The Seeds of Fiction (43 page)

Xavier Chamorro and his wife Sonia were gracious hosts. A bottle of whisky was placed before us, and we quickly quenched our thirst. I had known Xavier since the late 1960s. He had worked at the newspaper
La Prensa
with his brother Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, whose assassination in January 1978 was the catalyst for the revolt against Somoza. Graham could not get over the lovely bourgeois setting of their home. Whenever we were left alone he signalled with his hands and eyes his impressions. Tomás Borge finally arrived with his cadre of bodyguards. He sat opposite us, across a low, round wooden coffee table, and ordered milk. Graham looked shocked; in disgust he refreshed his glass of scotch.

Short and Mayan-looking, with a head that appeared too large for his body, especially in his smartly tailored olive-green uniform, Borge wore the star of
comandante
of the revolution on his lapel. As the only surviving founder of the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional he had already, at forty-nine, entered Nicaraguan folklore. He could be eloquent, verbose and often poetic. In fact he was a good poet. He had also been a Marxist, at least initially. Upon his release from a Somoza prison in August 1978 he had declared at a Panamanian press conference: ‘Yes, I am a Marxist-Leninist.' Three months later in Mexico City, where I interviewed him, he was no longer so sure. ‘Somoza painted us Marxist. We have some Marxists with us, but the FSLN is much wider,' he answered. The concept of the ‘prolonged people's war' (advocated by his faction), he maintained, was ‘not Marxist, but a military concept which will lead to taking advantage of the favourable moment'.

During the early days after the Sandinista victory Borge was the most public of all nine rebel
comandantes.
He had personally forgiven the man who had tortured him during his long years of imprisonment. In his office on the top floor of what had been the electric company building in Managua there were fourteen crucifixes on the wall, by my count, and in the reception room were four more sculptured crucifixes of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, he had praised the Catholic Church and asserted that the Church's virtues and Sandinista ideals were one and the same. It was an interesting reflection of the philosophical parallels between a dogmatic religion and a doctrinaire political ideology.

A Borge show was often the best show in town, if for no other reason than for being refreshingly frank. However, whether it was the milk or the audience, that night was not a typical Borge show. He droned on about the divisions within the FSLN and discussed each of the Sandinista factions in exhaustive detail. Most of what he described was public knowledge. In
Time
we had treated the subject thoroughly, and I had included an analysis of the rebels' divisions in my book on Nicaragua, which E.P. Dutton in New York was about to publish.

Listening without comments to Borge's remarks, translated by Xavier, Graham's demeanour was that of a patient visitor, exhibiting outward calm. His face reflected too much sun, and even his eyes had turned red. Flor de Caña rum and Scotch whisky were flowing freely on our side of the round coffee table — in fact, far too freely. I decided that just in case the
comandante
said something new I should tape the conversation in order later to provide Graham with a clearer picture of the evening. I went out to the car and retrieved my little bag with my tape-recorder. I placed it on the coffee table before Borge. As he was totally absorbed in his monologue I thought it would be rude to interrupt and request permission to tape him. In fact I had taped him on numerous occasions before. However, paranoia was alive and well in the Sandinista ranks. Hardly had I set it down than one of Borge's bodyguards bent down and whispered in my ear, ‘You are not recording the
comandante,
are you?' I reached over and shut off the recorder.

Later that night when we returned to our VIP villa and discussed the day's activities Graham said he hadn't noticed the glares I had received from Borge's vigilant bodyguards. It was then that I opened my tape-recorder to find the tape that I had placed in it was gone. A sleight of hand by one of Borge's bodyguards had evidently confiscated the cassette. I was angry but also embarrassed and humiliated. I half expected Graham to say with his characteristic acerbity, ‘Bad show.' Instead his only reaction was to declare it a bloody boring evening. He really wasn't interested in the divisions within the ranks of the Sandinistas, he said. Noting that Borge, as Interior Minister, was in charge not only of the police but also of prisons, Graham observed that there was probably still room for me in one of his crowded penitentiaries. When Chuchu came to fetch us the next day and I told him about Borge's bodyguard's having seized my tape, he was not happy. Nor was he happy to hear from Graham that we were moving out of the ‘secure' villa to Managua's Hotel InterContinental.

