The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey

very interesting story. well told. made even more interesting that Ortega is back in power.

Rushdie deserves our respect for his prose and courage. I'm afraid, however, that he was caught up in the contemporary mystique of the Sandinistas -- the nice revolutionaries, such as Jaime Wheelock, with fatigues and Hermes scarf on the European cocktail circuit. Foreign "sandalistas" have for years flocked to Nicaragua to bathe in their vision of revolutionary social justice. Too bad it was always, and is, a fraud.

Rushdie, to his credit, sounds alarms over autocratic tendencies within sandinism, thus, one hears, making him objective and balanced, but he missed what was coming. The Sandinistas were too smart to revere Lenin or Stalin; that makes no sense in Latin America, though Rushdie used this as measure. Even Castro understood that a little distance from Eastern Europe was necessary. Che is the guy, the icon, or became so after he usefully died in a quixotic and wholly unproductive adventure to Bolivia.

The Sandinistas of today are icons of a different sort: they represent corruption at its worst, striking deals with an equally corrupt and ideolgically suspect "far right" to capture the presidency with only around 35% of the vote. President Ortega, leader of the original "revolution," used his deal with the corrupt right to bury charges against him of repeatedly raping his minor stepdaughter, according to his now adult stepdaughter. This stuff is not made up -- check out the March 22, 2009 New York Times on the Chamorro family, which captures the last 30 years of Nicaraguan politics and the state of the press in Nicaragua. It is ugly, but not news to people who have followed the country for years.

This is not to denigrate Rushdie's work. Most contemporary writers were wrong about the Sandinistas. Rushdie's is less wrong and better observed and written than most. It should not, however, obfuscate what the historical record has shown since and therefore should not be read as definitive or "objective," as some reviewers suggest. Who, in the United States, would presume to understand the U.S. Civil War on the basis of one contemporary writer, no matter how well-meaning and articulate?

I would give more stars, on the basis of Rushdie's talent for prose and observation, but I am troubled that the historical cement is setting around old anecdotes, such as Rushdie's, that are moving but out of date. The Nicaraguan tragedy contiunues; so does the "sandalista" delusion.

Rushdie provides a balanced view of the conditions in 1987 that coinside with my seminar work there in 1988. The 1997 preface to the original is helpful. He captured the sence of it.

The new edition has not been altered by the author. However, the introduction offers a profound reflection on the lost path of the Sandinista Revolution. It is definitely a worthwhile reading.

A bit outdated, but still a very good read. This is probably one of Salman Rushdie's easier books to read :) Well, there is no magical realism here, just realism. A tiny book of 130 odd pages of Rushdie's travelogue of his 3-week Nicaraguan trip in 1986, on the eve of the 7-year anniversary of the revolution. He is not Nicaraguan and he would never be able to capture the complexity of Nicaraguan psyche. But I think he did a good job of observing the then contemporary Nicaraguan political situation through the eyes of a well-read/traveled literary intellectual. His immigrant out look comes through as well. His references to Benazir Bhutto, Indira Gandhi and other third-world political situations add another texture to the often seen political analysis of Sandinista movement.

Rushdie is obviously sympathetic to the revolution, but he maintains a healthy dose of skepticism. Even though he hangs out with the hotshots of FSLN (Frente Sandanista de Liberación Nacional), he is not afraid to ask the uncomfortable questions about the Contras, the shutdown of La Prensa, the economic collapse of post-revolution Nicaragua.


I think the book does a good job of summarizing the Nicaraguan political landscape in '86 through the eyes of an "internacional".