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¡Que se rinda tu madre! Leonel Rugamaand Nicaragua's Changing Politics ofMemoryHilary FrancisPublished online: 24 Jul 2012.

To cite this article: Hilary Francis (2012) ¡Que se rinda tu madre! Leonel Rugama and Nicaragua'sChanging Politics of Memory, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies: Travesia, 21:2, 235-252,DOI: 10.1080/13569325.2012.694812

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Hilary Francis

¡QUE SE RINDA TU MADRE! LEONEL

RUGAMA AND NICARAGUA’S CHANGING

POLITICS OF MEMORY

The elucidation of collective memory takes place on continually shifting ground, leavingscholars of memory with few collective certainties of their own. One aspect appears constant:the emphasis on trauma as a way of framing memories of the past. The question of how torepresent trauma is pivotal to the culture of memory in many Latin American countries.However, an exclusive focus on trauma can obscure the persistence of other memorial cultures.In Nicaragua, for example, a pantheon of revolutionary heroes still dominates the memoriallandscape. Here, I examine the case of Leonel Rugama (1949–1970), a Nicaraguanrevolutionary poet. Rugama’s dying words, ¡que se rinda tu madre! (let your mothersurrender!), are a central element in Nicaraguan collective memory. Comparing memorials toRugama over three decades, I argue that the use of ¡que se rinda . . . ! in the early 1980s isindicative of the iconoclastic power of a particular collective moment. In contrast, “¡que serinda . . . ” is absent from the 2010 memorial which marks the 40th anniversary of LeonelRugama’s death. This change reflects the present Sandinista regime’s discomfort with therevolution’s original radical intent, a discomfort amply justified by the recent re-appropriation of Rugama’s final words by opponents of the current regime.

In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from theconformism that is about to overpower it.

Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History.

In a quiet street in downtown Managua, a small concrete plinth marks the entranceto the Colonia Leonel Rugama. Part monument, part street sign, this simple memorialresembles hundreds laid down in the early years of the first Sandinista government(1979–1990). Scores still remain, quietly crumbling away like the rest of downtownManagua, perfectly camouflaged by the general sense of decay. Robert Musil’s much-cited observation holds well here: the monuments “seem to be impregnated withsomething which repels attention, causing the glance to roll off” (Musil 1987: 61). Thismemorial is different though. For one, although its style mimics the monuments of therevolutionary years, it is in fact a replica. The original 1979 version, was removed inthe early 1990s, as part of a campaign by right-wing Managua mayor Arnoldo Aleman.The memorial’s message makes it easy to see why it was targeted for demolition, andthis is where its real significance lies. The monument’s simple plaque features the datesof Rugama’s life, and a single phrase which, for Nicaraguans at least, requires nofurther explanation: “¡que se rinda tu madre! (let your mother surrender). These were

Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Vol. 21, No. 2 June 2012, pp. 235-252

ISSN 1356-9325/print 1469-9575 online q 2012 Taylor & Francis

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13569325.2012.694812

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Rugama’s last words, his response to the National Guards who, having cornered him ina safe house, demanded that he give himself up. He was twenty years old.

Shortly after the Sandinistas returned to power in 2007, the Rugama plaque wasreinstated, almost exactly as it was. More broadly though, political memory in Nicaraguahas changed substantially in the intervening decades. A recent national monument toRugama displays a sickly sentimentality which, I will argue, implies a ‘conformism’ of thekind that Walter Benjamin warns against. In the spirit of Benjamin’s warning, this pieceoffers two interrelated critiques. The main body of the article traces changingrepresentations of Rugama, and offers a critique of the ‘kitsch turn’ in state-sponsored

FIGURE 1 The plaque which marks the entrance to the Colonia Leonel Rugama. Photo

by [Eoghan Clarkson].

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memory work in Nicaragua. I argue that this turn is indicative of the great distance betweenthe current government and its original revolutionary roots. In spite of this distance, thenew kitsch remains within a Nicaraguan tradition of ‘heroic memory’, a tradition which isnot reducible to a trauma or victimhood frame. My second critique relates to this, andconcerns memory studies’ reification of trauma and victimhood as the only or preferredway of thinking about the past. I begin by exploring understandings of heroism and heroicmemory within memory studies, before moving to the specifics of the Nicaraguan case.

