Red and black in Managua

It was a real slaughter. One of the largest massacres against civilians in history. How could it be that no one knew how to give me an address?? I walked with the feeling of not being able to escape from the sun nor from oblivion.

That July morning, when the bullet grazed his cheek, Miríam Martínez Padilla knew that the revolution had arrived there. It was the 17 July 1979, the day of joy. Although she couldn't know it yet, and rather, if someone had asked, I would have said that instead of the day of joy, better the day of desperate men, the, simply, of naked men, because she saw with her own eyes how soldiers from the fearsome National Guard undressed quickly and walked as God had brought them into the world through the streets of Managua, trying to turn ideology into a simple wardrobe issue and thus save their skin.. Day 17 In July, the columns of the Sandinista Army entered Managua and Anastasio Somoza, the last of the clan, He left the country, escaping to Miami. The family dynasty that had ruled Nicaragua with a harsh and corrupt hand for forty-five years ended.

The 20 July, three days after that bullet grazed his cheek, Miriam Martínez Padilla was in the Plaza de la República celebrating the victory. And you can still see him among the tumult, next to one of the trucks that enter the square loaded with Sandinista Front fighters, with red and black flags, immortalized in photography. One of those photographs that end up turning an anecdote into a symbol of an era. The story was told to me by her granddaughter in one of those casual conversations that occur on long bus trips..

I arrived in Managua with that revolutionary image of the Plaza de la República in my memory.

I arrived in Managua with that revolutionary image of the Plaza de la República in my memory.. A Managua of legend. It was hot and in the taxi that took me from the terminal to the hotel “Whole Lotta Love” by Led Zeppelin was playing, a hot song for a hot day, I thought with a half smile, and I lowered the glass in the hope that the draft would relieve me of the sweat, but the only thing it served was for the heat to come in mixed with the noise of the cars and the voices of the street vendors who took advantage of the red lights to sell peanuts or water or soda in plastic bags., that once drunk they always end up on the floor. El suelo de Managua es una alfombra de bolsas de plástico que se pegan en el asfalto semilíquido que flota en las calles.

Rojo y negro en la ciudad

En Managua, rojo y negro no es la novela de Stendhal. Rojo y negro es la bandera del Frente Sandinista y los colores con que se pinta el presente de Nicaragua. Digamos que si la cola nica tiene más de cien años, el presente del país tiene menos de cincuenta años. Su historia es un despropósito que encadena dictadores con terremotos, guerras y políticos corruptos. Que Nicaragua sea el segundo país más pobre de América Latina no es una casualidad, y la capital es un resumen de esta historia.

La Plaza de la República

Empecé a caminar por la Avenida Bolívar, from the north roundabout where the sculpture dedicated to Hugo Chávez is to the south one where that of Simón Bolívar is located. Actually, a four-lane layout for traffic, two up and two down, flanked by empty lots and a sidewalk crushed by the sun. No more. In the zone, about a seismic swarm, building is prohibited. One walks and walks with the feeling of having made the wrong stopover., because this city is not human, It is tailored to cars, not from pedestrians.

Just before reaching the boardwalk and Puerto Salvador Allende, city ​​recreation place with views of Lake Xolotlán, and where the unique middle class likes to go to cool off and eat with family, Revolution Square is located, thus renamed by the Government Board of National Reconstruction shortly after the Sandinista triumph. In it, three mausoleums with eternal flames remember three key men of the Sandinista Revolution that overthrew Anastasio Somoza.: Santos Lopez, Carlos Fonseca and Tomás Borge.

Where the unique middle class likes to go to cool off and eat with family

On the sides of the Plaza de la Revolución there are several important buildings of Managua, The few buildings left standing after the earthquake 1972, the palace, the People's House and the Rubén Darío Theater, next to the old cathedral that remains standing almost as a symbol of the destruction that can come at any moment. This is one of the few that tourists visit in Managua, plus a place of passage to the Island of Ometepe or the colonial cities of Granada and León, that a city where you go just to enjoy going.

