My Car in Managua

by Forrest D. Colburn

Histories of revolutions often focus on military, political, or economic upheavals but sometimes neglect to connect these larger events to the daily lives of "ordinary" people. Yet the peoples' perception that "things are worse than before" can topple revolutionary governments, as shown by the recent defeat of the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua and the governments of Eastern Europe. Providing the kind of prosaic, revealing details that more formal histories have excluded, My Car in Managua offers an objective, often humorous description of the great difficulties and occasional pleasures of life in Nicaragua during the Sandinista revolution. During a year's work (1985-1986) at the Instituto Centroamericano de Administración de Empresas (INCAE), Forrest Colburn purchased a dilapidated car—and with it an introduction to everyday life in Nicaragua. His discoveries of the length of time required to register the car (approximately six weeks), the impossibility of finding spare parts (except when U.S. dollars were applied to the search), and the fact that "anyone getting into a car in Managua can be charged a small fee [for car watching] by anyone else" all suggest the difficulties most Nicaraguans faced living in a devastated economy. Drawing on experiences from visits throughout the revolutionary period (1979-1989), Colburn also sheds light on how the Revolution affected social customs and language, gender roles and family relationships, equality and authority, the availability of goods and services, the status of ethnic minorities, and governmental and other institutions. Illustrations by Nicaragua's celebrated political cartoonist Róger Sánchez Flores enliven the lucid text.

Genres: Travel, History, Nonfiction, Memoir

148 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

Reviews

[Kathryn]

Nice light read, very enjoyable. Read it in a few hours. I'd read a much more political account of the Nicaraguan Revolution before that showed what happened behind closed doors at the highest levels, but this shared sketches of a more personal nature, demonstrating how the Revolution affected the day-to-day lives of normal people. Don't expect much depth. Lots of charming vignettes and snippets of conversations--jokes, proverbs, pithy one-liners-- that showed that the author was truly swept into the confidences of a great deal of Nicaraguans and that he had an insightful eye. I loved the description of the renegade McDonald's that was chided for selling cheeseburgers without cheese and the supermarkets that, short on goods, would lay out the items over an entire aisle, one item deep. I also really enjoyed the chapter on some of the idiosyncrasies of Nicaraguan Spanish. After all the lightheartedness, the last chapter gives a very sober and thoughtful evaluation of the accomplishments of the Revolution ten years in. I suppose you could say the book is "dated," but it only strives to share one man's experiences and observations during the 80s, nothing more. It's clear that Colburn loves the Nicaraguan land and people. I'll likely be traveling to Nicaragua at the end of the year-- I'll be interested to see how much has changed since twenty-some years ago.

[Bob Newman]

Just barely chugging along in Nicaragua

Once upon a time, as I remember, there was a country called Nicaragua. It was in the news every day. Revolutionaries had taken it over. This was perceived as a great threat to our nation, (the USA)---a well-known military pushover with a decrepit economy which could easily have been totally destroyed by this Central American Marxist powerhouse. We armed the opposition and a war ensued in which the poor killed the poor. Russians, Bulgarians, and even Libyans appeared in Central America. People came visiting from everywhere who dreamed that Latin American countries could develop without being dominated by Uncle Sam. Even Salman Rushdie wrote a book about it. Suddenly, an election was held---hey, I thought Nicaragua was totalitarian---and the revolutionaries lost. Nicaragua faded from the news immediately and nothing more has ever been heard of the place. That's the media biz.

MY CAR IN MANAGUA stands out like a lighthouse on a dark stormy night. An eminently reasonable man spent a lot of time there and wrote an academic study of the place. This is not it. Colburn captures the flavor of Nicaragua in those tumultuous years here, describing daily life and survival tactics in easily-flowing prose. No cant, no rhetoric, no animosity. In a brief book he covers a vast variety of subjects; from car purchase and maintenance to accounting and management techniques on "revolutionary" cattle ranches. You can find out what kind of toothpaste was available in Sandinista Nicaragua (Bulgarian) or how to tell a middle class home in Managua (it had cement floors). Everything is described with understanding and with a sense of humor. The book is illustrated with drawings by a famous Nicaraguan cartoonist of the time, Róger Sánchez Flores, though I did not find them exceptional. We plainly see the economic mess created by a revolution that was far more successful in breaking down old social barriers and empowering the common man. Colburn never harps on this, just notes various unvarnished facts. The affection that the author feels for this impoverished, exhausted country is obvious. For a commonsense view of 1980s Nicaragua that is enjoyable, well-written and insightful, you cannot do better than this book. And it made you wonder, not for the first time perhaps, if the USA's style of foreign policy would ever change.

[Adobe]

In short essays based on his sporadic periods of residence in Nicaragua during the 1980s, the author describes the quotidian results of the new Sandinista government. Colburn is even-handed and remarkably non-judgmental: he notes the material shortages and inflation under the piecemeal socialism of the Sandinistas with the same disinterested clarity used when he describes the widespread jokes about former dictator Anastasio Somoza. Things were rough under the Somozas; different things were rough under the Sandinistas. But Colburn takes great pleasure in the country and its inhabitants, including the gregarious hitchhikers he conveys in his decrepit car, itself a notable possession in fraying Managua.

[David]

The perspective provided was highly interesting. The stories were the best. Sometimes the descriptions outside the stories were still good, but some times they seemed like mere lists. For the most part the book was really interesting though.

[Erin]

A pretty interesting book about post-revolutionary Nicaragua. I wish I would have read it after I had been here a while and was more aware about the war and revolution.

[Tim]

A brief and lightweight, but amusing, reflection on the author's time living in Managua during the 80s. Stories about Nica culture and life under the Sandinista revolutionary government.