Silvio Sirias

An Open Letter to a Young Writer

2009-07-03T20:27:00.003-05:00

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.
Anais Nin

I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.
Doris Lessing

Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.
Cyril Connolly

For Dominique Wiese

This missive is an apology, of sorts. That’s because, at a crucial moment, when you needed my endorsement, when you needed a vote of confidence, I failed you. But perhaps you didn’t even notice this. In fact, it wasn’t until after we said our farewells that I realized that I had let you down.

Thus, in case you overlooked my lapse, allow me to refresh your memory.

The incident took place the day of your graduation from high school, during the reception that followed. You, your family, and I were chatting, all of us feeling proud of your accomplishments. At some point during our conversation your father expressed how much he liked Words of a Dragon: a collection of the best essays from the Introduction to College Writing course--a collection that, incidentally, included several outstanding pieces that you wrote. Throughout this part of our gathering, I kept deflecting, rather clumsily, your father’s praise for my teaching. After all, I kept insisting, the students wrote those works, not me.

Feeling awkward and hoping to divert attention away from the topic, I turned to you and said, “Tell me, what are you going to major in?”

“I’m thinking about art,” you replied. But then you hesitated for the briefest of moments, looked me in the eyes, smiled, and added, “or maybe I’ll study creative writing.” And I knew that you meant every word of that last statement.

That part of your answer came as a complete surprise, startling me, and instead of rejoicing and offering words of encouragement I stammered something about how some writers are also excellent visual artists, what a wonderful gift this is, and how God did not see fit to grant it to me. Shortly after I was done stuttering, we said our farewells and went our separate ways.

That scene has been haunting me since because I now realize that I should have said, “That’s wonderful. I enjoy your writing, very much, and I have faith that someday you’ll make your mark as a writer.”

But let me try to illustrate why your expressed desire to become a writer so alarmed me. I’ll try to do so through a story I learned while conducting research in preparation for writing Bernardo and the Virgin. As an adolescent, Bernardo Martínez told Father Enrique Mejía Vilchez, the man responsible for ministering to the residents of the village of Cuapa, about his fervent desire to become a priest. In response to Bernardo’s plea for support, Father Mejía Vilchez adamantly refused to endorse the teenager’s ambition, crushing his spirit--at least temporarily.

Although Bernardo first attributed the refusal to the priest’s cantankerous nature (I met Father García Vilchez when he was well-advanced in years, and his legendary ill-temper was, indeed, based on reality), in the years that followed that exchange, a phrase Father García Vilchez said gnawed at Bernardo: “Why do you want to become a priest? Don’t you know that the road to hell is paved with the heads of priests?”

The day came, eventually, when Bernardo understood that the priest’s rejection was not because he lacked faith in Bernardo’s vocation and resolve (although at the time, with Bernardo being illiterate, the cleric knew that the young man had a long, uphill struggle before him), it was because Father Mejía Vilchez was acutely aware from his own experience that the priesthood was a harsh, lonely life of sacrifices that he did not wish upon anyone, let alone upon someone he respected, like Bernardo.

A similar sentiment overwhelmed me the day of your graduation.

My hesitation was never a question of lacking faith in your ability or in your resolve; rather, the long, difficult journey to arrive at the point where I can, still with trepidation, call myself a writer, reared itself, a terrifying specter. All those instances of self-doubt, and the wasted time these provoked, sent a chill straight through me. You see, the sacrifices called for to become a writer are daunting, and many times along the path it seems as if instead of moving forward one is regressing. What’s more, like the priesthood, being a writer is a lonely occupation, with only a handful of people capable of understanding and of offering to help along that journey. And the solitude in which writers work, without validation or pats on the back, invariably lead to moments of despair that become even more dreadful in the face of the editorial rejections that unavoidably plague writers at the most vulnerable stages of their careers.

And yet, in spite of these drawbacks, in spite of these fears, the sacrifices become worthwhile once we feel that we have achieved a satisfying measure of command over the craft.

Thus, well aware of the difficulties that await you, I can say in all honesty that I believe that you have the aptitude and the will to succeed. Your writings, as you know, have impressed me, for several years now. And I’ve been stirred to confidence by the statement you made last school year that you already know what your first novel will be about. Indeed, I believe that you have many tales to tell and, more importantly, that you’ll learn how to tell them well.

For these reasons, I shall now state what I failed to say the last time we spoke: “Walk boldly toward your goal of becoming a writer. I have faith in your desire and in your willingness to work hard to learn the craft; and I pray that someday your words will touch the hearts of many readers.”

Godspeed, then, and may God bless you.

Doing the Blog-Thing Wrong All Along

2009-06-22T16:10:00.001-05:00

With the advent of blogs, while more is being written, the writing’s getting worse. Personally, I am as careful with the text of a blog as I am with the page of a novel.
José Saramago

Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has a purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

I’ve been somewhat neglectful of my blog as of late, but that’s not out of lack of motivation or out of laziness. The truth is that I’ve been short of time because of the convergence of several important events: the conclusion of the 2008-2009 academic year, a demanding stretch for teachers as great amounts of effort are expended to wrap up the year on a high note; the upcoming release of Meet Me Under the Ceiba (September 30), which has obligated me to learn more, and rather quickly, about the business of promoting my work; and the polishing of Harvest of My Gathering: Essays from the Tropics, whose manuscript has begun circulating among publishers. It has been a busy couple of months, indeed.

In trying to learn how to promote my books I’ve visited various websites and blogs that offer sage counsel. One site in particular offered excellent advice on how to write for blogs. But what I read saddened me: it turns out I’ve been doing this wrong for the past five years. The author argues that the attention span of internet readers is minimal, and that in posting more than fifteen lines of text a writer will be left with only a handful of readers—those who are most devoted to the writer or the ones that have plenty of time on their hands.

I agree with this assessment. In fact, I’m one of those readers whose attention will soon drift unless the subject or the writing absolutely grabs me. The article therefore suggests that it is better to make a brief comment about the topic at hand, followed by a link or two to lead interested readers to further information. This way it’s easier to make frequent posts and the writer is guaranteed greater traffic.

Nevertheless, in spite of knowing that the practices preached in the article are true, I can’t turn away from the type of writing I’ve been doing these years. When I started my blog, my hope was to write a collection of essays worthy of compiling in a book. And after polishing the best entries these last eight months, I am proud of the result that is Harvest of My Gathering. There’s a unity and smoothness to the readings that has exceeded my expectations.

What my blog has become since its inception, for me at least, is a sounding-board where I publish what I am thinking at the time, share a few of these entries with readers of The Panama News, and then allow the writings to breathe for a spell in the hope that with further revisions they’ll acquire the wisdom and grace of a fine wine. Although traffic through my blog may remain low, I know that the essays I post here are the best work I am capable of producing at a given moment; and I certainly cannot ask more of myself.

Thus, happy with the outcome, I shall continue violating the guiding principal of blog writing, which is: keep it simple and short. But I break these conventions with the full knowledge that within another five years, if I bestow upon my entries the same passion I gave to those of the first five years, I will have enough material for More Essays from the Tropics.

Participate in the Bernardo and the Virgin Readers' Contest. Details on Facebook.

Preview of an Introduction

2009-05-29T07:20:00.004-05:00

Dear Blog:

I apologize for neglecting you for so long. I realize that when we started our relationship I promised that I would make one entry per week. But you must admit that for nearly five years I have kept that promise, even though there were many instances when I was tempted to take a vacation. Well, five weeks have gone by without me contributing to your growth. But I have a good excuse: I’ve selected the best entries for a manuscript titled Harvest of My Gathering: A Collection of Brief Essays. I’ve been working hard polishing and updating these; I’ve arranged them in an order that makes sense, and then I asked my trusted first editor—my wife, Erinn—to review the result. She believes the book reads very well. I was so thankful to hear this. But then Erinn gave me news that set me back a bit. She said, “You need to write an introduction.” Her words brought forth a mild case of writer’s block—something that I’ve never experienced before. But after tossing many ideas around, I believe I came up with a decent opening for the collection, or so I hope. Please keep in mind that it’s just the introduction. Someday you’ll be able to read the entire book that we’ve written together, and I pray that you’ll approve. In the meantime, I now promise to get back on track with my weekly entries. But so you’ll see that I’ve been busy and not goofing off, here’s the "Introduction" to Harvest of My Gathering: A Collection of Brief Essays.

Love,

Silvio

Introduction

A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in, not out.
Virginia Woolf

The essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything.
Aldous Huxley

I first visited Nicaragua, my parents’ country of origin, when I was a year old. Of that trip, I remember nothing except for a handful of peculiar scents that fused themselves into my olfactory banks. But experiences like this—coupled with growing up in a Los Angeles Latino household—made me believe, as a child, that every family in the world was a mixture of Spanish and English, cheeseburgers and tortillas, rock and roll and boleros, staid colors and gaudy visual displays. In my eyes, then, throughout the first five years of my life, being bicultural seemed the norm.

But I woke up to the harsh reality that I was dwelling on the outer, largely invisible fringes of US society my first day in kindergarten, at Vernon Avenue School. And at this juncture, as a five year old Nicaraguan-American—this was long before hyphenated ethnic identities became the norm—I wanted, more than anything, to become solely “American.” The last thing I sought was to stand out among my Los Angeles schoolmates: I fervently desired to blend in seamlessly into the society for which my teachers were preparing me, even if that came at the expense of my Latino identity.

Throughout the years of my “Americanization,” however, my parents continued visiting Nicaragua, in spite of the huge economic sacrifice this represented for our family. I traveled there twice again—quite an odyssey on the aircrafts and in the Central American airports of that era—at the ages of seven and nine; and, in spite of the brevity of these visits, on both occasions I returned to the States with concrete memories of people, Spanish-language tongue-twisters, foods, places, and fascinating stories. The experiences harvested during these trips took their rightful place in my memory alongside the smells I internalized as a toddler.

And there was one thing, above all others, that I knew, although not rationally, with every fiber of my being—an intuition so overwhelming that it became truth: life in Nicaragua was closer to being real, the country’s history was more palpable, and the culture was easier to grasp and dissect than that of the United States. Because of the affirming immediacy of these childhood impressions, I became very fond of my parents’ homeland.

But that affection was not enough to prevent the feelings of shock and dismay when my parents informed me, shortly after I had turned ten years old, that we were moving to Nicaragua, for good. The mere notion made me feel as if my American heart and identity were being ripped to shreds, thoughtlessly discarded because of my parents’ selfish desire to return to the familiar, to a homeland that nostalgia had rendered as virtually flawless. But for me Los Angeles was home, the center of my universe; California inspired awe, and while attending school I learned to swim rather effortlessly in the diverse cultural waters of the United States. Moreover, although my experience in and knowledge about Central America was limited, I knew two things for certain: the United States looked forward, usually with optimism, but Nicaragua was mired in the past.

Aware, even at that young age, that my sights are normally cast on the brightest spot on the horizon, I abhorred the thought of leaving the only homeland I knew—the most innovative and creative nation on earth, where I saw myself, and most clearly, growing happily into adulthood. In my ten year old mind, Nicaragua represented a retrograde culture where order, discipline, industriousness and efficiency were concepts that no one seemed to understand. And my American upbringing had ingrained these traits in me as the most admirable in any civilized society. Because of this, moving to my parent’s country of birth represented a giant step away from the All-American boy I had worked so diligently to become. Thus, to reword Dylan Thomas, I did not go gentle into the tropics.

Today, however, with the radiant clarity of hindsight, that move has become the most significant milestone of my life.

After only a few months in Central America I began to see great order in what once appeared to be unadulterated bedlam; I saw supreme discipline in the lives of so many Nicaraguans who struggled every day against the tidal wave of poverty to make something of their lives; I witnessed indescribable acts of courage in those who risked everything to speak out against injustice, against a government whose sole purpose was to retain power, regardless of the human cost.

In the midst of poverty so oppressive it would wrench anyone’s heart, I witnessed countless noble, compassionate deeds, often bordering on heroism. Life in Nicaragua, then, both its pleasures and its pains, soon became far more stirring than it ever had been in Los Angeles. And to incorporate the experiences of Nicaraguans into my personal history, all I needed was to keep my five senses on alert. What’s more, as an “American” teenager living in the underdeveloped world, I learned that both the beauty and the ugliness of humankind are always in close proximity, at less than an arm’s length.

