refers to—and I interpret his quote at face-value, not as irony—was in fact the glue that held together centuries-worth of traditions regarding an individual’s responsibility to set a good example for others.

I was fortunate enough to grow up in a middle-class Granada home. My mother’s extended family was part of a social class that for generations sought to keep their offspring well-educated and cultured—without the burden of being materialistic, which being middle-class implies today. My family’s emphasis on being respectable made it possible for me to have several role models to choose from within my own family: men and women who devoted themselves to becoming the best persons they could possibly be. And it was to them that, like an impressionable adolescent looking into a crystal ball, I turned to for some insight with regard to who I could become.

I’ll share one example (but only one, for the list is rather long): that of my great-aunt Mercedes Jacinta López, better known within the family as “Chintita.” In an era that predated the feminist movement, she shattered gender barriers, walls that had been keeping women from positions of responsibility for centuries. In the early 1940s, Chintita became the first woman to work for a bank in Granada. Today, throughout the world, a woman bank-teller is a common sight, but her appointment provoked a temporary uproar in patriarchal Granadino society. On her first day on the job, several men withdrew their savings, arguing that a woman wouldn’t know how to handle their money. But within a matter of days, Chintita’s efficiency, honesty, humor, and gift for making people feel at ease soon put an end to their apprehensions.

Years later, urged on by friends, Chintita began to dabble in politics. Eventually, she became the first woman vice-mayor of Granada. Still, in spite of these considerable honors, Chintita, a well-read person who knew and could recite most of Rubén Darío’s poems by heart, wore these distinctions with humility—always ready to smile and be amiable, even to the humblest person in Granada. When Chintita died, four years ago, thousands attended her funeral. By living her life according to the middle-class standards set generations before her, she was able to touch many, many lives.

Last June, during my most recent visit to Granada, my sister and I, in comparing notes, kept repeating that something was missing, that Granada had changed, and substantially, in the years since we grew up there. We both agreed that the city had lost the gentility of old. In the streets, backpacking tourists, aggressive peddlers, and local vagrants have replaced the refined adults of our youth who always seemed to have time for us without expecting anything in return. And during the evenings the doors of middle-class homes, that in our adolescence were always open to welcome every visitor, were now gated and locked; the lives of the inhabitants in the heart of Granada are turned inward, and missing are the social and cultural interactions of old.

I admit that the colonial buildings of the city look better than when my sister and I lived there. The restoration was funded by foreigners who recognized the beauty of Granada and quickly moved in after the fall of the Sandinista government, in the beginning of the 1990s, to capitalize on the site’s potential for tourism. Their efforts and investment has made the Granada beautiful to behold. But these entrepreneurs, although ingenious and more well-intentioned than not, have been unable to replace the centuries-worth of respectability that the former middle-class represented.

What, then, happened to Granada’s middle-class?

A Revolution.

Ironically, as well as tragically, although during the 1970s popular rage in Nicaragua was directed toward the Somoza family and their closest allies, the change in government ended up mostly displacing the middle-class. Disenfranchised from the businesses that made them able to earn a decent, if not modest, living—especially compared to the US middle-class—the heart of Granada’s gentility was forced into exile. Paradoxically, the city’s aristocracy—the wealthy, that is—was better equipped to weather the political storm and hold onto, or successfully reclaim, their properties. And Granada’s elite continues living behind closed doors today, seemingly oblivious to the plight of the less fortunate.

Throughout our recent visit, my sister and I felt displaced, as if we never lived in this majestic city. And now that I look back, I believe it’s because the type of persons we once looked up to as adolescents, the type of persons we could emulate, no longer have a public function. The standards bearers of social respectability—that middle-class from which came the mentors of our youth—have been driven underground, labeled during the Revolution as the petite bourgeoisie, enemies of the common man and woman.