Memory studies and ‘heroic memory’

In The Texture of Memory, James Young cautions against a simplistic opposition ofmemorial and monument, and argues that “a statue can be a monument to heroism anda memorial to tragic loss” (1993: 3). Young’s formulation implies a recognition thattrauma and heroism can coexist as elements in the construction of memory, but inrecent years that possibility seems to have been lost. Fassin and Rechtman argue thattrauma now has “global validity” (2009:1) as a framework for understanding the past.For Levy and Sznaider (2006) a new ‘cosmopolitan memory’ has emerged which drawson the holocaust to reframe memory through a prism of good versus evil, a frameworkwhich helps to constitute a global politics of human rights. Others argue thatpostmodernity entails a shedding of the heroic frame (Bauman 2005; Forster 2003). “Inrecent years”, suggests Hie-Jyun Lim, “a shift can be observed in the construction ofcollective memories, from heroic martyrdom to innocent victimhood” (Lim 2010:138). Aleida Assman holds that “trauma is the other of a heroic narrative”, and calls fora greater clarity in our usage, suggesting that ‘trauma’ be reserved for those victims ofviolence “with neither a mission nor means nor self-defence” (2004: 28).

The exact shape of the new paradigm is disputed. Some emphasise human rights-based discourse and the pursuit of transitional justice. Others, within trauma theory,would reject the implication that trauma can or should be worked through. Huyssen(2011) divides the literature into two, regarding human rights discourse as the provinceof social scientists, and memory studies, and particularly trauma, as the focus forresearch in the humanities. From there, it might be tempting to dismiss theuniversalising, deterministically linear tendencies in the literature as a folly of the socialsciences. However, as Susannah Radstone notes, trauma theory shares the trend towardsuniversalism. “[A] stress on silence and the unrepresentable, rather than on the specificsof location, language and culture, allows memory research to think that it can, under theguise of trauma analysis, go anywhere” (2011: 117). Here I use the short-hand ‘traumaframe’ to refer to the discourses of trauma, victimhood and human rights which, despitetheir differences, all contribute to the same ascendant paradigm. Following Kansteinerand Weilnbock’s (2012) call for an effort to ‘provincialize’ trauma, this article showshow Nicaraguan memory culture remains largely unaffected by the trauma frame.

In The Ruins of Memory, Lawrence Langer (1991) provides a lacerating critique ofheroic memory. He contrasts the Israel’s heroic reinvention of the holocaust with theambivalence and diminished broken selfhood which he argues is characteristic ofholocaust survivors (Langer 1991). Here, an expectation of heroism is a manipulatoryimposition, a further psychic wound which compounds already immense suffering. Ina similar fashion, Goren (2007) shows how New York fire-fighters’ suffering in the

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aftermath of 9/11 was exacerbated by their heroization. Media attention was disruptiveand invasive, as was the heroic discourse itself, which the fire-fighters saw as completelyinappropriate and unrepresentative of their experience. In these cases, a heroic framewas an imposition that entailed further psychic pain, but elsewhere it is the trauma framethat acts as an imposition. For example, Bracken & Petty (1998), argue that an explosionin trauma work by international NGOs has meant the imposition of Eurocentric notionsof trauma, and the neglect of more pressing material needs. These cases suggest thattrauma and heroism can both be experienced as discourses of power, and careful critiquerequires close attention to their significance within the power relations of each memorialculture.

What kind of power does heroic memory wield in Latin America?1 It is oftenassociated with nationalism and state terrorism of the right (Jelin 2003: 27–8; Stern2006: 7–34). Recently though, Michael Goebel (2011) has argued that in the case ofArgentina, the link between nationalism and state terrorism has often been overstatedand over-simplified. There is a need to revisit and unpack assumptions about theattributes of heroic memory, not least because the ‘turn to the left’ has prompteda revival of the heroic-revolutionary form (Coronil 2011; Demelas-Bohy et al. 1999).The Argentine philosopher Ricardo Forster (2003) argues that heroic myth, in spite ofits dangers, is an important vessel for ideas and emancipatory politics. He suggests thatthe real danger lies in ceding the territory of heroic myth entirely to the right, and thatthis was precisely the mistake of the German left in the 1930s. For Forster, a rejection ofthe hero only serves to replicate and strengthen dominant discourses of power byremoving a sense of politics from memory. Forster’s argument mirrors the familiarcontention that trauma or victimhood frames can displace politics (Di Stefano 2011;Casullo 2009). This article belongs to that general trend, but is mindful of Jeffery andCandea’s warning:

[N]ot only does victimhood attempt to suspend or trump politics, the reverse isalso the case. The analytical (and political) assumption that politics is the startingpoint, that it is what really lies beneath, is no more innocent . . . than victimhood’sclaims to ontological primacy. (2006: 290)

With this in mind, this paper explores the complex legacy of heroic memory inNicaragua, and the ways it feeds and has fed anti-authoritarian politics, without seekingto obscure its erasures, dangers and contradictions. The remainder of the articleconsists of four sections. The first looks at the plaque in the Colonia Leonel Rugama, andthe formation of heroic memory during the first Sandinista government (1979–1990).A second section deals briefly with the memory politics of the neoliberal years between1990 and 2006. The last two sections consider the years since the Sandinistas returnedto power in 2007, and deal respectively with state-based and counter-memorialrepresentations of Rugama. We begin by returning to the Colonia Leonel Rugama.

