The Jaguar Smile

by Salman Rushdie

  Epitaph for the Tomb of Adolfo Báez Bone

  They killed you and didn’t say where they buried

  your body,

  but since then the entire country has been your

  tomb,

  and in every inch of Nicaragua where your body

  isn’t buried,

  you were reborn.

  They thought they’d killed you with their order of

  Fire!

  They thought they’d buried you

  and all they had done was to bury a seed.

  When the guests had departed and the dust had settled, I asked Daniel Ortega a few more questions. First, though, he wanted to give me his views on La Prensa. ‘They can do anything they like, but they must not advocate support for Reagan and the Contra. That’s the mark. They went over it. What could we do? Put them on trial? That would have created too much negative attention. So all we could do was close the paper.’

  I said: ‘I want to be clear about this. I’ve been told that the problem with La Prensa was CIA funding and control. But now you’re saying it was the editorial line.’

  Ortega replied: ‘There’s a war on. In peacetime, if La Prensa wants to take CIA money, which it did, and push the US line, that’s fine. If it wants to attack the Frente, that’s also fine. But now it’s different. The enemy uses the paper.’ The internal front argument again. The fear of a repetition of Chile. Amongst all Nicaragua’s phantoms, I thought, there were two darker spectres. Edén Pastora, the skeleton in the cupboard; and Salvador Allende, who was possibly the most important political figure in Nicaragua, after Sandino, anyway.

  I asked: ‘I’ve heard many people saying they think a US invasion is inevitable. What’s your view?’

  Ortega: ‘There is a certain fatalism here about this. The situation at the frontier is very tense. Many things could trigger an invasion. For example, in March, we crossed over the Honduras frontier to attack Contra camps. The Honduras government knew we were there, they knew why, they said nothing. It was OK. But the US made a great fuss, moving their personnel and weaponry to the front at a time when we were already falling back. Finally the Honduras government did send us a protest, because of the intense US pressure on them to do so. Now the situation is worse than it was then, because soon, US advisers will be legally allowed to be present by the Congress. So if we shoot down a helicopter and a US citizen dies, it could be provocation. Actually, in March, a US citizen was killed, but since he was there illegally — illegally according to the Congress — Reagan couldn’t make anything out of it.

  ‘On the seventh anniversary we deliberately held the Acta at Estelí, to show our determination. After we repelled the two Contra forces that had massed on the frontier, the Honduras government was afraid that, as in March, we would go after them across the border, in “hot pursuit”. They actually contacted us to warn us that the US had decided that if we did, that was it, they would attack us. It was very clear. So it could happen at any time.’

  I asked: ‘Now that the US is spending so heavily to “buy off” your neighbours, do you agree that you are gradually becoming isolated?’

  Ortega: ‘It’s not so easy for the US to isolate us. The people of Central America know that a war here would spread, would become a Central American war. The US had been trying to persuade Honduras, Costa Rica and Salvador to break with us, as you know, and they may succeed. But even Costa Rica, in spite of everything, still has reservations.’

  I asked: ‘Who was responsible for the attack on the Contra in Tegucigalpa today?’

  Ortega: ‘We think some guerrillas may have done it. But that fifty Contra leaders could meet so near the President’s house: this has disturbed the people of Honduras.’

  I asked: ‘On the economy: considering the great pressure it’s under, how close is it to total collapse?’

  Ortega: ‘In this special situation, war, we believe that the idea of collapse is not appropriate. You must understand that our people have never been used to great affluence, and minimum subsistence levels are being maintained. We are even slowly improving our agrarian and industrial base.’

  I asked: ‘But with inflation at 500 per cent, a more or less total strike of investment capital, and a fiscal deficit that represents forty per cent of government spending, are you really saying you can survive indefinitely?’ The latest economic indicators were pretty terrible: figures released by the Economic Commission on Latin America showed a three per cent drop in gross domestic product, a five per cent fall in production in manufacturing industry, a vast trade gap. Cotton production had been badly hit by disease and weather and had fallen by nineteen per cent. Low world prices, as well as drought, had meant a reduced income from coffee, sugar and cotton exports (most of the coffee crop had been sold in advance, at 1985 rates, and had therefore missed out on the rise in coffee prices in 1986.)

