Nicaragua diary: Granada Poetry Festival

The Granada International Festival of Poetry ends with a parade.  It is scheduled to begin at 2:00 in the afternoon, but locals have told me not to plan on anything happening until around 4:00.

That's about the time I step out of the Hotel Granada onto the Calle de Calzada, the pedestrian mall which runs through downtown and ends in front of the hotel.  The large crowd on the hotel steps and across the street around the Iglesia Guadalupe is a mix of young and old, families and tourists, street vendors and shopkeepers.  They are watching a group of mostly younger men in motley dress dragging heavy chains along the cobblestone street.  I have no idea what they represent.  All are masked and wear multi-colored paper hats.  They are dressed in an assortment of shorts and jeans and cloths tied around their waists like skirts, some also in torn nylon stockings.  The clatter of their chains on pavement makes a menacing sound.

Several of the masked revelers wielding chains are lifting and slamming them on the street while leering into the crowd, daring anyone to reign in what suddenly feels to me like a real threat.  One of the masked men fakes a move toward a group of boys, as if he is going to bullwhip them.  They scream and scatter.

Then I notice that many of the chains are connected to a young man in the middle of the pack, who is being dragged and jerked along like a prisoner.  His face is shrouded in a hood, his eyes covered in a yellow blindfold.  He is suddenly yanked so hard his head bounces off the pavement.  He pulls himself limply to a sitting position before his legs are pulled from under him.  I think of the Penitentes, the self-flagellating believers who voluntarily whip themselves in empathy for Christ's suffering on the way to the cross.   Maybe this prisoner is also a volunteer who suffers gladly for some unknown cause.  When I look around I see families and even little children smiling and shouting, but my adrenaline has kicked in and I still am on edge as the chain gang passes.

 

The group comes to a tree at the final intersection of the street across from the Iglesia.  By now it feels like things have slipped out of control, beyond entertainment, as the shouts and chain clanging grow louder and more threatening.  One of the masked men throws his chain over a large branch of the tree and he is joined by a dozen others who begin to heave and pull.  The hooded victim is hoisted into the air, flailing and shouting in what sounds like pain and desperation.   But, no sooner is he lifted high off the ground, than he is set back down, and the group of about two dozen men gather around him to pull him to his feet, remove his hood, and disconnect their chains.

I find a friend and ask what is going on.  She says the chains and hanging are part of a ceremony that ritually brings the poetry festival to a close each year.  The hanging of the metaphorical poet enacts the cycle of the festival--the death of festivities for this year to make way for next year's event.  The Nicaraguans are like many cultures with large numbers of poor.  They do not welcome, but neither do they shy away from death and violence.  Like the Mexican Day of the Dead, the poetry festival deals with the end of things head on.

But not everything here is so ghoulish.  The parade to follow and what I know of Nicaraguans and poetry tell a far broader story of the people and their country.   There is a saying in Nicaragua that everyone is a poet until proven otherwise.  The annual Festival of Poetry in Granada proves, if not that, at least the fact that a wide range of people respect what poetry represents.  The sheer size and variety of people in the crowds who come every night to listen to poets read their works in the plaza shows how universally admired poets are, even by those we would call common folks.  They applaud and talk with each other about the poems and poets, most of whom they are hearing for the first and most likely only time.  This year, I find from a festival flyer, over 110 poets from 62 countries have come to read their work to these large, appreciative crowds.  Poets are in attendance from India, Malaysia, China, Iceland, the United States and every Spanish-speaking country in the hemisphere and beyond.  Nobel prize winning poet, Derek Wolcott, and Pulitzer prize winner, Robert Pinsky, are two of the featured participants.

Every year the festival celebrates a poet connected with Spanish-language poetry, and this year it is Carlos Martinez Riva, a Guatemalan-born writer who spent most of his life in Nicaragua and who is buried in the city of Granada.  One of his poems is titled, "Poesia es insurrección solitaria" (Poetry is solitary insurrection).  That sentiment is echoed by the crowds who line the parade route, when a float that heads the procession stops at every corner of the Calzada to allow a woman to shout it through the public address system.  And the crowd shouts back:  "Poesia es insurrección solitaria," with a vigor that says they totally approve of the sentiment.  I picture a similar event taking place in the U.S. and can see the switchboard at the local police station light up with alarmed calls for someone to "stop this civil disorder" (although in language hardly that calm or polite).

Following the poet's float are groups representing smaller communities in and around Granada, each dressed in elaborate hand-sewn costumes, and all dancing to the accompaniment of small local bands.  Minus the floats, it is like the Rose Bowl Parade of poetry.  A small group, less than a dozen boys, passes by in black face and Grim Reaper capes, a couple carrying homemade scythes.  Another group dressed in everyday clothes carries placards protesting the government's failure to provide school supplies.  But most groups are there to dance and sing and twirl about in beautiful, colorful dresses and costumes.

Many of the dancers are children, primarily girls but also groups of young men; all smile and wave to families as they pass.  Almost no one refuses my request for a photo, something I have experienced every time I visit the country.  There is an innocence and joy in the Nicaraguan people that neither years of civil war and foreign intervention, nor ruthless governments can extinguish.  Despite poverty and the political maneuverings of current President Daniel Ortega, these are people who love poetry, which is far better than loving wealth or power or order, although some may love those as well.

When I see the crowds, the color, the celebration; when I hear the music and words of the poets; when see what grows and thrives from humble roots--then I realize what this festival means.  Where there is poetry there is hope.  Where there is poetry there is humanity.  Where there is poetry there is steely determination to search for and champion what is just and compassionate and right.

¡Viva la poesia!  ¡Viva la insurrección!