Leonel Rugama in a revolutionary age, 1979–1990

The Colonia Leonel Rugama lies in Managua’s eastern suburbs, the site of a number ofSandinista safe houses in the late 1960s, shacks where Leonel Rugama was sheltered in

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his final years (Cabestrero 1989). The site of Rugama’s assassination, at the entrance tothe Cementerio Oriental, is just a few blocks away. The Colonia itself was built to housemembers of Somoza’s Guardia Nacional, many of whom worked in the adjacent prisoncomplex, ‘La Aviacion’.2

Countless opponents of the regime were tortured and killed in the prison, whichwas also one of the Guardia’s last strongholds during the final weeks of armed strugglebetween Sandinista guerrillas and the Somoza dictatorship (Luna n.d.). With thetriumph of the revolution in July 1979, this bastion of the Somoza regime fell intoSandinista hands. La Aviacion remained a prison, a function it fulfils to this day, but theColonia became the property of the newly created Sandinista army. Its modest houseswere allocated to junior officers of the new army and their families, young men andwomen who had fought the dictatorship in the mountains and the cities. Until 1979,the neighbourhood was simply known as a Colonia Militar. The new residents chose torename it the Colonia Leonel Rugama and erected the original Rugama memorial thatsame year, in 1979.3 The Rugama plaque, standing at the centre of former Guardiapower, was a testament to the iconoclastic change that the revolution had brought.

‘¡Que se rinda tu madre!’. The inscription of these words creates the sense of iconoclasmwhich emanates from the plaque. The effect is produced by the dissonance between thecrudity of the phrase and the formality of the memorial on which it sits. The language ofthe street has been made powerful, official. The whole thing smacks of millenarianrole reversal. James Young (1989) has theorised that it is the finish, the impossibility ofdialogue, that stops us from seeing memorials, but the extreme visibility of the Rugamaplaque suggests another possibility. Memorials may not reflect a single collective view ofthe past, but they do have to exist within a society’s limits of acceptability. Perhaps it is thisvery conformity that makes them so difficult to see. In this context, the unusual shock theColonia plaque provokes is the result of the unusual moment in which the original plaquewas produced: the brief period of fragile consensus that Nicaragua experienced in the early1980s around the prospect for revolutionary change. The plaque, therefore, is a product ofwhat Greg Grandin (2010) calls ‘revolutionary time’. It symbolises a moment of societalagreement around a radicalism that is iconoclastic enough to be genuinely shocking. Theconfidence that Rugama showed in the face of the National Guard, seemingly somisplaced, had been vindicated entirely.

Rugama is one of Nicaragua’s most famous poets. His collected works reveala constant preoccupation with the possibility of death, and an insistent curiosity aboutthe right way to live, and to be remembered. Rugama was obsessed with legacies, hisown and other peoples, and it is likely that his choice of final words was conscious anddeliberate. Greg Dawes (1993) argues that Rugama’s last words serve to accentuatea macho violence within revolutionary heroism, and it is clear that they are complicitwith certain gendered constructions: their impact derives from the way they play uponthe veneration of mothers that is prevalent in Nicaraguan culture. But Rugama was nota macho revolutionary, and “¡que se rinda..!” is not the result of any Ramboesque intent.The power of the words, and, by extension, the Colonia plaque derives from a commonunderstanding of who Rugama was. In particular, it draws on the interplay betweentwo facets of Rugama’s imagined personality: first, his status as a revolutionary saint,4

and, second, his identification as a working-class boy from the barrio.Leonel Rugama’s aspiration to saintliness is epitomised by his poem To live like the

saints. Here, Rugama invokes the example of Che Guevara, who successfully combined

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asceticism with macho swagger. Rugama was different though, and fellow Sandinistasemphasized his shyness, and innocence with girls (Cardenal 1983; Cabezas 1985). Thisemphasis provides a sharp contrast between Rugama’s saintly innocence and the quasi-blasphemous tone of his final words, making them seem out of character, an extremereaction to the excessive cruelty of the National Guard. More central to the power ofthe plaque though, is the way that “¡que se rinda..!” uses Rugama’s image as workingclass boy made good. “¡que se rinda..!” after all, is not so much macho as boyish, analmost childlike playing with taboo. It is the kind of riposte that every kid ever hassledby the Guardia would wish they had had the guts to have given. Rugama “came frombelow” (Ramırez 1999: 48), but was educated and eloquent, with a choice of registersat his disposal. Instead of a wordy and noble soliloquy, Rugama chooses to speak fromthe street. In doing so, he becomes complicit with the sexism of working class culture,but this fact should not prevent us from recognising what else is going on here. Withhis choice of words, Rugama rejects more than the repressive structures of theSomocista state, he rejects the system of cultural inequality that underpinned it.