  Ortega gave a somewhat sheepish laugh. ‘Well, we have managed so far, and let’s say we hope to go on. We subsidize the price of a number of essential commodities, basic grains, oil, soap, beans, agricultural tools. All in limited quantities, of course. The rest of the prices, we have to let them rise, and they have gone up enormously. But at subsistence level the inflation is controlled.’

  I asked: ‘You make a great deal, understandably enough, of the Hague judgment. But many Western commentators play it down, setting the La Prensa closure and the expulsion of the priests against it, “balancing” it, so to speak. How can you hope to win the argument when, rightly or wrongly, the Western media simply don’t see the Hague rulings the way you do, and don’t give it the column-inches?’

  Ortega replied: ‘We know there is a lot of sympathy for our case among the people of the United States and Europe. We have to continue to take our case to the people.’ More televised jogging, more chat-show politics. The twentieth century was a strange place.

  It was one o’clock in the morning; time to leave. As I said goodbye to Rosario Murillo, she seemed already to be bracing herself for the Chinese takeaways of Manhattan. ‘The one thing I always look forward to in New York,’ she said bravely, ‘is the yoghurt.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh, yes. The wonderful yoghurt. It’s the only thing I miss.’

  ‘Enjoy it,’ I said, and wished them both good luck in New York. On the way out, I murmured to Rosario: ‘And don’t visit any opticians.’

  After leaving, I was struck by the fact that, throughout the dinner, I had not seen Daniel Ortega actually eat anything. I had been right next to him, and he had turned away all the evening’s delicacies, even the turtle meat. (Which had been unexpectedly dense and rich, like a cross between beef and venison. The turtles, incidentally, were protected during the whole of their breeding season, and could only be caught in limited quantities for a few months of the year.)

  I found out that he was known for this little habit, which could have been a sign of nervousness, or, more likely, an attempt to make himself seem a man apart, different from the crowd.

  And perhaps, when nobody was looking, el señor Presidente would sneak into his kitchens and stuff himself in secret.

  Map of Bluefields

  12

  THE OTHER SIDE

  Rub me belly skin (O mama)

  Rub me belly skin (O baby)

  Rub me belly skin

  With castor oil…

  The music of Rundown, a local group, played at top volume on a ghetto blaster, welcomed me to Bluefields, on Nicaragua’s Atlantic coast. Costeña music, Nicaragua’s answer to calypso, reggae and ska, had been one of the main reasons why I’d become so determined to get over to Nicaragua’s other side. I had also formed an ambition to swim in the Caribbean — because the Atlantic coast was, of course, really the Caribbean coast, as the locals were quick to point out — and the Pacific on the same trip. I’d already had my swim in the Pacific, strolling into the warm, warm water at Pochomil beach near Managua, where once the Somoza gang would take its weekend dips; now for the Mar Caribe.

&nb
sp; In Bluefields it was often difficult to remember I was still in Nicaragua. The west coast was, for the most part, racially homogeneous, but here, as well as mestizos, there were Creoles, three different Amerindian tribes, and even a small community of Garifonos who shouldn’t have been there at all, according to the textbooks, but up in Belize. And that wasn’t the only difference. The majority of the inhabitants here were not Catholic, but belonged to the Moravian church. And a large proportion of them were English-speaking, to boot.

  The culture of Bluefields felt distinctly West Indian, but it was more or less totally cut off from contact with the rest of the Caribbean — excepting Cuba. It wasn’t very closely in touch with the Pacific coast of Nicaragua itself, come to that. In Bluefields you couldn’t receive Nicaragua’s ‘Sandinista Television’, so you watched the Costa Rican programmes instead. It could take you all day to get a phone connection to Managua, and even then you might not manage it. There was no road link between the coasts. The few air flights filled up weeks in advance, and the only other route involved travelling 100 kilometres on a slow ferry down the Río Escondido (the ‘Hidden River’ that used to shelter pirate ships in the Days of Yore) as far as the township of Rama, where the 300-kilometre road from Managua came to an abrupt halt. The ferries had been frequent targets for the Contra. About a month before my visit they had burned the penultimate boat. The banks of the river were thickly jungled, and the ferries were sitting ducks; but the people, having no option, continued to use the route.

