CHAPTER 3
All It Took Was a Road / Surprises of Urban Renewal
From the very start, black music authorized a private autonomous, free, and even rebellious rhythm on the part of the listener or dancer, instead of subjecting him or her to a dominant, foreseeable, or prewritten pattern.
CARLOS FUENTES,
The Buried Mirror
Between Managua and Bluefields there are many, many mountains. Until the short-lived victory of the Sandinistas in 1981, there was no road. So Nicaragua was a fairly schizophrenic little country with the black people on one side of the mountain and the mestizos and blancos on the other, while Amerindians made a way for themselves in the jungles as best they could. It was very important that there be no connection between the East and West Coast populations. That way myths and distance could weaken any resistance to the reign of the dictator Somoza, if the threat of being “disappeared” was insufficient. When the freeways came through our communities, the African-American ones, my home was disappeared along with thousands of others. We were left with no business districts, no access to each other; what was one neighborhood was now ten, who lived next door was now a threatening six or eight highway lanes away, if there at all. Particularly hurt were the restaurants and theaters where a community shares food and celebrates itself. This we already know is a deathblow to our culture, extroverted, raucous, and spontaneous.
Anyway, I was in Nicaragua traveling to the house in which Nicaragua’s revered poet Rubén Dario was born and raised before his sojourn to Europe. Here, a black North American coming from Managua going vaguely in the direction of the Atlantic coast, where people like me lived, would eventually see me, too. I was anxious, divining this reunion of another lost portion of the Diaspora. This anxiety didn’t last long, however, for no sooner had I begun to be acutely aware of my “racial” difference from everyone around me (poets though they were, like me, in a nation of poets), than someone’s radio blasted Willie Colón and Celia Cruz singing “Usted Abuso.” The bus rang out with every imaginable accented Spanish singing, all swaying to my salsero preferido(favorite salsa singer). The South Bronx had survived and pulled a trick on the Major Deegan. The blockade against Cuba lacked a sense of rhythm. But it didn’t stop there. Next came Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson rockin’ our little bus through a war-torn, earthquake-ravaged land. The tales of our people’s incompetency and addiction to failure must be very bad jokes indeed.
Even more important was running into Nicaraguan poet Carlos Johnson. He reminded me of a painter friend of mine from Nashville, except for the West Indian tinge to his English. At the front porch of his house, Rubén Dario met us with a poem. Then came many poems from me, that to this very day stem from that moment of underestimating who and what I come from.
“My Song for Hector Lavoe”
Mira / tu puedes ir conmigo /
hasta managua and / the earthquake was no more a surprise /
than you / con su voz / que viene de los dioses / and the
swivel of hips de su flaca / as you dance or / when she
sucks the hearts / out of the eggs of / tortugas / anglos die to
see float about / while all the time we dance around
them / split up / change
partners and fall madly in love . . . porque
nosotros somos an army of marathon dancers / lovers / seekers
and / we have never met an enemy we can’t outlive.1
It turned out that Carlos used the racismo of the ruling class to his own advantage by wandering “aimlessly” around Managua as if he were an itinerant musician, like all black people, saxophone case in hand. Only this poet’s musical instrument was an AK-47, which was used strategically to undermine the Somoza regime and lead to what we nostalgically now call La Victoria. I heard this story and others like it once we’d made it back to Managua, full of deep, sweet black rum, black music, and relentless appetites.
In what we could call a tropical ice house, a dance hall under a thatched roof, open to the night air and the call of romance, we dance to something called Nicason, a mezcla (mixture) of reggae, beguine, and cumbé with a ranchero overlay. You see, road or no road, we connect to the culture of the people we live with, whether they like us or not, or even if they’ve never seen one of us: they know James Brown. In the sweat and swivel of dancing, being hungry for more of life, and each other, we ate huevos de tortugas, everybody.
Turtle Eggs and Spices
This is very simple to prepare because there is nothing to cook. Gather some young turtle eggs (substitute quail eggs where necessary). Lay them on a bed of fresh, clean, dry lettuce, spinach, arugula, it’s up to you. Place 4–6 eggs on the greens. Pierce the top of the eggs gently so that the whole egg doesn’t crack—we don’t want that. Make your presentation as extravagant or simple as you choose, placing edible flowers, orange or lemon peels, fruits or dried fish, in an attractive manner about the eggs. In another area prepare small dishes of crushed nuts, pico de gallo (a mixture of tomatoes, peppers, onion, garlic, and cilantro), peppers, pimiento, chopped olives, fish roe, and so forth, to be placed in the small holes we’ve made in the eggs by our guests who will leisurely “suck the hearts and spices” out of the eggs at their whim. This is a very sexy little dish. Sits well on the tummy, lightly, so to speak, so that dancing and romancing can continue without mitigation. (Please be aware that raw eggs may contain salmonella bacteria.)
That night in Managua we were able to cover the scars of war with poetry, music, and abandon ourselves to the impulses of our bodies in the night heat and each other’s arms. The volcano where Somoza dropped the bodies of anyone for any reason was covered with mist and clouds. I only thought once about the house I grew up in that had disappeared and been resurrected as a police station. The thought broke my heart, but the fact of all of us let me hold my head high.