Post-Conflict Central American Literature by Aparicio Yvette;

Author:Aparicio, Yvette;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

[The Managua that makes herself up

with fantasy and trinkets. Where idiots

delight in plastic bags.] (31)

The glimmering Managua that Sobalvarro alludes to is the one that can be viewed from atop Tiscapa Lagoon,[26] with its multinational buildings and fancy restaurants.[27] In “No hay,” believing that plastic bags prove modernization is idiotic and ignores the quotidian reality of most inhabitants. Those plastic bags seen floating in the Lake-sewer in “Del desempleado H#896440,” perhaps emblazoned with the names of transnational supermarkets, highlight the fragility and incompleteness of modernization processes in Central America. Nicaraguan elites who benefit from the city’s plasticization do not contemplate the “No hay” reality of the majority of their compatriots.[28] Managuans who experience “no hay,” or “nues” [s’not] (“Del desempleado H#896440) are banned from the city “que se maquilla” [that makes herself up]. They are those who must follow the edict: “Algo se hace o como sentenció el poeta: uno hace lo que puede” [Something is done or as the poet declared: you do what you can] (31).

The places that inhabit Sobalvarro’s prose poems are those in which “you do what you can” to survive. The poor and indigent “infest” Managua’s modernity. In her research on indigence in San José, which also applies to other Central American capital cities, social scientist María del Carmen Araya Jiménez pinpoints the root cause of increasing urban poverty: the “actual modelo de desarrollo urbano” [current urban development model] and its associated “consumo masificado” [mass consumption].[29] Araya Jiménez surveys the mass media’s treatment of “los excluidos,” or the poor, in comparison to press representations of middle class and elite citizens and municipal leaders. She focuses on three socially marginal groups that, according to press reports, mar San José’s aesthetics and disturb the urban experience of “legitimate” citizens.[30] Cuidacarros (literally car guards), informal vendors, unlicensed taxi drivers (often called piratas, or pirates), and indigents. All three groups play roles in diminishing middle class urban dwellers’ enjoyment of and spending in the city. As William I. Robinson argues, globalization has brought about “worldwide polarization” in which “broad swathes of humanity have experienced absolute downward mobility.”[31] In this scenario, Central American elites, such as those who hire a cuidacarros while they shop, are “global consumers” like their transnational peers; meanwhile, most Central Americans “do not consume.”[32] Sobalvarro poetically illustrates Araya Jiménez’s and Robinson’s estimation of contemporary Central America: the poor are left behind, slowly made invisible by shiny modernization processes that manufacture “iridescent” buildings that (momentarily) display national “advancement” while hiding the “pústula hedionda” [foul-smelling pustule] (“El olor de la lástima”; 51), or the tremendous poverty that plagues much of Central America.

Araya Jiménez contends further that indigents, the face of poverty on the street, can become normalized if they fulfill the roles of “picturesque” or “folkloric” urban figures—homeless street performers, for instance—for locals and visiting foreigners. Nonthreatening indigents provide an opportunity for alms giving and quaint photos or postcard images for foreign tourists, and they can (temporarily) awaken social altruism in national citizens.[33] Threatening poor people, “monsters,” or those who otherwise fail the “folklore” test hinder development and beautification projects.

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