The Murals of Revolutionary Nicaragua, 1979-1992 by David Kunzle with an introduction by Miguel D'Escoto, University of California Press, 1995, 203 pp., $65 (cloth), $29.95 (paper). From the Sandinista victory in 1979 to its defeat at the polls in 1990, over 300 murals were painted in dif- ferent corners of revolutionary Nicaragua. Today, few of those murals remain intact. Some were destroyed by the elements, others by indifference. The majority, however, were deliberately painted over under the orders of Managua's con- servative mayor, Amoldo Alemin- who is today favored to win Nicaragua's October, 1996 presi- dential elections. David Kunzle has done a splendid job documenting the mural move- ment that flourished in Sandinista Nicaragua. The Murals of Revolu- tionary Nicaragua offers vibrant, high-quality color photographs of 64 murals, as well as black-and- white images of over 200 others. Kunzle annotates each image with information about the location of the mural, its contents, and when and by whom it was executed. The photographs are accompa- nied by an extended introduction in which Kunzle describes the signifi- cance of the mural movement-and popular art and culture in general- in building a new Nicaragua. During the 1980s, 28 Centers for Popular Culture were built throughout Nicaragua to fulfill the revolution's mandate that "culture should be made by and not for the masses." The Centers promoted mural paint- ing, poetry and pottery workshops, and dance and theater festivals. "The murals celebrate the insur- rection and revolutionary construc- tion," writes Kunzle. "They are self- image and self-education, popular autobiography. They are extensions of the great literacy campaign, which turned 'all Nicaragua into a school,' as the phrase went; they are the blackboards of the people." The murals strikingly portray the strug- gle against U.S. intervention, with the United States often symbolized as the grim reaper. The insurrection itself is celebrated in a number of the murals which depict street barri- cades, peasants bearing small arms against the heavy artillery of the National Guard, and the role of Christian guerrillas in the struggle. A multiplicity of social themes are also addressed in the murals. Many emphasize the promise of a better life embodied by the revolution: free and universal health care, literacy campaigns, well-nourished children at play. Kunzle's defense of the mural movement and autochtonous cultur- al expression in general is unwaver- ing. While he sometimes goes over- board with his rhetoric, Kunzle has nonetheless done a thorough and praiseworthy job of collecting pho- tographs of now-destroyed murals, thereby helping preserve the cultur- al heritage of Sandinista Nicaragua that others are so bent on obliterat- ing. Nothing, Nobody: The Voices of the Mexico City Earthquake by Elena Poniatowska, translated by Aurora Camacho de Schmidt and Arthur Schmidt, Temple University Press, 1995, 327 pp., $49.95 (cloth), $18.95 (paper). It's a pleasure to see the works of prominent Latin American essayists finally finding their way into English translation. The University of Missouri offers a 1991 paperback edition of Massacre in Mexico, Elena Poniatowska's harrowing account of the 1968 killing of hun- dreds of student demonstrators at Tlatelolco by government troops. Now Temple University Press has put out a translation of her 1988 account of the Mexico City earth- quake of September 18, 1975. The book is comprised of a patch- work of testimonies of earthquake victims buried alive in the rubble, of others who frantically searched for the bodies of loved ones in makeshift morgues, and of the vol- unteer rescuers who worked around the clock digging out victims. The absence of a single narrative thread enhances the potency of the book. As each account concludes, the nar- rative folds back in on itself to the early morning hour when the ground rocked for two and a half terrifying minutes. The earthquake pulled back a cur- tain on Mexican social relations. The dismal working conditions of clandestine sweatshops were revealed after hundreds of seam- stresses died when the poorly con- structed factories crumbled in the quake. In the trunk of a car buried by the wreckage of the collapsed Attorney General's Office, the decomposed cadaver of a human rights lawyer was discovered bound and gagged, a victim not of the earthquake but of government re- pression days before. But the brightest light was shone on the authorities, whose response to the disaster ranged from incom- petent to obstructive to outright criminal. The high number of casu- alties was in part due to the histori- cal willingness of government offi- cials to turn a blind eye on building- code violations in exchange for a bribe. The soldiers who arrived on the scene in the first crucial hours were more concerned with cordon- ing off the area and preventing loot- ing than with rescuing lives. Most of the heroic rescues were made by concerned young people who burrowed into the rubble with shovels, picks, and their bare hands. These spontaneous acts of human compassion and solidarity planted the seeds for the flowering of grass- roots organizing in the tragedy's aftermath. "What is the positive out- come of all this?" reflects one sur- vivor. "I think that the old inferiority complex that Mexicans have should be questioned. We are not incompe- tent. What is incompetent is the sys- tem that we live in. The earthquake proved to us that when we work together, we do a good job." Between Earthquakes and Volcanoes: Market, State, and the Revolutions in Central America by Carlos M. Vilas, translated by Ted Kuster, Monthly Review Press, 1995, 224 pp., $36.00 (cloth), $18.00 (paper). Between Earthquakes and Volcanoes is a thoroughly documented, data- packed, and systematic retrospec- tive of the 30-year revolutionary cycle in Central America. In his opening discussion of the theoreti- cal and historical background to revolution, Carlos Vilas provides an incisive and elegant analysis of the relationship between economics, consciousness, politics, and the revolutionary process. Although what motivates people to rebel, he argues, is a sudden and dramatic change in living conditions, "the symbolic dimension of this process is as important as material life con- ditions." Political factors are also crucial since people "must be con- vinced that collective action can set things right." Vilas offers a credible framework for understanding events in the vari- ous countries of the isthmus as part of a single, broad-based revolution- ary experience. Capitalist develop- ment in Central America in the 1950s and 1960s, Vilas argues, gave rise to the protagonists of the region's revolutions: the new middle classes and a mass of rootless semi- proletarianized labor. While reces- sion, natural disaster, and demo- graphic pressures provided the cata- lysts, the interactions among the region's central political actors-the military, popular organizations, the church, revolutionary movements, and the U.S. government-generat- ed the chemical reaction. Vilas con- trasts the rise of revolution with the trajectory of reformism, more suc- cessful in Costa Rica than in Honduras. But in both countries, he writes, reforms were attenuated by the U.S. strategy of "low-intensity warfare" against the burgeoning revolutionary forces next door. Vilas' most significant contribu- tion lies in the final third of the book, which assesses the revolu- tionary experience and its ambigu- ous results. The establishment of a neoliberal regime in Nicaragua on the heels of the Sandinistas' elec- toral defeat, the Salvadoran peace agreement followed by a difficult transition for the left, and the on- again, off-again peace process in Guatemala seem the hallmarks of regression rather than triumph. But, as Vilas argues, it would be a mis- take to overlook the dramatic changes in Central American soci- eties-such as the opening up of the region's political institutions and greater popular participation-- forged in the crucible of revolution. The challenge that lies ahead is how to convert this historic oppor- tunity into genuine democracy and lasting peace.
