By Pat Werner
(2015 Todos derechos reservados)
DB-While he states otherwise, this is a comprehensive list of information sources for those of you wanting to really learn about Nicaragua – its people, its history and much more.
Of things Nicaraguan, there are a surprising number of sources in English. There are many other sources of things Nicaraguan in Spanish, and the two lists do not, for the most part, duplicate each other. For English readers, the following sources are suggested. This list is not comprehensive, but it is a beginning.
The Place To Start: If there is one essential book on Nicaragua, it is Ephraim Squier´s Nicaragua; Its People, Scenery, Monuments, Resources, Condition, And Proposed Canal, With One hundred Original Maps And Illustrations, 1860 (facsimile edition, 1973, AMS Press, New York, 1973). I have taught Nicaraguan history for 25 years, and this is still the best source to begin to understand Nicaragua. It is available for sale on the internet from various sources. It is indispensable. Originals are pretty expensive, beginning at several hundred dollars, but the facsimiles are quite reasonable. One cannot know Nicaragua without multiple readings of Squier.
Geology: The interesting thing about Nicaraguan geology is that it is quite old, with Cretaceous structures in the north, and much younger geology in the south. There are two major areas where precious metals are found, along the Coco River in the north, and the area of the mines by Siuna, La Rosita, and Bonanza. There are also very large gold mines at Malpaisillo, la Libertad, and Santo Domingo. There are other smaller, mostly older gold mines in Matagalpa. Where there are gold deposits, there usually is mineralization that yields various types of crystals of semi precious stones. The old silver mines of Maquelizo also have areas that produce minerals and crystals. I have panned for gold for years along the Coco River and done well. In areas by some of the gold mines are found there is amethyst, citron, and other quartz minerals. In the north are deposits of schorl, and schorl crystals floating in milky quartz, rose quartz, and transparent quartz crystals.
Other areas in western Nicaragua have petrified wood, both deciduous and palm trees, corals, and related. There may be opal in a few places, and reasonable deposits of colored flint. Areas of the San Juan River are replete with microcrystalline quartz and one area has large deposits of Serpentine. One must be careful of petrified wood as it is covered by the Nicaraguan law of antiquities. I once spent a lot of time with a two pound sledge hammer busting rocks along the San Juan River, looking for jadeite. I found pyroxenes, but no jadeite. The source of very fine jadeite used by the Olmecs and Mayas was finally found by the Motagua River in Guatemala after Hurricane Mitch exposed some old structures.
On old mines, sources include Ephraim Squier´s very fine Central America (1860), facsimile by AMS Press, New York ( 1975). On the mines of Santo Domingo, see Thomas Belt`s account of the flora and fauna of Santo Domingo. He wrote his book while working as a mining engineer at the gold mines of Santo Domingo in the 1860s. A good, general purpose geology handbook is, The Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Rocks and Minerals, Alfred Knopf, New York, 1993.
Ornithology and Bird Watching: In spite Costa Rica´s reputation for being a source to observe tropical trogons, Nicaragua probably has the same or greater amounts of quetzals as Costa Rica. Nicaragua has not had the publicity. Three areas, Arenal in Matagalpa-Jinotega, the Cordillera de Dipilto, and the massive limestone mountain Kilambé, all have quetzals. The large reserves of Bosawas and Si A Paz have complete biospheres, including the Harpy Eagle and worth a visit. And outside my study in Diriamba are found many species, including the national bird, the Emerald Browed Motmot ( Eumomota superciliosa), locally known as the Guardabarranco, and the spot bellied bobwhite quail, that call out in the early morning and later afternoon.
There are about 800 species of birds to be seen in Nicaragua, including many migratory species, such as the white winged dove and blue winged teal, both of which fly south in November by the millions. Two books cover the subject, Roger Tory Peterson, and Edward L.Chalif, Peterson Field Guide to Mexican Birds, Houghton Mifflin, 1973. The other necessary source is Gary F. Stiles and Alexander Skutch, A Field Guide To The Birds Of Costa Rica, Cornell University, 1989. With these two tomes and good glass, there is much to do and observe.
