The Jaguar Smile: Nicaraguan Journey (Picador Books) [Paperback]

"The Jaguar Smile," Salman Rushdie's record of his 1986 visit to Nicaragua, is a fascinating work with great value as an intellectual and historical document. The book is divided up into chapters, each of which stands alone as a unified and satisfying essay. The book as a whole paints an ironic portrait of Nicaraguan life during the Sandinista revolution.

Rushdie makes no claim to be objective; he is sympathetic to the Sandinista government and recalls being given cordial official greetings by some of the major Sandinista figures. But despite this affinity, Rushdie doesn't hesitate to cast a critical, and even satirical, eye on what he sees. In particular, he is wary of the Sandinista policy of press censorship: "[W]hat worries me is that censorship is very seductive. It's so much easier than the alternative."

Rushdie's keen powers of observation take in many of the institutions and personalities of Nicaragua, and he offers pungent insights on some of the racial, linguistic, political, and aesthetic issues facing the nation. "The Jaguar Smile" is particularly fascinating when Rushdie writes of his encounters with such eminent Nicaraguan authors as Gioconda Belli and Sergio Ramirez; reading Rushdie's accounts made me eager to seek out books by these writers.

Rushdie's prose--often amiable, occasionally cynical--is a pleasure to read. "The Jaguar Smile" is neither a comprehensive history of Nicaragua nor an unambiguous political manifesto, and should not be viewed as such. But as a skilled writer's record of his impressions of a nation at a crossroads in its history, this book is an impressive achievement.

In 1986, while working on his famously infamous novel, "The Satanic Verses", Rushdie took three weeks off to visit Nicaragua. The country had a dramatic effect on him. Ineluctably inspired, he originally planned to pen a few articles on the subject and leave it at that. But the words inexorably grew into this small book, which ultimately delayed "The Satanic Verses" by six months. So what occurred in that short time span to cause Rushdie to shelf his hulking novel in favor of a diminutive political travelogue?

In the preface Rushdie confessed a long standing interest in the subject of Nicaragua. Especially following the Reagan Administration's disparagement of the alleged new Central American "red threat" (and subsequent funding of the counter-Sandinista force, the "contras" - which later fed into the Iran-Contra scandal). Apparently he felt an affinity with a small country against a giant (a la Gandhi vs. Britain) and "how it felt to be there, on the bottom, looking up at the descending heel." So he didn't visit carte blanche or on a whim. He wanted to know the workings of the force that had toppled Nicaragua's forty year dictatorial regime (the Somozas). And how this new Sandinista government (at the time in power for seven years) responded to the contra threat and to the needs of its populace. In Nicaragua, Rushdie unearthed some of the social and literary themes that pervade his work. This may explain his enthusiasm towards the subject.

The book outlines Rushdie's trip more or less chronologically. Starting in Managua Rushdie gives a brief history of the city and of the resistance to the previous dictatorship. This culminates in a biography of one of the most famous Nicaraguarans: Augusto César Sandino (from whom the Sandinistas took their name). Rushdie observed the abstract pictograph of Sandino's hat everywhere. This ubiquitous symbol nearly took on the role of the man himself. The hat equals the man; the symbol becomes flesh. As a guest of the Sandinisita Association of Cultural Workers, Rushdie had access to the highest levels of government. He traveled and dined with the new Sandinista élite. Most of who, surprisingly, had literary backgrounds. Accompanying the Vice President (and novelist) Sergio Ramírez, Rushdie witnessed a land re-allocation (from the state to the peasantry) in Camoapa. With the President (and poet), Daniel Ortega, he watched the first phone call from Nicaragua to Moscow and Havana (connections that in no way endeared the country to the Reagan Administration). But some signs of disappointment appeared during his conversation with Father Ernesto Cardenal the Minister of Culture (and poet). Cardenal talked about censuring the press during wartime as a "cosmetic" issue. This depressed Rushdie. He then traveled to Estelí and met the nine comandantes de revolución (the founders of the new government). But Rushdie also talked with campesinos (peasants) in the Enrique Acuña co-operative. Many found themselves displaced by the country's issues. Despite their poverty, they fed Rushdie fertilized hen's eggs (the "eggs of love"). He also talked with extremely young soliders in the Germán Pomares field hospital. Many of them remained ready for battle regardless of their injuries. And on the somewhat neglected west side of Nicaragua he found lots of rain, more poverty, and some disillusionment with the revolution. Lastly, Rushdie debated the widow of the assassinated editor of "La Prensa" (censored by the Sandisitas), Doña Violeta. He found her claims of rampant communism in her country insincere. Rushdie later concluded that "if Nicaragua was a Soviet-style state, then I'm a monkey's uncle."

Rushdie often asked people, whether high or low on the social hierarchy, very pointed questions - he and Doña Violeta really get into it. Sometimes he even called them when they dodge a question. In the end Rushdie found some things to like and some things to dislike about the Sandinista government. For example, he outright states: "It disturbed me that a government of writers turned into a government of censors." But he remained impressed by the government's land distribution program.

