Murals of Revolutionary Nicaragua (Book Review)

“Murals of Revolutionary Nicaragua, 1979-1992”, 0520081900, c1995, by David Kunzle. In the publishing world, no matter the subject, there aren’t many times where it can honestly be said that there is only one book you really need to read on … “whatever topic”. When someone says this, usually what they mean is that, in their opinion, such and such a book is better than all the other books on that topic or, less honestly, that the book in question mirrors their personal beliefs on the matter. When it comes to revolutionary political art in Sandinista Nicaragua, it is fair to say there really is only one book you need to read (and I say that as someone who doesn’t share the authors political assumptions or ideas). Marxist art historian (UCLA) David Kunzle, is a recognized expert on the history of symbolism and the interaction of art an politics, who has authored books ranging from “Che Guevara - Icon, Myth, Message”, to “The History of the Comic Strip”, to “Posters of Protest: The Posters of Political Satire in the U.S., 1966-1970”. Although he has written books on political art and comics in Europe, he is no novice to the Latin world, and has widely researched and published essays on political art in Chile, Cuba, and Mexico.

Kunzle was in Sandinista Nicaragua, and was deeply moved by the imagery. He decided to document what remained of the more than 300 murals, after the Sandinistas were voted out of power in 1990. His book is really two books. The first being Kunzle’s indictment of those responsible for the destruction of the murals (historical documents, to Kunzle - the architectural equivalent of a book-burning, only worse, since books are replaceable) and a plea for restoration of those which remain, and the second being his documentary project on the quickly disappearing murals. His condemnation of those who destroyed the murals (he names names) is no mere footnote to his images, and this can be inferred from his whopping 83-page introduction, “The United States and Nicaragua: A History of Hostility”, which includes more than 130 footnotes (many comparable publications have only a 5-10 page introduction). The introduction is essential to understanding how the murals came to exist, and the significance of them - at least according to Kunzle. The former is important, since many people wrongly assume the murals to have been a natural outgrowth of Nicaraguan art & political culture. The original mural line was handled by the Felizio Santizo Brigade from Panama (later Brigades hailed from Chile, Cuba, Argentina, Italy, and Germany). The Panamanian Brigade had previously been commissioned to paint nearly 60 murals in Panama, throughout the 1970’s, under the administrations of both Torrijos and Noriega (there is no comparable legacy of these murals, nor tribute to them such as Kunzle offers Nicaragua, in that most if not all were destroyed by and after the U.S. invasion of Panama).

At times, Kunzle offers about as seething -and one sided- a critique of U.S. political-cultural influences then and now, as you will find in any University Press book. He gives a nice, fairly detailed account of mural art, how it got started in Nicaragua, what turns it later took, the significance of it, who commissioned it and created it, what it will me to lose it, and who is responsible for the growing losses across the country (as he notes, Leon and Esteli did not turn out Sandinista administrations, so mural art has protection there, and probably also a future foundation - especially now [note the book was published in 1995, long before Ortega returned to power in 2006]). This is followed by the catalog of murals Kunzle and company (he relied on many Nicaraguan friends for helps and access to photographs and slides). The end result is a 200-page, magazine-sized tribute to the art of the political mural in Sandinista Nicaragua. It is not hard to find reference to this work as being a “coffee table book”. While I suppose many people use this phrase to refer to any book large enough to cover up a measurable part of the surface area of their coffee table, it is hard to imagine a book less suited to casual browsing. This really isn’t the kind of book you flip through, while waiting for the football game to start, or for the dinner party conversation to improve. While the book is oversized, it is hardly huge, and if there is a criticism which could be leveled against the publication as a whole, it would be that it is not “coffee-table-ish” enough. Granted, it was a huge project. And, there are countless publishing concerns, sales figure concerns, and the ever-present fact that authors often do not end up getting printed the book they originally envisioned. But, I did find it odd that most murals are reproduced in the book in such a small format. While select murals receive much of a single page (the book is about 9x11”), it is far more common for several images to be seen on a single page. The color “plates” of the highlighted murals are often no larger than a 4x6” or 5x5“ photograph, and many of the b&w offerings are reproduced in minuscule scale, appearing in the text about the size of a playing card. Given that murals gain some of their power by the sheer physical size of them, one limiting factor of the book is that not a single mural is represented in the book as anything even approaching a gatefold (expanded or panoramic) reproduction. But, in the grand scheme of things, perhaps that is nitpicking.

While part two of the book, the documentary photographic project, stands on its own merits, it is Kunzel’s introduction and the underlying assumptions which might be questioned by some readers, even those thankful for his hard work in preserving the mural legacy. Kunzel seems not to ever question whether or not many of the things people assume to be true regarding written history and artwork in general, might not map well to public art, especially murals. Strangely, perhaps, Kunzle doesn’t recommend that anyone commission a new Mussolini-esque equestrian statue of Somoza; he maintains that since the destroyed statue is now in a museum, that is sufficient (only some art needs to stand forever, apparently). Being apolitical, if it is o.k. to keep the pieces of what was once the Somoza-on-horseback statue, in the corner of a museum, as a satisfactory attempt to preserve history, then why is it not permissible to simply photograph a mural, and then paint over it (at least the photo shows it as it really was)? Sometimes, even though he quite accurately points out that there is no such thing as a Contra mural (if there were 1980’s-era pro-Contra murals in Managua, does he really believe the Sandinistas would have left them untouched up through 1990?), Kunzle seems naïve in assuming that often monstrous public political art would simply remain, as created, for decades, if not generations (if every ruling party or generation demanded the right to such creations -not to be silly, but- eventually the whole city would be an overwhelming sea of imagery). There is the very real possibility that he has, through his notion of history as art, mapped to the murals a significance they are more likely to have to outsiders than to many native Nicaraguans. In some ways it is as easy as it is tempting to play devil’s advocate regarding much of what he says regarding the murals. For example, maybe the reason there is no great in-country outcry and organized protest against the loss of the murals is because there was no overpowering nearly-universal identification with them in the first place. Mural art was not inherent in Nicaraguan culture; it was imported from Mexico, via Panama; it was initiated by non-Nicaraguans; it was orchestrated and expanded by internacionalistas (which sounds more inclusive than “foreigners”); the mural school was established by Europeans; the most famed murals were done by artists from Chile, Italy, Canada, and San Francisco; it is widely agreed that many of the murals have non-Nicaraguan elements and overtones; the murals were never really adequately maintained by the Sandinista government (though to their credit they did try to prevent their destruction by protecting them via the historic patrimony law before handing over power); there is no Nicaraguan equivalent to Kunzle’s book, having been done by a Nicaraguan (why does it take a guy from L.A. to do what Nicaraguans should have been doing from day one?); and, worth noting, is that more than a decade after Kunzle’s book was published, it has yet to be translated into Spanish.

Devils’ advocate part concluded, and offered only partly seriously, because what Kunzel posits as obvious might not be so obvious to many readers. As great as many of the murals were, they may have meant much more to some people than others. No matter how important one considers them, though, anyone interested in the political-cultural history of modern Nicaragua is seriously indebted to Kunzel for this very noteworthy project. It really is the only book one needs to read about mural art in Nicaragua.