A line of drummers, dressed in the traditional blue and white, beat past with a background mass of colorful dresses pirouetting on stage. Disembodied voices, emboldened by the poignant atmosphere, chant \u201cNicaragua Libre!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Danzas por Nicaragua, a subset of the Nicaraguan cultural San Francisco-based nonprofit Chavalos de Aqu\u00ed y All\u00e1, organized the performance of \u201cEl G\u00fceg\u00fcense o Macho Rat\u00f3n\u201d at the Mission\u2019s Brava Theater on Oct. 12, 2019. The famed satirical drama and dance was conceived in the 17th century colonial town of Diriamba, Nicaragua, and the theme of the evening\u2019s show was, most fittingly, \u201craza y resistencia.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Concerted efforts by Nicaraguans to come together through cultural events and protest have grown in the face of a worsening political crisis in Nicaragua that has resulted in 70,000 refugees to neighboring Costa Rica and 325 deaths. The political crisis has its echoes not only in the country\u2019s late 1970\u2019s revolutionary period but also within the nation\u2019s rich history of reactionary, often anti-authoritarian art. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Twitter hashtag \u201cSOSNicaragua\u201d first emerged around April 19, 2018, according to UN DISPATCH in-depth analysis, following controversial government reforms to social security. The \u201creforms,\u201d which would\u2019ve increased the amount paid by the employed and reduced the amount received by pensioners, were the proverbial last straw on a decade\u2019s worth of abuses. Nicaraguan President Daniel Oretga enacted them in an attempt to address the deficit of the Instituto Nicarag\u00fcense de Seguridad Social (INSS), the country\u2019s social security administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Daisy Zamora\u2014a professor at SF State\u2019s College of Ethnic Studies, who is also a poet and served as the Vice Minister of the Nicaraguan Ministry of Culture for the Sandinista government after the Nicaraguan revolution\u2014described in detail the internal and external factors that gradually soured the 1979 revolution she had been a part of; that eventually lead to the accession of Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, to power in 2007. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the Sandinista victory of July 19, 1979, the Ministry of Culture, according to Zamora, worked to combat the long history of anti-culture and illiteracy that existed in Nicaragua during the regime of the Somozas\u2014their family dictatorship lasting from 1936 to 1979.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou know the beginning of the world? It was like Genesis. We were creating everything from scratch, from nothing,\u201d Zamora said. \u201cBecause it was the first time we ever had a ministry of culture in the history of Nicaragua.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Internal and external forces set in motion a series of governmental distortions that led to the modern-day oppressive Ortega regime. Zamora said the Ministry of Culture, along with other branches of the revolutionary government, changed over time by external war and fractions within the Frente Sandinista de Liberaci\u00f3n Nacional (FSLN). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cRosarillo Murillo, who is now the vice president of Nicaragua, she started, let\u2019s say, an internal war against the programs of the Ministry of Culture,\u201d Zamora said. \u201cIt was impossible to counteract what she was doing, because she was then, and since then, the partner of Daniel Ortega. And she was using her power to erode the programs in the Ministry of Culture.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This perversion of the new state was not without resistance, Zamora said. Those loyal to the revolution\u2019s ideals were eventually discarded and replaced by individuals more faithful to Ortega and Murillo, who have been the cause of several recent anti-government protests. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The end of November 2019 saw large scale demonstrations and protests from thousands of exiled Nicarguans in the streets of San Jose, Costa Rica, (as reported by Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa) and Nicaragua Actual, who describe themselves as a group of exiled Nicaraguan journalists. Notable among these vocalizations of dissent was the commencement of a hunger strike by the mothers of several political prisoners who are nearing a full year of exile in San Jose, Costa Rica, and the recent formation of a Costa Rican chapter of La Unidad Nacional Azul y Blanco (UNAB). UNAB is an organization aimed at the peaceful construction and promotion of democracy in Nicaragua, and the expedited removal of Ortega from power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think the Nicaraguan community has woken up here in the Bay Area,\u201d said Erik Leiva, Executive Director of Chavalos de Aqu\u00ed y All\u00e1. \u201cThe way we\u2019ve handled it is we resist through art, whether it be through dance or music.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Leiva, Chavalos de Aqu\u00ed y All\u00e1 fundraises, via events like \u201cEl G\u00fceg\u00fcense,\u201d for donations that are used for humanitarian efforts. These efforts usually, according to Leiva, coelce into necessity baskets referred to as \u201cCanastas Navide\u00f1as,\u201d which are filled with essential goods such as rice, beans and soap that are given to low-income families in Nicaragua. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Carmen Gonzalez, an organizer with \u201cSOSNicaragua San Francisco,\u201d said that the Mission\u2019s Nicaraguan community demonstrated during the subsequent weeks and months following the news of the violent protest suppressions. They can be spotted, swaddled in upside down flags, tabling near the 24th street BART entrance on \u201cSandino plaza\u201d\u2014as it came to be known in the late 70s by Nicaraguans in San Francisco who supported the Sandinista Revolution, according to John Ross\u2019 book \u201cMurdered by Capitalism: A Memoir of 150 Years of Life and Death on the American Left.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI lived in Nicaragua during that first era of the supposed Sandinista revolution,\u201d Gonzales said. \u201cSo what the Sandinista Government is doing in this second stage is that they\u2019ve been dismantling all of the powers of the state and the judicial system.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The response from the Nicaraguan community itself has been strong, according to Gonzalez, though this enthusiasm of support is not universal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mission-based artist, Calle 24 council member and Chavalos de Aqui y All\u00e1 board member, Gabriela Alem\u00e1n, was dismayed by the reaction of many of those not directly connected to Nicaragua, within the Mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Mission has been really disappointing. People are sympathetic, but I don\u2019t think Nicaragua is in the mainstream of anyone\u2019s frame of mind,\u201d Alem\u00e1n said. \u201cWhen things happen in Puerto Rico, the Mission stops. When things happen in Mexico, the Mission stops and the community at large stops. With Nicaragua the only reason there\u2019s still been like traction is because of the internet.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to a recent cultural analysis essay by Nicasio Urbina\u2014professor of Hispano American Literature and Director of Latino American Studies at the University of Cincinnati\u2014 called \u201cLa nueva m\u00fasica revolucionaria de la insurrecci\u00f3n de abril en Nicaragua,\u201d 2019 saw music take on a revolutionary or iconoclastic stance toward the Ortega government. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe April 19 movement has inspired a new wave of revolutionary songs,\u201d Urbina wrote. \u201cUsing the tools of the new Latin American song\u2014the Cuban trova, the Chilean protest music, and the Nicaraguan song\u2014reproposes the political values of a revolution that betrayed its principles.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The voices involved in this dissent are not ideologically homogeneous, according to Zamora. Some oppose the Ortega regime for reasons that stem from purely anti-Sandinista sentiments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey are people whose origins are counterrevolutionary, they fled the revolution perhaps because they were Somocistas,\u201d Zamora said. \u201cAnd then they are supporting the rebellion against Ortega and Murillo for that reason, nothing more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Regardless of any political differences Zamora feels, generally speaking, there is \u201ca great solidarity among Nicaraguans.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Diana Aburto Vega, co-choreographer and lead dancer \u201cEl G\u00fceg\u00fcense,\u201d commented further on the necessity of solidarity through community, for Nicaraguans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf there has been one thing that I have dealt with ever since I left my country,\u201d Aburto Vega said. \u201cIt has been homesickness \u2026 we bring a little bit of home to anyone in that audience.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEl G\u00fceg\u00fcense,\u201d which has its own revolutionary origins, has gained a new significance for many during these trying times. \u201cEl G\u00fceg\u00fcense\u201d has become, in many ways, a means to reconnect with a remote home and a place to voice shared pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAt the end of our last show,\u201d Aburto Vega said. \u201cEverybody just got up and started clapping and singing with us. And it brought not just tears in me but tears in a lot of people that were just there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although several theories estimate the exact date of creation and identity of the writer, it is generally accepted \u201cEl G\u00fceg\u00fcense\u201d debuted in Nahuatl and found its first home among street theaters under the noses of Spanish colonial authorities. The word \u201cG\u00fceg\u00fcense,\u201d the name attributed to the play\u2019s main character, also has its roots in the Nahuatl word \u201chuehue,\u201d meaning \u201cwise man\u201d or \u201cold man.\u201d The resplendent costumes, dresses, masks and large wooden \u201cGigantona\u201d shown and used throughout the performance are all seminal pieces of Nicaraguan cultural iconography.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared the play a Proclamation of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2005. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe production we put on represents the many parts of Nicaragua…I feel like [people], don\u2019t really know too much about the other side of Nicaragua,\u201d said Armando Ibarra, co-choreographer. \u201cThere\u2019s so much more that people can know, there\u2019s so much diversity in just that small country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Through partially subdued tears, Aburto Vega commented on the political crisis affecting Nicaragua. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt all goes to the heart,\u201d Aburto Vega said. \u201cTo the bottom of it, seeing our people die.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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