My Nicaraguan adolescence is what led me to become a writer. What I experienced on the streets, what I heard in casual conversations, what I read in the papers throughout those years filled my mind with wondrous, and often tear-jerking, stories—and I became duty-bound to one day tell as many of them as I could.

Immersed in a world that revealed something new and often magical every day (Gabriel García Márquez, by his own admission, hasn’t invented a thing; he considers himself merely a chronicler of tropical experiences), within less than a year I had become fully Nicaraguan, and enthusiastically so. My identity as an American went dormant—although on occasion it would resurface to give me a slightly skewed framework, compared to those of my peers, for viewing world events. The boy I had been in Los Angeles faded away as I learned to think and feel like the people around me. And as I grew increasingly happy to live in Central America, a new identity, that of a Nicaraguan, took hold, and firmly.

But after living eight years on this narrow strip of land that connects a continent, I was obliged to leave. The options for continuing my education in Nicaragua were too confining; thus, my only choice became to return to my place of birth, live in the company of relatives, and attend college. But the move back to the United States carried a hefty price: I plunged into a severe identity crisis. For decades I was unable to bring my two cultural beings into harmonious co-existence—one identity always sought to dominate over the other—and regardless of how hard I tried to craft both halves of me into a peaceful whole, the differences seemed irreconcilable. But, in spite of this strain, or perhaps because of it, something worthwhile emerged from the quest to understand the hybrid I am: this collection of essays.

When I committed to one entry per week in my blog, I allowed myself the frivolous luxury of writing about my personal fixation of the moment. Nearly five years later, after sorting through these micro-obsessions, I can observe, and clearly, an ongoing exploration of the recurring themes that constitute my search to find my place in the world.

The first section of this harvest, “Hopes and Smiles: The Panama Writings,” consists of essays that seek to understand the culture and politics of my recently-acquired third homeland: Panama, where I’ve resided since 2002. The second section, “A Worthwhile Journey: The Nicaragua Writings,” are pieces that attempt to sort out the convoluted world of Nicaraguan political affairs, a seemingly inescapable quagmire of power-mongering and greed, regardless of where the leadership resides on the spectrum. Section three, “Writings Without Borders,” are a gathering of entries that probe political and cultural events throughout the rest of the world, including the United States, that have moved me to comment upon them. The fourth section, “Mirrors Reflecting Back: On Favorite Readings,” are brief annotations about books that have contributed to shaping my identity. And the fifth section, “Love Made Visible: On Writing, Teaching, and Other Diversions,” are my most personal essays—they explore events from my past, the things I most love doing, and other experiences that have played a role in turning me into a writer.

Regardless of the topic of the essay, Harvest of My Gathering is, in its soul, my attempt to reconcile the adolescent who radically shifted his cultural identity with the person I am today. And although the journey has at times brought its share of confusion and pain, every step has been worthwhile because the experience of gaining insight into the cultures that have molded me has unquestionably informed the way this Nicaraguan-American acts, thinks, and writes.

Panamá, May 2009

Bernardo and the Virgin: Making the Rounds

2009-04-22T13:27:00.004-05:00

Recently, I discovered an online news article from the University of Costa Rica—dated April 7, 2008—that reports on a lecture that was centered on the novels The Tattooed Soldier, by Hector Tovar, and Bernardo and the Virgin. Needless to say, I was flattered and thrilled to learn of the attention.

The piece, written in Spanish, is titled “Central American Trans-imaginary Expressed in U.S. Literature,” and the author is Katzy O’neal Coto. The article begins by stating that Central American customs, traditions, language, and ways of being and thinking are still alive among the millions of immigrants who reside in the United States and are struggling to become part of a new multicultural reality.

Dr. Yajaira Padilla, Assistant Professor at the University of Kansas, who gave the talk, stated that both novels form part of a construct that allows members of the Central American diaspora to identify with an imaginary collective that exists beyond the borders of their homelands. These texts, she said, give readers a glimpse into the complex process of how immigrants define themselves as Central American or Central American-American, not only in relation to the multicultural U.S. imaginary, but also as part of what could be referred to as the Central American trans-imaginary.

The article goes on to say that the massive immigration of the 70s and 80s, due to the civil wars, lead Central Americans to establish economic, familial, cultural, and other such networks in their new homelands. Also, as a result of their displacement immigrants are constantly obligated to redefine their identities, both as a collective and as individuals.

Dr. Padilla posits that The Tattooed Soldier and Bernardo and the Virgin explore many of the questions that are raised by the evolution and transformation of Central American identities, particularly in those communities that have moved to the United States.

About Bernardo, she states that the novel provides an innovative look into the revolutionary and migratory histories of Nicaragua, incorporating the viewpoints of women and children of immigrants. Dr. Padilla goes on to explain that the novel is based on the true story of Bernardo Martinez, to whom the Virgin Mary appeared, as well as the stories of other fictional characters, among them: Sandinistas, an American priest, journalists, and Nicaraguans who reside in the States. Divided into three parts—covering the years of the Somoza dictatorship (1930-1979), the revolution (1979-1990), and the post-war years—the novel tells the story of what made Nicaragua what it is today.

The article concludes with the news that Dr. Padilla is studying the literary production of U.S. writers of Central-American heritage in an effort to help define Central American-American Literature, a branch of U.S. Literature that has yet to be recognized.

Click here to read the original.

* * * *

After learning about Dr. Padilla’s interest in Bernardo, I sent her an email expressing my thanks. In a most kind response, Dr. Padilla informed me that she is currently writing an article, for publication, on the novel. What’s more, she will be including Bernardo and the Virgin in the course on U.S. Latino and Latina Literature that she’s teaching next fall.

I can’t express how gratifying it has been to learn that a group of students will be reading and discussing my firstborn novel, come fall semester, in the University of Kansas.

Publicity Copy for Meet Me Under the Ceiba

2009-04-15T07:05:00.003-05:00

To review the publisher's publicity copy—better known as catalog copy—of one’s forthcoming book can be a bittersweet moment: sweet because of the excitement of learning with what words the publisher intends to market the work, and bitter because, on rare occasions, a writer discovers that the publisher is out of synch with one's work. Because of this, I always approach this moment with a little trepidation.

As the release of Meet Me Under the Ceiba approaches, I was thrilled after reading the catalog copy for the novel. Marina Tristan, Assistant Director of Arte Publico Press, wrote the descriptor. She did a magnificent job—better than I could’ve ever done—capturing the spirit of the novel.

I’d like to share with you the draft of the copy:

Meet Me under the Ceiba
Silvio Sirias
September 30, 2009, 256 pages, $15.95
Trade Paperback
ISBN-10: 1-55885-592-0, ISBN-13: 978-1-55885-592-2

This affectionate portrayal of a small Nicaraguan town
reveals humanity in all its beauty and ugliness

“I’m not afraid of that old man,” Adela once told her niece. But everyone in the small town of La Curva, Nicaragua, knew that the wealthy land owner, Don Roque Ramírez, wanted Adela Rugama dead. And on Christmas Day, Adela disappeared. It was two months before her murdered body was found.

An American professor of Nicaraguan descent spending the summer in his parents’ homeland learns of Adela’s murder and vows to unravel the threads of the mystery. He begins the painstaking process of interviewing the townspeople, and it quickly becomes apparent that Adela—a hard-working campesina who never learned to read and write—and Don Roque had one thing in common: the beautiful Ixelia Cruz. The love of Adela’s life, Ixelia was one of Don Roque’s many possessions until Adela lured her away.

The interviews with Adela’s family, neighbors, and former lovers shed light on the circumstances of her death and reveal the lively community left reeling by her brutal murder, including: Adela’s older sister Mariela and her four children, who spent Christmas morning with Adela, excitedly unwrapping the gifts their beloved aunt brought them that fateful day; her neighbor and friend, Lizbeth Hodgson, the beautiful mulata who early in their relationship rejected Adela’s passionate advances; Padre Uriel, who did not welcome Adela to mass because she loved women (though he has no qualms about his lengthy affair with a married woman); Adela’s former lover Gloria, the town’s midwife, who is forever destined to beg her charges to name their newborn daughters Adela.

Through stories and gossip that expose jealousies, scandals, and misfortunes, Sirias lovingly portrays the community of La Curva, Nicaragua, in all its evil and goodness. The winner of the Chicano / Latino Literary Prize, this spellbinding novel captures the essence of a world rarely seen in American literature.

Praise for the work of Silvio Sirias:

"The details of Bernardo's Nicaragua are wholly entertaining and enticing, with images of Catholic mysticism juxtaposed against the particulars of life in the dusty village of Cuapa. Sirias' prose is lovely."—San Antonio Express-News on Bernardo and the Virgin

SILVIO SIRIAS is the author of a novel, Bernardo and the Virgin (Northwestern University Press, 2007), and he has written and edited several books on Latino/a literature, including Julia Alvarez: A Critical Companion (Greenwood Press, 2001) and Conversations with Rudolfo Anaya (University Press of Mississippi, 1998). He received his doctorate in Spanish from the University of Arizona and worked as a professor of Spanish and U.S. Latino and Latina literature for several years before returning to live in Nicaragua in 1999. He currently lives in Panama.

Although the information regarding Meet Me Under the Ceiba has yet to be uploaded onto the website, if you wish to learn more about the publisher, Arte Publico Press, click here.

El laberinto del fauno: When Impossible Monsters Triumph Over History

2009-04-07T16:44:00.001-05:00

I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars.
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths”

In the infinite lie of that dream . . . .
Julio Cortázar, “The Night Face-Up”

Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of arts and the origins of marvels.
Francisco de Goya

I am responsible only to God and to History.
Francisco Franco

El laberinto del fauno—translated into English as “Pan’s Labyrinth”—has become one of those few films that grows on me with each viewing as I keep uncovering new layers of meaning.

To dismiss this movie as a children’s fable constitutes a refusal to consider the serious issues this tale explores: the nature of reason, of reality, of time, of freedom, of duty, of obsessions, and of the human need to believe that in the future something better awaits us.

Guillermo del Toro’s masterful fantasy, released in 2006, is set in post-civil war Spain, during the viciously repressive aftermath of a brutal conflict in which over half-a-million Spaniards lost their lives and at a time when the rest of the world lived in the gloom of World War II. The heroine of the story is an eleven year old girl named Ofelia—superbly played by Ivana Barquero. Her mother, a widow—played by Ariadna Gil—has remarried; and Ofelia’s new stepfather—played by Sergi López—is the sadistic Captain Vidal: a fascist who believes in the moral superiority of the victors, the Falangist Party, and in the necessity of cleansing Spain of all Republican sympathizers.

Captain Vidal has ordered his family to leave the city and move to an ancient millhouse from where he commands a garrison of soldiers that has been charged with annihilating a small column of socialist rebels resisting Francisco Franco’s reign through guerrilla warfare.

Throughout her short but turbulent life, the heroine has found refuge in fairy tales. In the film’s present, Ofelia’s avid reading of her treasured books has become an especially important sanctuary because she intuitively knows that her stepfather is capable of acts of extreme cruelty.

Shortly after the heroine arrives at the grim millhouse, a fairy lures her into a labyrinth that descends into an underground universe, well below the historical world of Spain. There, a faun—a mythical deity, half man, half goat—informs the girl that she is a long-lost princess, but that if she wishes to return to her kingdom she must successfully complete three tasks that will determine whether or not she has become fully human during the centuries her spirit had been away. If she has become human, she cannot return to her kingdom.

It is precisely at this point that Ofelia’s fantasy world and the historical world of Captain Vidal become destined to collide. Guillermo del Toro, who in addition to directing the film also wrote the script, doesn’t give viewers many opportunities to catch their breath—the pace of his storytelling is relentless and both worlds, those of the labyrinth and of history, are grim and inhabited by terrifying creatures.

