The Murals of Revolutionary
Nicaragua, 1979-1992
by David Kunzle with an introduction by Miguel D’Escoto, University of California Press, 1995, 203 pp., $65 (cloth), $29.95 (paper).
From the Sandinista victory in 1979
to its defeat at the polls in 1990,
over 300 murals were painted in dif-
ferent corners of revolutionary
Nicaragua. Today, few of those
murals remain intact. Some were
destroyed by the elements, others by
indifference. The majority, however,
were deliberately painted over
under the orders of Managua’s con-
servative mayor, Amoldo Alemin-
who is today favored to win
Nicaragua’s October, 1996 presi-
dential elections.
David Kunzle has done a splendid
job documenting the mural move-
ment that flourished in Sandinista
Nicaragua. The Murals of Revolu-
tionary Nicaragua offers vibrant,
high-quality color photographs of
64 murals, as well as black-and-
white images of over 200 others.
Kunzle annotates each image with
information about the location of
the mural, its contents, and when
and by whom it was executed.
The photographs are accompa-
nied by an extended introduction in
which Kunzle describes the signifi-
cance of the mural movement-and
popular art and culture in general-
in building a new Nicaragua. During
the 1980s, 28 Centers for Popular
Culture were built throughout
Nicaragua to fulfill the revolution’s
mandate that “culture should be
made by and not for the masses.”
The Centers promoted mural paint-
ing, poetry and pottery workshops,
and dance and theater festivals.
“The murals celebrate the insur-
rection and revolutionary construc-
tion,” writes Kunzle. “They are self-
image and self-education, popular
autobiography. They are extensions
of the great literacy campaign,
which turned ‘all Nicaragua into a
school,’ as the phrase went; they are
the blackboards of the people.” The
murals strikingly portray the strug-
gle against U.S. intervention, with
the United States often symbolized
as the grim reaper. The insurrection
itself is celebrated in a number of
the murals which depict street barri-
cades, peasants bearing small arms
against the heavy artillery of the
National Guard, and the role of
Christian guerrillas in the struggle.
A multiplicity of social themes are
also addressed in the murals. Many
emphasize the promise of a better
life embodied by the revolution: free
and universal health care, literacy
campaigns, well-nourished children
at play.
Kunzle’s defense of the mural
movement and autochtonous cultur-
al expression in general is unwaver-
ing. While he sometimes goes over-
board with his rhetoric, Kunzle has
nonetheless done a thorough and
praiseworthy job of collecting pho-
tographs of now-destroyed murals,
thereby helping preserve the cultur-
al heritage of Sandinista Nicaragua
that others are so bent on obliterat-
ing.
Nothing, Nobody: The Voices of
the Mexico City Earthquake by Elena Poniatowska, translated by Aurora Camacho de Schmidt and Arthur Schmidt, Temple University Press, 1995, 327 pp., $49.95 (cloth), $18.95 (paper).
It’s a pleasure to see the works of
prominent Latin American essayists
finally finding their way into
English translation. The University
of Missouri offers a 1991 paperback
edition of Massacre in Mexico,
Elena Poniatowska’s harrowing
account of the 1968 killing of hun-
dreds of student demonstrators at
Tlatelolco by government troops.
Now Temple University Press has
put out a translation of her 1988
account of the Mexico City earth-
quake of September 18, 1975.
The book is comprised of a patch-
work of testimonies of earthquake
victims buried alive in the rubble, of
others who frantically searched for
the bodies of loved ones in
makeshift morgues, and of the vol-
unteer rescuers who worked around
the clock digging out victims. The
absence of a single narrative thread
enhances the potency of the book.
As each account concludes, the nar-
rative folds back in on itself to the
early morning hour when the
ground rocked for two and a half
terrifying minutes.
The earthquake pulled back a cur-
tain on Mexican social relations.
The dismal working conditions of
clandestine sweatshops were
revealed after hundreds of seam-
stresses died when the poorly con-
structed factories crumbled in the
quake. In the trunk of a car buried
by the wreckage of the collapsed
Attorney General’s Office, the
decomposed cadaver of a human
rights lawyer was discovered bound
and gagged, a victim not of the
earthquake but of government re-
pression days before.
But the brightest light was shone
on the authorities, whose response
to the disaster ranged from incom-
petent to obstructive to outright
criminal. The high number of casu-
alties was in part due to the histori-
cal willingness of government offi-
cials to turn a blind eye on building-
code violations in exchange for a
bribe. The soldiers who arrived on
the scene in the first crucial hours
were more concerned with cordon-
ing off the area and preventing loot-
ing than with rescuing lives.
Most of the heroic rescues were
made by concerned young people
who burrowed into the rubble with
shovels, picks, and their bare hands.
These spontaneous acts of human
compassion and solidarity planted
the seeds for the flowering of grass-
roots organizing in the tragedy’s
aftermath. “What is the positive out-
come of all this?” reflects one sur-
vivor. “I think that the old inferiority
complex that Mexicans have should
be questioned. We are not incompe-
tent. What is incompetent is the sys-
tem that we live in. The earthquake
proved to us that when we work
together, we do a good job.”
Between Earthquakes and
Volcanoes: Market, State, and
the Revolutions in Central
America
by Carlos M. Vilas, translated by Ted
Kuster, Monthly Review Press, 1995,
224 pp., $36.00 (cloth), $18.00 (paper).
Between Earthquakes and Volcanoes
is a thoroughly documented, data-
packed, and systematic retrospec-
tive of the 30-year revolutionary
cycle in Central America. In his
opening discussion of the theoreti-
cal and historical background to
revolution, Carlos Vilas provides an
incisive and elegant analysis of the
relationship between economics,
consciousness, politics, and the
revolutionary process. Although
what motivates people to rebel, he
argues, is a sudden and dramatic
change in living conditions, “the
symbolic dimension of this process
is as important as material life con-
ditions.” Political factors are also
crucial since people “must be con-
vinced that collective action can set
things right.”
Vilas offers a credible framework
for understanding events in the vari-
ous countries of the isthmus as part
of a single, broad-based revolution-
ary experience. Capitalist develop-
ment in Central America in the
1950s and 1960s, Vilas argues, gave
rise to the protagonists of the
region’s revolutions: the new middle
classes and a mass of rootless semi-
proletarianized labor. While reces-
sion, natural disaster, and demo-
graphic pressures provided the cata-
lysts, the interactions among the
region’s central political actors-the
military, popular organizations, the
church, revolutionary movements,
and the U.S. government-generat-
ed the chemical reaction. Vilas con-
trasts the rise of revolution with the
trajectory of reformism, more suc-
cessful in Costa Rica than in
Honduras. But in both countries, he
writes, reforms were attenuated by
the U.S. strategy of “low-intensity
warfare” against the burgeoning
revolutionary forces next door.
Vilas’ most significant contribu-
tion lies in the final third of the
book, which assesses the revolu-
tionary experience and its ambigu-
ous results. The establishment of a
neoliberal regime in Nicaragua on
the heels of the Sandinistas’ elec-
toral defeat, the Salvadoran peace
agreement followed by a difficult
transition for the left, and the on-
again, off-again peace process in
Guatemala seem the hallmarks of
regression rather than triumph. But,
as Vilas argues, it would be a mis-
take to overlook the dramatic
changes in Central American soci-
eties-such as the opening up of
the region’s political institutions
and greater popular participation–
forged in the crucible of revolution.
The challenge that lies ahead is
how to convert this historic oppor-
tunity into genuine democracy and
lasting peace.
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