by Pat Werner
A while ago, I was invited by the city fathers of Diriamba, my hometown in Nicaragua, to give a talk about the pre-colonial heritage of Diriamba. About 40 km from Managua in the southern tablelands, it is the coolest and windiest of the towns on the meseta de los pueblos. About 2000 feet above sea level, it has a cool and enjoyable climate.
The city fathers wanted the scoop on the Indians of Diriamba and so I gave it to them. The town was quite small when the Spaniards came in the 1520s and in the first census of 1548, it only had a few puny encomiendas (estates run by Spaniards with the right to tax the locals).
Ethnically, the Indians of Diriamba were Chorotegas and they spoke the language that linguists would later call Oto Mangue. It was completely unrelated to Nahuatl but was closely related to Chiapaneco, spoken in southern Mexico. In the 1581 census, the town appears with the name Diriamborí. There are various ceramic pots in private collections from Diriamba and some petroglyphs are found scattered around the area. The pots usually date from the period of 1000 AD to 1500 AD, with a few dating back to 300-800 AD. This is nothing new and is typical of the pottery found throughout the southern highlands.

by Carlos Schmidt
Recently while in Guatemala City, I visited the City Museum. Among the many displays was the Declaration of Independence from Spain signed by delegates from the Kingdom of Guatemala, including Nicaragua’s Miguel de Lareynaga. The room where the Declaration was signed was a bit stuffy and no one else was there. I wondered to myself what that day was like on September 14, 1821 when a group of criollos, or upper crust colonists, decided to cut ties to the mother country and form their own government. Why they did so makes for an interesting tale.

Aside from a major uprising in Granada in 1812, the independence movement throughout Central America was characterized by smallish riots and plots that were all uncovered before they amounted to much. In Nicaragua, the independence movement centered around three men: Juan Arguello, Manuel Antonio de la Cerda, and Miguel Lareynaga. But to really understand why independence finally occurred, events in Spain must be considered. (more…)

by Pat Werner 

One of the favorite parlor games of gringos new to Granada is to haul out their favorite book on Nicaragua, one that gives some sort of deep insight into Nicaragua and the character of its people. Since 1990 there has been a spate of books, some a heady brew of fact and fiction, and others that are quite good at introducing Nicaragua to the newcomer. I have read most of them and have served as a source of information for more than one of them, sometimes attributed, sometimes not. But for me, none of them holds a candle to the mother of them all, Ephraim Squier’s magnificent, Nicaragua: People, Scenery, Monuments, Resources, Condition, and Proposed Canal.

 by Jerry Lawright

Initially, after Latin American independence from Spain in the 1820’s, U.S. policy towards its neighbors to the south was one of noninvolvement, guided by the Monroe Doctrine. This simply stated opposition to any foreign powers’ ambitions to re-colonize Latin America; the real clout behind it was Britain’s’ Royal Navy and that country’s desire to keep Spain or any other perpetual enemy from regaining a foothold in the Americas.

The United States itself had little interest in interaction with Latin countries for the first thirty years of their independence. In the 1850’s that would change. The history of Nicaragua and the United States intertwined for the next hundred and fifty years. While at times this association has involved armed conflict, at most others it was largely economic. The era around the turn of the last century embodied that, and the term first coined by President William Taft- Dollar Diplomacy – was heard.

by Zac Clemens

How does the name of a man who, while his “army” at times consisted of little more than a few hundred machete-wielding peasants, a man who first proclaimed himself as Caesar, then as the reincarnation of Christ, then as God himself, live on? A man who further proclaimed end-of-the-world prophecies with himself at their core, but was often penniless? What captured the imagination and explains his longevity?

His legacy lived on because the goal of Sandino’s self-proclaimed mission was far greater than that of the usual revolutionary. While it is true that Sandino was engaged in a war of national liberation, it is also true that not every liberation movement has promised eternal, spiritual and earthly salvation, nor claimed to carry out the work of God. Nor has every revolutionary leader claimed to be God incarnate. Sandino’s goal was not simply to rid his country of foreign intervention and reduce social injustices, but a wider-ranging one. This is precisely what sets the name Sandino apart from so many names with which he is often classified.

by Linus Trouser

There exists a pervasive belief, a sort of blanket perception in many parts of the world, of Nicaragua and Central America as a whole as a vaguely sinister and dangerous place. In fact, for centuries, from the middle ages on, all things Iberian have been portrayed with an evil tinge.

