Managua was never intended to be the capital of Nicaragua. Rival political groups from León and Granada had been fighting for decades in the early 19th Century to declare their respective city the capital; Managua lies roughly halfway between the two cities and in 1852 a compromise was met to designate it the official capital. Infrastructure and industry quickly increased in Managua, which incidentally was founded on over one dozen tectonic fault lines. This unhappy fact came back to sting the city in 1931 when it suffered a great earthquake, killing nearly 2,000 people and leaving 45,000 homeless. In 1936 a fire scorched much of a city, halting any rebuilding efforts from the earthquake just five years previous.
1972 saw a second massive earthquake, this time killing over 10,000 people, leaving 300,000 homeless and leveling 75% of the buildings in the city. Anastasio Somoza, the dictator at the time, siphoned much of the incoming foreign aid and the downtown area was doomed to remain in ruins for over two decades. In the 1990’s real effort was made to revitalize Managua, but another setback came in the form of 1998’s Hurricane Mitch. The storm remains the second deadliest (and costliest) hurricane in Central American history, causing the worst damage to Nicaragua and neighboring Honduras.
Each time a new natural disaster attempted to wipe Managua off the map, whatever rebuilding process did take place was haphazard. Roads were built in a patchwork fashion, creating the current chaotic blueprint of streets full of twists and turns. I can’t imagine attempting to navigate Managua without the crutch of Google Maps.
Of course, all of this history is a great metaphor for the resiliency of the Nicaraguan people who refuse to go down for the count after being knocked around by every natural hardship you can imagine. All of this is on top of the brutality of colonialism, foreign interests plundering the land, dictators, corruption, military coups- Nicaraguans have been through more than their fair share. This is another reason Daniel Ortega has been able to stay in power for 11 years: people were tired of the constant upheaval and it was just easier to breathe and enjoy a peaceful moment rather than jump head first into another conflict. That peace has disappeared and the Old Downtown area is now effectively a ghost town. I was able to walk around freely and most museums were still open, but the streets and squares were deserted save for the National Police guarding the area.
The most recognizable symbol of Managua, la Catedral vieja (The Old Cathedral), was badly damaged during the earthquake of 1972 and now sits like a hollowed out shell on Plaza de la Revolución. Almost every government since the quake has promised to reconstruct the decaying building, but the project always finds a way to be delayed and now one can’t imagine the city without its famous specter haunting the square. The cathedral is guarded 24/7, as it is unsafe to venture inside, but you can peep through the metal bars and catch a glimpse of the altar and pews. The emptiness of downtown due to the protests only added to the other worldliness of the cathedral while I was there. It acts not only as a ghost of Christmas Past and Present, but also of Christmas Future if things keep heading in the direction they are going.
I was told how spectacularly lit the cathedral is in the evening, but I was also warned that it was just too unsafe to be wandering around downtown after dark and I never got the chance to behold its nighttime splendor. I quickly began making a running list of things I needed to do on a return visit to Managua.
Rotating clockwise around Plaza de la Revolución, the next building you will see is the Palacio Nacional de la Cultura (National Palace of Culture). A “Palacio Nacional” of some sort has stood on this spot since the 1850’s, constantly being rebuilt after each natural disaster. Under the Somoza dynasty the building was used as the Congreso Nacional (National Assembly), but after the Sandinista Revolution of 1979 the congress was moved into the National Bank of Nicaragua; at least they had a sense of humor moving a corrupt congress into a bank! When Violeta Chamorro won the presidency in 1990, she renamed the building the Palacio Nacional de la Cultura and in 1996 it officially debuted its current state with the national museum on the ground floor and the national archives and library on the floor above.
The museum itself is a total mishmash of natural history, pre-Columbian through Colonial history and contemporary Nicaraguan art. There aren’t many written explanations in English, but the museum will provide a free English-speaking guide if you ask for one. I hit the jackpot with my guide; after my two-hour tour I was basically an expert on Nicaraguan history and heard a completely different perspective on the protests as she was older and had lived through the ‘79 revolution. The contemporary art wing was fantastic, with much of it focusing on protest art from the 1970’s and 80’s. We discussed the use of humor in protest and how creating art installations had been replaced by technology. Social media has been the biggest weapon for the protestors; Ortega fears it so much that he turned off the free government-provided WiFi at the airport because people were using it to Facebook Live what was going on.
Opposite the cathedral on the Plaza de la Revolución is a memorial for three men instrumental in the success of the ‘79 Revolution, including Carlos Fonseca, the founder of the FSLN. Fonseca was killed in 1976 and never got to see the Sandinista movement he set into motion bring down the Somoza regime.
