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Some experiences are hard to explain. I remember, shortly after my first trip to Cuapa, I tried discussing it with some friends at Lario’s. It occurs to me that Lario’s itself might need an introduction to a few of my readers. In certain towns, for no particular reason, a certain place will become a meeting point for intellectuals. Just as no history of Paris, France, in the 1950’s and 60’s would be complete without a description of the cafes of the Left Bank, no history of San Marcos, Nicaragua at the dawn of the 21st Century would be complete without a discussion of Lario’s restaurant. When the intellectual history of San Marcos is written, I’m sure there will be at least one chapter on Lario’s. Come to think of it, that might constitute about half of the book. In the rainy season, the roof would leak, to the point where it wasn’t worth taking your umbrella down, and one time, the sewers overflowed on the street outside. But whether it was pouring with rain or whether the sun was shining, which meant the dust was blowing, Lario’s was the gathering point for the intellectuals of San Marcos. We, for I make so bold as to class myself amongst San Marcos’ intellectuals, would discuss the possibility of a joint trip on Fridays to the nearby Pig Place, to eat some pork, we would chew over the latest news from Ave Maria College, where I was working at the time  - who’d been fired, who’d narrowly avoided being fired, and who should have been fired – and, when the discussion became too intellectual to follow, there was always the possibility that someone would decide to hold an impromptu limbo dancing competition.  On this occasion, I fear, I was not holding up my part in the conversation so well. I was trying to explain just what it was that attracted me to Cuapa, a town so small that it makes San Marcos look like a metropolis. “Its where a local tailor had a vision of the Virgin Mary,” I said. My friends smiled sceptically, “Uh huh, so how did she appear?” “Well,” I said, “It all began when he saw a statue glowing in the dark.” “Uh huh,” my friend nodded, “that’s usually how it happens in Nicaragua. After a few drinks, the statues start glowing in the dark.” I don’t think that the conversation lasted much longer: I just couldn’t find the right words. I tried again with another friend at a later date.

Situated a few kilometers outside of Cuapa, the Rock of Cuapa is a landmark visible for miles around. According to a local legend, it is the home of a duende, a mischievous spirit with powerful magical abilities. But the Duende himself fell under a spell: he fell in love with the beautiful daughter of a local farmer. He followed the girl around, spreading flowers where-ever she walked, but her parents did not approve of him as a suitor. In the battle that ensued, the Duende transported the family’s donkey to the top of the rock, but eventually, they drove him away from their farm-house by playing music. This tactic was later adopted by the United States when trying to drive General Noriega from his refuge in Panama. Another legend has it that any single man who climbs the rock will marry a woman from Cuapa; as far as I know, the U.S. military has never adopted this as a tactic.

“So what was the message?” she asked.

“If you want peace, you must make peace,” I replied.

“Oh well,” she said, “that’s true, but its not very impressive is it? That’s just common-sense, anyone could think of that. It doesn’t need a message from heaven just to say that.” 

Once again, I didn’t know how to respond to the scepticism. Perhaps, I reflected, you have to be a Catholic to understand. 

I should stress though that you don’t have to be a pilgrim to visit Cuapa. If you’re passing through Nicaragua, there are plenty of reasons for paying a visit to Cuapa. To get there from Managua, you catch a bus at the Mercado Mayo Rayo to Juigalpa, the capital city of the region of Chontales, and from there, it’s a very bumpy trip to Cuapa, and, if you are religiously inclined, you might well find yourself praying that the bus survives the trip. There are a couple of hotels, one of them is recently built, in fact, the first time I stayed there, you could smell the wet concrete, and, although the rooms are tiny, they have en suite facilities. Most houses in Cuapa, incidentally, are without running water. Right outside the hotel is an old tree. At one time, they used to tie the bulls to the tree and bait them, and local legend has it that if you stand under the tree at midnight you will get wet, because the tree weeps tears. Under the tree now, where there was once a ring for tying the bulls, is a statue of the Virgin standing on top of the globe. Central America is painted very well, and Cuapa itself is clearly marked. Some local boys took me for a gringo, so I explained that I was English and tried to give them a geography lesson using the globe – alas, the artist’s conception of Europe does not quite fit with reality. Still, the boys were friendly enough, and my friend Dr. Silvio Sirias, with whom I was travelling, was kind enough to translate for me some of their stories..
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Sr. Rayas proudly displays his catch: we ate the fish a couple of hours later, and they tasted great. In the foreground, on the left, you can see the strap of his rifle which is lying in the grass. His technique of fishing is efficient, but I am told that it is suitable for experts only: if you fire a gun at the wrong angle, the bullets may bounce up off the water, hitting by-standers.

If the local legends concerning Cuapa are true, it is something of a trap for the unwary bachelor. Where the river bends, just a little beyond the place where the women go to wash the clothes, there is a beautiful shaded swimming hole. But beware! Any visiting male who bathes there is destined to marry a local woman, and he will live in Cuapa for the rest of his years. Beyond the edges of the town is a tall jagged rock, its profile visible for miles around. It looks like an attractive target for rock climbers, but beware, not only is it haunted by a Duende, a sort of Nicaraguan sprite, but any young man from outside Cuapa who climbs it is destined to marry a Cuapena, and he will live the rest of his years in Cuapa.  I should add, at this point, that I can think of far worse fates than spending the rest of my years in Cuapa. One of my childhood ambitions was to be a cowboy, and Cuapa is definitely a cowboy town. Some of them still wear the traditional Nicaraguan cowboy hats, made of straw, some of them wear baseball caps. Some ride horses, some ride mules, and some ride donkeys. But whatever they are riding, and however they are dressed, one cannot but be impressed by the ability of the Cuapeños to stay on horseback, drunk or sober. My admiration for the horse-riding skills of Cuapeños is genuine, by the way. On my first visit, I was lucky enough to witness the local Hipaca, or horse-show. The riders paraded past on their best horses, in all their finery, and then assembled in the middle of a wooden stadium. Up on the second story, we set the whole structure shaking as we stamped our feet to the sound of the band, and, I cannot help but say, my fancy footwork was much admired. On my second visit, I actually had the chance to go riding myself. Jesus de Maria, our local guide, chose a pregnant mare for me, the most docile animal possible, sensing perhaps that I was slightly nervous about the whole business. Indeed, something of my fear must have been visible to everyone, judging from the way my friends kept on assuring me that I was perfectly safe, and there was nothing to be afraid of. I would have liked more protection than my straw hat though, because the path was very rocky, and it was a long way down.

