The Grimace of Macho Ratón: Artisans, Identity, and Nation in Late-Twentieth-Century Western Nicaragua (review)

Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 299 for the analyses of a variety of theories relating to border cultural studies and the politics of identity. Nadia Avendaño The University of Arizona The Grimace of Macho Ratón: Artisans, Identity, andNation in Late-Twentieth-Century Western Nicaragua Duke University Press, 1999 By Les W. Field This beautifully written and carefully researched volume studies how the Somocista, Sandinista and post-Sandinista Nicaiaguan governments ' cultural policies and political programs of national identity construction have affected the ways in which two groups of pottery artisans—in the southern town of San Juan del Oriente and the northern highlands around Matagalpa and Esteli— conceive of themselves in teims of ethnicity, gendei, artistry, and theii relationships to what they perceive as a manipulative, elitist state. Field describes how these artisans resist the oppressive tendencies of government by constandy redefining themselves and their art, repositioning themselves within the economy, and organizing themselves foi the purpose of cultural survival. The author begins by summarizing how the colonial dance-drama El Güegénce has been inteipreted by ruling class and opposition intellectuals over the course of two centuries in ways that support their political ideologies. He ends up by proposing his own reading of rhat work and by using it as a point of departure for his study of ruling groups' marginalization, co-optation, and exploitation of indigenous groups. Focusing on the dance ofthe machos (mules) that occuis neai die end ofthe play, he writes: I have seen the frozen grimace or rictus on the masks ofthe machos as an expression of forbearance with the constancy of oppressive conditions, frustration at the absuid limitations posed by authority , sarcasm and cynicism about change and what passes for change, and a lascivious enjoyment of carnality and sensual pleasure. The grimace tells about living with disjuncture and multiple kinds of uncertainty, particukrly about personal history and identity, (xx) Field draws from the theatre piece the themes around which he organizes his analysis: the silencing of women, the suppression of Indianness via the absorbing process of mestizaje, the cynicism and corruption of officialdom, and die people's skepticism toward and cunning resistance to constituted authority . To illustrate his diesis, Field introduces many topics that iange from the theoretical—e.g., a review of contemporary social scientific theories ofthe construction of national culture; a meditation on the inadequacy of cuirent mainstream anthropological categories to account for die phenomena that he uncovered in Nicaragua—to the concrete—e.g., the failure ofthe Sandinista women's association to change public policy so as to properly address women's needs (health care, protection from physical violence, child support payments); the negative effects for artisans ofthe internal struggle between Culture Minister Ernesto Cardenal's rural democratizing faction and poet Rosario Mirtillos uiban elitist faction; the foimation ofthe "myth" of Nicaragua mestiza; the Adantic Coast Miskitu Indians' achievement of limited political autonomy and the new hemispheric Indian solidarity movement as stimuli foi western Nicaiaguan indigenous activism. A single example should suffice to demonstrate die complexity ofthe identity issues that Field treats. Cardenal sought ways of incorporating rhe complex identities of artisans into the Sandinista revolutionaiy state, including them in his project of constructing a national culture because he regarded them as "producers of culture." Depicting Indians as true primitive socialists and proto-Christians who were the opposite of capitalists, "classless, spiritually and environmentally harmonious, and unaggressive " (91 -92), he declared that the cerámica negra of the northern highlands was an ancient indigenous art and that the potters were a direct link to Nicaragua's Indian past. The artisans brisded at their forced incorporation into Cardenal's cultural frame- 300 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies woik, insisting that dieir pottery designs and techniques had been their grandmothers' rather recent invention and diat they did not considei diemsdves Indians at all. They claimed, furthermore, rhar if they had not been women, the government would not have presumed to concoct and publicize diis faUacywithout consulting them. Then, after 1990, a startling change occulted. Having reversed their earlier position on the non-indigenous charactei of their art, the women see the indigenous organizations ofthe Matagalpa region as rhe best...