Photo: Sandinistas at the walls of the Estelí National Guard headquarters, from Nicaragua: June 1978-July 1979 (Aperture 2016)
American photographer Susan Meiselas joined Magnum Photos in 1976, after creating Prince Street Girls and Carnival Strippers, two bodies of work that explored the female experience in its multifaceted forms. At Magnum, Meiselas leaped into an entirely new realm after reading about the assassination of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Cardenal, the editor of Nicaragua’s La Prensa newspaper and a leading opponent of the country’s Somoza regime, which had been in power since 1936.
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In 1956, after two decades of rule, Anastasio Somoza Garcia was executed. His first son, Luis, assumed the presidency and his second son, Anastasio (“Tachito”) became Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. Together they begin a regime marked by brutal repression of the citizenry, while working with the United States, providing a base of operations so that America could meddle in the affairs of Latin American governments.
Awaiting counterattack by the Guard in Matagalpa, from Nicaragua: June 1978-July 1979 (Aperture 2016)
By this time the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) had taken shape, staging a series of guerilla actions against the Somoza regime. The response of the Nicaraguan government is a policy of martial law and censorship that is so extreme, that by 1977, the United States threatens to cut off military assistance if human rights are not respected. When Chamorro was assassinated on January 1978, 100,000 people demonstrate in response, following his coffin through the streets of Managua, the capital.
Meiselas remembers reading a full-page story in The New York Times discussing the event, and speaks about it with Kristen Lubben, executive director of the Magnum Foundation, in a conversation that appears at the end of the fortieth anniversary edition of her seminal photography book Nicaragua: June 1978–July 1979, which has just been released from Aperture.
Car of a Somoza informer burning in Managua, from Nicaragua: June 1978-July 1979 (Aperture 2016)
Meiselas explains, “Maybe it was the size of that article; maybe it was the way in which it implicated America in supporting the Somoza family. It all just started to turn my head.”
Magnum encouraged photographers to take the initiative, to dive into worlds they did not know in depth or at length, encouraging them to learn through direct interaction. Meiselas, who had no prior experience as a war photographer, went to Nicaragua without knowing the language or where she would stay—but she had a basic plan: she would go to the La Prensa office on her first day in town, where she met with Carlos Fernando Chamorro, the son of the slain editor, and photographer Margarita Montealegre, both of whom spoke English.
Sandinistas at the walls of the Estelí National Guard headquarters, from Nicaragua: June 1978-July 1979 (Aperture 2016)
From this entré, Meiselas began to get a lay of the land, delving deeper into a horrific war that went on for over a year before ending in victory for the Sandantistas, with Somoza fleeing to Miami with his family and chiefs of staff, taking the coffins of his father and brother with him. In total, 40,000 people were killed; 40,000 children were orphaned 200,000 families were homeless; the economy was in shambles, and the country was in $1.6 billion in debt.
Nicaragua humanizes the numbers, revealing just a fraction of the carnage and the toll it took on the living in order to liberate themselves from oppressive rule. Meiselas, who began shooting in black and white, switched to color photography as a response to what she was witnessing. Black and white has a subtle way of forgiving the horrors of war, of lessening their impact by avoiding the messy, brutal truth of color, which is so emotional, so vital, and so raw. Her photographs are unflinching documents of the desperate reality of resistance, of the willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to liberate the nation from exploitation and oppression.
Monimbo woman carrying her dead husband home to be buried in in their backyard, from Nicaragua: June 1978-July 1979 (Aperture 2016)
Understanding that the photograph is just one element of storytelling, Meiselas went on to create two films: Pictures from a Revolution (1991) and Reframing History (2004). For Pictures from a Revolution, she went back to Nicaragua to locate and interview the subjects of her photographs, giving them a voice in the history of the revolution. Reframing History saw her photographs transformed into murals and hung on the sites where they were shot, bringing the ast to life through the creation of art.
Now, for the fortieth anniversary, Meisleas brings all the works together through the advancements in digital technology, creating a free Look & Listen app available through iTunes that allows you to match up select photographs with content from the films. Taken as a whole, Nicaragua comes at a prescient time in world history, serving as a painful reminder of the high cost of liberty. United, the people can overcome, and though not all of us will make it, our efforts are not in vain.
All photos: © Susan Meiselas / Magnum Photos
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.