After we checked into the hotel that morning, Borge showed up with his entourage of bodyguards. We met at the hotel reception desk, and I immediately brought up the subject of the missing tape. He was not in his usual buoyant mood. In fact, he was angry. He told me I should not have taped him without permission. I explained that I didn't want to interrupt his talk by asking for permission. I had taped him, I explained, in order to give Graham a good briefing on his talk later that evening and requested the return of my cassette. He ignored my request and joined Graham, who had been explaining to Chuchu why we had moved to the hotel. Borge, I realized, was clearly upset that we had moved to the InterContinental and out of his VIP villa, insulting his hospitality; he probably suspected it was all my doing.

I often wondered what the Sandinistas thought of the recording on my
tape of Graham's expounding his theory on why high-rise apartment buildings for the poor breed crime, which I had recorded during a drive in Panama City. We had spied several high-rise buildings that had replaced the old tin-and-wood dwellings of the poor and recorded his views on the topic. I also wondered whether Borge thought we were spying for Omar. It was no secret that Torrijos had his own intelligence-gathering methods in Central America and that he was known to prefer that his agents used tape-recorders in place of long-winded typed reports, the authenticity of which were not always verifiable. Borge left us, and we set out on a sightseeing tour of war-torn Nicaragua. During the testy morning only Graham was happy. His room had a clear view of the Momotombo volcano across Lake Managua.

I drove Graham around and pointed out areas of combat in the countryside during the rebellion against Somoza. Graham was interested, but Chuchu, who accompanied us, was obviously still fretting over letting Tomás Borge down. We motored on to Masaya and then to Monimbó, where in October 1977 the flames of revolution and popular insurrection against the Somozas had been further ignited by Indians living in the poor neglected
barrio.
Those places all brought back memories of mangled corpses and shallow graves. The damage inflicted by the war was still evident.

I reflected on how miraculous it was that more journalists were not killed during the war. ABC News television correspondent Bill Stewart was one of the unlucky ones. He had been forced to lie down and had been executed in the middle of a public street in Managua by a Somoza National Guardsman. His gutsy crew had managed to film the cold-blooded killing, which was broadcast across the United States and brought home to the American people the ruthlessness of Somoza's troops. President Carter called the killing of the newsman ‘an act of barbarism that all civilized people condemn'. Those few minutes of videotape helped seal Somoza's fate.

In the beautiful town of Granada, the one-time capital of Nicaragua and the site of American mercenary William Walker's brief presidency (1856—7), Chuchu completely lost his cool. Unlike many Nicaraguan cities Granada had witnessed hardly any fighting during the Sandinista revolution. Chuchu picked an argument with the local correspondent of
La Prensa.
The newspaper was anti-Sandinista, and Chuchu cursed the reporter for his politics and working for such a ‘load of shit as
La Prensa'.

It was easy to lose your good humour, Chuchu later complained, because ‘assassin and rapist counter-revolutionaries were becoming more and more bold'. Only a week earlier, he noted, the counter-revolutionaries had crossed the Honduras border to strike at a Sandinista army post in Nicaragua's north. He worried that thousands of Somoza National Guardsmen who had fled into exile in Honduras would become counter-revolutionaries.

Graham was sympathetic, saying it was frightful to think of more fighting. Chuchu said the Sandinista leadership had no illusions that if then Governor Ronald Reagan, the Republican candidate for the presidency, won the November election that year they would be in deep trouble. The Sandinistas had read the Republican platform, which described them as Marxist and deplored their takeover of Nicaragua, accusing them of attempting to destabilize El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

‘The old Indochina domino theory,' Graham observed.

Storm clouds were gathering, Chuchu went on, quoting Fidel Castro as charging that the Republican Party platform ‘threatens again to apply the big stick to Latin America'.

The following day Graham and I were left alone. We paid a visit to our priest friend, Ernesto Cardenal, the new Minister of Culture who was full of plans. Culture, he said, had been neglected under the dictatorship. His government ministry was located in Tacho II Somoza's Spanish-style former home, El Retiro. We visited the city of León and the tomb, in the ancient Catholic cathedral, of Rubén Darío, the modernist Nicaraguan poet who brought recognition to his country at the beginning of the century by promoting Latin Americanism and wresting the Spanish language from its academic subservience to Spain. Dario had also warned against the ‘terrible rifleman' Teddy Roosevelt who then symbolized to Latin Americans the dangers threatened by the ‘Colossus of the North'. On a more contemporary note, the local Sandinistas in León showed off their ingenious arms caches that had been used during the war — false walls, floors and underground rooms.

