Customer Reviews

The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey

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"The Jaguar Smile," Salman Rushdie's record of his 1986 visit to Nicaragua, is a fascinating work with great value as an intellectual and historical document. The book is divided up into chapters, each of which stands alone as a unified and satisfying essay. The book as a whole paints an ironic portrait of Nicaraguan life during the Sandinista revolution.

Rushdie makes no claim to be objective; he is sympathetic to the Sandinista government and recalls being given cordial official greetings by some of the major Sandinista figures. But despite this affinity, Rushdie doesn't hesitate to cast a critical, and even satirical, eye on what he sees. In particular, he is wary of the Sandinista policy of press censorship: "[W]hat worries me is that censorship is very seductive. It's so much easier than the alternative."

Rushdie's keen powers of observation take in many of the institutions and personalities of Nicaragua, and he offers pungent insights on some of the racial, linguistic, political, and aesthetic issues facing the nation. "The Jaguar Smile" is particularly fascinating when Rushdie writes of his encounters with such eminent Nicaraguan authors as Gioconda Belli and Sergio Ramirez; reading Rushdie's accounts made me eager to seek out books by these writers.

Rushdie's prose--often amiable, occasionally cynical--is a pleasure to read. "The Jaguar Smile" is neither a comprehensive history of Nicaragua nor an unambiguous political manifesto, and should not be viewed as such. But as a skilled writer's record of his impressions of a nation at a crossroads in its history, this book is an impressive achievement.

In 1986, while working on his famously infamous novel, "The Satanic Verses", Rushdie took three weeks off to visit Nicaragua. The country had a dramatic effect on him. Ineluctably inspired, he originally planned to pen a few articles on the subject and leave it at that. But the words inexorably grew into this small book, which ultimately delayed "The Satanic Verses" by six months. So what occurred in that short time span to cause Rushdie to shelf his hulking novel in favor of a diminutive political travelogue?

In the preface Rushdie confessed a long standing interest in the subject of Nicaragua. Especially following the Reagan Administration's disparagement of the alleged new Central American "red threat" (and subsequent funding of the counter-Sandinista force, the "contras" - which later fed into the Iran-Contra scandal). Apparently he felt an affinity with a small country against a giant (a la Gandhi vs. Britain) and "how it felt to be there, on the bottom, looking up at the descending heel." So he didn't visit carte blanche or on a whim. He wanted to know the workings of the force that had toppled Nicaragua's forty year dictatorial regime (the Somozas). And how this new Sandinista government (at the time in power for seven years) responded to the contra threat and to the needs of its populace. In Nicaragua, Rushdie unearthed some of the social and literary themes that pervade his work. This may explain his enthusiasm towards the subject.

The book outlines Rushdie's trip more or less chronologically. Starting in Managua Rushdie gives a brief history of the city and of the resistance to the previous dictatorship. This culminates in a biography of one of the most famous Nicaraguarans: Augusto César Sandino (from whom the Sandinistas took their name). Rushdie observed the abstract pictograph of Sandino's hat everywhere. This ubiquitous symbol nearly took on the role of the man himself. The hat equals the man; the symbol becomes flesh. As a guest of the Sandinisita Association of Cultural Workers, Rushdie had access to the highest levels of government. He traveled and dined with the new Sandinista élite. Most of who, surprisingly, had literary backgrounds. Accompanying the Vice President (and novelist) Sergio Ramírez, Rushdie witnessed a land re-allocation (from the state to the peasantry) in Camoapa. With the President (and poet), Daniel Ortega, he watched the first phone call from Nicaragua to Moscow and Havana (connections that in no way endeared the country to the Reagan Administration). But some signs of disappointment appeared during his conversation with Father Ernesto Cardenal the Minister of Culture (and poet). Cardenal talked about censuring the press during wartime as a "cosmetic" issue. This depressed Rushdie. He then traveled to Estelí and met the nine comandantes de revolución (the founders of the new government). But Rushdie also talked with campesinos (peasants) in the Enrique Acuña co-operative. Many found themselves displaced by the country's issues. Despite their poverty, they fed Rushdie fertilized hen's eggs (the "eggs of love"). He also talked with extremely young soliders in the Germán Pomares field hospital. Many of them remained ready for battle regardless of their injuries. And on the somewhat neglected west side of Nicaragua he found lots of rain, more poverty, and some disillusionment with the revolution. Lastly, Rushdie debated the widow of the assassinated editor of "La Prensa" (censored by the Sandisitas), Doña Violeta. He found her claims of rampant communism in her country insincere. Rushdie later concluded that "if Nicaragua was a Soviet-style state, then I'm a monkey's uncle."

