León - Capital of the Revolution

19/08/09 - 23/08/09

From Granada we made our way to León via the capital, Managua, using what seems to be quite a popular mode of transport between the three cities....minivans. It is a lot easier and more comfortable than getting a regular bus and there is not a huge difference in price, the only disadvantage being that the minivans do not leave until they are full. That was not a problem in Granada, but we had to wait almost half an hour in Managua, all the while with people swarming around the van trying to sell us drinks, biscuits, dvds, newspapers and god knows what else!

Arriving in León we headed to "Calle de los Poetas", a hostel we had picked out of the guide book, but unaware that the hostel consisted of only three rooms, we arrived to find that it was fully booked. We got chatting to the owner, Rigo Sampson, whose family came over to Nicaragua from England in the 19th Century. He himself speaks very good English having spent a year living in London. Luckily for us, he knew of a neighbour across the road who also rents rooms and so we had a bed for the next few nights. There we had the chance to meet Richelle, an American girl from Seattle, who had come to León to do a 3-week intensive Spanish course. Richelle, if you get to see this, it was a pleasure to meet you, we hope you enjoyed your time in San Juan del Sur and we hope to see you in Seattle one day :)

León was originally founded in the same year as Granada, 1524, by the very same Francisco Hernández de Cordoba, but a volcanic eruption in 1609 completely destroyed the city and so it was moved to its current location, 40km away. Culturally, it is the most important city in the country, home to several famous poets, including the most famous of all, Ruben Darío, and the site of several universities. León´s importance and advantageous position on Lake Managua even earned the city a period as capital of Nicaragua, until Mangua was named capital in 1852, as a compromise between the eternal rivals León and Granada.

León has twelve churches spread throughout the city, the biggest being the cathedral on the main square which took 113 years to build. It is the biggest cathedral in the whole of Central America and there is a legend which says that this particular cathedral was supposed to be built in Lima, Peru, but somehow the plans got mixed up and so it was built in León instead. Who knows if there is any truth in it, but nonetheless, it is a magnificent building, and the interior is breathtaking. The cathedral also houses the tomb of Ruben Darío, which is guarded by a sorrowful lion. This is meant to represent the sadness of the people of León (Spanish for lion) at the passing of the great poet, who considered León his home and always returned here after his long periods abroad. There is a museum dedicated to Ruben Darío and it is in the very building where he spent his childhood under the care of his aunt and uncle, and where he spent the final months of his life before passing away in 1916 at the age of only 49. The museum is only small but has so much information and several possessions of the poet on display, it was really interesting. Another Nicaraguan poet, Alfonso Cortés, also lived for a time in the same house and went mad there in 1927. His family used to keep him locked in his room because of his mad outbursts and you can still see where he once bent the iron girders at one of the windows in his attempt to 'escape'.

We visited two other museums in León: the Museum of the Revolution and the Museum of Legends and Traditions. The former only consisted of one room with several photos and newspaper clippings, but the man that showed us around knew so much that we ended up spending almost two hours with him. The Revolution took place in 1979 and started in León, hence why León is referred to as the Capital of the Revolution. The Revolution was led by the Sandinistas (followers of the much admired Augusto Cesar Sandino who was assassinated in 1934) and resulted in the removal of the dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle. He was the third and final Somoza to be President of Nicaragua. His father and brother had gone before him, meaning that Nicaragua had been subjected to a Somoza dictatorship for 43 years. In 1979, the country was finally free, although that was by no means the end of it all. The Sandinistas had triumphed but not everyone agreed with them, and so there formed another group known as the Contras (contra-revolutionaries), and fighting between these two groups went on for another decade. The museum even has a few weapons on display that were actually used during the Revolution, including a bazuka!