Time plays an essential factor for both lead characters, but particularly for Captain Vidal who kills his perceived enemies without much thought or remorse because he is obsessed with his father’s heroic death on the battlefield. Time is so important for Captain Vidal, in fact, that he’s unnaturally attached to the pocket timepiece he inherited from his father. In spite of Captain Vidal’s best efforts to live up to his father’s legacy—who held the rank of general—he fears the clock’s ticking and suspects that he doesn't have enough time left to emerge from under the paternal shadow. The Captain’s frustration at coming up short manifests itself in self-loathing, which he eases through physically torturing and killing his enemies.

With death and destruction as the primary method for resolving existential conflicts, the world of history would easily overwhelm Ofelia’s magical universe if Guillermo del Toro hadn’t resorted to the legacy of two Latin American literary giants: the Argentinians Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar.

(The movie director understands, and perfectly, movie-making’s indebtedness to literature: when Ariadna Gil expressed that she was having trouble understanding the mother’s absolute dependence on her cruel husband, Del Toro selected several passages from Dickens’s novels to help the actor come to terms with the role).

From Borges, of course, Del Toro borrows the device of the labyrinth—the leitmotif with which the Argentinian writer is most closely associated. In Borges’s literary construct, the labyrinth is our world, our universe, through which we wander and are constantly obligated to make choices, with every choice altering the course of our lives. The fairy guides Ofelia through the maze, but ultimately the girl will have to make a difficult decision, and although in the labyrinth she can momentarily hide from her nemesis, Captain Vidal, the maze cannot protect the heroine from the confrontation that awaits her at the final intersection where the historical world and the fantasy world at last collide. (It is indicative of Del Toro’s fondness for Borges that the book the faun gives the heroine to help her make decisions is titled “El libro de las encrucijadas”: The Book of the Crossroads.) According to Borges, when we’re confronted with situations similar to that of the girl/princess, the choices we make define us and move us one step closer—for better or for worse—to our destinies.

Borges’s writings often place characters at the center of the universe—as Ofelia eventually is—where time and space ultimately collapse, leaving readers to reflect upon the multiple significances that a character’s decisions have on the resolution of an enigma.

But to rely on Borges’s labyrinth alone could not carry Guillermo del Toro’s fantasy against the massive weight of the historical world that Captain Vidal represents. To make Ofelia’s visions utterly believable, Guillermo del Toro appropriates the obsessions that Julio Cortázar instills in the psyche of his characters. In this Argentine’s stories, a character’s fixations and visions become so compelling that the fantastic events surrounding them are rendered far more believable than everyday reality. In “La noche boca arriba” (The Night Face-Up), the reality of captive of the Aztecs who’s about to be sacrificed is far more credible than the thin dreams of his other self: a modern man who experienced a motorcycle accident; or, as happens in “Las babas del Diablo” (The Devil’s Droolings), it becomes easier to believe that a photographer has unknowingly surprised the devil by taking his picture than it is to believe in the character's insanity.

The difference between the Argentinian writers is that Borges wants his readers to ponder the endless possibilities his stories intelligently pose, while Cortázar enjoys making the reader question which of two worlds is the real one.

Guillermo del Toro, in borrowing from the storytelling legacies of both writers, asks his viewers to enter the labyrinth with Ofelia, judge her choices, and in the end determine which of the outcomes is reality: Is she a human dreaming of being a princess? Or is she a princess, ready to return to her kingdom?

As witnesses to the confrontation at the final crossroads of El laberinto del fauno, Guillermo del Toro, most appropriately, leaves the choice up to us.

My Fan Club

2009-03-29T13:28:00.002-05:00

I have a mind to join a club and beat you over the head with it.
Groucho Marx

I never dreamed that someday I’d have my own fan club.

To my amazement, I have one on Facebook. (Actually, I have two; but more on the second one later.)

And now that I have a fan club of my own, I find the experience a little bewildering. Two questions, in particular, plague me: What expectations do my “fans” have of me? And, will I be able to live up to these?

Yet I can deal with these concerns because any person who says that he or she wouldn’t love to have a fan club is more than likely lying.

Still, now that I have one, I feel undeserving. If I were a writer who has touched the hearts of thousands of readers I’d understand. But I haven’t done this—at least not yet.

The question then becomes, if I’m not exactly a well-recognized writer, how did the Silvio Sirias Fan Club get started?

A couple of years ago, my wife, Erinn, thought it would be a quaint idea to start a Bernardo and the Virgin Fan Club. She created a page on Facebook and invited our friends to join. Before long, close to forty—all of them friends of ours—had signed up.

I thought the Bernardo and the Virgin Fan Club was a cute idea, and since the club was devoted to the book, the attention wasn’t on me; or so I convinced myself. (This is the second fan club I referred to earlier.)

Lamentably, the Bernardo and the Virgin Fan Club has just sat there, static after the initial reactions, and waiting for someone (Is it supposed to be me?), to breathe life into it.

A year passed since the club’s creation when I received an email from our “foster” daughter, Isabel Montoya. (For more about Erinn's and my relationship with Isabel read "A Blessing for Isabel.") In the message, she wrote that she had created the Silvio Sirias Fan Club, also on Facebook. Isabel said that she believed that such a club would be more appropriate than the one devoted to my first novel because she knew the publication Meet Me Under the Ceiba was right around the corner. She added that she hoped I enjoyed the gift and that she had named me the administrator so I could manage the group myself.

I thanked Isabel, not really comfortable with the idea of managing my own Fan Club, and thought: Oh, well, it was a nice gesture. My plan became to let the group sit for a while—at least until Isabel had forgotten she had created it—and allow it then to die a natural death; at that point I’d delete it from Facebook. On the first day two persons joined: Isabel’s mother and my wife. That should be about all the members, I concluded; and I placed the Silvio Sirias Fan Club out of my mind.

That was about three months ago. Last week, a ninth-grader said to me, “I saw your Fan Club on Facebook, Dr. Sirias, and I joined.”

I smiled and thanked him. The following day, another student said the same thing, almost word for word.

That evening, while at home, I checked my Fan Club site. To my astonishment, fifty-seven fans had joined. (And as I write this there are now seventy-four fans, including a few persons I don’t know. I realize this is nothing compared to the 300,000 fans the Victoria’s Secret Fan Club has, but I’m happy.)

The club I had never suspected would take off has suddenly come to life. Gamuts of emotions are running through me because of the Silvio Sirias Fan Club—mostly confusion and apprehension—but also joy at being recognized as a . . . as a . . . as a what?

As a writer?

As a teacher? (Are the students who signed up trying to curry favor?)

As both?

The writer in me asks, “Have most of the Fan Club members read Bernardo and the Virgin?”

Will they rush out and purchase a copy of Meet Me Under the Ceiba the very day it’s released (September 30).

And, what am I going to do for my Fan Club?

To this last question, the teacher in me answers: “We will soon have a quiz on Bernardo and the Virgin. It will be in the form of a contest. The first person to answer the question correctly will win a prize.”

Stay tuned, details will be forthcoming within the next week for members of the Bernardo and the Virgin (click on name to visit site) and the Silvio Sirias Fan Clubs on Facebook.

The Pleasure of Guiding Blossoming Writers

2009-03-17T10:27:00.003-05:00

I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten—happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.
Brenda Ueland

I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.
Doris Lessing

For the second consecutive year I’ve taught a course titled Introduction to College Writing, here at Balboa Academy, under the auspices of the University of San Diego. The students—mostly seniors, along with a handful of juniors—who successfully complete the class will receive three units of college credits that they can transfer to their university of choice.

As a teacher, last year was a rewarding experience, and based on what I learned I was able to, from the onset of the school year, develop a writing curriculum that challenges the students, encouraging them to venture forth into the world as writers who seek to have readers see the world as they do. I’ve been blessed with a group of talented, hard-working youngsters that has accepted every writing challenge I’ve set before them.

Because the results have been so enjoyable for me to read—not to mention enlightening—I feel the need to share these with a larger audience. I want to thank Eric Jackson, publisher of The Panama News, for making this possible. The students’ essays, which have been appearing regularly in the Opinion section since the September 22, 2008 issue, have been well received. I’d now like to take this opportunity to invite readers to revisit the notable writings these young authors have produced.

The first class assignment was to write a piece that would give readers insight into the type of person the author is. Alexandra Kula shared with us the essay “I’m Peter Pan,” in which she, as a youth who has already experienced life in several countries, describes how Panama has become home, and that she wishes she didn’t have to grow up so she could stay here a little longer.

Dominique Wiese, who has Zonian roots, writes about awakening to her mother’s heritage and coming to fully appreciate this part of herself in the piece “The Colombian in Me.”

When asked to write about something that would give readers insight into the type of person she is, Katalina Durbin responded with “The Eyes of a True Angel”—a moving piece about her summer volunteer experience at Panama’s Children’s Hospital.

Another student of Zonian stock, Andrew Bivin, wrote about how a close friend, by way of example, has taught him to seize the moment as opposed to planning every detail of his life in “Yes, No, Maybe So.”

In “What Made the Difference,” Erica Mutoh shares the vital lesson she learned about the importance of having an accepting attitude when she was confronted with a major change in her life.

The second class assignment was for students to narrate a personal experience. Spencer Jackson, in “A Walk in the Dark,” tells us about the terrifying experience of being stranded one night in the Netherlands.

In the piece, “My Pet Rock,” David Madinger, with considerable humor, shares his experience of being a rare item: a teenager afflicted with a kidney stone.

Ashley Kula, when asked to write about a personal experience, composed “Moving On,” a tale about her highly successful transition into life in Panama.

“California, Here We Come” tells of Michelle Klimasch’s discovery of and newfound passion for the great state.

Juan Diego de Obarrio narrates a harrowing tragedy he witnessed, years ago, at Panama’s Avalon Water Park in the piece “Slide #9.”

Students were also asked to write an essay about another person. Sarah Beck produced the touching piece “You Cook. I’ll be the Granny.”

And when asked to write an essay about culture, Eisha Abdel-Ghany opted to take her readers on a stroll through the streets of Cairo in “Walk this Way: or, Walk like an Egyptian.”

What has been most rewarding for me, as the instructor who has cheered them on through the act of writing, is that these essays are just a small sample of the excellent work every single student has produced. And, yes, there are many more student writings in the pipeline waiting their turn to appear in The Panama News.

Spanish or English: A Matter of Choice? (Conclusion)

2009-03-12T14:28:00.003-05:00

When it comes to languages, a shift in preference has invariably meant a significant shift in my identity. And during this last stage of my journey, I’ve been blessed to have my wife, Erinn, at my side. She’s a fully bilingual person who’s acutely aware of the important role that Spanish and English play in my life.

In fact, it was Erinn who encouraged me to leave the United States for Central America. (Most of our friends thought it was sheer madness for me to give up a tenured teaching position at a university for the uncertainty of ever being able to earn a decent living again). But it is in this part of the world, first in Nicaragua, and now in Panama, that I’ve become one with the two beings—the English and Spanish-speaking ones—that dwell within me.

The ten years since we moved here have passed by swiftly. There have been many difficult moments—economically, at first, and, surprisingly, with my being able to readjust to a culture in which I once felt completely at home. But today I can honestly say that my life has never felt more balanced, more centered.

More importantly, thanks to this move I’ve fulfilled my dream of becoming a published novelist—in the United States and in English. The stories that I choose to write about are here for the taking: all I need to do is to keep my eyes and ears open. In fact, tales that touch my soul seem to be in infinite supply and I now lament, every day, not having enough years left on this earth to tell them all.

Living in Central America inspires the writer within me. Moreover, I get to retrieve these stores that were lived in Spanish and render them in English, just like Julia Alvarez, one of my literary heroes, does in In the Time of the Butterflies and in In the Name of Salomé. Thus, when I write a novel I work almost equally in both languages: I conduct the research—the most fun part of writing a book—in Spanish, and I write—the more technical aspect—in English.

After all these reminiscences, I now find myself back to the starting point of this piece, the question a ninth-grade student asked me: “Dr. Sirias, which language do you prefer, English or Spanish?”

Well, to that student I’d now simply answer: "It depends on what leg of the journey I was on, but in the present stage, I prefer to live in Spanish, and write in English."

