Life, times, shmem: León is Culture

León was my favorite city in Nicaragua. This place gave birth to the Sandinista movement in the 50´s...thanks to those pesky commie university students. Like everywhere in Nicaragua, there´s horrible poverty anywhere you care to use your eyeballs (remember half the population "gets by" on less than $2.00 a day), but you can also see and feel the vestiges of a real revolutionary movement. Most murals I´ve seen in any city, all with amazing social/political messages or commemorating important historical events. More museums and monuments than anywhere else, dedicated to the revolution that managed to topple the 50-year dictatorial Somoza dynasty, raise the literacy rate 50%, and try to overturn the elitist economic structure.

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First dinner in town

Post dinner skies, right next to the main church.
It really looked just like that.

El Parque Central with its main Catholic Church, the largest in Central America. Mel took this picture from the roof of the Museum of the Revolution, just across the park.

The outside walls of the Museum of the Revolution.

Oof

Intense Iconography. The sandino outlines are just stuffed with symbolism. The dogs being stepped on are Somoza and Uncle Sam, respectively.

"Nature is the source of life"

"Emo causes hemorrhoids"

The city was also full of colonial churches

This mural, just outside the university, was put up to protest the government plans to reduce the educational budget to below 6% of the national budget. Beautifully brutal.

Possibly my favorite tag in the city.

Entitled "Labor Creates Wealth"

Augusto Sandino, Nicaragua´s original anti-American, the leader of resistance to the U.S. occupation of Nicaragua from 1911 to 1933. Made martyr, he was assassinated by Somoza in 1934, after a supposed peace conference.

Why is Nicaragua no better off today than before the Sandinista Revolution? This asshole, President Ronald Reagan, Mr. Counter-revolutionary. Actually...it´s likely not so much his fault (the best thing you can say about Reagan is that he had no idea what his policies meant or did, he was just a great actor after all, a perfect figure head) but rather those of his administration pulling the strings.

The above piece, plus the Reagan and Sandino paintings, were all in the Casa de Cultura, a reclaimed mansion of a former Somoza official. It´s absolutely an amazing place and YOU should see it. The best thing is shown below. A whole swimming pool is reclaimed and broadcasts the most intense anti - industrialcapitalist - materialistimperialist - mindsuckingideology - conformism - hateviolencestateviolence - racismslavesystem....artwork I perhaps have ever seen. It all linked circularly. Click the images for a closer look or, better yet, get your ass down to León and see what the United States of America means to Nicaraguans.