Mushrooms: Nicaragua has many mushrooms, little studied. A place to begin is Susan Metzler and Van Metzler, Texas Mushrooms, A Field Guide, University of Texas Press, 1992. Yes folks, there are magic mushrooms in Nicaragua, the Psilocybe cubensis, and also another mushroom that is little and brown and much resembles the Galerina, a deadly poisonous variety. There are tropical Amanitas, which may or may not be poisonous, as one resembles the A. muscaria. Tropical Amanitas reportedly cross breed, which makes them dangerous. In the north country, in the areas where the Spaniards first found gold, reportedly in the hair of a maiden swimming in one of the may streams, and where the Indians drove out the Spaniards, and where Sandino fought with the US Marines, and where many Contra ambushes and battles took place, there are to be found very succulent Boletus and Chanterelles.
As my father taught me, one never tells where choice mushrooms are found, and so the reader will have to wander the northern mountains for himself to find these two species. But they are here in Nicaragua. And they are worth hunting. Foraging for mushrooms tends to be a cultural trait of families from Central And Eastern Europe, and Spain. It is fascinating but must be done with great care, and conservatism. If one has not looked for edible mushrooms before, Nicaragua is not a good place to start. The medical community has little experience in treating mushroom intoxication or poisoning.
Orchids: Nicaraguan orchids are striking in their beauty. Unlike Costa Rica, which has been picked over extensively, there still are orchids that can be observed in the wilds. There are orchids for sale in Managua, but these are east Asian species that flower for a long time and are commercially successful. No one, to my knowledge, sells commercially Nicaraguan species. As with birds, there are about 800 species of orchids, of which about 650 have been identified. Costa Rica has slightly more orchids, but does not have some of the varieties that extend south from Mexico.
Several varieties of Cattleya, Mormodes, Sobralia, and Gongora flower in December- March. The Stanhopeas, which include the Stanhopea confusa, which has a powerful aroma of vanilla and hot chocolate, and flower in March- July. It resembles a hovering butterfly, and is magnificent. Sources for studying Nicaraguan orchids include Robert L. Dressler, Phylogeny and Classification of the Orchid Family, Dioscorides Press, Portland, Oregon, 1993, and his equally fine Field Guide to the Orchids of Costa Rica and Panama, Cornell University, 1993. Also note my Introduction To Nicaraguan Orchids, La Prensa Press, 2001. It is out of print but I included it on my web page, nicaraguanpathways.com.
Reptiles, Amphibians, And Mammals: The biosphere of Nicaragua contains many interesting neotropical cold blooded and hot blooded creatures. Most foreigners are deathly afraid of meeting up with venomous snakes. This is highly unlikely unless one is walking through jungle in the San Juan River basin or eastern RAAS or RAAN. The fer-de-lance is there, as is the bushmaster, but always never seen, especially by foreigners. There is occasionally found in cow pastures in western Nicaragua the tropical rattle snake, Crotalus durissus, but almost no persons are ever bitten by them. They are actually quite tasty, with a slight aroma of cucumbers and flavor similar to the western Diamondback rattler. Jaime Villa and Jay Savage´s bi lingual, Introduction To The Herpetofauna of Costa Rica, Society For The Study Of Amphibians And Reptiles, 1986, is very good with checklists.
The herpetofauna of Costa Rica is much like that of Nicaragua. Similarly, Jaime Villa, Larry David Wilson, and Jerry D. Johnson, Middle American Herpetology, A Bibliographic Checklist, University of Missouri Press, 1988, is a very good source of finding out what is in Nicaragua. Regarding mammals, a good source is Louise H. Emmons, Neotropìcal Rainforest Mammals, University of Chicago Press, 1990. For general biology of Chontales province, see Thomas Belt´s, The Naturalist in Nicaragua, University of Chicago Press, 1985. He was a mining engineer in Santo Domingo and observed much plant and animal life while working the gold mine.
