Book review: Las Fiebres de la Memoria (Belli)

We’re coming up on the anniversary of last year’s protests, which has led the country into an economic slump that may take years to recover from.  Interestingly, I posted something of a book review on that pivotal date last year.  Here's some thoughts on another recent novel by a different, noted Nicaraguan author. The book is called Las fiebres de la memoria, by Gioconda Belli (Seix Barral, 2018).  

At the moment, I’m writing from our favorite place to escape Managua’s April heat, which is Selva Negra, Matagalpa.  One of the eco-lodge owners is artist and historian Eddy Kühl Arauz, who I had a chance to talk to some this time, and his family represents German immigration to this area in the 1800s, to work in coffee.  Here are two of his paintings on the wall at the restaurant:

The artist-historian and the author, Belli, share this particular couple in their ancestry.   Do you see it says “Paris” below Jorge’s portrait? Here’s the connection.


Shortly before the French rose up to oust King Louis-Philippe de Orleans and his family in 1848, there were a couple trigger issues that infuriated the people against the ruling class.  Some decades earlier, the French revolution aimed to end the monarchy, but that didn’t seem to be last.  Soon enough they had an emperor (Napoleon) and a new wave of nobility and royalty.  One of the trigger issues in the new wave of unrest was around a duke, Charles Choiseul de Praslin, who was imprisoned for murdering his wife, but somehow accessed arsenic in prison to poison himself. People said that the king supplied the poison to save the royals from the shame of going to trial, or even that it was a farce in order to let him slip away.  The official French account says Choiseul de Praslin died in prison.


Kühl and Belli are among the Matagalpinos who suggest might not have ended there.  The story Belli tells (which is apparently inspired by Kühl’s research) traces Choiseul de Prasilin’s journey from the faked suicide, to England, and then to New York where he meets Cornelius Vanderbilt. This was the gold rush era, and Vanderbilt had a transportation network to take ships south on the Atlantic, across Nicaragua’s Rio San Juan, to Lake Colcibolca (Lake Nicaragua) and then travel over land to the Pacific.  Choisuel de Praslin, who had taken the pseudonym George Desmoulins, joined Vanderbilt on one of his trips through Nicaragua.  George/Jorge gets sick with malaria and stays in Granada until he recuperates.  He’s persuaded by another traveler to travel with him in Matagalpa, where he marries and has a (second) large family.


There are various themes in the book.  There is a 'Crime and Punishment' kind of psychological struggle with guilt and freedom; reflection on how his marriage fell apart; and also a struggle with identity, class, and power.  With this last point, it seems there are parts of the story that are trying to describe something of current events. Belli is one of the early Sandinistas who have been critical of the Nicaraguan government in recent years.


As the character George leaves France, he takes the last name Desmoulins. He says he admired Camille and Lucille Desmoulins, leaders of the French revolution, but the people later turned on them and they ended up in at the guillotine. “Revolutions eat their own children.” Then he hears of the unrest and how King Louis-Philippe cracks down, banning public gatherings, declaring curfew, and a massacre at Boulevard des Capulchines. In turn, chaos ensued, stores were looted, and hundreds of barricades were piled up in the roads. The king left the country to avoid more bloodshed and the National Assembly declared the 2^nd Republic of France.


George/Jorge comes to Nicaragua where there is violent struggle between the Liberals, Conservatives, and even this U.S. imperialist William Walker who takes over the country for a time.  The message seems to be, anywhere you go, there are struggles and swings in power, but they seem to present little hope for lasting change for everyday people.  The book seems to suggest that the one glimmer of hope, maybe, is that at a personal level, a new start is always possible.  And that the beauty of Nicaragua and its people is where that can happen.