The Last Word

Lancaster, Roger N.

THE LAST WORD Roger N. Lancaster The Festival of Disguises It's late May, and the Yankees are coming," sighed a Nicaraguan grandmother in her mid-thirties. "Of course, we welcome tourism because...

...Oh, they're just the same as the yankees...
...Albert asked Jorge...
...Well, do you threaten to hurt prisoners while interrogating them, or trick them in order to get information out of them...
...In the procession, I was confronted by a Monimbo youth who wore a mask that gave him red hair and blue eyes...
...And the Russians, I do believe, are the very worst...
...Not a cordoba's worth of difference between them...
...Of course not...
...The famous masks of Masaya—faces of peach-complexioned Spaniards with pencil mustaches—signify simultaneously a parody of white power and its appropriation by brown-skinned actors...
...You can see them, between June and August, ambling the streets of Managua, Masaya, Esteli: jeans and sandals, the obligatory backpack, typically a political T-shirt...
...You can tell the truth about our revolution, you can tell your fellow countrymen we want peace...
...Why yes, at times...
...No, that is immoral and against the law...
...Then you are systematically engaging in human-rights violations...
...But what about psychological torture...
...Every year, thousands of "political tourists" and internacionalistas visit Nicaragua: some to join coffee-harvesting brigades, some to assist in the construction of schools and hospitals, some just to wander around the New Nicaragua...
...You North Americans can go back to the United States and tell what you have seen in Nicaragua...
...He proceeded to browbeat Jorge, who had joined the Sandinistas as a clandestine activist in 1978 at the age of eleven...
...When this elicited no visible response from me, they tried other nationalities, as the two mischievously probed for just the right nerve...
...Do you beat them or torture them...
...Like myself, he was wearing a white T-shirt and a small backpack...
...Roger N. Lancaster is a doctoral candidate in social anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley...
...Of course, we welcome tourism because it promotes peace," she quickly added...
...But you can be sure that they are carrying dollars in their pockets," says Maximo, a Sandinista activist...
...They spend more money on one meal at the Hotel Intercontinental than a typical Nicaraguan family spends on food all week...
...Though she accepts the political function of the Yankee tourists, like many Nic-araguans she harbors deep reservations about the veritable invasion of well-intentioned internacionalistas...
...Carnival, then, reverses the usual gaze of colonial and class power: Subject and object, Indian and Spaniard, peasant and landlord, powerless and powerful, the observed and the observer—all exchange places through the ritual of disguise...
...When I reached for my camera to capture this event, he reached for his small, wooden facsimile of an Instamatic to take my picture...
...I was once treated to a louder-than-usual conversation, conducted for my benefit, by two women on the bus to Masaya...
...It's very puzzling...
...What is that...
...The festival has its origins in the colonial period, when the native Monimbo Indians put on the masks of the Spanish gentry and imitated European minuets...
...Do you kill prisoners...
...Oh, they're very bad...
...The two delighted in listing the repulsive habits of various internacionalistas: "The yankees...
...Cochino [piglike...
...During Carnival, "the festival of disguises," participants in Masaya don a variety of masks and costumes in a ritual display of social commentaries...
...Some tourists come not to aid the Sandinistas but to lecture them on human rights...
...Last year, I attended the Carnival at Masaya...
...These internacionalistas wander around dressed like the poorest campesino in Nicaragua...
...Throughout its history, the festival has found new subjects for humor and criticism, corresponding to the new power relations in society...
...Yes, but the Germans...
...And Canadians...
...It seems to me that most North American socialists are very rich...
...Albert, the son of a corporate executive, grew up in the Los Angeles suburbs and was visiting Managua on his summer vacation from Columbia University...
...They have the morals of animals...
...White, blond, and towering over the natives, the political tourist is hard to miss...
...Hippies [a word that has mysteriously slipped into the language in Nicaragua], I wish they'd stay in their own country...
...They never bathe, and you should see the food they eat...
...During the urban insurrections, Jorge was repeatedly arrested by the Somoza regime's Guardia National, and he now serves as a prison guard for contras captured in the fighting...

Vol. 50 • November 1986 • No. 11


 
Developed by
Kanda Sofware
  Kanda Software, Inc.