The Colonia plaque forms part of the first wave of memory, in the first years of therevolutionary government, which sought to commemorate the more than 50,000 liveswhich were lost in the struggle to overthrow the Somoza dictatorship (Charlip 2011).Hundreds of monuments and murals were erected in barrios across the country, andgalleries of heroes and martyrs were constructed in every town, featuring photographsand mementoes of those who died. This wave of commemoration paid tribute to thedead, but it also served as a way of asserting the power of the Frente Sandinista deLiberacion Nacional (FSLN). Much of this memorial work emphasized the ‘famous’Sandinistas: the select group of vanguardistas active in the FSLN in the years before1977, when the total number of militants never exceeded a few hundred (Arias 1980).Leonel Rugama, a pivotal figure in the early years of the Frente, was one of theseprivileged few. His commemoration gives an insight into the power and vision of therevolutionary movement. But it also points to sites of forgetting within revolutionarymemory. While Rugama is remembered, Mauricio Hernandez and Roger Nunez, thetwo young Sandinistas who died with him, have been almost completely forgotten(Ramırez 1999). The difference in attitude is perhaps indicative of Sandinista memory’semphasis on redemption and victory over suffering and pain. In the days after thekillings, photos of the three corpses were published in the state newspaper Novedades.Numerous Sandinistas noted that Rugama appeared untouched and serene, while thefaces of Nunez and Hernandez were disfigured by torture and distended with pain(Cabestrero 1989).

That reluctance to engage with the pain of the past was only exacerbated by theintensification of the Contra War towards the end of 1981. The introduction of themilitary draft in 1983 necessitated a renewed, and simplified, emphasis on heroism asa means of mobilizing for war (Bayard de Volo 2011). For all its erasures, and itsproblematic approach to gender, Sandinista commemoration in the early years of therevolution suggested the possibility of something truly transformational. With thereturn of war, the focus became victory, rather than revolution, and much of thisaspect was lost. The price of the new rigidity is particularly clear with regards toNicaragua’s disappeared. An estimated 5000–10,000 combatants were kidnapped bythe Contra, but their fate has never been adequately established. Anecdotal evidencesuggested that some of those kidnapped chose to fight with the Contra rather than be

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killed, and for this reason the disappeared were not celebrated as heroes by theSandinista authorities (Tully 1995; Fernandez 1993).

Nicaraguan memory in the neoliberal years, 1990–2006

At least 30,000 more Nicaraguans died during the years of US-funded civil conflict.The immense burden of war and economic hardship helped to erode the Sandinistasupport base, resulting in electoral defeat in 1990. The new government, a neoliberalcoalition led by Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, struggled to hold onto power in thewake of widespread civil unrest and armed opposition on the left and the right. TheChamorro government paid scant attention to the politics of memory, and its limitedattempts at creating a new national imaginary were contradictory and half-hearted. Attimes, it seemed that the administration wanted to create a new form of heroicmemory. Schools across the country were renamed for ‘civilian’ heroes of the past(Vannini 2011), and the Managua Peace Park was dedicated to the international‘heroes’ (George Bush Sr. among them) who allegedly brought peace to Nicaragua. In asimilar vein, a small monument on the Loma de Tiscapa was erected to commemoratethe failed uprising of April 1954. This effort sought to reemphasise non-Sandinistaelements in the history of resistance to the Somozas.

In general though, the new attitude towards memory was one of negation ratherthan creation. The plaque in the Colonia Leonel Rugama was torn down, as part of a widercampaign of destruction by Arnoldo Aleman, mayor of Managua from 1990 to 1995,and then president from 1997 to 2002. As a result of Aleman’s campaign, hundreds ofmonuments and memorials were destroyed, including countless irreplaceable examplesof revolutionary art. Government supporters also attempted to blow up the tomb ofFSLN founder Carlos Fonseca (Kunzle 1995; Tully 1995). The major public works ofthe neoliberal era were also works of negation. The new Managua Cathedral, built in1993, was meant of a symbol of peace and reconciliation, an assertion of the power ofChristianity to heal the fractures of war and provide the basis for a newly unifiedNicaragua. This was the explicit logic with which the Cathedral was constructed, butthe surrealist form of the building makes no reference to this history. Rather, in itsostentatiously futuristic style, it promises material progress as a means to heal thewounds of the war. This is a classic example what Fernando Coronil (1997: 391) called“truncated modernity”: the use of public works to enact and fetishize a level of materialprogress which has not actually been achieved. This approach intensified with Aleman’saccession to the presidency. His 1999 ‘musical fountain’ (subsequently removed by theOrtega administration) was a particularly good example of ‘truncated modernity’.With its flashy music and light shows, it also displayed a kitschiness which foreshadowsthe cultural production of the post-2007 FSLN administration.

