IT’S EARLY AFTERNOON and I’m driving west on Flagler Street in Miami, heading for Sweetwater to talk to the Nicaraguans. The Sandinistas have lost the election, and that might change thousands of lives here.
As always in Miami, I feel as if I’m in a Latin American country. The day is brilliant with sun, palm trees rattle in the breeze, and I’m listening to Radio Mambi. This is a 50,000-watt Spanish-language station named for the guerrillas who fought the Spanish in the 19th century.
When I’m in South Florida I listen to nothing else, because I’m a connoisseur of the fanatic heart. Radio Mambi, with all those watts capable of reaching Havana, is totally dedicated to the destruction of Fidel Castro. The news shows lead with stories about Fidel. The comedy shows are about Fidel. The talk shows are about Fidel. Fidel is the devil. Fidel is evil. Fidel should die. It’s beautiful.
On this day, alas, the Radio Mambi announcers are bubbling with an almost giddy confidence, full of laughter and joy, and the new tone makes me vaguely nostalgic for the old snarling vehemence. They are certain now that the end is near for Fidel. Look what happened to el dictador Daniel Ortega. Gone. Look at Eastern Europe. Only Fidel, el diablo rojo, is left. It’s only a matter of months, maybe hours, before he is gone too. Gov. Bob Martinez has even created a committee to make the transition in Havana smoother. We’re going back! Christmas in Havana! Vamanos, Cubanos!
But wait: What about the Nicaraguans? They can go home right now. About 150,000 Nicaraguans are living in South Florida. The suburb of Sweetwater is almost completely Nicaraguan, and is called Little Managua. Some 50,000 are said to have asked for political asylum, which they are unlikely to be granted now that a God-fearing, freedom-loving, pro-American regime is back in power in Big Managua. So are the Miami Nicaraguans packing for the journey home? Have they already departed? I cross Ronald Reagan Avenue, drive through a dull stretch, and then see Ruben Dario Avenue, named for the great Nicaraguan poet, and I am in Sweetwater. I see the Centro Comercial Managua, pull around, and go in and park.
A woman named Mercedes Gonzales is standing outside the Josefina Unisex Hair Design parlor. She is uneasy because I am asking her questions. People who look the way I do are usually there to put people who look like her in holding pens. “I have papers,” she says. “I am legal. Why should I go back there?”
With that, she gets into a 1987 Toyota Corolla and drives away.
Other people are not as cooperative. A man walks out of the Farmacia 22-24, spots me, goes back inside and out another door. I walk into the Managua Bakery. Everybody stops talking. I explain who I am and ask a few questions. Shrugs. People move to the door. A man says, “We’re happy about the elections. But going back … I don’t know. We’ll see.”
It is the same at the Tropic Cleaners and the Mi Cocina takeout and in El Mercadito Nicaraguense. Those who talk at all say they will wait and see. Most hurry away at the sight of a gringo. But not all. A younger man who says his name is Alexis Carballo does try to explain. He has a green card and works in a used-car lot on Calle Ocho, the main street of Little Havana.
“Nobody wants to go back,” he says. “And the reason is simple. They didn’t come here because of the Sandinistas. That’s all politics and bull—-. They came here because of poverty. Here they have jobs, they have places to live, they have cars, they have their kids in good schools, they think it’s paradise. Why would they want to go back? And how can the Americans force them to go back? That’s why everybody else came here too.”
DRIVING AROUND IN SWEETWATER, I can see what he means: green lawns and cars in driveways and children on bicycles. Managua, ruined by an earthquake in 1972, was never rebuilt by Anastasio Somoza; the old dictator stole the relief money and guaranteed the triumph of the Sandinistas.
In comparison with Managua, the ugliest major city in Latin America, Sweetwater looks like a movie set. It reminds me that we all see this world from different perspectives. For a decade, we were taugh.
“Look around,” Carballo told me. “Then ask yourself: Would you leave this for Managua?”
Sweetwater was always marginal, a distant western suburb of Miami, originally settled in the late 1930s by a troupe of touring circus midgets. For most of its history, it housed poor whites and itinerants.
But the Nicaraguans began to transform Sweetwater as they arrived in greater numbers in the early 1980s. Most were poor or lower middle class — renters, not owners, who worked at mean jobs. Following the Cuban-exile model, which in itself was a Latin echo of the classic European immigrant saga, they began to elect their own. They took over the city council (whose meetings were often held in Spanish). They witnessed their own scandals (most of the city council was indicted in January for extortion). They worked hard. They moved up.
