My Car in Managua

Once upon a time, as I remember, there was a country called Nicaragua. It was in the news every day. Revolutionaries had taken it over. This was perceived as a great threat to our nation, (the USA)---a well-known military pushover with a decrepit economy which could easily have been totally destroyed by this Central American Marxist powerhouse. We armed the opposition and a war ensued in which the poor killed the poor. Russians, Bulgarians, and even Libyans appeared in Central America. People came visiting from everywhere who dreamed that Latin American countries could develop without being dominated by Uncle Sam. Even Salman Rushdie wrote a book about it. Suddenly, an election was held---hey, I thought Nicaragua was totalitarian---and the revolutionaries lost. Nicaragua faded from the news immediately and nothing more has ever been heard of the place. That's the media biz.

MY CAR IN MANAGUA stands out like a lighthouse on a dark stormy night. An eminently reasonable man spent a lot of time there and wrote an academic study of the place. This is not it. Colburn captures the flavor of Nicaragua in those tumultuous years here, describing daily life and survival tactics in easily-flowing prose. No cant, no rhetoric, no animosity. In a brief book he covers a vast variety of subjects; from car purchase and maintenance to accounting and management techniques on "revolutionary" cattle ranches. You can find out what kind of toothpaste was available in Sandinista Nicaragua (Bulgarian) or how to tell a middle class home in Managua (it had cement floors). Everything is described with understanding and with a sense of humor. The book is illustrated with drawings by a famous Nicaraguan cartoonist of the time, Róger Sánchez Flores, though I did not find them exceptional. We plainly see the economic mess created by a revolution that was far more successful in breaking down old social barriers and empowering the common man. Colburn never harps on this, just notes various unvarnished facts. The affection that the author feels for this impoverished, exhausted country is obvious. For a commonsense view of 1980s Nicaragua that is enjoyable, well-written and insightful, you cannot do better than this book. And it makes you wonder, not for the first time perhaps, if the USA's style of foreign policy will ever change.

For those familiar with Colburn's Post-Revolutionary Nicaragua: State, Class and the Dilemmas of Agrarian Policy, this slim volume will come as a pleasnt surprise indeed. Void of academic pedantry, My Car in Managua delivers us from economic tables and shows us the life of everyday Nicaraguans. Colburn does this with splendid humor and tight, concise writing. Illustrated by noted Nicaraguan cartoonist Roger Sanchez Flores, the entire text charms from beginning to end. Without saying so directly, Colburn exposes the void that was U.S. foregin policy throughout the 1980s-a goal easily enough achieved, but seldom with such humble grace.