Like all of Rushie's work this one garnered a broad spectrum of responses (he can't seem to avoid politics, for better or worse). The supporters of the Reagan Administration obvioulsy didn't take kindly to it (which may reveal why George H.W. Bush provided no support to Rushdie during the "Satanic Verses" affair), and many praised the alternate view of Nicaragua that Rushdie portrayed. But some accused Rushdie of exemplifying petty bourgesois values (i.e., a rich westerner goes "slumming" in Central America and then returns to his privileged lifestyle). And some simply couldn't understand how Rushdie could possibly identify with the Nicaraguans. In the 1997 preface, Rushdie still defended the views espoused in the book, with some exceptions. For instance, he thought he hadn't expressed enough disappointment at the Sandinista's treatment of the indigenous Miskito population. But all in all he seems to stand by what he wrote.

Of course the book has dated somewhat since its 1987 publication. The spectre of eastern bloc communism no longer looms, and the Sandinistas were bloodlessly voted out of power in 1990 (internal party rifts and corruption contributed to their downfall). Not only that, the entire country no longer represents a political hotbed for the United States. Nonetheless, Rushdie paints some interesting pictures of this small country and its people at a moment in time. "The Jaguar Smile" remains worthwhile reading both as a study of Rushdie's themes and for the portraits of the Nicaraguan people that Rushdie recorded. He didn't find utopia, but he found enough to justify this little book.

In 1986, the seventh year of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, and three years before he got a fatwa from Ayatollah Khomeini, Salman Rushdie visited Nicaragua, travelling to Managua, Camaopa, celebrating the seventh anniversary of the revolution, and the Blue Fields area near the Atlantic Coast. I originally bought this book when I was interested in finding any of Salman Rushdie's books. I found it mildly interesting. This past winter, I took an upper division History of Central America at Fort Lewis College and after learning more about the Somozas and the Nicaraguan Revolution, I dug up Rushdie's book and one, it made more sense, two, I was more intrigued than merely interested.

Rushdie introduces the background to the Nicaraguan revolution that forced Anastasio Somoza Debayle's resignation in 1979 and even goes into the background of Augusto Sandino, the nationalist rebel leader executed by Anastasio Somoza Garcia's Guardia Nacional, and the Somoza dynasty that lasted forty years.

Rushdie got to meet some of the big nine Sandinista leaders, including President Daniel Ortega, vice president Sergio Ramirez, and agriculture minister Jaime Wheelock. However, they justify press censorship because they are at war with the Contras and America, and any press sympathetic to the US will undermine the regime. Seems reasonable, as the U.S. funding of Contras and the mining of Managua's harbours were acts of war by the U.S.

Not only are the Contras portrayed as terrorists, but Reagan isn't seen in a favourable light, understandably. Rushdie writes "Scarecrow Ronald Reagans hung--by the neck--from roadside trees." And in Ortega's speech to the people of Esteli, "Quien es culpabile?" the people roar back: "Reagan!" Foreign Minister Miguel d'Escoto even recalls a conversation with a Reagan administration official who tells him "Just do as we (the U.S.) say," serving as a reminder of U.S. hegemony in Central America and its refusal to abide by the Hague judgment, which ruled that the U.S. contra aid and force was a violation of international law.

Rushdie also visits Bluefields, where there are Miskito, Sumo, and Rama indigenes alienated by first the Somozas and the Sandinistas. One tragedy is that there are only 23 Ramas left and any attempt to preserve their language is hampered by the fact that many of them have few teeth, putting the mockers on proper enunciation. One of the people he meets is Mary Ellsberg, daughter of Daniel Ellsberg of the Pentagon Papers, who is totally sympathetic to the plight of the indigenes there.

Rushdie's interview with Violeta Chamorro, widow of La Prensa editor Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, and later to be elected president, reveals Ms. Chamorro as someone who tries to manipulate a few facts and is biased against Ortega--she claims that Ortega was not elected democratically and yet according to foreign observers and an 80% voter turnout, he was. Rushdie agrees that yes, it was wrong for the Sandinistas to shut down La Prensa, but he questions Chamorro's candour.

As in his books, Rushdie writes with a wry, sometimes humorous style prevalent in his best novels. e.g. "my breakfast of rice and beans--'gayo pinto,' it was called 'painted rooster'--began to crow noisily in my stomach." Or when joining the foreign volunteer workers in singing "we shall overcome," he says "Like so many people who absolutely can't sing, I get sentimental about old tunes; the lump in the throat provides an excuse for the painful fractured noises emerging from the mouth." But his lyrical writing found in Satanic Verses and Midnight's Children also shines through.

This book is definitely critical of the Reagan administration's policies, but it paints an even-handed view of the Sandinistas, listing their ideals while at the same time detailing repressive measures that would not have been implemented had U.S. anti-communist paranoia not led to funding the Contras.