Rushdie often asked people, whether high or low on the social hierarchy, very pointed questions - he and Doña Violeta really get into it. Sometimes he even called them when they dodge a question. In the end Rushdie found some things to like and some things to dislike about the Sandinista government. For example, he outright states: "It disturbed me that a government of writers turned into a government of censors." But he remained impressed by the government's land distribution program.

Like all of Rushie's work this one garnered a broad spectrum of responses (he can't seem to avoid politics, for better or worse). The supporters of the Reagan Administration obvioulsy didn't take kindly to it (which may reveal why George H.W. Bush provided no support to Rushdie during the "Satanic Verses" affair), and many praised the alternate view of Nicaragua that Rushdie portrayed. But some accused Rushdie of exemplifying petty bourgesois values (i.e., a rich westerner goes "slumming" in Central America and then returns to his privileged lifestyle). And some simply couldn't understand how Rushdie could possibly identify with the Nicaraguans. In the 1997 preface, Rushdie still defended the views espoused in the book, with some exceptions. For instance, he thought he hadn't expressed enough disappointment at the Sandinista's treatment of the indigenous Miskito population. But all in all he seems to stand by what he wrote.

Of course the book has dated somewhat since its 1987 publication. The spectre of eastern bloc communism no longer looms, and the Sandinistas were bloodlessly voted out of power in 1990 (internal party rifts and corruption contributed to their downfall). Not only that, the entire country no longer represents a political hotbed for the United States. Nonetheless, Rushdie paints some interesting pictures of this small country and its people at a moment in time. "The Jaguar Smile" remains worthwhile reading both as a study of Rushdie's themes and for the portraits of the Nicaraguan people that Rushdie recorded. He didn't find utopia, but he found enough to justify this little book.

In 1986, the seventh year of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, and three years before he got a fatwa from Ayatollah Khomeini, Salman Rushdie visited Nicaragua, travelling to Managua, Camaopa, celebrating the seventh anniversary of the revolution, and the Blue Fields area near the Atlantic Coast. I originally bought this book when I was interested in finding any of Salman Rushdie's books. I found it mildly interesting. This past winter, I took an upper division History of Central America at Fort Lewis College and after learning more about the Somozas and the Nicaraguan Revolution, I dug up Rushdie's book and one, it made more sense, two, I was more intrigued than merely interested.

Rushdie introduces the background to the Nicaraguan revolution that forced Anastasio Somoza Debayle's resignation in 1979 and even goes into the background of Augusto Sandino, the nationalist rebel leader executed by Anastasio Somoza Garcia's Guardia Nacional, and the Somoza dynasty that lasted forty years.

Rushdie got to meet some of the big nine Sandinista leaders, including President Daniel Ortega, vice president Sergio Ramirez, and agriculture minister Jaime Wheelock. However, they justify press censorship because they are at war with the Contras and America, and any press sympathetic to the US will undermine the regime. Seems reasonable, as the U.S. funding of Contras and the mining of Managua's harbours were acts of war by the U.S.

Not only are the Contras portrayed as terrorists, but Reagan isn't seen in a favourable light, understandably. Rushdie writes "Scarecrow Ronald Reagans hung--by the neck--from roadside trees." And in Ortega's speech to the people of Esteli, "Quien es culpabile?" the people roar back: "Reagan!" Foreign Minister Miguel d'Escoto even recalls a conversation with a Reagan administration official who tells him "Just do as we (the U.S.) say," serving as a reminder of U.S. hegemony in Central America and its refusal to abide by the Hague judgment, which ruled that the U.S. contra aid and force was a violation of international law.

Rushdie also visits Bluefields, where there are Miskito, Sumo, and Rama indigenes alienated by first the Somozas and the Sandinistas. One tragedy is that there are only 23 Ramas left and any attempt to preserve their language is hampered by the fact that many of them have few teeth, putting the mockers on proper enunciation. One of the people he meets is Mary Ellsberg, daughter of Daniel Ellsberg of the Pentagon Papers, who is totally sympathetic to the plight of the indigenes there.

