Life is hard - machismo, danger and the intimacy of power in Nicaragua

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lancaster, Roger N., Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Power (Social sciences).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (368 p.)

Place of Publication:

[Place of publication not identified] University of California Press 1994

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Rambo took the barrios by storm: Spanish videotapes of the movie were widely available, and nearly all the boys and young men had seen it, usually on the VCRs of their family's more affluent friends. . . . As one young Sandinista commented, 'Rambo is like the Nicaraguan soldier. He's a superman. And if the United States invades, we'll cut the marines down like Rambo did.' And then he mimicked Rambo's famous war howl and mimed his arc of machine gun fire. We both laughed.-from the bookThere is a Nicaragua that Americans have rarely seen or heard about, a nation of jarring political paradoxes and staggering social and cultural flux. In this Nicaragua, the culture of machismo still governs most relationships, insidious racism belies official declarations of ethnic harmony, sexual relationships between men differ starkly from American conceptions of homosexuality, and fascination with all things American is rampant. Roger Lancaster reveals the enduring character of Nicaraguan society as he records the experiences of three families and their community through times of war, hyperinflation, dire shortages, and political turmoil.Life is hard for the inhabitants of working class barrios like Doña Flora, who expects little from men and who has reared her four children with the help of a constant female companion; and life is hard for Miguel, undersized and vulnerable, stigmatized as a cochón-a "faggot"-until he learned to fight back against his brutalizers.Through candid discussions with young and old Nicaraguans, men and women, Lancaster constructs an account of the successes and failures of the 1979 Sandinista Revolution, documenting the effects of war and embargo on the cultural and economic fabric of Nicaraguan society. He tracks the break up of families, surveys informal networks that allow female-headed households to survive, explores the gradual transformation of the culture of machismo, and reveals a world where heroic efforts have been stymied and the best hopes deferred. This vast chronicle is sustained by a rich theoretical interpretation of the meanings of ideology, power, and the family in a revolutionary setting.Played out against a backdrop of political travail and social dislocation, this work is a story of survival and resistance but also of humor and happiness. Roger Lancaster shows us that life is hard, but then too, life goes on.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

This Book and Its Title

Personas

Introduction

PART I. LIFE

I. Junkyards

II. Beating One's Wife

III. Murdering One's Husband's Lover

IV. Coping with Less: Compadrazgo, Friendship, and Provisioning

V. Chicken Soup; or, Gossip, Tradition, and the Anthropologist

VI. Censoring La semana comica

PART II. SOME LIVES

VII. Rolando

VIII. Flora

IX. Osvaldo

X. Elvis

XI. Roger

XII. Maximo

XIII. Jaime

XIV. Jazmina

XV. Virgilio

PART III. POWER, POLITICS, AND PERSONAL LIFE

XVI. Dealing with Danger

XVII. The Negro of the Family

XVIII. Subject Honor, Object Shame

Conclusion

Notes

References

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

ISBN:

0-520-91552-6

0-585-25037-5

OCLC:

1162496539