On our return, we treated ourselves and our guide to a bowl of Sopa de Huevos de Toro. Literally, that means Bull’s Eggs Soup. Of course, bulls don’t have eggs, but there is one part of their anatomy that is remarkably similar in shape, and plays its own part in the process of reproduction. The first time I had this soup, I chose it because it was, to me at least, an exotic dish. Perhaps too, I had some primeval desire to prove my manhood – women I have spoken to, even native born Nicaraguans, tell me that it’s a dish best left to men. But whatever my reasons for choosing it the first time, I chose it again because of the taste. It would, so the parish priest told me, raise the sheets at night. That is hardly typical clerical banter, but then Fr. Raya is hardly a typical cleric. He tells his parishioners that in the Church he’s a priest, but on the streets, he’s a man. He invited Silvio and me on one of his hunting trips. We drove over the hills, then walked a little way through the forest to the edge of a stream, where he motioned us to crouch silently. With his rifle in hand, he scanned the water, whistling softly, and then fired a shot. In triumph, he waded into the water, and pulled out the body of a fish, which he left lying next to us on the ground. Then he asked us to stay quiet again, while he waited for another one to come along. As we crouched there, I heard a thrashing next to us. The fish was coming back to life! The impact of the bullet on the water had only stunned it. Fr. Raya shot another, then decided that was enough hunting for one day. As we returned to the vehicle, I said to him, “Father, I know you’re a fisher of men, but I hope you don’t use the same technique with them.”
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We returned to the priory, and, as we ate the fish, Silvio asked him about the apparitions, as part of the research for a book on the subject. The story does, indeed, involve a tailor called Bernardo who saw a glowing statue, but his relationship with the statue started long before that. In Nicaragua, statues of the saints tend to be very life-like. Not only are they painted, they wear real clothes, and life-like wigs. When he was a boy, Bernardo fell in love with one particular statue of the Virgin Mary in the Church at Juigalpa, and dreamed of one day marrying her. His grandmother set him right about that, but his love for this particular statue remained. When he was a teenager, he learned that the statue was to be replaced by a new one, and he was determined to buy it for the people of Cuapa. He organised a collection, paid for the statue, and transported it from Juigalpa to Cuapa on the back of a donkey – the same bumpy road that I travelled by bus. It was years later, when he was sacristan, that he saw the statue light up, illuminating the darkness in the empty church one evening. Later, in his walks through the fields around the edges of  Cuapa, he had a vision of the Virgin, and it was there she told him “If you want peace, you must make peace.”  Bernardo did want peace, peace in Cuapa, a town torn apart, at that time, by gossip and intrigue. Nor was it only Cuapa that was torn apart: these were the years of the civil war between the Sandinistas and the Contras, when the whole country was torn apart by violence. On the way to Cuapa, we passed through a valley where an ambush took place. Hundreds of young men, who had been drafted into the Sandinista army, were fired on and killed by the Contras. Nicaragua is a country that still bears the scars of those years of war: people who lost loved ones, people who lost limbs, poverty where once there was plenty and ruins where once there were beautiful buildings.

When this photograph was taken, I could still smell the wet cement. The room may be basic, the mattress may be thin, and the supply of cold-water may not be reliable, but the welcome is warm and friendly, and the food is excellent. There is another hotel in Cuapa, but without the luxury of en suite facilities, in fact, it has no flush-toilets at all, but they do a nice breakfast.

When people ask why Catholics make such a fuss about statues and paintings, I reply that images and symbols are sometimes a good way to keep us in touch with realities that lie at the edge of our understanding. It may be childish to fall in love with a statue, but what’s so bad about trying to shape reality so that it fits the visions of perfection we had in childhood, however dimly we understood them at the time? And perhaps it is not only Catholics who understand these images. Many villages in India , so I understand, have statues to the goddess who is the Mother of the village, and is, at a deeper level, the Mother Goddess. Before Christianity came along, there were people who worshipped Isis, the Mother Goddess with her child in her arms. For myself though, the image of Mary and her child is always associated with the message of the Christian Gospel. I can almost picture her in front of me now, a woman holding out to me her new born child, so fragile and so precious, and saying “Take him in your arms, this is truth, this is peace, this is God. Don’t let go of him and let him fall, but don’t hold him too tight either, or you’ll crush the life from him. This is my son, do whatever he tells you.”

Making peace is hard. When I returned to San Marcos, the firings at Ave Maria College continued, and I decided to leave Nicaragua behind me. The peace that I prayed for may have come to the campus, but I’m not around to see it. But I did bring some things from Nicaragua with me to my new home in Panama, including a statue of Nuestra Señora de Cuapa. Her hand was broken along the way, but her smile is as serene as ever. 
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