brad brace contemporary culture scrapbook

In a country that’s nutty about gossip, veteran barbers Cesar Larios and Manuel Rodriguez run the engine room of the national rumor mill — Managua’s landmark Imperial Barbershop. Since this modest three-chair barbershop opened its doors 35 years ago, Rodriguez and Larios have seated, aproned and lathered some of Nicaragua’s most important politicians, bankers and powerbrokers. Right-wing former president Arnoldo Alemin and ex-communist guerrilla leader Henry “Modesto” Ruiz are both on the client list. His Eminence, Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, the country’s top religious authority, has been getting the same haircut here for 30 years. Managua’s Sandinista Mayor, Nicho Marenco, comes in for a trim every month, as do the publishers of the two leading opposition dailies, and a flurry of politicians, businessmen and financial leaders.

Once seated comfortably in the red-cushioned barber’s chair, even the most powerful member of the elite becomes just another guy in need of grooming. And it’s a common-man experience whose relaxed intimacy most of them seem to relish. “They come in and gossip and joke around,” says the 61-year-old Rodriguez, as he deftly moves a straight blade around the ears of a lesser-known patron. “The politicians want to know what other people say about them, and what they say about others.”

The politicians, of course, also do some politicking of their own.

“The Liberals says bad things about the Sandinistas, and the Sandinistas say bad things about the Liberals — it’s a crossfire,” says Larios, 56, the barbershop’s founder and owner. “When they are sitting in chairs next to each other, they hug and act like friends. But as soon as one of them leaves, the other starts to say bad things again.”

The Imperial may simply be the elite’s answer to the village barbershop, which has a time-honored role in Nicaraguan society as a place where ideas are exchanged, jokes are tested, names are smeared and rumors are born. All subject matter is open to discussion off the mirror, from politics and sports, to women and weather.

Walking into a Nicaraguan barbershop is a bit like stepping back into the colonial era, and some of the equipment in use is not that much newer. My neighborhood barber gives me a straight-blade shave, proceeded by several rounds of ointments and creams, and then a full facial and head massages with some sort of ancient vibrating contraption that looks like a Thomas Edison prototype. I don’t know what that thing is, but it keeps me going back.

And just as the scuttlebutt at the Imperial is a window into Nicaragua’s corridors of power, my local barbershop is the best place to take the pulse of the street. Here, news rolls easily off the tongues of those who know what they’re talking about, and those who don’t. Sometimes, the barbershop itself becomes part of the news: When legendary newspaper publisher and opposition leader Pedro Joaquin Chamorro was gunned down by unknown shooters in January 1978, the leading suspect — one of Larios’ clients — told the police he had been getting a haircut at the Imperial Barbershop at the time of the murder. Larios later had to testify that the suspect had not in fact been in his chair that day.

Unless served a summons, however, Larios and Rodriguez prefer to respect barber-client privilege, especially with their bigger clients — the ones who have outgrown the chair, so to speak. Arnoldo Alemin, the portly former president convicted on embezzlement charges, now sends a car and driver to fetch Rodriguez to do a home haircut, for which the barber charges double, or $9. Miguel Obando y Bravo, who used to come into the shop when he was just Archbishop of Managua, started sending the car after the Pope named him cardinal in 1985.

“You build up a confidence with the clients,” Rodriguez says, politely declining to discuss any of the really juicy tidbits that have been entrusted to him from the barber’s chair over the years. “You hear so much, it’s hard to remember everything they say,” he adds diplomatically, with a revealing twinkle in his eye. In fact, the reason his clients feel so free to express themselves may be that the whatever they say is carefully swept up with the hair clippings and discarded at the end of the day.

MANAGUA, Nicaragua — A waterborne disease spread through animal urine has killed nine people and sickened more than 1,600 in storm-stricken Nicaragua, health officials said Monday.

The disease, leptospirosis, was spread by flooding caused by a month of intense rains and category-5 Hurricane Felix, which hit northeastern Nicaragua last month, President Daniel Ortega said Sunday.

As of midday Monday, nine people had died of the disease and 1,606 people had fallen ill, Lt. Col. Guillermo Lopez, deputy chief of the country’s Civil Defense Department, told reporters.

The highest number of cases, 745, appeared in the northwestern city of Somotillo, Lopez said.

The infectious disease is usually contracted through cuts in the skin. It is spread because the urine of rats, cows and pigs ends up in pools of standing water during stormy weather.

Symptoms include high fevers, vomiting, nosebleeds and intense muscle aches, especially in the knees and calves.

The Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua is (economically speaking) the poorest region of a very poor country.

It has a distinctive history of conquest, colonization and resource exploitation that has left it underdeveloped and environmentally depleted, with high levels of unemployment and poverty, and low levels of schooling, health and other social services.

This area of Nicaragua now comprises two autonomous regions: R.A.A.N (Región Autónoma Atlántico Norte – North Atlantic Autonomous Region) and R.A.A.S. (Región Autónoma Atlántico Sur – South Atlantic Autonomous Region), whose respective capitals are Bilwi (formerly Puerto Cabezas) and Bluefields.

The Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua comprises 57% of the national territory and has a vast supply of natural resources. The marine life on the Caribbean coast is unparalleled, the coastal rainforests are second only to those in Brazil, and the region’s mineral resources have the potential to yield $5 billion. Foreign companies, with concessions granted by the central government in Managua, have extracted vast amounts of these resources – leaving behind only massive pollution, erosion, and contamination. URACCAN intends to provide the basis for the ecologically sound development of abundant seafood, mining, and forestry resources for the benefit of people who live on the Coast.

In contrast to the Pacific Coast region of the country, the social and cultural distinctness of the Caribbean Coast is striking. While the Pacific Coast population is quite homogeneous: 96% Mestizo (of mixed indigenous and Spanish ancestry), almost 100% Spanish-speaking, and predominantly Roman Catholic, the Caribbean Coast is home to six different ethninc groups speaking four different languages.

The Mayangna (Sumu) and Rama are direct descendents of indigenous peoples now much-reduced in number; only the Mayangna still speak their own language. The indigenous Miskitu people have, since the 17th Century, undergone a process of inter-marriage with people of African origin and Afro-Caribbean immigrants. They represent the largest of the Coast’s ethnic minorities, and still speak their own language. Next in size is the population of English-speaking Creoles, descendents of white settlers on the Coast and their African slaves imported in the 18th Century, and of further migrations of Afro-Caribbean workers from Jamaica and Belize. Spanish-speaking Mestizos, who have migrated from the Pacific Coast region at various periods in search of land or work, now constitute the majority group. There is also a small population of Black Caribs, descended from black slaves, who ran away or were shipwrecked along Central America’s Caribbean Coast in the 18th and 19th Centuries, and who inter-bred with indigenous Carib indians. Their language (Garifunu) is still alive in the larger Caribbean settlements of Belize and the Bay Islands of Honduras, but the Nicaraguan Caribs speak Creole English.

A Brief History of the Coast

Nicaragua is unique in that it is the only country in Latin America that was colonized by two powers. The western side was colonized by Spain, which implemented a policy that resulted in the complete annihilation of indigenous peoples. The evidence of their culture is now minimal and limited mostly to folklore. Years of colonization has resulted in the destruction of their identity, language and social organization. In their place, a Mestizo, Spanish-speaking, Catholic culture has evolved.

The eastern, or Caribbean coast, however, has a different history. It was colonized by Great Britain, and for its own reasons, which had nothing to do with the interests of indigenous people, Great Britain implemented a policy that in the end resulted in the survival of three indigenous groups, including the Miskitu, Sumu, and Rama, and three multi-ethnic communities, including the Creole and Garifunu.

The differences between the two regions were exacerbated when, in 1894, the Nicaraguan military – with the help of the U.S. military – invaded the Caribbean coast, forcing territorial integration, to which Costeños (people of the Caribbean coast) were resolutely opposed. From that moment on, successive Nicaraguan administrations began implementing policies that sought to impose the primacy and dominance of Mestizo culture. Indigenous cultures and languages of the Caribbean coast were delegitimized by governmental decree. Economic policies based on the granting of licenses and concessions to foreign companies to exploit the natural resources of the region fostered increased resentment and antagonism, as Costeños witnessed the extraction of great wealth without any tangible benefit to the region.

The Autonomy Law, first implemented under the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) government in 1987, sought to redress the injustices created by centuries of foreign and internal colonialism. The autonomy process legitimizes and acts upon the demands of the Costeños to reclaim their historic right to the natural resources of the region as well as the right to defend, preserve, and promote their identity, history, culture and traditions

Indigenous Rama People

The Rama people are the smallest ethnic group living on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua. The assessment of the Rama population was never very high. It was estimated at 500 by 1827 and 285 in 1909, with a lowest citation of 164 by 1865. The total Rama population today in 2003 is said to be above 1000.

The Ramas may have been relatively late comers to Nicaragua. The name Rama did not appear in the colonial documents until the eighteenth century. The Ramas are considered descendants of the Votos, who at the time of the conquest occupied a territory extending from the Rio Escondido north of Bluefields lagoon to the Rio San Juan which forms today the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Traditionally the Ramas lived in small scattered settlements, moving about and hiding from intruders in the tropical forest.

At the turn of the XVIIth century the Miskitus granted the Ramas a small island in the lagoon of Bluefields in recognition of their help in fighting off Terraba Indians from the south. An estimated 200 Ramas from the coastal area of Punta Gorda moved to the island which became known from then on as Rama Cay. The island is thirteen kilometers south of Bluefields. (The trip from Rama Cay to the market town of Bluefields takes about four hours on average by dug-out canoe (`dory’ in Creole), and from an hour and a half to thirty minutes by motor boat.). Today the vast majority of the Rama population lives on Rama Cay.

By the mid-eighties, the Ramas found themselves in the midst of discussions for the autonomy of their region, which included claims by all ethnic groups of the region to the use and development of their ethnic languages. This is how a delegation of Ramas from Rama Cay approached the Sandinista authorities of Bluefields in 1984 to ask for help in saving their Rama language. A “Rama Language Project” (RLP) originally aiming at the revitalization of the Rama language was initiated in the mid-eighties. It was sponsored by CIDCA (Centro de Investigación y Documentación de la Costa Atlántica), the institution in charge of research in the region, including all language programs.