  What would happen when the Contra burned the last boat? The only answer I ever got to this question was a fatalistic shrug. To live in Bluefields was to accept remoteness, just as it was also to accept rain. It was one of the wettest places I had ever been in. ‘May is sunny,’ people said, but that was cold comfort in July.

  Apart from music and swimming, I was taken to Bluefields by a desire to find out if the revolution still felt, over there, like a new sort of conqueror. The inhabitants of the vast Atlantic coast province of Zelaya (only about 200,000 of them in almost half the country’s land area, almost all of it covered with virgin jungle and criss-crossed by inland waterways) had not had much to do with the making of the revolution. As a matter of fact, throughout the country’s history, the two coasts had not had much to do with one another at all. The Pacific coast had been a Spanish colony, but even though Columbus had landed in 1502 on the spot where Bluefields now stood, it had been the British who established, in 1625, the Protectorate of Mesquitía. Their subjects were mainly Amerindians: the Mosquitos or Miskitos, the Sumos and the Ramas. The British set up a puppet Miskito ‘kingdom’. These Miskito ‘monarchs’, often educated in the British West Indies or even in Britain, were based in the village of Pearl Lagoon to the north of present-day Bluefields. The Miskitos repressed the Sumos and Ramas so thoroughly that, today, barely a thousand Ramas (and not many more Sumos) were still alive. When I heard this, I realized that my mental picture of the Miskitos as a ‘pure’ tribal people whose ancient way of life had been disrupted by the Sandinistas, might need a little revision.

  Under the British, the Atlantic coast gradually acquired its sizeable Creole population. This was made up in part of runaway slaves from elsewhere in the Caribbean, and in part of people imported by the British to work for them as overseers and clerical staff. Thus, unusually, the British, who were more accustomed to using blacks as slaves, turned them, in Nicaragua, into a petit-bourgeoisie.

  The Spanish-speaking mestizo population was growing, too, and in 1838 the Republic of Nicaragua was established. Mestizo numbers continued to increase, and at the last count they made up over half the population of Zelaya. (The blacks or Creoles, at 50,000 plus, accounted for about a quarter.) Old resentments between the Creoles and the ‘pañas’ — from españoles, Spaniards — had diminished, but the divisions were still occasionally noticeable. The army on the Atlantic coast was almost wholly mestizo. This racial division between soldiers and civilians hit me the moment I arrived at the long wooden hut that was Bluefields’ airport terminal. The Creoles didn’t like joining the paña army, though they didn’t mind signing on with the police.

  The Somoza dynasty handed the Atlantic coast over to the transnational companies, who dug fortunes out of its gold mines and profited also from the abundance of precious woods. The transnationals created, in Zelaya, a distorted, totally dependent company-store economy, habituated to imported US produce and at the mercy of the foreign employers. They exported the area’s wealth, put back little or nothing, and when the last Somoza fell they decamped. The effect on the locals’ way of life was shattering. And then the Sandinistas arrived, singing heroic songs of revolution and liberty. It wasn’t surprising they got a frosty welcome; the revolution of the Pacific-coast pañas had felt, to many people on the other side, more like annihilation.

  Bluefields was poor as mud. (Only dry places could be dirt poor.) It was too poor to build a waterfront. A few jetties, all loose planks and holes, stuck out into the bay. The wooden houses with their verandahs and balconies looked attractive, but when you got close you saw the rot, the poverty. Children played hoop; Creole ladies lounged on barrels, ample-bottomed and well buttoned-up. Vote for Yazmina & Fátima, the walls insisted. I went into a bar in which a mestizo sailor, Pancho, was holding forth. ‘I’ve been everywhere,’ Pancho stated. ‘Miami. Mobile, Alabama. I’ve been all over. Let me tell you something: I liked Mobile, Alabama better than Miami, Florida. People don’t bother you in Mobile. It’s like here, in Bluefields.’ The rain began to belt down and Dylan started to sing ‘Stuck Inside of Mobile’ in my head. ‘Is there any beer?’ I asked, and the small jelly of a woman who ran the bar said, ‘No. Beer finish.’ But when she left the room, Pancho winked and fished out a bottle of cerveza Victoria from the cold box. ‘Be my guest.’

