Portrait of a Revolution

Waiting to pass muster in Managua’s immigration room is a lot like being in Purgatory—patience or prayer seems the only way out. The air stinks of old coughs and cheap smoke. A teller riffles off the mandatory exchange of U.S. $60 to 1,200,000 córdobas. Bill Haley and the Comets blast from an unseen speaker; a militiaman stands at tin-soldier attention, one stray toe tapping to “Rock around the Clock.” I win release into an odd, ripe-lime twilight. Next to a wall, a mother in combat boots and camouflage fatigues ties a rumpled red ribbon in her baby girl’s hair. On the road, faces line the cracked windows of old buses that lurch and exhale the black exhaust of bad petrol. A small car screeches to a stop. On its dented side, scrawled in purple, are three words: “colt lancer cab.” The driver, a yellowish fellow with flyaway hair and faraway eyes, emerges. Around his cigarette he grins, showing bad teeth and blue gums. He pries open the door with a screwdriver and says, “Bienvenido a Nicaragua!”

He takes me to Hotel Bolonia, a hostelry orphan, shabby but, for only $20 a night, close to clean. Because the exterior door remains locked, there is a bell to ring, and a peephole to pass. The lobby is small and seedy, with a firefly ceiling bulb and a little metal desk that holds a temperamental telephone. Along the back wall is a grand but vacant counter of carved wood. Once a private home, Hotel Bolonia has a past more genteel than its present, and more promising than its future.

DS

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Dee Rivers Stimpson

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Waiting to pass muster in Managua’s immigration room is a lot like being in Purgatory—patience or prayer seems the only way out. The air stinks of old coughs and cheap smoke. A teller riffles off the mandatory exchange of U.S. $60 to 1,200,000 córdobas. Bill Haley and the Comets blast from an unseen speaker; a militiaman stands at tin-soldier attention, one stray toe tapping to “Rock around the Clock.” I win release into an odd, ripe-lime twilight. Next to a wall, a mother in combat boots and camouflage fatigues ties a rumpled red ribbon in her baby girl’s hair. On the road, faces line the cracked windows of old buses that lurch and exhale the black exhaust of bad petrol. A small car screeches to a stop. On its dented side, scrawled in purple, are three words: “colt lancer cab.” The driver, a yellowish fellow with flyaway hair and faraway eyes, emerges. Around his cigarette he grins, showing bad teeth and blue gums. He pries open the door with a screwdriver and says, “Bienvenido a Nicaragua!”

He takes me to Hotel Bolonia, a hostelry orphan, shabby but, for only $20 a night, close to clean. Because the exterior door remains locked, there is a bell to ring, and a peephole to pass. The lobby is small and seedy, with a firefly ceiling bulb and a little metal desk that holds a temperamental telephone. Along the back wall is a grand but vacant counter of carved wood. Once a private home, Hotel Bolonia has a past more genteel than its present, and more promising than its future.