Archaeology: The presence of prehistoric presence Man in Nicaragua has been systematically studied for about sixty years. One of the most indestructible evidences of prehistoric Man is ceramics, and related. The pre-Columbian ceramic sequence covers about 3,000 years before the coming of the Spaniards in 1522, and is usually divided into four periods. Thousands of ceramic vessels are in the hands of collectors and the government. The laws of Nicaragua define how pre-Columbian artifacts can be possessed, and failure to follow that law can result in a collection being confiscated and the possessor being arrested. Law 1142 needs to be followed in all its elements.
The collection I posted on my web page was confiscated by the Nicaraguan government from a collector precisely for not following the law. Another element to collecting pre-Columbian artifacts is that there is a booming cottage industry in producing and selling counterfeit pottery to gullible buyers. The potters in a couple of towns noted for pottery production are pretty good at making good counterfeit copies. Two of the best collections available for viewing authentic, legal pre-Columbian ceramics are found in the National Museum in Managua and at Mi Museo in Granada. Best place to begin reading is Fred Lange´s excellent, The Archaeology Of Pacific Nicaragua, University of New Mexico Press, 1992.
An interesting sidelight of pre-Columbian ceramics is that the various cultures produced a certain amount of jadeite objects, with the jadeite coming from the Motagua River valley in eastern Guatemala. In 2010 the Spanish confiscated a collection of jadeite objects and turned them over to the Nicaraguan Institute of Culture. I was asked to study and analyze these 32 objects, and a few more that were in the National Museum. That study resulted in my (in Spanish) Objetos de Jadeita en Nicaragua: Un Analisis Preliminar. The Spanish is pretty straightforward with pictures of every jadeite piece identified and analyzed. It also in on my web page as a manuscript. There is no source in English on Nicaraguan jades. In Costa Rica which in some ways is similar to Nicaragua in its found jades, but in other aspects is quite different, can be found in Fred Lange´s (ed), Precolumbain Jade: New Geological and Cultural Interpretations, University of Utah Press, 1993.
The Conquest, Indigenous Peoples, And Colonial History: There is no comprehensive account of the conquest of Nicaragua because the letter that Pedrarias Davila wrote to the Spanish Crown describing the conquest was lost. There are a few snippets, but nothing like Bernal de Castillo´s great account of the conquest of Mexico. In English there is very little. The identification, ethnic identity, population and economic production of indigenous villages in 1548, shortly after the conquest, can be found in my, The Ethnohistory of Early Colonial Nicaragua, found on my web page, cited above.
An account of the wild and wooly shenanigans of the first Spaniards, fighting with the Indians, themselves, and the Catholic Church, can be found in a manuscript, in English, I wrote as an afterthought after writing about the early days, in Spanish. That manuscript, The Church State Conflict,(no date, but written in 1994) is found on my web page. Linda Newson´s, Indian Survival In Colonial Nicaragua, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1987 is an excellent source based upon extensive research of primary documents. Similarly, William Fowler´s, The Pipil- Nicarao, (1985) is an excellent synthesis of much early ethnographic reports of the various Indigenous groups in western Nicaragua and El Salvador at the onset of the conquest.
The 300 years of colonial history has few sources primary sources, with 300,000 pages of documents about colonial Nicaragua crying out for researchers. On colonial economy, Miles Wortman´s, Government And Society In Central America, 1680-1840, Columbia University Press, 1982, is a basic source. Murdo Macleod´s, Spanish Central America, A Socioeconomic History: 1520-1720, University of California Press, 1973, is another valuable, primary source. For anyone curious about how the colony actually worked and how Spain introduced its laws to Nicaragua, I translated a lot of laws, mostly called cédulas reales, and organized the reports and lawsuits of the Coleccion Somoza, a collection of 10,000 pages of colonial documents from 1504 to 1551. Those laws, 110 annotations of lawsuits, and 130 letters and reports to the Crown give one a good view of the boisterous life in Nicaragua at the beginning of the colony. Please see Spanish Law In Early Colonial Nicaragua: Statutes, Lawsuits, and Ancillary Reports, found on my web site.