The Museum of Legends and Traditions is situated in a former prison, which was used by the Somozas during the period from 1921 to 1979. It was known as Prison 21 because of the year in which building was completed. All kinds of prisoners were bought here: petty thieves, political criminals, rapists and murderers, and the prison was split into sections depending on the type of criminal you were. Members of the church were even imprisoned here if they somehow managed to get on the wrong side of the Somozas, but they were at least spared physical torture. The other inmates were tortured six days a week, from Monday to Saturday. On Sundays they had a day off and instead attended mass in the very place where they were usually tortured...ironic or what? The torture methods included having you ear cut off or your nails pulled out. They also used to file the prisoners' teeth with a huge metal file. These different methods of torture are depicted in drawings on the walls throughout the building. It was a truly awful place, even more so because Somoza´s National Guard also used to arrest innocent people and demand money from their family in return for their release. Sadly, several prisoners died as a result of the torture inflicted on them by the guards. Because of the atrocities that occurred here during all those years, in 1979 when Somoza was overthrown and the prison was shut down, it was forbidden for León to ever open another prison. The nearest jail is in Chinandega, about an hour away.

Apart from the Cathedral, we saw several of León´s other churches, including El Calvario, where in February of 1979 five students were shot by the National Guard in the bell tower. In their memory, there are five crosses bearing their names on the wall, where several bullet holes are still visible. We also saw the oldest of León´s churches, called Sutiaba. An indigenous tribe of the same name used to live in the area, and nearby there is an ancient tree called El Tamarindón. (The tree´s fruit is called tamarindo in Spanish (Eng: tamarind) and can be used to make a juice, which we have tried a couple of times.) The tree is more than 600 years old and approximately 400 hundred years ago, the Spanish used this very tree to hang the chief of the Sutiaba tribe, Adiáct. There is a plaque dedicated to him at the foot of the tree.

One morning we decided to visit Chichigalpa, home of the Flor de Caña distillery (the national brand of rum) and a sugar cane plantation, both of which could be visited according to our guide book. Alas no, the plantation appears to be pretty much deserted now, and the train that once took visitors from Chichigalpa to the plantation is no longer in service. We were thinking of getting a cab there, just in case there was a slight possibility of being able to have a look around, but in order to get in, the taxi driver advised us to say that we wanted to go to the hospital and not to the plantation itself. Apparently if we told them that we wanted to see the plantation they would refuse us entry. Needless to say, we didn´t end up going. We didn´t have any luck at the distillery either. A guard at the gate told us that in order to do a tour around the factory we needed a permit from Managua, which was three hours away! We went back to León feeling rather disappointed, but as a consolation, that afternoon, we got to see a free concert at the theatre, which was being held in celebration of 25 years of partnership with the Austrian town of Salzburg. As well as a couple of traditional singers, there was also a modern pop/rock band who we really liked, and there were lots of folklore dancers as well with fantastic costumes who were accompanied by three percussionists, including someone playing the marimba, a very typical instrument in Nicaragua.

After León, our journey would take us to the Carribean coast of Nicaragua to visit the English-speaking Bluefields and Corn Islands. Due to it being such a long journey we were forced to spend a night in Managua, which we had hoped to avoid, due to its reputation of being one of the most dangerous cities in Central America. The only time we ventured out was to the local Ticabus station (only one block from our hotel) to enquire about bus tickets to El Salvador for the following week, and outside the bus station a fairly young guy started talking to us. Not wanting to annoy him we stood talking to him for about ten minutes, listening, smiling and nodding at everything he said. He told us that we shouldn´t be walking around on our own, even during the daytime, and that if we went two blocks to the right, we would most definitely be robbed. It didn´t even matter if we weren´t carrying money, they would take anything they could. He told me that it was especially dangerous for me because of the fact that I´m so white. Apparently to the people of Managua, my white skin represents a dollar sign! He also said that we shouldn´t think that the people here are bad...they are just hungry and desperate and have to fight to survive. Obviously, he made us feel slightly uncomfortable and completely put us off going anywhere else, but in the end we decided to get a taxi to a nearby shopping centre, where we spent a nice afternoon not worrying about the dangers of the city. We went to the cinema to see State of Play with Russell Crowe, which I thoroughly recommend. This was our second trip to the cinema in the last few days as we also went on our first evening in León. That time we saw The Proposal with Sandra Bullock, a typical romcom, but I´d still recommend that one too :) We got the same taxi driver to pick us up again and take us back to the hotel and arranged for him to take us to the bus stop at 4am the following morning. More about that in the next post.