Read The Jaguar Smile for Free Online Page B

dictatorship. He justified his support for parties and governments of the right in his native Peru by saying that hepreferred ballots to bullets; that a flawed democracy was infinitely preferable to no democracy at all.
    Peru was a flawed democracy of the right. Nicaragua was a flawed democracy of the left. If democracy were really Vargas Llosa’s goal, then Nicaragua, according to his own declared principles, was exactly the kind of state he ought to be supporting, and fighting to improve.
    I wondered, into the silence, why he did not.

5

    ESTELÍ
    A t five a.m. on the morning of 19 July, the day of the seventh anniversary celebrations, I went to the home of Daniel Ortega and his wife, the poet Rosario Murillo. After getting past the usual compound walls and guards, I entered a rambling bungalow of many verandahs and large numbers of carved wooden rocking-chairs. The decor reflected Rosario Murillo’s interest in the country’s arts and crafts: there were brightly coloured wooden animal mobiles dangling from the beams, and pottery decorated with pre-Columbian motifs, and cushions covered in the softened bark of trees. The house revealed very little about Comandante Daniel, for whom, it seemed, reticence had become (had always been?) second nature. Children’s toys, and indeed children, were everywhere. There was no shortage of little Ortegas, and many of them, I noted, were wearing ‘Masters of the Universe’ T-shirts, featuring the eternal battle of He-Man and Skeletor; another indication of the omnipresence of US culture.
    The Sandinista leadership assembled. This year, the main‘Acta’ or celebratory event was to be held at Estelí, the northern town, just forty kilometres from the Honduran frontier, that had always been solidly behind the Frente. (Even the local bishop was the most amenable member of the Nicaraguan church hierarchy.) The decision to hold the Acta at Estelí was an act of defiance, and it was a racing certainty that the Contra forces would be doing their best to ruin the day. ‘We will show them we can defend our frontier,’ Daniel Ortega said.
    Pragmatically, four of the FSLN ‘nine’ stayed behind in Managua, as did Sergio Ramírez. We set off in convoy, preceded by the now-familiar outriders in their orange washing-up gloves. Their hands, I thought, must get terribly hot and sticky in there.
    The Nicaraguan people knew what to do when the rubber gloves approached: they got out of the way. We zoomed northwards. Daniel Ortega drove his own, black Landcruiser. I travelled behind him with Rosario Murillo and two of the ‘nine’, the agriculture minister Jaime Wheelock and the FSLN’s political chief, Bayardo Arce, in Comandante Arce’s vehicle. Arce looked impatient as we bowled along (he has a reputation for being something of a speed merchant). Scarecrow Ronald Reagans hung – by the neck – from roadside trees.
    Arce munched on an enormous cigar as we crossed the bridge at Sébaco. ‘It would be a good day,’ he remarked absently, ‘for the contra-revolución to attack a bridge.’
    ‘Hmm,’ I agreed, keeping my voice deep and courageous. The road was lined with members of the peasant militias in fatigues, carrying their Kalashnikovs. ‘We decided to use the militias for security purposes today,’ Arce said. ‘We couldn’t pull the troops in from the frontier, as you’ll understand.’
    ‘Hmm,’ I agreed again. In Sébaco, I noticed, you could goand play bingo at the Red Cross building. They obviously didn’t get too much work, I reassured myself.
    ‘The security seems excellent,’ I mumbled. Jaime Wheelock, baby-faced and friendly, grimaced. ‘There are a lot of roads,’ he said. ‘We can’t guarantee that they are all safe.’
    ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I see.’
    Wheelock was worried that the Contra would hide out along the smaller mountain roads and ambush the campesinos as they made their way to Estelí. Many rural communities had been instructed not to try and make