Though sometimes envisioned as a sort of southern Mexico, Nicaragua has always been quite different from Mexico, beginning with human occupation. Two works of colonial Mexico, Eric Van Young´s, Hacienda And Market in Eighteenth- Century Mexico, University of California Press, 1981, and Robert Himmerich and Valencia´s, The Encomenderos Of New Spain, 1521-1555, University of Texas Press, 1991, are both of peripheral interest, though Nicaragua was a much smaller proposition than New Spain, and did not have large encomiendas at any time. Colonial works that touch upon the Caribbean coast are also scarce, one exception being Troy S. Floyd´s, The Anglo-Spanish Struggle for Mosquitia, University of New Mexico Press, 1967.
Archaeology does not end with the coming of the Spaniards, and they began leaving material artifacts as soon as they began the conquest. Recent controlled digs at Leon Viejo, for example, have yielded pottery from Sevilla, Spain, and related artifacts, and porcelain from Canton, China. What is interesting is that collectors have concentrated on Precolumbian ceramics and artifacts, which are quite common and counterfeited with abandon, and Spanish colonial ceramics, including tin glazed majólicas, and a couple of types of authentic Ming dynasty, do not appear in any collections. Spanish colonial ceramics and artifacts have been studied in other places. See, for example, Kathleen Deagan, Artifacts Of The Spanish Colonies of Florida and the Caribbean, 1500-1800, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C., 1987. The entire sequence of Hispanic ceramic development is found in Florence C. Lister and Robert H. Lister, Andalusian Ceramics In Spain and New Spain, A Cultural Register from the Third Century B.C. to 1700, University of Arizona Press, 1987.
Independence And State Consolidation Through William Walker: There is very little written in English about this 50 year time span, 1810-1860. Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr., Central America, A Nation Divided, Oxford University Press, 1985, is indispensable to understanding this time. Regarding William Walker, the best way to understand what happened is to read his book, The War In Nicaragua, University of Arizona Press, 1985, written by himself shortly before he was shot in Honduras in 1860. The major work in English is Alejandro Bolaños´ encyclopedic, William Walker, The Grey Eyed Man Of Destiny, privately published, five volumes, 1990. Alejandro spent 25 years traveling the globe finding the documental basis for Walker and its completeness shows in this magnum opus.
Sandino, The Marines, Somoza, and the Sandinistas:Precious little has been written in English about the beginnings of Nicaragua in the first two decades of the 20th century. For that matter, little has been written in Spanish of this important time. Jose Santos Zelaya dominated Nicaragua, and Central America until 1909, and his leaving was followed by a series of wars and uprisings that ended up with Anastasio Somoza Garcia, a rural middle class native of San Marcos, in power by 1936. Hermann Deutsch´ potboiler,
The Incredible Yanqui, The Career of Lee Christmas, Pelican Publishing, Gretna, 2012, narrated the career of Christmas, a mercenary that was involved in Honduras politics at the turn of the century and was directly involved in the wars between Honduras and Nicaragua. Lester D. Langley and Thomas Schoonover´s The Banana Men, American Mercenaries and Entrepreneurs in Central America, 1880-1930, University of Kentucky Press, 1995, does a much better job of documenting the career of Samuel Zemurray of banana fame, and his funding and involvement with Lee Christmas in Honduras. They also note that American mercenaries Tracy Richardson and Sam Dreben were also active in the uprisings, having fought for Nicaraguan General Luis Mena in Nicaragua´s Civil War of 1912. The involvement of the U.S. Marines in the war with Augusto Sandino is well told by Neil Macaulay´s, The Sandino Affair, Duke University Press, 1985. The career of Somoza Garcia is ably described in Knut Walter´s, The Regime Of Anastasio Somoza, 1936-1956, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1993.