Civil society hardly challenged this reluctance to engage with the past. A 2002feasibility study by the International Centre for Transitional Justice found that bothpoliticians and civil society lacked a ‘bona fide commitment’ to a transitional justiceprocess.5 For many sections of civil society, this lack of interest can be attributed to thecontinuing strength of Sandinismo. Elsewhere in Latin America a sense of duty to thememory of the dead has translated into a struggle for remembrance and justice. ForSandinista Nicaraguans that same sense of duty implies instead a continuing

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commitment to Sandinista ideals. Remembrance and politics are fused, irrevocably, asa result of the immense suffering of the revolution and the civil war years, and thepower of the cultural and discursive output which accompanied the wars. This is trueeven for those dissident Sandinistas who now oppose the FSLN. Any move to reimaginethe heroes and martyrs as victims, or to privilege the memory of innocent victimsrather than heroes, is difficult to imagine in the Nicaraguan context. This survival ofhero-based, specifically Sandinista forms of memory, combined with the negation ofthe neoliberal years, means that there is no society-wide discursive framework forthinking about the civil war and the insurrection. It is in this context that the memorywork of the current Sandinista government must be seen.

Leonel Rugama and the Orteguistas. State memory work since2007

Daniel Ortega’s return to power has brought a renewed emphasis on memory andcommemoration. Here, the government’s efforts are referred to as Orteguista in order todistinguish them from other strands in Sandinista memory. Orteguista memory workforms part of a wider discursive strategy which appears to have three aims: it seeks toretain the support of the traditional Sandinista base, whilst also seeking to win over ex-Contra combatants and supporters and promoting revolutionary memory amongst youngpeople who did not experience the revolution first hand. The ramifications of thesemultiple aims are apparent in the government’s recent memorial to Leonel Rugama.

On 15th January 2010, the 40th anniversary of Leonel Rugama’s murder, a newmural was unveiled at the site of his death (figure 2). The Rugama mural was painted bythe ‘Leonel Rugama Cultural Movement’ (MCLR), a Sandinista youth group whoreceived nearly 4 million cordobas (about $190,000) from the government in 2010.6

Its style and message echoes MCLR murals across Managua, which tend to emphasisebanal sentiment and continuity with the original revolutionary project. The Rugamamural, in three panels, amply reflects this approach. On the left, the flags of Nicaraguaand the FSLN are shown. The central image of the mural is a little girl with a

FIGURE 2 The 2010 Leonel Rugama mural. Author’s photo.

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paintbrush, putting the finishing touches to a portrait of Rugama. To the right,Rugama’s poem ‘epitaph’, which ends with the line “very close to death/ but not to theend” handily conveys both Rugama’s religiosity and the message that the “luchacontinua”. The image further hammers home the claim for continuity and completion.

Rugama’s legacy has proved pivotal to the present administration in three ways.Firstly, in order to gain a broader appeal, the FSLN has sought to reinvent itself asa Christian socialist movement. Leonel Rugama is useful here, because he was one ofthe few early Sandinistas to retain his Catholic faith. Secondly, Rugama’s example oftotal dedication to the revolutionary cause is meant as a positive model for youngpeople. Finally, the process of commemoration is meant to solidify the government’sclaim of continuity with the original revolutionary project. In fact, though, its style andcontent actually suggest a significant departure. The image is insufferably cutesy, andowes more to Hallmark than Diego Rivera. The execution is poor, and the overalleffect bland and anodyne. The absence of “¡que se rinda tu madre!” is also striking, giventhat the mural marks the place where Rugama’s most famous words were spoken. Theshift is not from heroism to trauma or victimhood: Rugama is still invoked as a hero, asa progenitor of the current political status quo rather than a passive victim ofSomocismo. Still, the piece represents a very different kind of heroism from that of theColonia plaque. The absence of ‘que se rinda . . . ’ and the mural’s overall kitschinesseschew the revolutionary politics of the earlier work in favour of a universalising, non-threatening cuteness.

This kitsch is representative of the current administration’s broader culturaloutput. Pink, instead of red and black, is the new party colour, and hundreds of

FIGURE 3 Close-up of the 2010 mural’s text. Author’s photo.

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enormous pink billboards featuring Ortega’s face have been erected all over thecountry. ‘Eternal Christmas trees’, enormous metal structures covered in lights, werescattered around Managua, at the end of 2008, and have been in year-round operationsince then. The music of the revolution has been replaced with cheesy rewrites of‘Stand by Me’ and ‘Give Peace a Chance’. Overall, this use of kitsch as a universalisingstrategy corresponds to Milan Kundera’s classic definition:

Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice tosee children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved,together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tearthat makes kitsch kitsch. (Kundera 1987: 251)

For Kundera, this appeal to universality necessitates “the absolute denial of shit”(1987: 248). Anything uncomfortable, anything which interferes with the banal unityof the piece, is simply erased from the picture. This phenomenon can clearly beobserved in the 2010 Rugama mural, which carries no reference to the violentcircumstances of Rugama’s death. Rather it seeks to evoke smug satisfaction that thegoals of the original revolutionary project are now, allegedly, being achieved.