  The proprietress returned and blew her stack. ‘Where you find that? Pancho, you no good. These days you got to look after your reg’lar customers, and those beers is reserve. They is reserve. I need meat and ting, I gotta keep the butcher his beer. You got beer at your house, you get me one.’ Pancho made mollifying, insincere noises. I felt bad, and didn’t enjoy the drink.

  After dark, in a Creole bar in the Old Bank barrio, I was befriended by Francisco Campbell. He was home on leave from the Nicaraguan embassy in Washington, and he was a man with a problem: the US authorities had just expelled his wife, Miriam, who had also worked at the embassy. He was a likeable, generous man, and put his troubles aside to show me a good time. We ate the bar’s special ‘chop suey’, with which no Chinese person would ever have felt the slightest affinity, but which tasted spicy and delicious, and drank Flor de Caña Extra Seco with tamarind water.

  The transnationals, Francisco told me, had been the ones who cut Bluefields’ trade links with the Caribbean. He was keen to restore them. ‘Do you know Trinidad imports all its beef from Argentina?’ he demanded. ‘Do you know how many thousands of miles further that is?’ He was also eloquent on the subject of shrimps. They spawned in the Escondido tideway and then, in the rainy season when the rainwater pushed the salty water back, they headed out to sea. The lagoon at the river’s mouth would fill with shrimps; it would be alive with shrimps. They were the easiest catch in the world. But trawling was banned, because then you’d catch too many, and ruin things for the future. ‘Shrimp fishermen from Jamaica have been raiding our continental shelf for as long as I can remember,’ he expostulated. ‘It’s about time we came to some arrangement about that.’

  We emerged from the bar when the Extra Seco was gone, and strolled down the street past the Moravian school. The night sky was full of stars, but if you kept looking up at them you were in serious danger of falling down one of the many holes in the road. Francisco had been thinking about his wife, and as we passed the school he cried: ‘I was expelled myself once, you know. Right here, from this school.’

  ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘It was the long hair of Mary Hebbert,’ he said. ‘That did it.’ Mary
Hebbert had the most beautiful long fair hair, and the young Francisco wanted desperately to attract her attention. One day as he was coming to class — he was not yet ten years old — he saw the hair of Mary Hebbert dangling out of the classroom window. He had an impulse he could not resist: he pulled it. Unfortunately, he pulled too hard, and she banged her head against the window frame. She decided to make a big song and dance about Francisco’s bid to be noticed, and the headmaster asked his parents to remove their boy from the school.

  ‘That’s terrible,’ I said.

  ‘It was OK,’ Francisco grinned. ‘You survive expulsions.’

  ‘What happened to Mary Hebbert?’ I wanted to know.

  ‘I found out,’ he said contentedly. ‘She married a klutz and lives in the Caymans. So she got hers in the end.’

  Cathy Gee, a US citizen working with a local development agency, was telling me about the death of the Rama language when I noticed the smashed computer VDU in her office. The screen had gone, and the insides were in a terrible mess. ‘Oh, yeah,’ she said. ‘Yeah, it was on the boat the Contra attacked. It got shot.’ She pointed to something taped to the top of the unit. ‘We found the bullet, too. Yeah.’ The computer had been a keenly anticipated gift. ‘Too bad.’

  ‘So the Contra are assassinating machines now,’ I said.

  We got back to the Rama language. There were only twenty-three people alive who could still speak it: the other Ramas had already lost their tongue. A French linguist had spent months with the ageing twenty-three, to record the structure and phonetics of the language before it disappeared. ‘She came up against quite a problem,’ Cathy told me. ‘Most of the old Ramas had lost their teeth, so they couldn’t pronounce some of the words properly. Yeah.’ False teeth were much too expensive to be an option. Dental costs could therefore deliver the final blow to a tiny, dying language. Nicaragua is a land of small tragedies as well as large ones.