Rekindling a Flame: On a Marvelous Endorsement

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.
Albert Schweitzer


Joshua Berman is an accomplished travel writer. He is co-author of Moon Handbooks Nicaragua, unquestionably the best guidebook for this country. What first drew my attention to Joshua’s work was that, a little over a year ago, he wrote in his blog that he had just purchased Bernardo and the Virgin and was looking forward to reading it. Grateful for the plug, I sent Joshua an email thanking him.

In his response, he stated:

Dear Silvio,

Wow, ¡qué milagro! I’m in the middle of reading Bernardo and the Virgin (I hadn’t yet read it when I wrote the post about Nica reading lists on my blog), and I was planning on contacting you later this week. Incredible. Bernardo and the Virgin is not only one of the best books I’ve read on Nicaragua, but one of the best historical fictions I’ve ever read. So, felicidades for that. I plan on including your novel on the Suggested Readings list of the next edition of my guidebook on Nicaragua.

I’m looking forward to communicating more with you,

Josué

Joshua and I have since corresponded, but only briefly. Today, however, my spirit soared after reading the grand endorsement Joshua gives Bernardo and the Virgin in the most recent edition (Third edition, September 1, 2008, Avalon Travel Publishing) of Moon Handbooks Nicaragua. The following quote can be found on page 459, in the section titled Further Study. Bernardo is the first book mentioned.

Suggested Reading

A prodigious amount of literature emerged from the Sandinista years, when Nicaragua was the setting of the hemisphere’s most celebrated—and criticized—socialist experiment of the century. You’ll find more titles on Nicaragua in the used-book section than you will on the new releases shelf. Following is an extremely eclectic (and incomplete) list of your options.

Fiction

Sirias, Silvio. Bernardo and the Virgin. Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2005. Bernardo stands head and shoulders above other books about Nicaragua for sheer originality, real-life texture, and ingenious use of voices and characters. This historical novel tells the true story of the Virgin Mary’s appearances to a campesino in Cuapa, while portraying a thick slice of Nicaragua’s past and present. If you only have time to read one book before your trip, this may be the one.

I would never dare to wish for a better review than that, especially from someone who has read extensively about Nicaragua.

Gracias, Joshué. Your message came at a time when I needed that extra boost.


To purchase your copy of Moon Handbooks Nicaragua, click here.

Or, for a copy of Bernardo and the Virgin, go here.

An Unforeseen Earthly Connection: On Santo Tomás, Chontales

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
Robert Frost


I heard the story of my family name from my paternal grandfather, José Vicente Sirias. According to his tale, in the latter half of the eighteenth century two brothers left their homeland in the Middle East and eventually settled in Nicaragua. My guess today—after researching historical migrations to Central America—is that they were part of a large wave of Catholics who came to this region from what today constitute Lebanon, Syria, Israel, and Palestine to escape economic hardship, as well as discrimination against non-Muslims, during the last throes of the Ottoman Empire .

The brothers settled in the town of Acoyapa, located in the cattle-raising province of Chontales. Their presence intrigued the residents of this region, but the local citizenry never learned to pronounce the immigrants’ surname. Instead, folks referred to the brothers as “Los Sirias”—an abbreviated form of "The Syrians"—and the brothers adopted the nickname. Sadly, both the original family name and their true land of origin have been lost to time.

This tale, as fragile as it is, is the only source I have that explains our uncommon last name.

Today, for the branch of the Sirias family I belong to, the locus of our heritage has shifted ten miles south of Acoyapa, to the town of Santo Tomás. This community—of 16,000 inhabitants and located 118 miles south of Managua—is the last outpost of civilization. (Many Nicaraguans would disagree with the term “civilization” being used for any Chontales community.) The heart of Santo Tomás lays on the eastern side of the road to Rama, a village where, after a long and exhausting boat ride, one can reach Nicaragua’s isolated Caribbean coast.

Santo Tomás is where east meets west. It is the wild frontier where the Afro-Antillean, the indigenous, the European and, in the case of the Siriases, the Middle Eastern heritages merge.