This kitschy gesturing towards peace and love is a product of political expedience:Ortega’s defiant and aggressive stance in the 1990 election campaign was considered bymany to be a factor in the FSLN’s defeat (Ramırez 1999), and prompted the shift toa very different discourse. Still, the kitsch co-exists with another Orteguista approach tomemory, one which emphasises violent struggle. At the Museo de la Victoria Sandinista,

FIGURE 4 An Ortega campaign mural in Leon, May 2005. Photo by [Eoghan Clarkson].

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constructed in 2009, Ortega’s status as a revolutionary fighter is exulted, often at theexpense of historical truth. In the museum’s displays, photographic evidence ismanipulated, in order to make it appear that Daniel Ortega was present for all the keybattles of the insurrectionary war (1978–1979).7 The government has also madeincreasing use of Sandinista youth gangs to intimidate opponents with threatened oractual violence.8 This is the dark side of Nicaragua’s heroic memory, and it is not justa problem of Orteguismo. Youth groups aligned to all the main political parties, inspiredby the urban warfare of the 1970s, have made frequent use of homemade mortar-launchers, a weapon frequently used by early Sandinistas.

Marita Sturken (2007) has theorised that, in the United States, memory kitschprovides a comforting, infantilising sense of American innocence, which works toobscure the continuing violence of the American state. Nicaraguan state kitsch playsa similar role: it obscures the violence of the past, and the on-going violence whichunderpins FSLN control in the present. For Sturken, kitsch conveys the expectationthat its sentiment is shared, but also that it is sufficient. In this way, kitsch memoryblocks a genuine engagement with, or interrogation of, the history which spawned thekitsch memory object. Here I have suggested, with Forster, that heroic memory isinnately political, and the Leonel Rugama mural does convey a political message. Still,by combining heroic memory traditions with the tools of political kitsch, the Rugamamural presents an extremely circumscribed and hierarchical version of revolutionarypolitics, one that prevents any genuine engagement with its subject.

Any critique of kitsch is open to the charge of elitism, but the charge depends on anacceptance of a binary which aligns kitsch with the popular and high art with elitism.Bourdieu argues for this kind of opposition: he suggests that a ‘taste of necessity’prevails amongst those with limited means, a species of cultural production where formcorresponds to content, and there is an expectation that beautiful pictures show

FIGURE 5 The samemural, defaced by dissident Sandinistas, December 2008. Photo by

[Eoghan Clarkson].

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beautiful things.9 The plaque in the Colonia Leonel Rugama refutes this assumptionabsolutely. Its power derives precisely from the clash between form and content, thecontrast of its staid monumental shape and the colloquial rebellion of the inscription.The same is true of Rugama’s poetry, authentically working class and the opposite ofkitsch, with its irony and understatement and its refusal to sentimentalise. In thiscontext a critique of kitsch is not an attack on the popular. Nonetheless, it is necessaryto move beyond purely aesthetic considerations. Young (2008) suggests that theevaluation of memory sites should not be based on aesthetics alone, but should considera piece’s context, its reception, and the way it functions within its social field. ForYoung, this means that Rappaport’s Warsaw statue is successful, even though its heroicfigurative style might mark it out as kitsch in a European context, because it speaks toa diverse range of groups within a broader public. In the next section I consider thereception of Orteguista memory work, by looking at other non-Orteguistarepresentations of Leonel Rugama.

Rugama and contemporary vernacular memory

In 2010, a statue of Rugama was erected at the campus of the Universidad NacionalAutonoma de Nicaragua in Rugama’s hometown of Estelı. The work, a cooperativeeffort by sculptor Fredy Moreno and archaeologist Bayardo Gamez, was developed inconsultation with the university and Leonel Rugama’s family. The statue is a bronze,figurative piece, of the kind that critics elsewhere might associate with kitsch. In theNicaragua, where 19th century nationalism did not leave the same quota ofthoroughbred-riding patricians, it has a very real power. Rugama is captured with hishand outstretched, giving a speech or sharing a poem with his audience. In sharpcontrast to the MCLR mural in Managua, here the exact content of Rugama’s messagehas deliberately been left open to interpretation, provoking engagement and interest inRugama’s work, rather than a didactic assertion of its content.10 The piece seeks toconvey a non-violent version of Rugama’s legacy, and Rugama is presented as a poet,rather than a guerrillero. Nonetheless, the radicalism of Rugama’s legacy is not lost:a small plaque at the foot of the statue features the words ‘que se rinda tu madre’. TheRugama statue is an example of a wider academic trend in Nicaragua, where scholarshave sought to rethink Sandinista memory in a critical and gender-inclusive way,retaining the heroic-inspirational frame, but de-emphasizing the martial and militaristicaspects of the past. The ‘Tren Cultural’, a travelling exhibition about the work ofNicaragua’s literacy brigades, is a good example of this (Lopez Vigil 2006), as isFernanda Soto’s Ventanas en la Memoria (2011), which explores the dynamics ofrevolutionary memory on Nicaragua’s agricultural frontier. Soto seeks to contribute toa renovation of Sandinismo, via a nuanced and critical approach to the past.

