Escape From Politics : Nicaraguans Also Dote on the Soaps

When Judith Cheng invited her family and Sandinista friends to her recent wedding, the guests protested that the reception conflicted with the latest prime-time soap opera.

Sure, they wanted to celebrate Cheng’s marriage, they said, but they had been waiting six months for Maria Elena to be reunited with her long-lost son. And in the penultimate episode of “Birthright,” Don Rafael del Junco was about to repent for trying to murder his illegitimate grandson.

After her wedding, Cheng did the only decent thing: She turned on the television for her guests. “My father was the first one there,” the newlywed said.

Filling a Void

Wrenching, romantic nighttime soap operas, called telenovelas, are all the rage in revolutionary Nicaragua, despite the fact that they carry distinctly unrevolutionary messages. War with the U.S.-backed rebels--or contras --and an eroding economy have broadened the appeal of the sentimental soaps; their scenes of love and intrigue temporarily fill the void of Managua’s vacant lots, empty stores and broken families.

“It’s an hour of escape after a whole day of Sandinism and politics,” said Patricia Murrillo, 19. “It’s a way to forget your problems.”

Some soap opera devotees defend the shows as great fantasy. Others say there is nothing else to do at night, anyway, in Managua, where there are few cultural events. They complain that it’s too hot to go to movie theaters without air conditioning that run--and rerun--old films from the United States, Europe and elsewhere in Latin America. In a recent week, the fare included “Star Wars” and “Crime and Punishment.”

During an evening hour of soap operas, some mothers can stop thinking about sons who have gone off to the front, and young women do not care that there are not enough men around. Teen-agers can forget about schoolmates that come home from the war in coffins.

Costly Cooking Pot

For an hour, housewives put aside their worn purses emptied by inflation. They forget that the aluminum cooking pot that cost 150 cordobas two years ago carried a price tag of 10,000 cordobas last week, and that yesterday the same vendor wanted 14,000 for it. (There are now about 1,000 cordobas to the U.S. dollar).

In the glow of the TV, no one remembers that one of the three pumps has failed at the Asososca Dam, which supplies half of Managua’s water, and that there are no dollars to buy the parts needed to fix the U.S.-made pump. For an hour, no one wonders what will happen when another pump goes out.

Instead, whole families and neighbors without TV sets gather in homes throughout the country from 7 to 8 p.m., six nights a week, to witness the personal agonies of others.

They lean back in their carved-wood and wicker rocking chairs, fan themselves against the relentless heat, and tune in to Mexican, Venezuelan, Colombian or--their favorite--Brazilian soap operas. Hardly passive viewers, the talkative Nicaraguans argue throughout the program over plots and productions.

Small Town Atmosphere

Like many Latins, Nicaraguans have long enjoyed the nighttime soap operas. But their gossipy, gregarious character seems to make them even more susceptible to the stories of interwoven lives. Nicaraguans sit outside in the evening, chatting and observing the comings and goings of their neighbors, and with only 3 million people, the country is a lot like a small town of interwoven families.

When a popular soap opera such as “Birthright” is on the air, the only welcome visitors are those who have come to watch TV. Ringing telephones go unanswered and, some say, it is even difficult to find a doctor.

The basic story of “Birthright,” from a popular pre-revolutionary Cuban novel, had been aired on the radio here in the ‘50s and was well-known before the Mexican-produced television soap appeared in March.

Round-Table Discussion

The show was so popular that articles about it appeared on the front pages of newspapers, and columnists analyzed its political content. When the show ended, there was a televised round-table discussion with psychologists and intellectuals.

The story of the wealthy Del Junco family concerns the toils and trouble of a daughter impregnated by a lover who leaves her, and her father who tries to have the baby killed. A poor black maid, “Mama” Dolores, steals the baby and rears him as her own. The baby grows up and becomes a doctor but remains ever-faithful to his surrogate mother.

In the end, after many twists and much suffering, the doctor is reunited with his mother, who had been searching for him, and Don Rafael del Junco recovers from a near-fatal stroke to accept his grandson.

In the pro-government daily newspaper El Nuevo Diario, columnist Eduardo Estrada wrote that the show “reveals the crude and hypocritical morality of the oligarchic and bourgeois families of Latin America. Mama Dolores is a symbol of the exploited, marginalized working class that in the end is a better example of morality and class” than the rich.

‘The Way Things Are’

Not everyone sees the soap in political terms, of course. Maria Cristina Carcamo, 48, a cook and a single mother of five, said she liked the story because “it shows things the way they are, like how men abandon their kids.”

Rosa Martinez, 16 and pregnant with her first baby, said she likes the shows “about unhappy marriages” because she can learn what to do--or what not to do--in her new marriage.

Although they are shown on the Sandinista government TV channels, the soap operas are distinctly un-Sandinista. Many deal with an aristocracy, lending themselves to nostalgia among the upper classes whose friends have left or who have reduced their standard of living. For the poor, they are a window into times past and a life style they could never emulate.

When asked about the popular soap operas, Minister of Education Fernando Cardenal threw up his hands, rolled his eyes and said: “They’re terrible. But what are you going to do? We don’t have the money to make our own shows.”

Social Message Shows

Ivan Garcia, director of the Sandinista Television System, which runs the country’s two channels, says the government has reduced the airing of soap operas from four hours a night before the revolution to just an hour nightly now. He said programmers try to pick shows that have some social message, although he admits there are not too many to choose from.

“We have as a criterion that the program has to contribute to the educational formation of the people. The trick is to pick the ones that have some political or social value that can help people, even if they are not in total agreement with the revolution,” Garcia said.

“We don’t run the ones where the peasant goes to work in the house of a wealthy couple, falls in love with the millionaire husband, and there’s a love triangle until he leaves his wife for her. There’s nothing in those, and that’s a lie,” Garcia said.

Garcia, like many men, says he watches the better soap operas. Unlike American shows, Latin soap operas end after several months, and new ones are aired.

Mariano Valle, a radio station director, said he never used to watch the programs before the revolution.

Set Still Works

“We used to have three televisions, so my wife could watch what she wanted, my son could watch what he wanted and I could watch what I wanted,” Valle said. Now they have one working set.

At the Paradise Beauty Parlor, where manicurists and hairdressers often discuss the latest soap opera, customer Maria Ester Lacayo said she saw no redeeming value in any of the soap operas and prefers to watch a good science or medical program.

“If we want to get ahead, we should put on programs that help people--like how about some nutrition programs in these times with so much scarcity? What do you learn with a soap opera? If you live here you should see reality and look for solutions, not for soap operas,” said Lacayo.

Patricia Murrillo said she knows the contorted stories of love and lust are not real, but that doesn’t bother her.

“They’re just stories, fiction, but they aren’t all pain,” said Murrillo. “There’s always a happy ending.”