Rushdie's interview with Violeta Chamorro, widow of La Prensa editor Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, and later to be elected president, reveals Ms. Chamorro as someone who tries to manipulate a few facts and is biased against Ortega--she claims that Ortega was not elected democratically and yet according to foreign observers and an 80% voter turnout, he was. Rushdie agrees that yes, it was wrong for the Sandinistas to shut down La Prensa, but he questions Chamorro's candour.

As in his books, Rushdie writes with a wry, sometimes humorous style prevalent in his best novels. e.g. "my breakfast of rice and beans--'gayo pinto,' it was called 'painted rooster'--began to crow noisily in my stomach." Or when joining the foreign volunteer workers in singing "we shall overcome," he says "Like so many people who absolutely can't sing, I get sentimental about old tunes; the lump in the throat provides an excuse for the painful fractured noises emerging from the mouth." But his lyrical writing found in Satanic Verses and Midnight's Children also shines through.

This book is definitely critical of the Reagan administration's policies, but it paints an even-handed view of the Sandinistas, listing their ideals while at the same time detailing repressive measures that would not have been implemented had U.S. anti-communist paranoia not led to funding the Contras.

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".

"The Jaguar Smile" chronicles Salman Rushdie's trip through Nicaragua during the Sandinista years and U.S./Contra war against the revolutionary government. This is a work by Rushdie that has been somewhat forgotten under all the publicity of his later scandal involving "The Satanic Verses" and recent works like "Shalimar The Clown," but it is a book worth re-discovering as it shows Rushdie going to see for himself what the Sandinista movement was all about, something even more significant today when one considers the new revolutionary tide sweeping Latin America and even more noteworthy, the re-election of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. In wonderful detail Rushdie describes the lush landscapes of this beautiful country and it's peoples, from the government men to the indigenous populations. He interviews high-ranking Sandinistas and probes into the ideas and philosophies behind the uprising and chronicles the disastrous effects of the U.S.-funded Contra war on the population. The conclusions Rushdie draws are refreshing, he supports the overall revolution, believes some mistakes have been made, but is very impressed by the work and fruits of the movement and is angered at how obsessed the Reagan White House was with crushing this small country's will to be independent. "The Jaguar Smile" is also full of poetic moments, for Nicaragua is a country of poets we learn, and there are some wonderful pieces shared here, especially those reflecting on the revolution and the hopes of the people. There are moments of hilarious comedy between Rushdie and the locals, especially in his quests for good beer in a country ravished by shortages. Rushdie also draws interesting comparisons between his experience in Central America and his experiences in his native India and confesses that being involved in Indian revolutionary movements has caused him to feel genuine sympathy for the Sandinistas. Overall "The Jaguar Smile" is a fun read, and a sad one as well, as we see how U.S. paranoia funded a war that crippled a beautiful nation and it's hopes. A welcome departure from the typical "academic" work, "The Jaguar Smile" deserves to be read, and then read again.

Salman Rushdie was invited to visit Nicaragua in July 1986, while that country was embroiled in a messy diplomatic row with Reagan's USA, and the revolution held so dear was in the process of eating up its own people. Rushdie discovered a land cluttered with ghosts and poets, a government which he felt he could believe in like no other, and a plethora of experiences which he collected and published in this book.

This is travel writing with a philosophical, literary, and politically informed edge. Rushdie is an astute critic; with an eye trained in revolutionary and poverty-stricken India and Pakistan, he observes the state of Nicaragua with an optimistic, yet realist gaze. In reading the book, one can sense the affinity Rushdie had with Chatwin; both writers have a gift of a cool, yet human eye, able to see more than what they were perhaps intended to by their 'hosts'. This writing reads like a novel, a collection of essays, and an autobiography. For in telling his tales, Rushdie reveals plenty about himself and his own understanding of life, politics, art, as well as his own perceived place in the world.

I just saw a film on present-day Nicaragua, a country that's no longer flavour of the month, at least as far as the world's press is concerned. It's been at least 15 years since I've read this book. I liked it fairly well then, and feel that, though Rushdie might have been a bit too kind to the Sandinistas (who deserve much of the criticism they received) the fact that Nicaragua was robbed blind by Somoza (who stole relief money for the earthquake that hit Managua in the 1970s)and, it seems, by the penultimate president, Aleman (convicted of financial wrongdoings but certainly not jailed)gives the Sandinistas' programs (redistribution of land,literacy, and the equal participation of women in Nicaraguan life)some credibility.

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.

This lively but sketchy little book by Salman Rushdie, fired from the hip after a three-week stay as an official guest in 1986, needs putting into some less jacket-blurb perspective.