This difficult renegotiation of the relationship between past and present, in wayswhich diverge from the Orteguista account, is also evident among grassroots Sandinistas.The new plaque in the Colonia Leonel Rugama, erected by the neighbourhoodcommittee, does not follow Orteguista aesthetics. In form it resembles the originalmonuments of the 1980s: its base is painted red and black, not pink, and its centralmessage is the original, iconoclastic ‘!que se rinda tu madre¡’. Superficially, interviews inthe Colonia Leonel Rugama suggest that the new Orteguista memory culture has been

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received positively: “the discourse is different now . . . Daniel is different . . . they[Daniel and his wife] ask for peace.”11 “Now . . . we fight with ideas”.12

Still, this tacit acceptance belies the contrast between government discourse andlocal understandings of the past. It is also at odds with my first encounter in the Colonia,with two very friendly young men in pink and white FSLN t-shirts, busy messingaround with a mortar-launcher, taking pictures of each other in a succession ofmilitaristic poses.13

This younger generation has been raised with revolutionary memory. Local residentRafael Blandon explains that they “are Sandinistas because we have told them the history. . . Sandino, Carlos Fonseca, German Pomares, Camilo Ortega, Francisco Rivera . . .it’s because of that that they [young people] are Sandinistas . . . if we didn’t tell them thehistory they wouldn’t be involved.”14 Blandons account retains an emphasis on theguerrillero past: he includes Francisco Rivera and German Pomares, key commanders ofthe insurrection, in his litany of key heroes, though neither is emphasized in the newOrteguista discourse. His romantic account of these heroes is inspired by the culturalproduction of the 1980s, what Jose Luis Rocha (2009) calls the ‘real inventedrevolution’. In contrast, Blandon’s own memories of the insurrection are cheerfullyunromantic. He remembers, for example, that when he first joined the Sandinistaguerrillas in the mountains, they threatened to kill his family if he revealed their location.Blandon’s commitment to Ortega, and to peace, is very real and in no way superficial,but his commitment is rooted in the transformational promise that the Colonia plaqueembodies, rather than the efforts of the new Orteguista discourse. Blandon believes thatthe transformation can be achieved this time round, because the country is in peace.

Dissident Sandinistas often portray Ortega’s loyal supporters as mere clients,motivated by the prospect of material gain. Testimony from the Colonia Leonel Rugamaconfirms Soto’s (2011) assertion that this continued loyalty has more to do with thecontinuing pull, for Sandinistas of all ages, of the complex heritage of revolutionarymemory. For the older generation, Ortega’s discourse of peace is welcomed, but it isnot faithfully reproduced. Rather, their recollections reveal a continued anger towardsthe right and a commitment to the full pantheon of revolutionary heroes which differsfrom the Orteguista account. The younger generation has been exposed to their elders’unromantic accounts of their own war-time suffering, as well as tales which reproducethe romanticised heroic discourse of the 1980s. The persistence of ‘insurrection-style’aggression suggests that some young Sandinistas have internalised this heritageselectively, preferring to dwell on a romanticised view of revolutionary violence.15

This romanticisation of violence is also apparent in one of the most strikingappropriations of Rugama’s legacy. In early 2011 members of Rejudin, a youth groupopposed to Ortega’s unconstitutional bid for re-election, began demonstrating whilstwearing t-shirts with the slogan “que te reelija tu madre” (let your mother re-elect you).The witty irreverence of their words was admired,16 but their use of mortar launchersin attacks on property was condemned as anachronistic and inappropriate.17 Theprotest hit a nerve within the Ortega administration, which subsequently launcheda series of media attacks on Rejudin. “Que te reelija . . . ” was particularly provocative fortwo reasons. First, the use of reelija implied equivalence between Orteguismo andSomocismo, because opposition to the Somoza dynasty centred on repeated campaignsagainst re-election. Second, by paraphrasing Leonel Rugama, the Rejudin memberspositioned themselves as the rightful heirs to the legacy of Sandinismo.