Behind the memorial lies the Parque Central, which provided the perfect piece of shelter when I, along with half a dozen police officers, got caught by a flash thunderstorm. May is the beginning of the rainy season in Nicaragua and the storms can really sneak up on you. Traveling in the shoulder or off-season can save you a lot of money, so don’t let the weather deter you. The rain usually only lasts for a few hours in the afternoon; plan an indoor activity and you’ll be fine. The perks of skipping the peak-season really should be it’s own blog post, but I never regretted being in Central America in May for a second.
If Sandino is the number one guy in Managua, Rubén Darío comes in a close second. Darío is the national poet and although he spent his childhood and died in León, Darío got his professional start in Managua working at a newspaper. The National Theater and Library are named after him, but the celebration doesn’t end there. Museums, statutes and informational placards dedicated to extolling his life dot the Old Downtown area.
When I’m in New York, I probably spend as much time in theaters as I do in my apartment. Theaters and opera houses are my places of worship and I make visiting them a top priority in any city. I so badly wanted to take a tour of the Teatro Nacional, which you can do if you call ahead and arrange a time, but due to the protests no tours were being given. I even tried to talk the guard into letting me in the gate to take a couple pictures, but it was a no-go. Again, on the list for next time.
Ortega and Murillo have made a concerted effort to restore the lakefront area known as the Malecón. The most notable addition to the Malecón, as well as the main avenues of Managua, is Murillo’s pet project: the chayo palos. (They are technically called Trees of Life, but locals call them “chayo palos,” or Chayo Poles; Chayo is Murillo’s nickname.) These brightly-colored metal trees are at least 40-50 feet high and are equipped with Christmas light-type bulbs that burn so intensely they can be seen from space. The tourist in me was kind of obsessed with these trees. They were weird and cool; the perfect mix of tacky and awesome. As RuPaul might say, they are serving some Julie Taymor realness! And yet, the trees are a sore spot for many Nicaraguans as they cost the country millions of dollars that could have been spent on the people, many of whom live in dire poverty. The chayo palos are also an enormous drain on the electrical grid, diverting precious resources to keep them lit every evening. The trees are heavily guarded at the moment as protestors have been trying to tear down and destroy them.
Much more popular on the new seawall is the Puerto Salvador Allende, a mini-village full of restaurants, bars and children’s playgrounds. There’s a go-kart track and boats for cruising around Lake Managua. I was told that the place is usually packed, but there couldn’t have been more than twenty people while I was there. Surprisingly, many of the restaurants were still open, staffed with servers shooting hopeful glances as I strolled by. After making a lap around the the puerto, I settled on a spot that served cold Toña (one of Nicaragua’s national beers) and tostones (green plantain slices that are fried, smashed, fried AGAIN and then skewered with something- in my case, fried cheese. Yeah, this isn’t really the land of kale smoothies, so while the food is delicious, you have to be diligent about walking it off.)
If you walk along the Malecón in the opposite direction of the Puerto Salvador Allende there are a few other interesting things to check out. One is a model reconstruction of the Old Downtown pre-1972. It’s one thing to hear a statistic that 75% of Managua’s buildings were destroyed and another to time warp back and visually experience just how much has changed.
I also visited four replica houses turned museums relating to Sandino and Rubén Darío. I’m sure you could breeze through all four houses in five minutes, but there was a very enthusiastic guide in the one of the houses who was eager to give me a detailed tour. He didn’t speak any English and my Spanish is limited, but this was just a small hurdle for us to overcome. He spoke slowly and with the aid of many hand gestures I honestly understood about 80% of the info; sometimes we just had to give up on a point when the language barrier was too great, but he got through to me on a point about the syllable count in some of Darío’s modernist poetry, which I could feel both of us saw as a major triumph.
Having a grasp of basic Spanish is vital when traveling to Central America, but don’t put off going if you aren’t fluent. The power of language immersion can work miracles. Never let language hold you back. These four houses on their own are nothing to write home about, and yes I can now school a Jeopardy category on Sandino or Darío, but it was my interaction with the museum guide that will be my cherished memory. It was also during our conversation about poetry structure and syllable counts that everything about Managua clicked for me. Darío was a revolutionary of the Spanish language. Students are attempting to lead a revolution through protest and social media. Ortega was a major part of the Sandinista revolution. The contemporary art in the national museum made out of trash from the city dump in an effort to spark its own revolution. The idea of “revolution” is what really pumps through the veins of Nicaraguans. There’s a fire inside the population, that just like the earthquakes and hurricanes sometimes erupts and boils over. One such moment is happening right now and I’m lucky enough to have caught a small glimpse of it firsthand.