After two failed marriages—in which time my grandfather produced seven children, including my father, from his first marriage—he returned to his province of birth after a long absence and settled in Santo Tomás. There, he married again—at last successfully—and had eight more children.

Although my father and the Santo Tomás branch of the Siriases had different mothers and they didn’t meet until they were adults, they got along splendidly, caring for one another as if they had been together all of their lives. I’ve come to feel close to the Sirias-Vargas clan as well. (My father’s limb of the family tree is that of the Sirias-Burgos.) When I visit my uncles, aunts, and cousins in Santo Tomás I feel rooted. Admittedly, I find it strange to feel intimately connected to a community where I’ve never lived. But I believe that’s because when I’m in Santo Tomás I hear wondrous stories that make me feel close to my father and his three brothers—all of them now departed.

This is why Santo Tomás has become such an important part in the construction of my identity. That is why the community is mentioned prominently in Bernardo and the Virgin. It’s also why this Chontales town is the site of a key encounter in which my aunts and uncles briefly become fictional characters in Meet Me Under the Ceiba.

Santo Tomás is where I feel close to my paternal heritage. What’s more, I know that I shall always feel this way because, through a series of unpredictable events that now appear to have been steered by the more blessed forces of fate—too complex to discuss in a blog entry and, I confess, a little too personal—my father is buried there, next to his father.


For anyone interested in learning more about Santo Tomás, click here

And to learn more about Acoyapa, including the mention of several Siriases who played important roles in the town’s history, click here

The Magic of Antigua, Guatemala

I think that the ideal space must contain elements of magic, serenity, sorcery and mystery.
Luis Barragan


I first visited Antigua, Guatemala when I was fifteen years old. I had come to this country as part of a leadership conference for Central American Catholic youth. That experience marked me for life, in the best of ways. On our last day in Guatemala we were taken to Antigua, the spectacularly well-preserved original site of the nation’s capital. That brief visit became engraved in my memory as a magical incident, a day where ancient colonial walls spoke to me of the clashes and confluences of cultures, religions, beliefs, and people that took place here centuries ago.

I’ve just returned from my third visit to Antigua. This time, I accompanied a group of high school students from Balboa Academy to a leadership conference organized by the Association of American Schools of Central America. The experience was, once again, magical. Seeing the city through their eyes allowed me to relive a part of my life when the future was a vast ocean of possibilities, as limitless as the dreams of youth.

But what most marked me on this occasion was a trip to a state-operated home for elderly people who are destitute. I visited the institution to help supervise a group of students who went there as part of a community service project. I admit that when I first learned that I had been assigned to the old folks’ home I was quite concerned about what I would say or do with the residents. After all, I was a perfect stranger walking into their dwelling, uninvited, with the intent of becoming their friend.

My apprehension vanished, however, the moment I entered the home. While leading the students back into the dining room—our arms cradling small gifts and supplies—I said “Buenos días” to the residents seated along the long corridors of the elegant colonial home. They rewarded my greeting with warm, welcoming smiles.

That day I heard a dozen unforgettable stories: the ninety-two year old man who was grateful for his good health and for being able to have a roof over his head; the former jeweler, embittered after a car accident left him without the use of his legs and because his family, who lived only an hour away, had not visited him in over a year; the poet who had never written down a single verse yet could recite from memory all his compositions; and others.

My experience in soliciting people’s stories—part of my trade as a writer who bases his novels on actual events—came in handy. I could have spent several weeks at the home and still not heard every fascinating tale. I only wish I’d had more time to spend with these elders who so generously offered me intimate glimpses into their lives.

At the end of our visit, as we prepared to leave, my favorite resident, a small, mute woman, still not terribly aged, who communicated in sign language few could understand, held onto me, her arms around my waist, in gratitude for the time I spent trying to communicate with her. (In spite of the trouble I had understanding her, we laughed a lot together.) She didn’t want me to leave.

And as the young students filed out of the home, smiling in approval as my new friend clung to me, I knew then that I was living another moment that would become part of my reservoir of magical memories of Antigua, Guatemala.

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.