Spanish or English: A Matter of Choice? (Part IX)

2009-03-06T10:58:00.003-05:00

In the classroom, my enthusiasm for teaching literature, in Spanish, remained unabated, for I had never really stopped loving the language and the culture. But outside of the classroom I had become a US Latino and Latina literature fiend. I read voraciously these writers that were, culturally-speaking, like me—that is, they also lived on the hyphen of split identity, such as being Mexican-American, Cuban-American, Puerto Rican-American, and so forth—and were writing in English.

Learning about these authors and their works was akin getting a second doctorate. But I didn’t mind the hard labor in the least because I was studying writers who told stories that closely resembled those I had unsuccessfully tried to tell years earlier. Yet, at the time, I didn’t consider them as models: I had given the dream of being a novelist my best shot, and I was now happy to try to become a scholar whose critical writings were respected within the academic community.

After I had become familiar with the existing studies in the field, I noticed a void: the need to prepare a volume of interviews with notable novelists. I convinced a colleague from the English Department at Appalachian State, Bruce Dick, to join me on the project. Together we spoke to Cuban-Americans writers such as Virgil Suárez, Roberto Fernández, Gustavo Pérez-Firmat, Achy Obejas, and Cristina García; the Mexican-Americans Rudolfo Anaya (Bruce and I would go on to compile and edit Conversations with Rudolfo Anaya—the first collection of interviews ever published that were focused on a single US Latino author), Benjamín Alire-Sáenz, Demetria Martínez, Carla Trujillo, and Kathleen Alcalá; the Dominican-American Julia Alvarez; and the Salvadoran-American Marcos Villatoro.

Although the project was producing wondrous results, I burned out along the way. (The interviews, however, provided me with an excellent education regarding how these writers approach the craft. Also, Bruce took the idea in another direction and published an excellent collection of interviews: A Poet’s Truth: Conversations with Latino/Latina Poets.) Something inside of me—having nothing to do with the work at hand—snapped. To put it simply: I had become terribly unhappy living in North Carolina.

The first couple of years I resided in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains were blissful. I fell in love with the region, the people, and the university. I found many similarities between the local culture and those of Latin America: devotion to family, community, religion, and an openness and friendliness toward outsiders, like me. But with the passage of time, as the newness wore off, I started to feel isolated, utterly alone.

Among the 500 full-time professors at Appalachian State University, I was one of only two faculty members of Latin American descent. And my colleague taught in the sciences. Thus, it felt as if I alone was shouldering the burden of representing an entire culture on a campus of 13,000 students. I was, by default, the expert on “being” Latin American. As such, I was constantly invited to chat with classes and groups—something I truly enjoyed—and over the course of four years I made well over one hundred public presentations.

The problem was that people seemed to only want to hear about the left side of my mixed-heritage, the Nicaraguan side, and few appeared to care what I had to say about the entire hyphenated—Nicaraguan-American—equation. And I, for the first time in my life, fully appreciated the hyphen: it was the point where my two heritages, the Nicaraguan and the American, connected and interacted with one another to produce the identity with which I finally felt comfortable. I was completely at home straddling my cultures and their languages; and this posture, creatively-speaking, was bringing forth the best in me. And I, as a teacher, wanted to share this new understanding with my students. But getting the university to approve my teaching courses on US Latino and Latina literature became a bureaucratic maze that would take years to unravel. And impatience started to get the best of me.

The low point of my isolation came during a meeting of the Appalachian Humanities Council, of which I was the director. In that capacity I had brought several of the writers Bruce and I had interviewed to give talks on campus. While the Council members discussed which speakers we would invite the following year, a professor who was well-regarded on campus said, “I don’t think we need to invite any more Latino writers; they’ve already been well represented in our program.”

It was at that precise moment—after I had done all that I could to bring what I thought was the best of the Hispanic-American hyphenated experiences to the Blue Ridge Mountains—that I started to think about leaving.

Spanish or English: A Matter of Choice? (Part VIII)

2009-02-22T14:01:00.001-05:00

This time around, with a set of reasonable expectations, I passed the doctoral exams without experiencing the slightest trauma.

A whirlwind of events immediately followed. First, I wrote my dissertation on Don Quijote de la Mancha, in English—for now I was far too excited about my development as a writer in this language to desist. I had conducted the necessary research three years earlier and saved the information in orderly files. And since I had plenty of time to dwell on the topic, the three-hundred page treatise seemed to write itself.

But in those three years away from Spanish something inside of me had changed. No longer was I the wide-eyed, idealistic student who had loved the language unconditionally. The experience of the failed exams had destroyed my innocence. Also, during that time I had discovered a new passion: English—and my heart now wanted to continue along this path. What’s more, having a doctorate in Spanish no longer meant the completion of a dream: it had become something akin to having fulfilled the stipulations of a business contract so I would be allowed to enter the teaching profession at the next level of play.

That step came when I accepted an offer to join the Department of Foreign Languages at Appalachian State University, in Boone, North Carolina. This meant moving to the east coast, a world away from everything I had ever known. But the lure of living on the cusp of the mystical Blue Ridge Mountains was too strong to resist—to this day I’ve never lived anywhere so beautiful.

My first years at Appalachian I was happy teaching Spanish. But as I began to probe my heart, searching for the area of research and publication I wanted to pursue, a place where I could carve out a small niche for myself as a scholar, I failed to find one. Having attended a couple of conferences devoted to Don Quijote, I knew that I didn’t want to pursue this path for I thought the Cervantistas a stuffy crowd. And the dilemma became worse after I scanned the entire horizon of Spanish and Spanish-American literature and found nothing that ignited a fire within me.

I was adrift, without an academic area, after many years of preparation, that I wanted to call home. I started to fear—and for someone who teaches college this is an enormous phobia—that my passion for studying had completely burned out, rendered a pile of ashes, and that I was destined to become someone who would never distinguish himself in his chosen field.

Submerged in this stagnant pool of scholarly ennui, I felt trapped, caught in a limbo where the meaning of one’s life work is absent. This changed, and abruptly, however, the day I strolled into a bookstore on Main Street, in Boone. Browsing through the stacks, I came across Oscar Hijuelos’s The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. I knew the novel, written by a Cuban-American, had won the Pulitzer Prize, so I took a chance and bought it. Reading that book changed my life as well as the way I looked at fiction written in the English.

When I wrote my earlier novels, I yearned for models—writers with a similar background to my own who straddled the line between cultures and languages and who saw the world in a way similar as I did, but at the time I could find none. I had now read such a writer.

(What I still find mystifying is that the characters in The Mambo Kings are eerily familiar, as if I had lived among them during my Los Angeles childhood. This was the same feeling I had upon first reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, in which Gabriel García Márquez managed to capture the essence of the people who populated my Nicaraguan adolescence.)

The discovery of Hijuelos and his work reignited a fire within my imagination, and that blaze started to roar like a furnace in the dead of an Appalachian winter. But I first approached the topic of US Latino and Latina Literature—written in English—from a scholarly perspective, not as a creator, for I firmly believed that my dream of becoming a novelist had been nothing more than a foolish catharsis against the disappointment of having failed the exams. Regardless, I suddenly possessed an academic obsession, an intellectual and emotional fervor I was willing to die for.

But this new found passion also divided me, and often times painfully. I was expected to teach Spanish, exclusively; but now the new calling of my soul, coupled with the knowledge I was accumulating at an astonishingly rapid rate and that I desperately wanted to share with the world, was pushing me even further into English.

Spanish or English: A Matter of Choice? (Part VII)

2009-02-18T16:05:00.001-05:00

Reeling in pain from the thought that five years of arduous work and total dedication to learning everything I could about Spanish-language literature had been for nothing, I sought refuge in English.

Now free for the first time in ages to read books of my choosing, I started to devour the works of American and British novelists to catch up on the English-language masterpieces I felt I had been missing.

But, more significantly, I found immense solace in writing: my first novel, in English. The idea for the story had come to me a couple of months before the mishap, in what felt like a blinding flash, while I was showering. It was a clear vision, playing in my head like the clearest of films, of a young Nicaraguan who, from the pitcher’s mound, threw a blistering fastball to an American batter. The setting was Nicaragua, 1933, during the final months of the three-decade old U.S. Marine occupation.

I knew the story ended with that pitch, and I became ardently devoted to uncovering everything that preceded the vision. What particularly excited me about writing this novel was the possibility of painting on a canvas so panoramic that I would be able to incorporate a good portion of the history of Nicaragua during the 20th century. (This is something that, I believe, I accomplished years later in Bernardo and the Virgin.)

Writing this book greatly eased the bitter disappointment of having failed my doctoral exams. I found fiction an addicting elixir, capable of lifting the drab clouds of reality that surround our daily lives. What’s more, the magic of creation was taking place in English, and this vastly increased my interest in, as well as my love for, the language.

I completed the novel, polished it as best as I could, and sent the manuscript to a few publishers, absolutely sure that they would jump for joy over having discovered this new and vastly talented writer who was in command of the English language yet wrote from a Latino perspective.

Quite the opposite happened.

I received a series of impersonal form-letters; but among them was one that helped me understand that I still needed to learn a lot about the craft. Structure, characterization, point of view, pacing, and purposeful revision meant little to me. Realizing this, I abandoned hope of publishing this book and set forth on a new venture: a novel, detailing the entire life, from infancy to old age, of the legendary Zorro. (I wrote this fifteen years before Isabel Allende published her Zorro.)

In writing this novel, I was able to conduct considerably more research than with the first one. (In fact, a large part of the problem with my first effort was that I was writing about Nicaragua after having been away for more than ten years, and I’ve since learned that to bring a setting to life the details of the place must be fresh in a writer’s mind.) Over the course of my investigations I became quite an expert in the Spanish colonization of California and the years of Mexican rule.

But as I wrote the rough draft, the subject somehow shifted. Now the story, in addition to being about Zorro, became about the rise and fall of the Californios, and to reflect the importance of the dual protagonists would require a major overhaul of the manuscript, something I felt incapable of performing. Because of this, I shelved the rough draft—never to touch it again—but, still madly in love with writing in English, I immediately embarked on a third novel.

This new effort was influenced by the large amount of children’s literature I was reading at the time. The work was a cross between a fairy tale and a fantasy, but I didn’t ever discover the story and when I was about a hundred pages into the manuscript, the characters held a meeting in my head and told me, in no uncertain terms, that although they were most interesting, I had them performing absolutely boring tasks; and since they were right, I abandoned the work.

Throughout this time I continued working in education, at the University of Arizona, in a non-teaching position. Through my job I was able to keep abreast of developments in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Since I had left, three years earlier, a new chairperson, Dr. Charles (“Chuck”) Tatum—one of the most remarkable persons I’ve ever met—had managed the miracle, and in an amazingly short period of time, of bringing stability to the department. He was well acquainted with my case and one day he contacted me, saying, “Are you ready to return to finish your doctorate? We need to right the wrong that was done to you.”

Knowing that Chuck was a person who could be completely trusted, I accepted, excited about the idea of finishing what I had come to believe was impossible; and almost at the snap of my fingers I once again found myself immersed in Spanish.

Spanish or English: A Matter of Choice? (Part VI)

2009-02-12T09:55:00.003-05:00

During five years of graduate school, virtually everything I wrote was in Spanish. But these writings were academic—esoteric essays that could only interest, and remotely at that, hardcore researchers on obscure topics of Spanish-language literature. Still, at the time I believed that to produce articles and, perhaps someday, a book or two on literary criticism, was my destiny—as well as my only recourse—as a writer. What’s more, I fully embraced the notion of a life devoted to teaching and scholarship in the areas of Spanish and Spanish-American literature.

But then, one of those luminous moments in a writer's development took place. I was well into my fifth year of graduate work, and shortly before I was scheduled to take my doctoral exams, when I wrote a piece on Juan Boscán, a Catalan poet of the Spanish Renaissance, for one of my classes. The professor believed that with some revision the essay would be worthy of publication; and I, caught on the academic treadmill and in a hurry to add muscle to my C.V., began to explore the possibility further. Upon conducting the suggested research, however, I concluded that I needed to write the essay all over again, from scratch and with a different focus.

