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

The Grimace of Macho Ratón: Artisans, Identity, and Nation in Late-Twentieth-Century Western Nicaragua. By LES W. FIELD. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xxiv, 282 pp. Cloth, $49.95. Paper, $17.95.

Nicaragua of the late 1990s has returned to the "popular" and academic backwaters that characterized Nicaraguan studies prior to 1979. Since the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas in 1990, researchers and internacionalistas have moved on; laudably, anthropologist Les Field has remained. In his continuing ethnographic research on a handful of potters in San Juan de Oriente (just south of Masaya) and in the Matagalpa/Jinotega region in Nicaragua, Field has enriched our understanding of artisans throughout their odyssey of daily work and life struggles whether at the national cultural center or at the economic margin.

The Grimace of Macho Ratón is uniquely written using the seventeenth-century central Mexican play, El Güegüence--which depicts convoluted Spanish colonial policy juxtaposed with indigenous lore--as the backdrop and format for the book. Field, in his pursuit of Nicaraguan national identity through the study of artisans, relates the central theme of El Güegüence as a celebration of "subversion, disorder, and confusion" (p. 74). This interpretation becomes a critique of those who seek to redefine Nicaraguan national identity by imposition rather than a simpler revelation that the play may be best understood "as a parable of the passage of time and power" (p. 213).

The book consists of an introduction and five chapters. The first chapter surveys Nicaraguan national identity; the second chapter studies artisan response to Sandinista rule; the third chapter focuses upon artesanas and their role in the artisan community; the fourth chapter delves into the indigenous conundrum and pottery and identity; and the fifth chapter seeks to arrive at some conclusions about contemporary artisans, artisan work, and national identity.

This book has many strengths. First, the study is well grounded in the contemporary academic literature on Nicaragua; second, the author presents intimate stories of two groups of artisans, the potters of San Juan and the makers of cerámica negra from Matagalpa/Jinotega, to reveal their perceptions of Nicaraguan national identity and their work and family environments; third, the book offers a poignant discussion of the links between individual artisans, unionized artisans, and artisans operating within cooperatives and state institutions (especially the Ministry of Culture during the Sandinista era); and finally, Field employs a novel literary approach, using El Güegüence, to craft the body of the text.

A major limitation of The Grimace of Macho Ratón is derived from its research design; although the ethnographic study provides ample detail for a limited number of respondents, the trade-off, nonetheless, is the non-generalizability of the findings. Also, it would have been useful if the author had included a formal conclusion to the book, a map of Nicaragua showing the research communities of San Juan de Oriente, Matagalpa, and Jinotega, and a lengthier discussion of the economic plight of the potters throughout the transition from the Sandinista era to the present neoliberal era. Notwithstanding these limitations, this work should find its largest audience in upper-level anthropology courses with an emphasis on Latin America as well as the broader community of scholars interested in Nicaragua.

Michael J. Pisani, Texas A & M International University

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