I first read The Jaguar Smile in 1987, at the start of a sustained and continuing association with Nicaragua. What a good introduction, I thought as the plane approached Managua, and certainly an easy read. Several years and many such approaches later, on rereading it as something of a "Nicarologist", I was struck only by the inevitable flimsiness, the froth, the ducks-and-drakes treatment. Since I found the book otherwise hard to fault substantially, I fretted about small things. If he has to Hispanicize Christopher Columbus in the opening sentence, why call him Cristoforo - instead of Cristóbal - Colón? Why hasn't someone bothered to comb out other blemishes in the Spanish he sprinkles around? Why does he place the battle of Pancasán in 1974 instead of 1967? Even the odd tautology and cliché jarred on me: Tomás Borge described as a "tiny" gnome; "the might of Somoza's tanks"; "The young men in the [hospital] wards were all gung-ho, all volubly starry-eyed about the revolution (...) and all super-keen to return to the fray".

Of course there is much that does full justice to Rushdie. And much to ponder on, including a reference in the first chapter, well in advance of the February 1989 fatwa, to "(...) another, faraway martyr-culture, that of Khomeini's Iran, represented a fearsome warning (...)". People will clearly read the book more out of interest in Rushdie and his singular trajectory than for the now time-flaked information on Nicaragua.

All right, he gets a second star for his effective central message that Sandinista Nicaragua was an imperfect state in a true revolution.

Before I saw this book on the shelves in a local bookstore, I did not know that Salman Rushdie had written any non-fiction. That fact intrigued me. And because the book was about Nicaragua in 1986, as the Sandinista government fought off the Contras and the United States - an episode of U.S. history and history of the Western Hemisphere that I, due to the demands of a career, had not followed as closely as I would have liked when and while it unfolded - I bought it.

Rushdie was invited to visit Nicaragua for three weeks in July 1986, as a guest of the Sandinista Association of Cultural Workers - surely as much a propaganda program as a cultural one. He did not go with the intent of writing about his visit, but "my encounter with the place affected me so deeply that in the end I had no choice." THE JAGUAR SMILE came out in 1987. It was re-issued in 1997 with a new preface that is retrospective in nature (the Sandinistas having been voted out of power by then).

THE JAGUAR SMILE is not the book to go to for a comprehensive, impartial account of the Sandinista movement and its years of rule (is there such a book?). For one thing, it was written before that chapter ended. For another, Rushdie was not a neutral observer. To his credit, he admits as much. (His public support for the Sandinistas in the U.K. undoubtedly was a principal reason for his being invited to visit the country and given the sort of access to people and places that he was.) In his 1997 preface he briefly mentions several respects in which his book, in hindsight, was less balanced or accurate than ideal.

Still, THE JAGUAR SMILE is fine journalism and better-than-average political analysis. In its 137 pages, it provides a very good, vibrant, and intelligent overview of Nicaragua in 1986. And the writing is worthy of an author of Rushdie's stature.

Even allowing for Rushdie's bias, the United States does not come off well. In his 1997 preface, Rushdie, looking back, sees the U.S. in the Eighties in Nicaragua as a sort of paradigm of "the power of a super-power: first to describe a given leadership as unacceptable; then to create the circumstances in which it becomes unacceptable; and finally to obliterate the memory of its (the super-power's) own part in the process."

Yet the Sandinistas took some missteps as well, at least from the perspective of "realpolitik". Chief among them was their flaunting flirtation with Marxism-Leninism and the Soviet Union, Cuba, Bulgaria, and East Germany - a flirtation so advanced that one might easily conclude that they were married bedfellows. It is, of course, somewhat easier to be judgmental today about such ideological leanings than it was before 1989, but even Rushdie, in 1987, sensed that Nicaraguans were too naive and too susceptible to the siren song of communist revolution, that they were woefully ignorant about the labor camps and other features of life in the Soviet Block and in Cuba.

I close with one of the anecdotes that make the book worth reading as good journalism. It occurred while Rushdie was visiting a cooperative village in northern Nicaragua, near the border with Honduras and Contra troops. The villagers were fiercely committed to the Sandinistas and fiercely anti-Contra. As Rushdie ate lunch, children were playing cards in a nearby shack. "Their playing-cards were made out of rectangles of paper cut out of an old Uncle Scrooge comic book. * * * Pieces of Huey, Dewey and Louie flew from the rage of the billionaire American duck. While on a radio, I promise, Bruce Springsteen sang `Born in the USA'."