When I sat down before the computer to begin writing the new version, in Spanish, I did so without an outline—which is something highly unusual for me. I stared at the blinking cursor, for what seemed like ages, unable to conjure up a single word. Then, without thinking, I typed the name of Juan Boscán’s wife—Ana Girón de Rebolledo: the noblewoman who played a key role in introducing the works of Garcilaso de la Vega, the first truly great poet of the Spanish language, to the world.

I stared at her name, my first sentence, still unable to continue further. At last, and suddenly, as if in a trance, my fingers started moving rapidly along the keyboard and, virtually without being aware of writing, I finished the essay in a single sitting. The experience felt absolutely magical, a genuine visit from the muses.

More interestingly, however, I wrote the article in English. Ultimately, the piece was so flawless that when it was accepted for publication, the editors of the journal didn’t even ask me to change a comma. And for the first time ever, in spite of years practice in writing and editing several newsletters in English, I felt as if I had been in total command when writing in that language, and the feeling was exhilarating.

But while basking in the glow of that triumph, believing that I was now truly able to express myself with equal strength, in writing, in either language, something unexpected happened that altered the way I felt toward Spanish.

For five long years I had devoted myself, body and soul, to being the best student I could possibly be. I had done everything my professors had ever asked of me, and I had managed to excel, in their estimation, in several of my classes. That’s why, when I failed to pass the doctoral exams, I felt as if my entire world had collapsed—years of trying to build the foundations of my knowledge on solid ground suddenly came tumbling down like a house of cards.

Pain and outrage consumed me because—and I say this with the objectivity that comes from more than twenty-years distance—I had been set up to fail by one individual: the Graduate Advisor at the time, a sadistic person who wanted to send a message to all graduate students, through me, that we were fair game and none of us lived up to his expectations.

(At the time the Department of the Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Arizona was utterly dysfunctional—the problems were so pronounced that we made the cover of The Chronicle of Higher Education as “The Nation’s Most Conflictive Department”—and the injustice done to me was perceived on campus as just another small complaint in a mile-long list of faculty and student grievances.)

I was advised to stay in the department for another year and then retake the examination; but angered over the unfairness of it all, I walked away from the doctoral program and took out my frustration on Spanish, asking myself, irrationally, I now admit, “How could the language I had loved so faithfully since adolescence betray me in such a heartless fashion?”

Spanish or English: A Matter of Choice? (Part V)

2009-02-02T12:29:00.002-05:00

My first two years back in Los Angeles I sought linguistic refuge among my Spanish-speaking friends. But, at the same time, English was working its way back to the forefront of my brain in steady waves that crashed upon the rapidly expanding shoreline of my first language. To help in the process, when I was away from the safety zone of my group, I eavesdropped on English-speakers as discreetly as possible to learn the art of casual conversation. At home, I’d spend hours watching movies from the 30s, 40s, and 50s—which explains my fascination with actors of this era—to bridge the gap between the way previous generations spoke and the talk I heard on the streets. And I although I didn’t realize it a the time, this is when, slowly—as opposed to the sudden rush with which Spanish swept me off my feet—I started falling in love with English.

Indeed, my love affair with English seemed to take forever to develop when compared to the six-months it took me to fall head over heels for Spanish. Two seemingly endless years went by before I gained enough confidence to take risks in the English-speaking world. (And since I had spent my adolescence in Nicaragua, the stage in human learning when we soak up idiomatic expressions, there was a huge gap in my knowledge, one that took me fifteen years to fill. Most sayings bewildered me when I first heard them. After all, why would anyone or anything be “after my own heart?” Or, what’s an albatross, and what would it be doing around anyone’s neck? Or, for that matter, why would anyone put a monkey on their back? Or, how could a circle be vicious? Expressions like these puzzled and yet fascinated me for a decade and a half when, at last, I had finally heard and assimilated most of them.)

And during my first two years in college I successfully avoided taking classes that required writing. The sting of my first English professor’s pronouncement, that my writing was unreadable, still hurt. But my dodging this bullet came to an abrupt halt when, in order to continue in my major, Business Management, I was required to take a course on Business Writing. When I walked into the room for that first class meeting I was absolutely terrified, expecting the teacher to point toward the door and cast me out.

But the instructor—I can still remember her name, Mrs. Violet Brown—approached teaching like a cheerleader, celebrating every inch her students gained on the playing field.

And with respect to building my confidence as a writer, Mrs. Brown was exactly the type of mentor I needed at that moment of my life. I always enjoyed writing, regardless of the language, but the comments the Freshman English instructor made two years earlier convinced me that I should confine every thought I chose to put on paper to Spanish. Mrs. Brown, however, beginning with the very first assignment, was delighted with what I wrote for the class, and she presented any criticism as gentle suggestions.

We started the semester composing memos. Then we graduated to letters—at first letters with simple requests, such as making a purchase, and ended with letters of complaint or in response to a complaint: a writing task that required tact and a great deal of imagination. We then learned how to produce Public Service Announcements: calls for community action designed to be read over the radio at a normal pace and in exactly thirty seconds: a wonderful exercise in learning how to write economically. Then Mrs. Brown taught us how to produce a House Organ—a newsletter designed to inform employees of a company about useful or fun information related to their jobs. (The craft of putting together a newsletter served me well in several non-teaching jobs that I had following my graduation from college.) And she ended the course teaching us how to write a research paper. It was through Mrs. Brown that I learned the importance of tone, which is paramount if a writer wants to win readers over.

The teacher praised my progress throughout the semester, and she was the first person to mention that I had a nice “voice” on paper. To this day, I credit Mrs. Brown with giving me confidence. Her class, by far—especially considering that I have never taken a single class in “creative writing”—was the most helpful course I ever took on my way to becoming a writer. The debt I owe her is immeasurable, and thanks to her I was able to complete college because I never avoided another course that required writing. In fact, Mrs. Brown taught me that putting together a research paper can actually be a fun and challenging experience—an attitude that was essential in helping me survive graduate school.

In the years that followed graduation, through the jobs I had, I became so entrenched in the English-speaking world that I no longer hesitated to speak or write for an audience. And yet, Spanish remained the language of my soul as, in my mind, it represented the sounds of poetry and passion.

Four years after having completed my bachelor’s degree, I met another great influence in my life, Dr. José Elgorriaga, Chairperson of the Modern Languages Department of California State University in Fresno. Inspired by what he did for a living, I decided to quit a well-paying job as an insurance underwriter to go to graduate school and study Spanish-language literature full-time. And with that rather sudden turn, I switched language once again—for the next six years almost everything I wrote, and most of what I would speak, would be in Spanish.

Spanish or English: A Matter of Choice? (Part IV)

2009-01-14T17:26:00.001-05:00

When I arrived in Los Angeles, I was an alien; and the sensation of not belonging could, at times, be overwhelming. In the nearly eight years I had been living in Nicaragua, my identity had shifted, completely. No longer did I think of myself as an American, nor was English my preferred language. Culturally and linguistic, I had become part of vastly different world; and although the landscape of Los Angeles was still familiar to me—saving me from the daunting task of learning the intricate weaving of the sprawl to situate myself in that urban chaos—the things people said and did were quite foreign to me. I was now a stranger in the land of my birth.

Since I had barely spoken English the entire time I lived in Nicaragua—with the exception of four summer breaks when my parents sent me to Los Angeles so I could “remember”—the language had taken refuge in the nether regions of my brain, in a faraway place that made its retrieval difficult. I could understand what folks said to me, as well as anything I heard on radio or saw on television, but when it came to talking I had considerable trouble producing the language.

The experience of speaking to, say, a postal clerk, and to have that person stare back at me with a puzzled expression, unable to have discerned what I had said, was extremely disconcerting. In my mind, I had expressed myself in perfectly clear terms, but judging by people’s reactions, I eventually became convinced that I that had somehow learned gibberish. Two long years would pass by before I regained enough confidence to speak freely in English.

And when it came to writing, matters were worse.

Only days after my arrival, I enrolled in Los Angeles City College. Among the classes I was advised to take was Freshman English. A week after handing in our first essay, the English instructor called me out of class. As kindly as he could, he said, “I read your composition, and I’m afraid you don’t belong in this class. In fact, your writing skills are so poor I suggest you explore options other than college.”

Moments such as this one can scar even the hardiest among us, and the professor’s comment riddled me with self-doubt for years regarding my ability to write in English. But I refused to follow his advice; I stayed in college, but for as long as I could I avoided classes that required much writing.

Fortunately, I found a sanctuary on campus where I knew I would be safe until I got my bearings: I hung around with students who were also from Latin America. At once they became my brethren, my source of support. I found great comfort in being among them, as they saw the world largely as I did. And it was then that I learned that culture and language are shared havens, where humans can be themselves while also combating the feeling of being totally alone. What’s more, through my friendship with them, I was able to continue writing in Spanish, publishing my work in the newsletter of the Latin American Student Association and, through this, affectionately become known as “El Poeta.”

The cafeteria was our gathering place, and in between classes I went there to seek comfort in the loud Spanish chatter as we shared the central dream and hope of our lives: to someday find our place in the world. But for all I had in common with them, our situations, with regard to language, were reversed, simply because, while they were struggling to learn English, I was doing my best to remember.

Spanish or English: A Matter of Choice? (Part III)

2009-01-06T15:48:00.002-05:00

My first serious attempts at creative writing—feverish and feeble poems of adolescence that, thankfully, were lost ages ago—were in Spanish. Although inauspicious, those verses—inspired by the works of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer and Pablo Neruda—were my entry, as a writer, into the world of literature. I was so in love with Spanish—as well as thrilled over my command of the language—that for several years I happily filled notebooks with these first attempts at finding my niche.

But on the horizon of this idyllic existence, a dark cloud approached (at least, in my eyes, it was a harbinger of drastic change): graduation from high school. I faced a daunting decision that could alter my life, and irretrievably so: whether to remain in Nicaragua, or return to Los Angeles, my birthplace, to attend college. To study in the States was my parents’ preference; they understood the value and quality of a U.S. education. The problem was that I wanted to stay in Nicaragua; I loved living there and I had assimilated into the language and culture to such an extent that I now identified myself as Nicaraguan, rather than American. After seven years I now belonged to this world, to this culture, as well as to Spanish, and I fully realized that to leave would break my heart, perhaps even beyond my capacity to endure the pain (or so I honestly believed at the time).

My rational side, nevertheless, agreed with my parents. I had experienced being a student in both countries, and I was acutely aware that the educational resources and options in the United States were, in comparison, unlimited. In Nicaragua there was only one university I would consider attending—the Jesuit run Universidad Centroamericana. But the offerings of this institution were minimal next those of any California university. My limited options in Nicaragua, in essence, made the decision for me, although that didn’t make it easy: I had to follow my intellect, rather than my heart.

In life some farewells are excruciating, and the ones I made as I left Nicaragua are among the most painful. And that flight from Managua to Los Angeles—the one I believed was taking me away forever from Spanish—was, without a doubt, the saddest one of my existence.

Spanish or English: A Matter of Choice? (Part II)

2008-12-24T16:01:00.004-05:00

Without seeking the notoriety, I became the center of attention at my new school—the Colegio Salesiano, in Granada, Nicaragua. Out of a population of four hundred students, I was the only one who didn't speak Spanish like a native. In fact, my command of the language was so atrocious that during recess any outsider would be able to discern my location: I was the one in the middle of a roving circle of adolescent boys that fired questions at me and then laughed uproariously at my convoluted answers.

The fame was certainly not of the kind one seeks voluntarily.

After a week or so of merciless teasing, I started to dread going to school. The harsh and often cruel jokes that my Spanish elicited began to weigh my spirit down. Fortunately, my fifth-grade teacher, Señor Frank Arana, was most understanding of my plight as his only "foreign" student, allowing me to make mistakes he would never tolerate in the rest of my classmates. Señor Arana seemed to have complete faith in my ability to catch up, and this belief encouraged me to work hard to master the language as quickly as possible.

The key players in this quest proved to be my new extended family. In addition to my parents and two sisters, seven other relatives—my maternal grandmother, two unmarried great aunts, my mother's sister, and her husband and daughter—shared the same roof. We lived in a marvelously large colonial home that had plenty of room for everyone. With three generations to play and interact with in my free time—and exclusively in Spanish—my acquisition of the language was placed on an accelerated track.