The era of the 1970´s, with its economic boom, and beginning of political instability, is described by Beelzebub himself, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, in his Nicaragua Betrayed, Western Islands, Boston, 1980, just before he was blown up in Asuncion, Paraguay. Regarding the Sandinista Revolution and Contra War, there are many sources, most not very good. A few worth mentioning include, Shirley Christian, Nicaragua, Revolution In The Family, Random House, New York, 1985. Christopher Dickey, who was briefly in Nicaragua early in the Contra War, followed around a particularly psychopathic Contra named Suicida, and sort of used him as a paradigm for the war. See Christopher Dickey, With The Contras, Simon and Shuster, New York, 1985.
Stephen Kinzer, reporter for the New York Tiimes, was sent to Nicaragua, by his own account, without knowing much about Nicaragua and not understanding completely Spanish, He proved himself truthful in his Blood of Brothers, Life and War in Nicaragua, Anchor Books, Doubleday, New York, 1991. Another source is Tim Brown´s, The Real Contra War, Highlander Peasant Resistance In Nicaragua, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2001. Brown was President Bush´s representative in Honduras during the last phase of the Contra War, when an attempt was made to wind things down. The Americans held court some evenings in the Maya Hotel in Tegucigalpa, where spooks from several countries could regularly be found tippling various libations. It is therefore a surprise to find that there are several shortcomings in this work. Though his wife is Costa Rican, he mostly got wrong his translations of Nicaraguan slang. He also got wrong the anthropology, archaeology, and cultural inheritance of the northern highlanders, following the Costa Rican view of the origin of the northern mountain people. It is not surprising there are other misinterpretations in this work.
Glenn Garvin´s, Everybody Had His Own Gringo, The CIA and the Contras, Brassey´s, Riverside New Jersey, 1992, has none of these faults. Garvin, presently a television commentator for the Miami Herald, reported on the Contra War, was beat up in Nandaime in 1988, and continued to report until he was kicked out of Nicaragua in 1989; he is the only reporter who wrote a credible narrative of the war effort on both sides, including the warts of the Sandinistas, Contra, and CIA, particularly the CIA. The superior intelligence of the Sandinistas in gleaning information from Commandante Zero, the incompetence of the beginning Contra planning under Emilio Echaverry, and some successes in 1987, the bloodiest year of the war are all topics he alone reported, perhaps because other reporters had a reluctance to wander the northern mountains when the bullets were flying. No one escapes Garvin´s reporting, and the CIA comes out looking like a bunch of gung ho pirates with little or no cultural or historical knowledge of Nicaragua. It is worth a read.
Passing Thoughts: A knowledge of European history, and particularly Spanish history in the 19th and 20th centuries is indispensable to understand the Independence movement and relations between Nicaragua and Spain. A good source is, Jose Alvarez Junco and Adrian Shubert, editors, Spanish History Since 1808, Hodder Headline, London, 2000. Finally, for musings on the Nicaraguan equestrian tradition, the reader is referred to Russel H. Beatie´s Saddles, University of Oklahoma Press, 1981. See also Smoke Elser and Bill Brown, Packin´In On Mules And Horses, Mountain Press Publishing, Missoula, Montana, 1980, and Manual Of Pack Transportation, (reprint)War Department, Office of the Quartermaster General, Quail Ranch books, Santa Monica, CA, 1981. The best use of horses is probably packing, not riding. Mules are another matter. No matter, you can always tell the quality of the rider by observing the angle of the hoof as it meets the ground (59 degrees is about right), and the rider´s seat in the saddle and the angle of his knees.
Pat Werner
Much more info at his website: http://www.nicaraguanpathways.com/
And invites discussion and comments at patwerner48@gmail.com
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