Scale Model of the Ruben Dario National Theatre, image by Laura C. Mallonee

“Let then the Dreams of the Dead rebuke the Blind who think that what is will be forever and teach them that what was worth living for must live again. Teach us, Forever Dead, there is no Dream but Deed, there is no Deed but Memory.”

- W.E.B. DuBois

Timeline of natural disasters and other memories

1819

Managua, Nicaragua’s capital city, is found on the banks of a volcanic crater previously known as Xolotlán (Nahuatl for place of the dog of the underworld). This lake will eventually be named Lake Managua (from Mana-ahuac, the Nahuatl term for where there is much water). Nearby are two more volcanoes, Momotombo and Momotombito.

Scenes in Managua, Nicaraguan Capital, Razed by Earthquake, printed by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Wednesday, April 1, 1931

1931

An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.1 hits Managua, creating a fire that destroys the majority of the General National Archive.

1970s

Rodolfo Tercero Nieto, my grandfather, is hired as an accountant to the city of Matagalpa, after working for the federal government for 10 years.

1972

An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.3 kills 18,000 people, injures 40,000, and leaves 200,000 people homeless in Managua.  In the National Archives, 80,000 of celebrated poet Ruben Dario’s volumes are destroyed by an uncontrollable fire.

1978

The FSLN (otherwise known as the Sandinista National Liberaton Front) hold hostages in the National Museum. This was a culmination of the Sandinstas’ attempts to take over the government from the Somoza dictatorship.

1979

Sandinistas overthrow the Somoza government, which had been in power for 43 years.

American Assistance Following the Destruction of Managua by the Earthquake of March 31, 1931, University of Wisconsin Libraries

1985

Once in power, they squash a two-year research project on  the history of the Sandinista party. Project historians are visited by members of the Sandinistas and forced to give up original documents, which have not been seen to this day.

1995

I visit Nicaragua for the first time, when my grandfather begins chemotherapy for cancer.

Scale Model of the Ruben Dario National Theatre, image by Laura C. Mallonee

Scale Model of Pan Am Building on Roosevelt Avenue, image by Laura C. Mallonee

Visitors at Memory Park, image by Laura C. Mallonee

The history of British, German, and US colonization,  coupled with natural disasters and decades of political corruption, leaves the history incredibly vulnerable.

Any history, any narrative can be created. President Daniel Ortega’s administration has taken advantage of this by creating the myth that he was the sole leader of the Sandinista party. However, Carlos Fonseca (born in Matagalpa in 1936), a teacher and librarian, was the founder of the Sandinista Party (FSLN), remembered as being  more aligned with the beliefs of Augusto Sandino. Fonseca was killed three years before the Sandinstas took power.

Where the institution tries to impose a forced narrative of liberty, struggle, and triumph it opens the space for the personal memories and histories to run rampant. Scholars Brenda Nyandiko Sanaya and Anne Namtsi Lutomia write: “Virtual and dynamic, the archives is also not bound by the nation-state.” They describe an archive that is composed of folktales, stories, and oral traditions. These are all tied to the handing down of memories.

Memory is a wisp of air; passes quickly and swiftly fades.

Rafael Enriquez - Comandante Carlos Fonseca Nicaragua entera te dice: Presente - undated, UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library

“Remembrance Environments”

Rodolfo T. Nieto created a booklet of typewritten notes during  the final stages of his cancer. His notes are a repository of what would otherwise have been passed down through oral tradition: dialect, pronunciation, nicknames, jokes, folk tales, indigenous terms.

Page 40 is entitled, “Palabras Indigenas” (Indigenous Terms) and  gives a list of places named in Nahuatl and Chorotega (also known as Mangue, the namesake of the capital). When I see this page I browse for the town where my family came from: Matagalpa, which means the place of ten houses or surrounded housing.

Page 41 is entitled, “Matagalpinos Reclaman Su Muerto” (The Matagalpans Reclaim Their Dead). Rodolfo briefly recounts a story from the previous century, when the local cathedral’s inauguration was delayed due to the late delivery of bells ordered from the Vatican, which were expected to come by way of Corinto, a city on the Pacific coast. It was decided that Matagalpa would borrow a bell from Jinotega. At the same time, Jinotega had recently finished a cemetery but could not inaugurate the burial ground because no one had died at the time. It is stated that Jinotega’s mayor had the idea to rob a grave from Matagalpa and inter the body in the new cemetery of Jinotega. At the end of this story, Rodolfo claims that, even to this day, both cities still blame each other over the incident. Jinotega will never give up the body unless Matagalpa gives back the bell. 

Algunos Apodos Matagalpinos (Some Matagalpan Nicknames), Rodolfo T. Nieto, 2002

Palabras Indigenas (Indigenous Words), Rodolfo T. Nieto, 2002

Matagalpinos Reclaman Su Muerto (The Matagalpans Reclaim Their Dead), Rodolfo T. Nieto, 2002

Memory is a game

Expresiones Nicas (Nica Expressions), Rodolfo T. Nieto, 2002

The intensity of memory is loud. Giving directions often involves the assumption that everyone knows the history of the area; where a building used to be, despite whatever may be sitting there now.  Less often I’ve encountered addresses that use actual street names. The reason is because street names are not a thing there.  An example of a home address may be “the block that is ¼ miles west of the old Texaco gas station.” The gas station is no longer there, but people remember it. Another example is directions referring to the former location of a  theater palace on the main street.

Since I didn’t grow up in Nicaragua, I, too, had to come up with my own memory game that was not influenced by the government or by the surroundings of Matagalpa. How I play with it:

a. Memory through the sound of a  voice. I have a recording of my other grandfather telling a joke. 

b. A photograph (to see the similarity of face) that I can happen upon by intention or coincidence.

c. Reading letters from Papa Rodolfo; one dated January 2004, where he said that he was happy to receive articles I wrote for the high school newspaper, and included his Spanish translation of what I had written. 

d. Reviewing the family tree with my mother, sister and grandmother. 

Stories and memories are my connection to the land that I cannot visit often. It is a longing to smell the trees and feel the humid air. When I open my grandfather’s notes and read through a list of names of his friends in Matagalpa (many who passed during the revolution), when I read aloud the Nicaraguan sayings or dichos, I am there in the living room with him. We are sitting silently by the window, listening to motors of cars and buses pass by, to the voices of the women who sell fruit on his corner, to the silence, and we feel the wind pass through the house.

Group portrait of Morales family,  Matagalpa, Nicaragua, 1935

Group portrait of Morales family and Rodolfo T. Nieto (far right, middle row), Matagalpa, Nicaragua, 1956

Portrait of Rodolfo T. Nieto’s mother, Nicaragua, 1936

Christine Calvo, MLIS, is the Project Archivist at Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. She is a first-generation Nicaraguan-American from Los Angeles, CA.