Particularly vital during this transition stage were my great-aunts—Chintita and Hildita, as they preferred their nieces and nephews to call them. Brimming with wit and good humor, they turned Spanish into an adventure—a game in which I learned to gauge the effect my choice of words and phrasing had on people and of how this, in turn, affected the way I was perceived. My great-aunts also taught me how to turn the tables on those who teased me, and before long my responses to their obnoxious questions were making others laugh at the interrogators, rather than at me. And to my great relief, once I ceased being an easy target, the game ceased to be fun for my tormentors.

Thus, thanks to my great-aunts' coaching and my desire, once again, to blend in—as well as wanting to please Señor Arana—within six months of my arrival to Nicaragua I was speaking Spanish like a native.

From that point on, Spanish became my joy, my public and private treasure. I began to absorb the language with every pore of my being, and I assimilated into Nicaraguan culture to such an extent that before the conclusion of my first year there, the students who once laughed at me forgot that I had once been foreigner, an exotic type of "gringo" who looked exactly like them, as opposed to having blond hair and blue eyes. (In that era, before the emergence of ethnic minorities in the United States, all gringos were supposed to look like Brad Pitt.) Moreover, to my great satisfaction and pride, at the conclusion of eighth grade I received the award for top student in the literature class. I had competed against the very students who three years earlier had teased me mercilessly for my awkwardness of their native language and I was now outperforming them. That accomplishment made me fall completely in love with Spanish.

As a result, my identity shifted once again, in the opposite direction. I now lived in what once had been an alien world with both feet planted firmly on the ground; and I was absolutely loving every minute of the experience of moving away from my "Americaness" toward fully embracing my Nicaraguan heritage.

Spanish or English: A Matter of Choice? (Part I)

2008-12-15T17:37:00.004-05:00

If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.
Noam Chomsky

The limits of my language means the limits of my world.
Ludwig Wittgenstein

An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which a person faces and uses his experience.
James Baldwin

(The question that prompted this essay has been dogging me for weeks. At first I believed I could provide a short, simple answer. That has not been the case, however. To keep from making this piece overly long, and because I haven't yet finished it, I will post "Spanish or English?" in several parts.)

The question came without forewarning, and in Spanish: “Dr. Sirias, what language do you prefer? English or Spanish?”

The eyes of every adolescent in that ninth-grade Spanish-language literature classroom were on me, eager to hear my reply. I fumbled through my answer, trying in earnest to please the questioner, but I soon found myself lost in a maze of recollections, trying to grasp the key moments of my life with regard to language. Mercifully, before long I noticed the students’ gazes glazing over. Those are looks I usually dread, but on this day I welcomed them. My unsteady and rather incoherent reply had lost their interest. Besides, something I said along the way steered the discussion in another direction of far greater interest to ninth graders.

The awkward moment was forgotten, but for days afterward the question continued to nag me, and while it turned in my head it elicited other questions:

What was, in fact, my preferred language?

Did I choose that language, or did circumstances choose it for me?

The answers, at least in my case—and I suspect it’s the same with most bilingual people—is not that simple.

Growing up in Los Angeles, the first five years of my life were equal parts Spanish and English. At the time my mother was learning English, so I had no option but to communicate with her in Spanish. Also, my paternal grandmother, who lived nearby, never mastered English, so Spanish was the language in which I related to her. What’s more, my parents’ closest relatives and friends preferred Spanish. Thus, Spanish was the language I associated with family, as well as with feeling safe and loved.

Yet English reigned in the world beyond this intimate circle, and through my fully bilingual father, neighborhood friends, cousins, radio, and television, I acquired this language as well. I can’t say that I remember having to work at becoming bilingual; rather, it seems that with childlike ease I had made both languages part of me.

But this peaceful linguistic co-existence changed abruptly my first day in kindergarten. Almost overnight, the need to communicate effectively in Spanish ceased. English became the language of new friends, of pleasing teachers, of reading and, soon to follow, writing. And it wasn’t a matter of teachers forcing me to abandon the language of home—although they certainly failed to mention that it would benefit me to become competent in Spanish—but what happened was that my identity shifted radically, and I wanted, more than anything, to fit in seamlessly with my English-speaking classmates.

Before long I was code-switching at home, in conversations with my mother. “Mamá, have you seen my almohada?” I’d asked when I couldn’t find my favorite pillow. Or, “Mamá, quiero un sandwich de peanut butter y jelly.” But my newfound talent for mixing languages didn’t impress her. In fact, she became exasperated with what she saw as sheer laziness, of my lack of the intellectual discipline necessary to be in command of her native language. The conflict came to a head when, having code-switched once too often, my mother said to me, “Stop that! I’d prefer you speak to me only in English rather than hearing you speak that way.”

I still recall that as a liberating day.

I had been freed of the chains Spanish had started to represent, not because I didn’t like the language, but because my most important relationships were now in English, and with few opportunities to practice, using Spanish became work in which I had to perform mental calisthenics to find the right words, the correct verb tenses, and the proper syntax. My formal instruction in language was now exclusively in English and the Spanish voices that once swarmed inside of my head became muted, if not silent. After my mother reprimanded me, I gladly renounced Spanish as well—but little could I foresee the turn of events my life would take in only a matter of years.

Still, I was happy to convert to monolingualism—knowing only one language represented a lot less work. Of course I understood just about everything people said in Spanish, but to speak the language became increasingly difficult each passing day. Moreover, in the late 1950s and early 1960s there were few opportunities to practice outside of the home. Although we still have quite a way to go, in comparison to today, the United States was absolutely intolerant of any language other than English being used in public.

Since language has always played an important role in my life, I absorbed every word and nuance of English with relish. The narrative of my life was now being written almost entirely in that language, with the concession of a few words of Spanish sprinkled in to remind me of the culture of home. But the world I wanted to conquer, to excel in, spoke English: the language I now associated with becoming a successful “American.”

But then, without warning, when I had just turned eleven, my parents announced that we were moving to Nicaragua, the land of their birth. My father had received a job offer that would free him from working in a factory and my mother, who was experiencing health problems, wanted to live close to her family. Overnight, I had been ripped away from the solid footing and emotional comfort of English. Once in Nicaragua, I was placed in a monolingual, all-boys, Catholic school. And if I wished to avoid being the object of ridicule—my difficulties in Spanish rendered me entertainment-fodder for my new classmates—for the first time in my life I had to work, and work hard and fast, to learn a language.

The Virgin Mary: Once Again at the Crux of the Nicaraguan Divide

2008-12-02T19:22:00.001-05:00

El presidente de la República, Daniel Ortega, invitó a los funcionarios de todas las instancias del gobierno a celebrar con entusiasmo y fervor religioso las festividades en honor a la Inmaculada Concepción de María.
(The president of the Republic, Daniel Ortega, invited functionaries from all branches of government to celebrate with enthusiasm and religious fervor the festivities in honor of the Immaculate Conception of Mary).
A Message on El Pueblo Presidente, Daniel Ortega’s official website.

Beginning in August of this year, supporters of Daniel Ortega’s presidency began to hold vigils in several of Managua’s traffic roundabouts to “pray against hate”—an official Danielista slogan. In mid-November, a few days after the municipal elections, large images of the Virgin Mary, in her guise as the Immaculate Conception, appeared mysteriously, overnight, on the two roundabouts where the vigils were most commonly held and where, during the recent civil disturbances, Sandinistas congregated to wave black and red flags—the party colors.

Although no organization or government agency officially claims responsibility for the Virgins’ sudden appearance—the images were placed on concrete pedestals and bolted down with reinforced steel bars—virtually every press report says that it was the work of Sandinistas, and the party has yet to issue a denial of this assertion.

The opposition—who profess to be the “legitimate” Catholics—have denounced the placing of the statues in the roundabouts as a cynical move on the part of the Sandinistas—the manipulation of a sacred Catholic symbol for political purposes.

And then tensions spilled over when, under the cover of night, persons unknown splashed one of the images with red paint, the color of the Liberal Party, the Sandinistas’ most noted opposition. According to reports in El Nuevo Diario the effect was dramatic: the Virgin looked as if she had uncontrollably shed buckets of blood red tears. An anonymous group soon removed the paint; but that same night someone took a sledge-hammer to the statue and pounded away until the Virgin’s face was completely destroyed and the image had been knocked off the concrete pedestal.

The Nicaraguan Council of Catholic Bishops has asked the government to remove the images to avoid further desecration of a religious symbol that’s important to Nicaraguan Catholics. As of yet, the request has been ignored.

I’ve been watching these events with both concern and fascination. The issue of the apparition of the Virgin Mary in the Chontales town of Cuapa—an event fully accepted by the Nicaraguan Catholic Church—constitutes the central conflict of my novel Bernardo and the Virgin. After Mary appeared to Bernardo Martínez, the former tailor and volunteer sacristan shared his visions and, as a result, he unwittingly placed himself in the center of a political storm—a vortex so harrowing that the seer eventually had to take refuge for several years in a seminary. And throughout the rest of the country belief in or rejection of Bernardo’s vision became the litmus test of whether a person was against or for the Sandinistas and their Revolution.

Nicaraguans, then, have walked this path before. Several priests who have served in various Central American nations have assured me that Nicaragua is the most Marian nation in the region. That is, the people’s devotion to the Virgin is palpable to the point where at least one priest confessed that he was baffled—and even a little concerned—by the Nicaraguans’ love for Mary because, in his eyes at least, it made devotion to her son, Jesus, seem secondary. In fact, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception—largely celebrated on the night of December 7, the eve of the actual commemoration—outranks Christmas Day in importance, hence the Sandinistas’ call for government functionaries to celebrate the day with “enthusiasm and religious fervor.”

Once again, the Virgin Mary is at the heart of a political tempest, gazing down upon a fully divided Nicaragua. What I find baffling is that the Sandinistas have now embraced her when in the 80s they did everything within their power to censor the news of her appearance and to discredit Bernardo Martínez completely. Now, the questions that keep coming to mind are: what do Daniel Ortega’s followers have to gain by appropriating Mary? Do they, since their rejection of the apparition in Cuapa proved disastrous in the 80s, wish to cut off the opposition before dissidents rally around Nicaragua’s devotion to Mary? What exactly is Daniel’s strategy?

The Sandinistas’ move appears to be a certain blunder, a feeble attempt by Daniel Ortega and his followers to co-op the figure of Mary before she, once again, like in the 80s, galvanizes the opposition. But above all, the Sandinistas’ push to pass as devout followers of this religious figure, who’s central to their compatriot’s spiritual belief system, is so transparent, so insincere—because faith cannot be falsified for long—that it’s, without a doubt, destined to backfire and fail.

An Open Letter to a Young Nicaraguan

2008-11-23T18:07:00.002-05:00

For Sandra Mariela Peña

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts . . . perhaps the fear of a loss of power.
John Steinbeck

Man's nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been known to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature.
Mohandas Gandhi

Faith has to do with things that are not seen and hope with things that are not at hand.
Saint Thomas Aquinas

Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.
Aristotle

Today you’ve made me realize how blessed I am to have several countries I can call my own. Being so fortunate allows me to look away when something painful is occurring in one of my homelands, and find solace in the good things that are taking place in another. Thus, whenever the United States, Nicaragua, or Panama experience painful events that have been inflicted by the worst traits of human nature, I take respite in the positive that’s alive in another of my countries. This blessing certainly helps me fight off despair and often allows me to see light in the darkness.

Of my three homelands, Nicaragua is, by far, the one from which I’ve most often had to avert my eyes. We’ve been unable to learn from the suffering we’ve inflicted upon each other for the sake of gaining and retaining power. In Latin America we’ve become the quintessential example of the danger inherent in surrendering to caudillos: warlords, dictators, and strongmen who possess just enough charisma to make vague promises of future populist reforms in order to gain the sympathy, at least at the outset, of the working class. Such men have been the plague of our nation throughout the last three centuries. And Daniel Ortega, as the world can clearly see today, is no exception.

