Insights into JAGUAR SMILE , BY SALMAN RUSHDIE

 

Salman Rushdie's first non fictional book and a journalistic account was written in 1987, and as a glimpse at that particular moment of time,  this book is very effective.   Rusdie’s trip of three weeks was made at the invitation of the Sandinista Association of Cultural workers and he was there at the seven year anniversary of the Sandinista’s rise to power. Rushdie sees a certain righteousness in the Sandanista movement, but warns that with power comes certain temptations, and admits that the leaders he met with were questionably equipped to deal with those temptations. 

The Jaguar's Smile, the title of which comes from a famous Nicaraguan poem,  'Limerick' in which a little girl wearing a smile rides away on a jaguar. When she returns, the girl is gone, and now the jaguar is wearing the smile. Far from being propaganda, Rushdie awknowledges with his title that the politics of Nicaragua are dangerous and ambiguous. History would show that neither the Sandanistas or the Contras or even the Americans who became involved turned out to be truely just in their actions.

In the introduction part of his non-fiction work  'Jaguar Smile' - “I did not go to Nicaragua intending to write a book, or, indeed, to write at all: but my encounter with the place affected me so deeply that in the end I had no choice.” So notes Salman Rushdie in his first work of nonfiction, a book as imaginative and meaningful as his acclaimed novels.

Edward W. Said exclaimes  Rushdie's work and said -   ''Extraordinary . . . a masterpiece of sympathetic yet critical reporting graced with [Rushdie’s] marvelous wit, quietly assertive style, odd and yet always revealing experiences.” 

It's true that, Salman Rushdie, is from another Third World country with a certain style of contradiction, would understand Nicaragua and the revolutionary process with a special eye . That's always the way when politics and religion are concerned: people frequently end up doing the wrong things for the what they feel are the right reasons. "The Jaguar Smile" captures that pretty succinctly

 In The Jaguar Smile, Rushdie paints a brilliantly sharp and haunting portrait of the people, the politics, the terrain, and the poetry of “a country in which the ancient, opposing forces of creation and destruction were in violent collision.  Recounting his travels there in 1986, in the midst of America’s behind-the-scenes war against the Sandinistas, Rushdie reveals a nation resounding to the clashes between government and individuals, history and morality.

The issues of Nicaragua, as Rushdie notes in his afterward, feel dated and more as a sort of a period piece from the Cold War, but that was also its strength. The issues and crises of the moment almost always fade with time, and when they don't it is because our view of history changes them, not the events themselves. The big issues of art, literature, democracy, self-governance, corporate and oligarch power, violence, poverty, and on and on, still remain a striking part of the human condition and Rushdie explores these with confidence .

The New York Times praised this non fiction work as -

“Stirring and original . . . It gives us a picture of the country in bright, patchwork colors unavailable in your usual journalistic dispatches.” —

The situation is presented from an outsider's perspective, albeit from one which can, on account of its own past, sympathize with the struggle of a poorer nation. To my eye, far from being a Communist stooge, as has been alleged by some of his critics in regards to this travelouge, Rushdie judges what he sees from the revolution and its enemies in these three weeks on a basis consistent with what appears to be his principles, priorities and morality.

Overall, this book is a snapshot into the political climate of Nicaragua during the first reign of the Sandinistas. It is somewhat informative, but also simple and serves as a great introduction to Nicaragua as a modern nation.  In light of subsequent developments (especially Ortega's recent move toward dictatorship), some of Rushdie's observations seem a bit naïve; however, it's interesting to wonder whether the contemporary decline of the FSLN is an indirect consequence of the US foreign policy that was assailed in this book.