Following our return to Managua Graham and I had accompanied Maríneza Isabel home so she could freshen up. She was no longer living with Ramiro. Left in the living-room with a Mickey Mouse cartoon blaring on the television, I moved across the room to lower the volume. There slumped in an easy chair, half hidden and hypnotized by the antics of capitalist America's most famous rodent, was a Sandinista officer. He offered Graham and me only a grunt of recognition and remained glued to the Spanish-speaking Mickey.

‘One must get terribly bored in the mountains year after year,' Graham shouted to me. We broke into a fit of laughter. Mickey Mouse even robbed the beautiful Maríneza Isabel of a goodbye wave from her new beau.

That night, at Los Ranchos restaurant, Graham concluded we were surrounded by counter-revolutionaries, and he did not enjoy his meal featuring typical Nicaraguan dishes. I told Graham the bourgeois types in the restaurant could have well been anti-Somoza and even pro-Sandinista, such were the complexities of this revolution. Many Nicaraguans in the business sector had contributed to the overthrow of Somoza. Graham still felt they were too well
dressed for our restaurant setting and that they eyed us suspiciously. He pronounced it enemy territory and was happy only when we left.

Whether it was the stress of her new job in the Interior Ministry or the distraction of the Mickey Mouse fan, Maríneza Isabel, as helpful as she tried to be, made a logistical mess of Graham's and Chuchu's departure. She booked a reservation for them on a non-existent flight. I flew back to Mexico while Graham and Chuchu suffered more delays. Graham told me as we parted that it was time for him to go home; he was missing Yvonne and was anxious about his own ‘war' with her daughter's former husband.

Graham later recounted that when Omar asked him his opinion of Borge, Graham said he had been sceptical of the man at first but gradually came to appreciate him. Omar had agreed. ‘For the first few minutes you dislike him.' For all his personality faults Borge was a fine poet. Daniel Ortega, dour and distant, also a poet, likewise grew on Graham. On the other hand, Ortega's companion, the poet Rosario Murillo, was an instant hit. This handsome, vivacious woman, a grand-niece of Sandino, had once worked for
La Prensa
publisher Pedro Joaquín Chamorro and spoke excellent English. She had attended secondary school in England and finishing school in Switzerland and was an immediate favourite of Graham's when they first met in Costa Rica. In the new government she was Vice-Minister of Culture.

The following month, in Asunción, Paraguay — where he was living in exile with his mistress — Tacho II was killed when his white Mercedes was blown apart by a rocket-propelled grenade in an ambush by an Argentine guerrilla group. Argentine army specialists skilled in the art of clandestine operations were already moving into Honduras to shape the ragged bands of anti-Somoza border raiders into a fighting force. The Argentines eventually worked with the CIA in launching the not-so-secret war to overthrow the Sandinistas. With Ronald Reagan now occupying the White House, Ortega and the Sandinistas were indeed in deep trouble, as Chuchu had predicted. Tacho II Somoza was buried in Miami, Florida.

When I returned to Managua several weeks later I learned from the Foreign Minister, Father Miguel D'Escoto (a Roman Catholic priest), that he had been expecting Graham and me for dinner and had assembled the rest of the governing
junta.
No one had advised us, not even our friend Borge. We had unintentionally stood up the Reverend Father of the Maryknoll Order and the
junta.
So much for communications within the Sandinista leadership.

Around that time I received encouraging news from Gabriel García Márquez in Mexico City. I passed the news on to Graham in Antibes: the guerrillas were ready to release Ambassador Dunn. Unbeknownst to us at the time, the
Ambassador's friends in South Africa, the United States, Chile (where he had also served) and El Salvador had quietly been collecting ransom money. They were equally ignorant of Graham's efforts to save Dunn. By mid-September they had collected more than $1 million and the money was transferred to the US Embassy in San Salvador for safekeeping. By early October the guerrillas were demanding that the money be handed over. The negotiators first wanted proof that Dunn was alive.