“I would like to go back for a visit,” a man named Edgar Cruz tells me as he washes a Mazda in the driveway of his home. “That would be nice. But I’m an American now. My kids are American. I’m here to stay.”
I have been told to visit Los Ranchos Restaurant, where the old Somoza crowd hangs out. I find it in another of the many shopping centers that serve as the plazas and zocalos of Latin Miami. The restaurant is closed. I find a young Nicaraguan woman in front of the Happy Buddha Chinese restaurant. “They open for dinner,” she says in English. “Bu Roosevelt Avenue, and then go to La Esquina de Tejas restaurant. It’s half empty at this hour. I have soup and rolls, and watch the Cuban businessmen. One departs smiling, and shouts at a friend, “Navidad en La Habana!” They both laugh.
Outside, young men drive by in Corvettes and Camaros, radios blaring. But not Radio Mambi. New Kids on the Block. A man on crutches approaches me for change. His leg is missing, the trouser pinned up to his thigh. He says he was a contra, wounded in battle in Jinotega Province in 1987. I give him a few dollars, and ask if he is going back to Nicaragua. He clenches the dollars, his eyes full of bitterness, shrugs, and says, “Quien sabes?” — who knows? And hobbles away.
On a Friday night, I go to the Brickell Point Sheraton Hotel for a meeting of the Nicaraguan American Bankers and Businessmen’s Association. Almost 1,200 jam into a ballroom with room for about 900. Most are men, dressed in suits of muted colors, with an occasional linen guayabera adding a Latin touch.
TRIUMPHALISM IS THICKER HERE than the cigarette smoke. Nobody dodges and mumbles; they hand you business cards and talk freely. They have assembled to listen to Francisco Mayorga, economic adviser to Violeta Chamorro, conqueror of the Sandinistas. When Roberto Arguello, a past president, calls the meeting to order, they all stand to sing the country’s old national anthem (which pt to justify the contra campaign. He certainly doesn’t admit that the new Nicaragua will be made up of so many losers: the contras, who lost the war, and the Sandinistas, who lost the election. Instead he insists that this newest Nicaragua will be “inclusive, not exclusive,” it will be “tolerant,” it will be free.
It is a speech that Mario Cuomo could have made. There is warm applause, and much waving of forefingers, the symbol of UNO, the coalition that his mother led to victory on Feb. 25. “Nicaragua te necesita,” he says at the end. Nicaragua needs you. He says this five times, making it a chant. The crowd cheers and then gives way to Mayorga.
“This one is great,” the man next to me tells a friend. “Wait till you hear him…”
Mayorga is a small, neat man, with a gift for the Latin American oratorical style: that splendid mixture of facts, sarcasm, withering scorn, crude jokes and romantic poetry whose master in this century is Fidel Castro.
Mayorga makes the crowd roar by declaring that Nicaragua will again be a republic. He salutes all those who struggled against the Sandinistas. “Mision completa!” he shouts. Mission complete! They cheer and laugh. He then asks for a minute of silence for the contras who died on the battlefield. Then he starts the main speech, a plea for help, for money, for managerial skills; making clear that for him, as for his auditors, thestrategy was to destroy bridges, grain elevators, communications and farms. He blames the Sandinistas.
“We have to clean up their mess now,” he shouts. “And we will need the help of el exilio.”
El exilio — the exiles — listen carefully. The new government will end inflation by issuing a new currency that will be equal to the dollar. “One cordoba, one dollar!” (Cheers.) The military draft will end immediately. (Small cheers.) State-run monopolies will end. (Slightly bigger cheers.) Restrictions on private industry will be reduced. (Bigger cheers.)
When Mayorga adds that the government will create a program to compensate the owners of seized private property, he is given a standing ovation.
IN THE LOBBY, THE REACTIONS are more muted. They are, in fact, not much different from those in Sweetwater. Nice speech, but hey, man, quien sabes? Here’s my card, I’m with Metropolitan Life. Call me at the bank if you need more.
The Nicaraguans have discovered networking. But Mayorga’s final passionate plea for their help, invoking everything from the volcanoes and beaches to the beauty of Nicaraguan women, obviously didn’t move all to contact their airlines. One young man in a three-piece suit says to me: “Hey, I love my country. But I love myself more.” He laughs, but he is absolutely serious.
At one point, a man approaches me for a light. I give him one and ask him if he’s goia monthly column for Esquire.