The stereotype of the foppish but always cruel Spaniard of old carries on from Errol Flynn’s “Captain Blood” to “Zorro” to Johnny Depp’s nemesis in “Pirates of the Carribean.”  When was the last time you saw an English-language movie with a Spanish hero?

Historians trace this perception to two bipolar stories handed down from the past, accepted in the modern conscience but not exactly true- the Black Legend/White Legend. The Black Legend is the blood soaked story of Spanish conquest of Latin America, rife with slaughter and enslavement on a massive scale. The White Legend is the mirror image, the Spanish justification for their actions. It holds that not only did the conquerors introduce advanced culture and religion, but put an end to the human sacrifice and cannibalism central to native cultures in the Americas. The irony is that the cursory image created by the combination of the twin legends is that of sanguinary mayhem.

by D. Arróglia

Genesis of English in Nicaragua

Perhaps the first people to utter Anglo-Saxon words in Nicaragua were the dreaded British corsairs who set foot on our Caribbean Coast in the XVII century as they waged an undermining war against the Spanish. These pirates pillaged Spanish villages up and down the Coco River, as well as the main towns of León, Granada, and El Realejo. Famous buccaneers such as William Dampier, John Davis (from Jamaica), and the famous Henry Morgan wreaked havoc along the isthmus. Morgan was a rookie pirate at the age of 30 when, along with the infamous buccaneer John Morris, he attacked Granada in June 1665. It would not be the only time. In their attacks, they used the fierce Mayangna and Zambo or Miskito warriors, who included some English words into their vocabulary. However, the first historical landfall and contact with the Nicaraguan Caribbean indigenous population by subjects of the British Crown occurred in Cabo Gracias a Dios, in northeastern Nicaragua in 1633. The British Capitan Sussex Camock laid anchor in the Miskito Cays to barter with the natives.

by Sean Wayne

Some forts are built to defend against or take refuge from outside aggressors; others as permanent military bases that may serve as instruments of internal control. A commonality among fortifications is that they are situated on high ground to provide a commanding field of fire to control as much of the surrounding area as possible. But now, happily, what once were places of bloodshed or oppression are quiet places to learn about history; what were once fields of fire are now great views; battlements are now viewing platforms. Bring your camera, binoculars and perhaps your imagination along and take a tour of Nicaragua’s forts.

by James Spencer

The 120-mile long Rio San Juan River in Nicaragua is one of the most history-laden rivers in the world. For more than 500 hundred years this turbid tropical marine highway has been the route and battleground of pirates, adventurers and conquerors from Spain, Britain, Costa Rica, France, the United States and in recent times even involved battles between CIA backed forces and Russian and Cuban backed communists. Among the many stories the San Juan has to tell is its heyday as a major transit route in the golden age of steamships and Mark Twain’s voyage through Nicaragua aboard one of them.

by Zac Clemens

The Buccaneers of the Spanish Main captured the imagination of generations, freebooters who lived by the sword and gun, sailing the Caribbean in search of fortunes in gold and silver. They also captured and burned several cities in colonial Nicaragua, adding a colorful page to the nations’ early history.

In 1519 the conquistador Cortes looted and butchered his way through the Mayan Empire of Mexico and sent back to Spain ship loads of gold and silver, spreading tales of untold riches more. Conquistadors, professional soldiers spawned in the incessant European warfare of the era, would respond in waves. Men like Cordoba, Alvarado, and Pizarro would wreak havoc on centuries-old new world native civilizations. The accumulated riches of the Indian nations were plundered and their populations decimated. In Nicaragua, the four indigenous tribes -the Chorotega, Nahua, Maribios and Chontlal- numbered 700,000 at the time of Spanish contact in 1522. Twenty six years later, only 35,000 remained. Survivors were enslaved in gold and silver mines or plantations to provide a steady stream of wealth. Within a hundred years of Columbus’ 1492 voyage, an empire larger than Europe, called the Spanish Main, would span a crescent from Florida to Peru. (more…)