Nicaragua 1985 (Part 2)

Despite the overwhelming lack of interest in the first set, here are some more photos from Nicaragua in 1985...


Coffee pickers depart Leon for the fields. Reagan's terrorists were targeting coffee plantations as part of an effort to wreck the Nicaraguan economy; coffee was pretty much Nicaragua's only export item, and their best shot at getting hard currency in the country. The pickers were sent off with a big patriotic rally beneath a banner reading something like "We will win the battle of coffee!"

More below the fold...


A whole passel of revolutionary heroes. I had no idea who the martyrs of July 23 1959 were; an explanation is here. Short version: they were student demonstrators killed by Somoza's National Guard.


Leon was the first city to be captured by the Sandinistas, so it saw the fiercest fighting in the revolution. Paying homage to Franco, Somoza had the city bombed. Ruined buildings, walls with bullet holes, and this dead jeep all stood witness to the conflict.


An abandoned guard post near the Costa Rican border. The Nicaraguan border guards told us they were expecting an invasion from Costa Rica any day now, and the Costa Rican border guards said they expected an invasion from Nicaragua.


This mural explains everything.

[That's all, folks]

Nicaragua 1985 (Part 1)

Managua was a donut city. The center was destroyed by the 1970 earthquake, and Somoza decreed that rebuilding be done on the outskirts--on land, that is, owned by the Somoza family. Most of the central city was still empty in 1985, and all the action was in the surrounding suburbs.

More photos below the fold:


This is Rivas, a town near the Costa Rican border where we had our first, and most expensive, meal. At the border they required each visitor to exchange $30 at an imaginary rate of 20 cordobas/dollar. The case de cambio rate was 750 cordobas/dollar, and on the black market you could get double that. So our first meal worked out to maybe $50 because we paid with the money we exchanged at the border, but it was really more like $2.

At dinner, ordering from a lengthy menu, we played out the first of several identical scenes:

Quisiera...el bistec.
No hay.
Bueno. Entonces, quisiera los camarones.
No hay.
Que hay?
Pollo.

The economy was wrecked, the supermarkets had soap and little else, and the restaurants had chicken.

This was a kids' fiesta we happened across in Granada; I think it was Virgin of Guadelupe Day. The kids asked if everyone in America had feet as large as mine (size 13), and of course I said yes.


In a country full of slogans, this was my favorite.


An interior courtyard in Granada. I don't know what this building was or had been.

More pictures in a day or two.

[That's all, folks]