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Nicaragua: A Personal Perspective (III) [1]

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Date: 2023-08-04

When someone jams the muzzle of a semi-automatic pistol in your ear, you become immediately fluent in the local language. What really worried me was that they seemed unsurprised that they had kidnapped a foreigner. The only foreigners in Managua were me, some Russians (hidden somewhere), and Cubans (likewise). I explained in my barbaro Español that I worked for Radio Catolica and they pistol-whipped me.

A few km into an earthquake-devastated zone outside town, they stole my wallet, threw me to the ground, and stood staring, pistols pointed at me.

Aha, this is it. They’ll throw my body into one of these convenient chasms in the ground. I wonder if anyone will ever find it?

Then one said, “Señor. If you look up, stand, or see our car plate—we will shoot.”

I lay there until they had driven off and then I began to make my way, shaking like a leaf, back to town.

I will spare you the boring details of the local police etc., suffice to say that two days later I was staring out the window checking out the Harrier jump jets parked in jungle clearings as we approached Belize airport, en route to the UK.

* * *

My Radio Catolica crew.

Despite my somewhat negative experience of Nicaragua, I put this down to being in an admittedly dangerous country, (pretty much all my career has been in such countries) and when six months later the German client asked me to go back and fix the transmitter (the local engineer had blown it up) I reluctantly agreed. This time, I would stay in my hotel in the evenings and not get kidnapped.

I had to transit Vienna, where I discussed an upgrade with the engineers and picked up a box of electronic parts. I nearly missed my connection due to being detained by Vienna customs on suspicion of carrying bomb components.

This time, the Radio Catolica guys behaved very differently. I had a better knowledge of the language. They began to take me on visits around the country. They took me to see a school, and I was shocked. The no-school policy of Somoza had been replaced by Marxist indoctrination. I learned about the secret re-education camps, and about the repressive attitude of the regime toward the ‘other’ Nicaragua, Bluefields, a semi-autonomous region.

About this time I somehow got invited to a party with the Sandinista leadership. The cognitive dissonance between what I had newly discovered, what I had previously thought, and what I was now hearing from the actual leaders of the revolution, left me numb. It was hard to take in. Moreso, because I was sitting next to Mick’s ex-wife, Bianca Jagger.

By day I was installing the new parts at the transmitter site, and watching a Dakota being loaded in the next field with white bales. The field had a significant presence of FSLN militia. I didn’t know it, but I was close to being a bit part in the real-life original of the series El Señor de los Cielos. It was Amado Carrillo Fuentes piloting that plane. This was where the Sandinista’s foreign currency was coming from. Cocaine out, dollars in.

The day after I finished and tested the transmitter, I arrived at the Radio Catolica studios to get the job signed off. It was shut up, and two militia with AKs stood outside. The Sandinistas had shut the station down. The local client had fled. I phoned London and got permission to return. But Nicaragua had not finished with me yet.

At the airport about sixty passengers including me were crammed into the “departure lounge”, a box-like structure with plate glass windows and a concrete roof some 20 feet up. I was standing next to the wall. minding my own business, when suddenly I was struck hard in the back and thrown to the floor. My initial shock changed to anger: who’d bashed me? But there was no one who could have. Next moment I was again struck and thrown to the floor. What was happening?

I looked around and people were screaming, “Temblor! Temblor!”

I hadn’t heard this exact word before. My mental clockwork went: Temblor? Ah yes, it means something like … terremoto. Fuck! It’s an earthquake!

Bam! Something struck me painfully on the shoulder. I glanced down: a large chunk of concrete. I looked up and saw the ceiling swinging back and forth, gaps opening and closing on either side, more chunks of concrete raining down. The crowd made a rush for the (locked) terminal doors and the militia, outside, raised their AK47s and aimed at us.

I’ve been in a lot of life-threatening situations, including the eye of a Texas tornado. But the adrenalin high from being in a quake lasts ages by comparison.

Soon we were on our way to Havana in a rickety old Russian aircraft. Next to me sat a friend I’d met in Managua, a Cuban/Canadian newsman for CBC.

A squad of Nicaraguan boy scouts got up and stood in the aisle singing some awful song about the achievements of Collective Farm 67 or some such, stamping their feet. Fueled by adrenalin I got up too, and began abusing them in Mexican Spanish.

My friend dragged me down into my seat. “Shut up! Have you forgotten where we’re landing?”

Umm… Cuba?

“That’s right! The scouts have been invited by Fidel Castro for a medal! You’ll be arrested! Fuck, I’ll be arrested too for sitting next to you!”

In Havana I bought some posh cigars for my boss in London. When I gave him my present he asked how much I had paid, and laughed. “They are cheaper here in London.”

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