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The struggle which ensued is demonstrative of the importance attached toownership of revolutionary memory. Equally though, the form of the Orteguistas’vehement response indicates the distance the FSLN has travelled from LeonelRugama’s original intent. Rejecting the protesters’ insinuation that the Ortegaadministration is now comparable to the Somoza dictatorship, Carlos Escorcia, ofSandinista radio station La Primerisima, responded rather weakly that the twogovernments had “poco o nada que ver” (little or nothing in common). Escorcia suggestedthat, “que se rinda . . . ” was “understandable” (sic) in Rugama’s case, even though thephrase was drawn from “the vernacular of criminal culture” because of the difficultcircumstances Rugama faced at the moment he uttered the phrase. Generally, Escorciaclaimed, such words were only used by people with a “low ethical-moral level.”18

Escorcia’s formulation does not attempt to reclaim Rugama’s iconoclastic legacy,but rather seeks to obscure it entirely. This operation brings to mind Walter Benjamin’sobservation, which began this essay, about the recurrent need to rescue tradition fromconformism. Despite this risk, the examples outlined here demonstrate the continuingindependence and vitality of vernacular memory. The present government’s renewedemphasis on the past coincides with a revival in academic and activist interest in memoryin Nicaragua. This revival is in its infancy, and its possibilities and paths are as yetunknown. With time, there may be more of a mingling of heroic and traumatic tropes inNicaragua. At present though, both state-based and vernacular versions of the Sandinistapast remain anchored within the framework of heroic memory.

This piece is not meant as a manifesto for the heroic frame. Like any other memoryculture, Sandinista memory is flawed and contradictory, complicit in complex powerrelations which facilitate erasures and inequalities. Still, it should be clear that for manyNicaraguans, its revolutionary possibilities have not been diminished. Sandinista heroicmemory is not a throwback, or a peripheral case of arrested development: it continuesto engage and inspire a significant section of the Nicaraguan population. It would benaive to overstate the radical potential of this legacy, given the current government’sextensive efforts to assimilate it, and the wider difficulties that Nicaragua faces.Nonetheless, in the face of the enormous power ascribed to global discourses of traumaand victimhood, the survival of this distinctive form of memory politics is itself a formof resistance, one that deserves to be more widely recognised.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Jose Luis Rocha, Janie Boyd and Ariel Rugama, for their guidance inNicaragua, and to Fredy Moreno and the residents of the Colonia Leonel Rugama forsharing their thoughts and memories. Thanks to also Mervyn Bain, Cara Levey, ClareMagill, Ian Ross, Alejandra Serpente and Celia Sosa for their thoughts on earlier drafts.I owe a particular debt to Eoghan Clarkson for taking the photo which inspired thepiece, and to Paul Francis, for offering ideas which helped me bring it all together.

Notes1 For other instances of heroic memory in Latin America, see Brunk and Fallaw 2006;

Hite 2003; Demelas-Bohy et al. 1999.

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2 Telephone interview with Miguel Ernesto Vijil Icaza, Minister of Housing 1979–1988, 23/02/2012; interviews with residents of Colonia Leonel Rugama, CarmenCenteno Ruız, Marıa Elena Acuna and Rafael Blandon (pseudonyms), Managua,27/02/2012.

3 ibid.4 For a much fuller consideration of Rugama’s role as a ‘saint’ see Barbosa (2006).5 International Centre for Transitional Justice. Annual Report 2002–2003. Available

online at http://ictj.org/sites/default/files/ICTJ_Annual_Report_2002-2003.pdf,p. 12. Cited by O’Shea (2008).

6 ‘Millones para Paseo y Plaza de las victorias sandinistas’. La Prensa. January 20, 2010.7 Matilde Cordoba. ‘Es un museo a lo Kim Il Sung’ dice Luis Carrion. El Nuevo Diario.

October 8, 2009.8 For further information on state complicity with gang violence see Rocha (2008) and

Amnesty International 2011. ‘Nicaragua must investigate fatal post-election violence’at http://www.amnesty.org/zh-hant/node/28033.

9 My approach to Bourdieu here owes a lot to the discussion in Binkley (2000).10 Telephone interview with Fredy Moreno, 2/3/2012.11 Interview with Marıa Elena Ruız, 27/02/2012.12 Interview with Rafael Blandon, 27/02/2012.13 It should be stated in their defence that the mortar-launcher was armed only with a

sock, and that mortar launchers are sometimes employed as noise-makers, withoutany offensive intent.

14 Interview with Rafael Blandon, 27/02/2012.15 Rogers (2006) notes that criminal gangs in the 1990s were similarly inspired by a

romanticised idea of the insurrection.16 Marıa Jose Zamora. ‘¡Que te reelija tu Madre!’ La Prensa. March 20, 2011 (http://

www.laprensa.com.ni/2011/03/21/opinion/55457), accessed December 2, 2011.17 Frank Cortes. Rejudin: ¿Optara por el camino facil? El Nuevo Diario. February 22,

2011. (http://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/blogs/articulo/810-rejudin-optara-cami-no-facil), accessed March 23, 2012.

18 Carlos Escorcia Polanco ‘Ignominioso ultraje a la madre del presidente DanielOrtega’. Radio La Primerısima. May 27, 2011 (http://www.radiolaprimerisima.com/noticias/99505), accessed August 31, 2011.

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Hilary Francis is a doctoral candidate at the University of Aberdeen. Her thesis explores

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human rights and democracy promotion in Central America and East Asia.

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