What makes matters seem grimmer for those, like you, who reside in Nicaragua is that the twenty-first century brand of caudillismo—as practiced by Ortega’s new mentor, Hugo Chávez—has emboldened the Sandinista leader, allowing him to believe that by hiding under the banner of the elected leader of a sovereign developing nation he can govern as he wishes, like a spoiled child with a new toy, without scrutiny or criticism. The manner in which Ortega orchestrated the theft of the recent of the municipal elections—and, to all appearances, gotten away with the dastardly act—can lead those who dream of a better Nicaragua to despair, to have little hope of a just and fair future.

You may believe, at present, that the world will soon forget recent events and allow Daniel Ortega to get away with his electoral crime. You may also believe that he is now free to move toward becoming our nation’s next dictator.

This, I assure you, will not happen. The world has changed, and Ortega and his allies have failed to realize this. They underestimate, to their great detriment, the power that young, intelligent, educated people—just like you—possess. You have the means to tell your stories, to keep the world outside your borders informed of the truth, to not allow us to forget.

During the 2001 Nicaraguan election campaign, Daniel Ortega, who lost that race, came to San Marcos, the town where I was living, to give a speech. What I heard that day, as he spoke in the central park before a largely unresponsive crowd of 500, convinced me that he is a relic of the past. For more than twenty minutes he lectured—and boringly—about the virtues of the World Wide Web. What’s more, he promised that if he won the election every Nicaraguan home would be connected to the internet. (I guess he didn’t realize that people would first have to buy computers, which the Nicaraguan working class certainly can’t afford.) The more Ortega spoke, the more obvious it became that he was largely ignorant about the cyber-world. Cynically, however, he took advantage of his public’s greater ignorance. But what I realized that day was that Daniel was afraid of the ability people have to use these instruments of mass communication, as he continues to be afraid of that power today.

But what Daniel Ortega fears most is to become irrelevant again (and if it were not because Nicaraguans became fed up with the idiocy of the opposition, he would continue to be irrelevant). He misses the limelight of the days of yore, when he was the leader of a highly romanticized revolution that many in the world adored. He even appeared on the Donahue Show (the Oprah Show of its time), and some of us still remember the scandal of the $3,000.00 pair of glasses he wore at the taping while many in Nicaragua went hungry.

His mistake, then, in these municipal elections is that he succumbed to his fear of being forgotten.

Believe me, this gross miscalculation will cost Ortega dearly—the entire world witnessed what he did, and as a result he took a big step toward becoming irrelevant once again. And the days of the caudillos are numbered: people want change, and not posturing—of this they are already growing tired.

Daniel Ortega and his outmoded allies have started their journey toward the sunset. The Sandinista Party is sure to lose the next presidential elections. And you, I promise, will be rid of him for good.

But that’s when your greater challenge begins. The youth of Nicaragua are easy prey for the merchants of despair. The world saw the bat-toting, stone-throwing, mortar-launching gang members who under the banner of the Sandinista Party intimidated those protesting the electoral fraud. This is the battle that you, and others like you, need to win. The education of Nicaragua’s youth is the key to our nation’s future: an education free of political or religious indoctrination; an education that will make us a better people.

The time has come for young Nicaraguans to learn to place the common good far above the cult of personality.

Although this task is monumental, I have faith that you, and those like you who love Nicaragua and are ready to place the fruits of your schooling at its service, will start leading the rest of us there.

The Herald of a Coming Dictatorship: Nicaragua’s Municipal Elections

2008-11-16T14:40:00.002-05:00

Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.
Thomas Hobbes

Democracy will be overthrown with the tools of democracy.
Adolph Hitler

The spirit of democracy is not a mechanical thing to be adjusted by abolition of forms. It requires change of heart.
Mohandas Gandhi

Barack Obama’s victory gave the world a sterling example of the merits inherent in the democratic process when it approximates perfection. The consensus and community building of the democrat’s campaign were remarkable—a lesson for politicians everywhere. Today few can question that when elections are honest, creative, and open, humankind is better for it. That, in large part, is why much of the world rejoiced upon learning the results of the elections and wished the United States well as it enters an uncharted era with hope and enthusiasm.

Yet only a few days after Obama’s resounding victory, in a dastardly plot Daniel Ortega hatched with the help of his cronies—a stratagem that went largely unnoticed because of the riveting US electoral year—democracy suffered a disheartening defeat in Nicaragua’s municipal elections.

The blatant fraud that took place on Sunday, November 9, started taking shape months ago. The first sign for alarm appeared in May of this year, when the members of the Sandinista-controlled Consejo Supremo Electoral—the institution charged with safeguarding the legitimacy of elections—canceled the participation of the Movimiento Renovador Sandinista and the Partido Conservador, claiming that they had failed to meet the deadline to submit their plans for internal restructuring (a claim both parties still maintain was false). With this move, Daniel Ortega and his associates eliminated the two political parties most likely to draw away the votes of potential Sandinista sympathizers.

Then, when José Miguel Insulza, Secretary General of the Organization of American States, publicly expressed his concern over the measure, Ortega countered in a speech replete with passionate, nationalistic rhetoric that outside interference in Nicaraguan affairs would not be tolerated. He went on to suggest that international electoral monitoring organizations, such as the well-respected Carter Center (which has supervised every Nicaraguan election since 1990, including the one Daniel Ortega won two years ago), would not be allowed to observe the balloting. And only a week before votes were scheduled to be cast, Rosa Marina Zelaya, former president of Nicaragua’s Electoral Council, expressed that it was “lamentable and distressing” that the current Council had failed to accredit reputable international observers to verify the results.

In light of these events, then, the chaos and violence that followed the announcement of the landslide Sandinista victories in the municipal elections, including the much disputed mayoral race in Managua, is not surprising. And at present, Ortega’s “turbas”—gangs of unschooled adolescents armed with baseball bats, stones, and under the supervision of Sandinista elders—are roaming the streets of many Nicaraguan communities intimidating the opposition. These swarming harbingers of fear have been Daniel Ortega’s most effective response to dissension since the early 1980s—the height of the Sandinista Revolution.

Within the Sandinista party—of which Daniel and his wife, Rosario Murillo, are the undisputed rulers—democracy long ago ceased to exist. One only needs to heed the words of internationally respected Nicaraguan writers—such as Sergio Ramírez, Gioconda Belli, and Ernesto Cardenal, among others—all former Sandinista stalwarts, who for years have been trying to alert the world that under Daniel Ortega’s reign democracy in Nicaragua is only a few heartbeats away from its demise.

But as the world celebrated democracy at its best following Barack Obama’s election, the abuses taking place in Nicaragua have gone largely unnoticed. With the exception of a few European nations that are withholding financial aid to Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega's maneuvers to remain in power far longer than the current constitution allows have gone uncontested in the international arena.

In the early 1980’s, when the Sandinista Revolution enjoyed great support throughout the world, the former Comandante of the Revolution said in an interview: “We (Nicaraguans) grew up in a situation where we didn't know the meaning of freedom or justice, and therefore we didn't know a thing about democracy.” At the time his pronouncement seemed harmless—the quaint thought of a young, perhaps even innocent, leader of an impoverished and long-suffering nation that was in the process of reinventing itself. Today, however, Ortega fully understands how the democratic process works, and aware that his approval rating among his people is abysmal, he has opted to take a page out of the Third Reich’s playbook and use the tools of democracy to bring about its downfall in Nicaragua.

Balbina Herrera’s Head-Start

2008-11-10T10:58:00.003-05:00

The first lesson is this: take it from me, every vote counts.
Al Gore

Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.
Aristotle

It’s difficult to overlook the power this continent’s youth has exercised in recent presidential elections. Much is being said and written about the advantage Barack Obama had over John McCain with regard to his remarkable ability to capture the youth vote—an advantage that paid off handsomely in a landslide victory.

Courting young voters also paid off two years ago for Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega. His campaign was designed to appeal to a significantly large portion of the electorate—Nicaragua’s voting age is sixteen—who were infants, or yet to be born, when Violeta Chamorro’s 1990 victory brought the Sandinista Revolution to an end.

For Nicaragua’s youth, who had scant memories of what life was like during that era, the stories their elders told them about Ortega’s previous reign seemed more akin to fables about the Big Bad Wolf; and the harsh national economic realities, coupled with the blatant corruption of Arnoldo Aleman’s government, made Daniel’s return actually seem desirable. Thus, thanks to young voters, the leader of the Sandinista Party, in a three-way race, obtained 37% of the required 35% of the ballots to barely win the election. (Ironically, many of the youth who voted the former Comandante back into power have now become his most vocal critics.)

In the Republic of Panama, Balbina Herrera, presidential candidate for the ruling party, the Partido Revolucionario Democratico (PRD), is directing the heart of her campaign to the nation’s younger voters. Throughout Panama City, a series of large ads and billboards supporting Herrera’s candidacy have suddenly sprung up, and seemingly everywhere. What’s interesting to note is that the ads are not the traditional candidate mug-shot. Instead, attractive children, teenagers, and young adults smile blissfully—often in a models’ poses—while the legends of the announcements proclaim that their lives will have far greater educational and employment opportunities with Balbina as president. In one ad, the candidate stands up front and center while at her side and behind her are a couple of dozen beaming faces, all of voting age and not one over twenty-five.

Thirty percent of Panama’s electorate is under the age of twenty-five. What’s more, the ads promising better education include children of elementary school age, a clear indication that Balbina is also reaching out to young parents. In sum, then, she’s aggressively going after the thirty-five and under vote, which constitutes close to fifty percent of Panama’s voters.

Balbina’s “De Corazón”—From the Heart—campaign motif is counting on the certainty that the youth are quick to hope, and hope is what she offers in the highly attractive ads: ads that contain no traces of her once-close association with General Manuel Antonio Noriega, Panama’s former dictator. The campaign’s publicity looks single-mindedly toward the future. Still, subtle hints of Latin America’s historical paternalism are in evidence: ask what the government will do for you, and you shall receive. But in offering to help every Panamanian achieve his or her dreams, Balbina makes the campaign not about herself, but about the desire for a better life of the common voters.

Ricardo Martinelli, of Cambio Democratico, and Juan Carlos Varela, of the Panameñista Party—the two opposition candidates of significance—are doggedly sticking to the traditional mug-shot ads. Ricardo Martinelli’s face, in particular, is on large billboards near every Super 99—the large chain of supermarkets he owns—and many Panamanians are beginning to express their annoyance of having to stare at the unimaginative billboard-sized photograph of his face for another five months.

Clearly, Martinelli’s and Varela’s campaigns are lagging far behind Balbina Herrera’s—both in imagination and in effectively targeting the crucial segment of the youth vote. And as often happens in elections, unless they come up with equally effective ads, and within the next few weeks, the upcoming Panamanian presidential election will essentially be over as they will not be able to catch up to Balbina Herrera’s formidable head-start.

A Purist of His Trade: Anastacio Moreno, Cutarra-Maker

2008-11-04T11:20:00.005-05:00

You cannot put the same shoe on every foot.
Publilius Syrus

I own a pair of cutarras. They are the traditional campesino footwear of Panama: open-toed with an intricate polished weave on top, an engraved polished sheet of leather as platform, and rubber soles. One needs to be careful when purchasing these since they’re handmade—trying on both the left and right cutarras until a pair fits perfectly. I find cutarras wonderfully comfortable. In fact, they’re what I wear at home most of the time.

Recently, however, I discovered that what most Panamanians refer to as cutarras are an aberration—that, in reality, the more popular version, the kind I own, are a grave violation of tradition.

“Genuine cutarras don’t have rubber soles. The bottom should a single, unpolished plank of leather with nothing underneath. The things people today refer to as cutarras are an insult to the craft,” says Anastacio Moreno, professional cutarra-maker.

When it comes to his trade, Anastacio (who spells his first name with a “c”) is a purist. And although he’s in his early fifties, he’s been making cutarras for well over forty years.

“I started making them when I was a little boy, living in the countryside near the town of Guararé, in the province of Los Santos. In those days, every campesino knew how to make cutarras. They’re what everyone wore back then. Today, though, making genuine cutarras is a dying art.”

