Sandinista Revolution Day

Today is the 29th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution. It’s a national holiday, and since it’s celebrated on a Saturday this year, we also get Monday off of school. Describing the moment of the revolution in his book Blood of Brothers, Steven Kinzer says:

All during July 19 and 20, battalions of jubilant Sandinistas poured into Managua. The youth and idealism that radiated from their faces was a perfect counterpoint to the aura of corruption and venality that hung over Nicaragua for so long. By the tens of thousands, people poured from their homes to greet the conquering guerrilla heroes, to hug them and shower them with gratitude.

The last 29 years have been pretty rough on the young Sandinistas, turning them into, at the very least, old(er) Sandinistas. Our caddy-corner neighbors are still pretty enthusiastic and every year they throw a gigantic party for the entire neighborhood. This is the first year that we’ve been here to experience it because we only moved to this house last September. On Thursday another neighbor flagged me down and advised me of the upcoming festivities and suggested that if we had somewhere else to sleep we should go there. That the party is remarkable should have been enough to get us out of the house since even mundane Nicaraguan holidays warrant some very fierce revelry. Of course we didn’t heed the warnings and starting at about 5:00 the party preparations began with this giant wall of speakers:

The rest of the night it felt like someone had parked outside our house with a trunk full of subwoofers that caused even the bathroom door at the back of our house to rattle. The party was complete with a big red and black (Sandinista colors) piñata for the kiddies, which seems like the perfect metaphor for Nicaragua. The requisite montón of fireworks was steadily spaced throughout the night to insure that Dora was constantly panicky. Around midnight the rain got too strong and I think forced everyone home, but I was already asleep. This is now proof that I can sleep through anything.

¡Feliz Día de la Revolución!