Maloca Media

We lived in Nicaragua for almost two years, from 2002 until 2004. By then, Sandinismo had ceased to be recognisable to anyone who shared the optimism of the years immediately following the overthrow of the Somoza regime in 1979. During the 1980s, the Contra, enthusiastically fed and watered by Ronald Reagan, Oliver North and a cabal of interventionist über-conservatives, effectively destroyed the Nicaraguan Revolution: when the peace accords were signed in 1990, some 30,000 people had lost their lives in the civil war, and the population was exhausted. We arrived during a period of political apathy and ascendant neo-liberalism: Enrique Bolaños had won the 2002 elections on the pro-business Liberal Party ticket, but had already begun to distance himself from the caudillo Arnoldo Alemán, under whom he had served a term as vice-president, and who was facing corruption charges. Meanwhile, ordinary Nicaraguans continued to struggle with an economy crushed by years of embargo, war, corruption, failing markets and natural disasters. In 2007, I returned to Nicaragua with my friend and fellow-anthropologist Dennis Rodgers. Since 1996, Dennis has conducted a longitudinal ethnographic study in one of Managua’s poor barrios. The local youth gang (pandilla) has long been a key social formation and trope in Dennis’ research; while this remains a central reference point, the scope of his ethnography has broadened to encompass contexts such as the political economy, the State, the drugs trade, religion and neo-liberalism. Dennis appears in one of the photos, labelled ‘El Chele.’