Every single cutarra Anastacio Moreno manufactures is custom-made—woven especially for each customer. Señor Moreno practices his trade in an alleyway off Sal-Si-Puedes: the quintessentially third-world street off Avenida Central that’s cluttered with zinc-covered booths that sell a wide and odd assortment of things, including folkloric items.

For eight dollars, Anastacio will make a pair of cutarras, cut and woven to the measurements of each foot. First, the craftsman asks the client to sit on a stool and place a foot on a wood box, similar to that of a shoe-shiner’s. The craftsman then sits on the opposite end of the box and places a leather sheet under the foot. He traces a broad outline with a pen. Afterward, he marks several specific points, including one between the first two toes, and proceeds to cut the leather according to the outline. Once this is done, Señor Moreno punctures the sheet at the marks. He then takes two long, thin strips of leather, soaks them in water, squeezes out the excess water, and begins to tie the sheet onto the customer’s foot. Prior to tying the final knot, he asks if the fit is comfortable and, if necessary, makes the adjustments before completing the weave. He repeats the process on the second foot. After that, the cutarras are ready—fitting every customer to perfection. The entire process takes close to twenty minutes and is fascinating to watch.

Panamanian folkloric dancers keep Anastacio Moreno in business. “The true cutarras are the only kind that makes the slapping sound dancers require,” Señor Moreno says with obvious pride.

November, a month replete with Panamanian national holidays, is the peak season of his business year. And five years ago, in 2003, when Panama celebrated the centennial of its independence from Colombia, Anastacio barely kept up with the demand. “At one point, people were lined-up half a block down the alley to get a pair of cutarras. Suddenly cutarras became a symbol of national pride; it was incredible. If business was always that good I’d be a wealthy man. But as it is, I make enough to get by.”

My wife is one of the handful of foreigners who have come to him to have cutarras made. She’s bought two pairs so far, and she swears they're extremely comfortable.

“Would you like a pair?” Señor Moreno asks me. Feeling terribly guilty, I confess that I own a pair of the aberrations, the kind with rubber soles. The cutarra-maker stares at me without saying a word; his disapproving glare bears holes into my conscience. “But the ones you have don’t make the sound cutarras should make.” When I timidly admit that, contrary to my wife, I like to walk without making sounds, Anastacio Moreno shakes his head mournfully and, after a long pause, says: “As you wish; but I want you to know that those things you own aren’t cutarras. They’re nothing more than sandals.”

As we prepare to leave, my wife asks him to autograph the cutarras he made. Surprised by the unusual request, Anastacio smiles shyly, the hardcore purist in him tamed for the moment, and writes his signature with obvious pride on the right cutarra.

“You know,” he says as my wife gives him the eight dollars, “I may be the last legitimate cutarra-maker in Panama City. I’ve trained several young men to make them, but they’ve all ended up making those damn sandals because there’s more money in it.” He sighs, looks longingly at his workbench, and says in parting, “People don’t seem to care much about tradition any more.”

Sometimes it’s About Who Inspires Faith

2008-10-19T16:32:00.004-05:00

Faith is a passionate intuition.
William Wordsworth

Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

In 1960, the Democratic National Convention was held in the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. My family lived within a few blocks of this site. I was six years old at the time and on the final day of the Convention I remember walking there with my parents, who wanted to witness history up close. Although we weren’t allowed into the Arena, there was an electrifying atmosphere outside—music, shouted slogans, balloons, and a shared feeling that we were at a crossroads in American history.

What I remember best about that day are two things: that my jacket ended up covered with buttons of every single candidate seeking the Democratic Party candidacy, and the loud cheer that greeted the news that John F. Kennedy had won his party’s nomination.

My father—a veteran of the Korean War and naturalized US citizen—was inspired by Kennedy. He volunteered to help the campaign, and with me in tow he knocked on dozens of doors to distribute leaflets, buttons, and bumper-stickers supporting JFK. When Kennedy was elected, it was a joyful moment in my home as my parents celebrated the victory as theirs. They had faith that a new era of inclusion was being ushered in, and the sadness of seeing those hopes so tragically truncated haunts me to this day.

Years later, my father, who returned to live in Nicaragua and experienced the Sandinista Revolution—which he absolutely abhorred—found inspiration in Ronald Reagan and became an ardent Republican. With time, thanks to him, I learned to listen respectfully while not uttering a word in order to keep the family peace. It is a practice I honor to this day: I keep my heartfelt political opinions to myself in the presence of those whose viewpoints differ from mine—all for the sake of preserving amiable relationships.

Also, I’ve learned that teachers wield considerable influence over the minds of their students—even of college age. Thus, I remain as impartial as I possibly can around youth. I’ve learned to steer discussions that have the potential of becoming political toward posing the questions that both sides of the spectrum are raising. I’ve become quite a capable facilitator in helping students arrive to their own conclusions according to their consciences and beliefs. It is not a teacher’s place, I firmly believe, to shape the political views of students; rather, it is our duty to help them to learn to determine for themselves the stand they wish to take on issues or which candidates they will support.

In addition, because my wife and I have voluntarily chosen exile from the United States, the land of our birth, to reside in Latin America, I feel I surrendered the privilege to assert my viewpoint regarding US politics and elections. I prefer to let those who live in the trenches advocate their positions with vigor; and when I do chime in, I do so timidly, limiting my comments to some aspect of a discussion I feel people have overlooked.

Moreover, a bit wiser with age, I’ve learned that spiritual matters are far more transcendent and timeless than politics. In my youth I defended my political views with passion, not caring who I offended, only to discover, once the dust had settled, that I had been on the wrong side of the issue. Therefore, today I only come forth in matters in which I'm absolutely sure that I’m in command of the facts and where my voice may help prevent a mistake or correct an injustice.

Because of these strongly held principles, I’ve never used my writer’s pulpit to endorse a US presidential candidate. However, today I will break from tradition to state my belief that Barack Obama represents the direction in which I believe the United States needs to go. I have faith in his ability to lead.

What made me step away from a lifelong practice of withholding my views was Gen. Colin Powell’s endorsement of the Democratic Party candidate. Already, conservatives are attacking Powell for his support of Obama. But Powell’s words—and the courage it took to pronounce them—have inspired me to join in and say that I, too, believe that the United States has reached a critical crossroads that begs for a historical choice.

In particular, these words, uttered by Gen. Powell during his appearance on today’s “Meet the Press,” moved me to cast aside my silence and take this stand:

And I come to the conclusion that because of his ability to inspire, because of the inclusive nature of his campaign, because he is reaching out all across America, because of who he is and his rhetorical abilities — and you have to take that into account — as well as his substance — he has both style and substance, he has met the standard of being a successful president, being an exceptional president.

I agree.

Barack Obama reminds me of a time when hope filled the hearts of most Americans. We need hope again, perhaps more than ever. And I am filled with faith. That's because the electrifying appeal of his campaign takes me back to that day, long-ago, when I was six years old, standing in front of the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, and a great nation was poised to make another historical choice.

Standing Next to Paul Newman

2008-10-11T13:32:00.003-05:00

The light that you think you emanate is not necessarily the light that other people see. You think of yourself as shy, retiring . . . and some people will see you in an entirely different way.
Paul Newman

When I was a boy, Paul Newman was the actor most women swooned over. I know this because my mother was one of them. She once adopted a cat—the only cat my family ever owned—because the animal’s grey-blue eyes reminded her of the actor’s. What’s more, she instantly came up with a name for her favorite feline: Paul.

In my own way, I inherited her admiration for Newman. Growing up, I never missed one of his films. And my respect for him grew when, during the early 1980s, as the Nuclear Freeze Movement’s most visible spokesperson, he demolished Charlton Heston in a nationally-televised debate about the arms race.

A few years later, when I first heard about Newman’s Own and learned that all the profits of that enterprise went to charity, I became fiercely loyal to the product. (It certainly helped that the olive oil salad dressing was absolutely delicious.)

And today, a week after Paul Newman’s death, I find myself recalling the morning I stood next to him, and for quite a while, before becoming aware of his identity. The encounter took place in the fall of 1973, when I was nineteen and in my second year at Los Angeles City College. One morning, with a long gap between classes, two fellow students, both women, suggested a quick trip to Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard—then the largest record store in Los Angeles—to check out the latest releases.

When we arrived, business was slow; there were only a handful of customers. The sales-clerks, two young men, were playing Cat Stevens’s and Van Morrison’s most recent recordings. I couldn’t have asked for better music. And after flipping through albums for about an hour, it was time to head back to for our next class. Being the only one who decided to buy something, I joined the short line at the cash register while my friends continued searching through the bins.

I was the fourth customer. I stood there, enjoying the music and in no hurry to get back to my accounting class. The customer in front of me was in his forties, with slightly graying hair. He wore a dull-gray overall and a soiled pair of work-boots. I took him for a refrigerator repairman who, also on a break, had decided to buy himself a few records. The only thing that seemed a unusual was that he had placed a stack of close to 40 albums on the counter, apparently with the intention of buying every single one and, although we were indoors, he wore over-sized sunglasses.

When his turn came to pay, the sales-clerk rang up the purchase, which, considering the amount of albums, took a while. He informed the customer of the amount—close to two hundred dollars (music was more affordable then)—and the man handed him a credit card. The young man looked at the card; he then glanced at the man. He looked at the card again and, doing a formidable job of keeping his cool (but I could tell that he had become excited), he said, very courteously, “I’m sorry, Mr. Newman, but with purchases over $100 I have to call the credit card company for authorization.” (In this era, prior to computerization, credit card limits were verified manually.)

And then, that distinctive, smoky voice I’d been hearing all of my life inside the sacred dim halls of movie theaters, answered, “That’s fine. Go ahead.”

As the sales-clerk placed the card back on the counter, I read the customer’s name:

Paul Newman.

Discreetly, for we were standing shoulder to shoulder facing the sales-clerk, I leaned forward to catch a better glimpse of the man’s face. All it took was a fraction of a second to confirm that the refrigerator repairman standing next to me all that time had indeed been Paul Newman.

If only my mother were here, I thought.

I did my best to remain calm, to enjoy the experience of standing next to Paul.

But I was unable to stay cool for more than thirty seconds. I needed to share this with someone. What’s more, I needed witnesses so that later I could be sure that it hadn’t all been a dream.

I left the line and hurried to the opposite side of the store, closer to the exit, where my classmates were looking at records. When I reached them, as serenely as I could, I said, “Now, don’t be obvious. Whatever you do, don’t overreact. You see the fellow paying at the register? That’s Paul Newman.”

Both girls at once looked toward the register and, at that moment, the Hollywood star glanced our way. My friends reacted as any red-blooded American woman of their age would:

They squealed . . . and rather loudly.

The handful of customers at Tower Records turned to see what had happened. They soon concluded it was nothing more than a couple of immature college students excited over the latest Doobie Brothers' recording.

But the squeals also drew Paul Newman’s attention. In spite of the sunglasses, we could tell that he was staring at us.

We stared back.

He continued to stare at us.

We continued to stare at him.

He smiled.

Now all three of us squealed.

And then he gave us that patented, beautiful, million-dollar Paul Newman grin.

We had to hold on to each other to keep from falling in a dead faint.

While Mr. Newman waited for the credit card company to clear his purchase, he toyed with us the way a cat plays with its prey. He alternately stared and smiled at us. We, in turn, alternated between swoons, jumping in place while emitting little, squirrel-like squeals, and silly giggling. (I also believe we were drooling, but I can’t be sure because it’s a memory that, apparently, I’ve been successful in repressing.)

Throughout all this, with the exception of the one sales-clerk, the rest of the people in Tower Records were oblivious that Paul Newman stood among them.

The purchase now approved, Mr. Newman grabbed the large bag containing the stack of records and headed for the exit. As he passed near us he gave us one more gorgeous grin and left the store. Although none of us fell to the floor, it took a while before our legs were sturdy enough to rush to the exit. His passion for cars well-known, we had to see what he was driving.

We opened the door, stepped out, and stood there, our mouths gaping as we stared at the stunning red Porsche passing before us. And then the most astonishing thing happened: Paul Newman rolled down the window, stuck his arm out above the roof, and waved farewell.