I asked about the old Rossevelt Avenue, but no one knew how to give me an address, not even approximate, from where he was. Just as I had in my mind the memory of the photograph of the Plaza de la Revolución on the Day of Joy, where you could still see Miríam Martínez Padilla, I also remembered, although not exactly, what was described by Ernesto Cardenal in his memoirs about the fateful day:

“I wanted to get closer to Roosevelt Avenue, but the bullets that came from there, and the guard repelling the people, they prevented me (…). I was walking crouched, but I had nowhere to go (…). I ask a doctor, and he doesn't know, but it tells me that there are many injured and dead (…), and more stretchers continue to arrive”.

It was a real slaughter. One of the largest massacres against civilians in history. How could it be that no one knew how to give me an address?? I walked with the feeling of not being able to escape from the sun nor from oblivion. I continued inquiring about the old Roosevelt Avenue, because I have a fondness for the altars of anonymous heroes, and because someone had to know where more than fifteen hundred people died.

Tiscapa Hill

When climbing the Loma de Tiscapa, it is surprising to see the number of trees scattered throughout the city.. I wondered why I couldn't escape the sun down there.. From the top of the hill you can see the green tops of the trees, but it must be that the sun has ways of filtering through the branches and devouring you as you walk through that city that seems like it will cease to exist at any moment.. The sound of car horns reached up there., the, at least, I imagined it. I looked for the old Roosevelt Avenue from the hill as if, dreamer, there would be a big X on the ground; If there was, it would already be hidden by the layers of plastic bags on top of it..

The sound of car horns reached up there., the, at least, I imagined it

La Loma de Tiscapa is another of the essential settings on the revolutionary route of Managua. Was, with the Presidential Palace, today only ruins, the dark fiefdom of the Somozas after the earthquake 1972, but today the silhouette of Augusto César Sandino is projected throughout the city from above, and more than all over the city, nationwide. Above the figure of the father of the Sandinista Revolution has been installed, because there, precisely, It was where his trace was lost when he was captured after signing the Peace Agreement, just a plot, with Juan Bautista Sacasa and Anastasio Somoza García. He was never heard from again., and in the absence of remains, they never met, Today the Sandinista Front has erected a tomb that is a symbol. That silhouette of Sandino is close to happening like Che's face, How well does it work for selling t-shirts?.

The Carlos Fonseca Museum

If Augusto César Sandino is the founding father of present-day Nicaragua, The Sandinista Front would not exist without Carlos Fonseca, who personalized Sandinismo better than anyone. And that's why it has its own museum. When coming down from Loma de Tiscapa, I stopped a taxi driver and asked him to take me to the Carlos Fonseca Museum. No longer because I'm tired of walking around the city crushed by the heat and traffic., but because they had warned me, that area is dangerous. A few blocks away are “the ruins”, one of the areas most devastated by the earthquake 1972 and that still remains in ruins today, fenced lots inside whose interior there is only a rune of demolitions. At the Museum a guide explained some of the murals to me. and there it was, the old Roosevelt Avenue, in an old photograph. I pointed it out to him urgently. That's where I want to go.! Where is? there is nothing there, partner (back then, The guide must have thought that given my interest in the Revolution I had become a companion and not a tourist.). It does, exclaimed, I want to go anyway.

Roosevelt Avenue

Roosevelt Avenue? He explained to me that he had not found anyone who could tell me how to get there because, although some streets in the city have names, nobody knows them like that, but rather people are located by cardinal points according to some point of reference, and that, also, Each government that enters changes the name of the streets and squares according to the political interest of each side., and so there is no one who finds the north. So, normal, The old Roosevelt Avenue was located near the building of the National Bank of Nicaragua, currently headquarters of the National Assembly.

I arrived with the same taxi driver who had taken me to the Carlos Fonseca Museum. Today, All those dead only deserve a plaque almost hidden in the corner of a building, and little more. Even revolutions are falling into oblivion. I took the required photo, I thought about those dead, in those times, I thought of Miríam Martínez Padilla, in Revolution Square, in Somoza, in Sandino, and I thought there was a time when at least you knew what to fight for.

 

 

 

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