How to Cite
How to Cite
Abstract
This article looks at the process of historical reinterpretation and anti-imperialist struggle around the Nicaragua mural in (former East) Berlin to demonstrate how internationalist solidarity does not unfold singularly but in a multi-layered, often contradictory manner. Since 2018, this mural has turned from an inconspicuous site into a place of contestation. On the one hand, for residents, the mural has transformed into a projection of rescuing and reinstating memory of the former GDR’s efforts of internationalist friendship and solidarity. On the other hand, it has become a site for political struggle for Nicaraguan exiles living in the area. Based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork and archival research in Nicaragua and Germany in 2018–2019 and 2023, this article complicates how memory practices shape everyday lives in Berlin for German and Nicaraguan residents alike. Their divergent interpretations of the mural’s meaning sheds light on the tensions of memory politics vis à vis political and historical reinterpretation and demonstrate the potential for the Nicaragua mural to place a magnifying glass over the anti-imperial politics of Berlin.
References
Agudelo Builes, I. (2017) Contramemorias. Discursos e imágenes sobre/desde La Contra, Nicaragua 1979-1989. Managua: Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua y Centroamérica de la Universidad Centroamericana IHNCA-UCA.
Alewitz, M. and Buhle, P. (2002) Insurgent images: the agitprop murals of Mike Alewitz. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Anreus, A., Folgarait, L. and Greeley, R.A. (eds) (2012) Mexican muralism: a critical history. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Babb, F. (2004) ‘Recycled “Sandalistas”: From Revolution to Resorts in the New Nicaragua’, American Anthropologist, 106(3), pp. 541–555.
Babiracki, P. and Jersild, A. (eds) (2016) Socialist internationalism in the Cold War: exploring the second world. Exploring the Second World: Socialist Internationalism in the Cold War, Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
Bach, J. (2021) ‘Materielle Kultur und die Entstehung der „Ostalgie“: Die Bedeutung von Alltagsobjekten in der Erinnerung an die DDR’, in M. Rüthers (ed.) Gute Erinnerungen an schlechte Zeiten? De Gruyter, pp. 117–126.
Bahro, R. (1977) Die Alternative: zur Kritik des real existierenden Sozialismus. Köln: Europäische Verlagsanstalt.
Berdahl, D. (1999) ‘“(N)Ostalgie” for the present: Memory, longing, and East German things,’ Ethnos, 64(2), pp. 192–211.
Borowy, I. (2017) ‘East German medical aid to Nicaragua: the politics of solidarity between biomedicine and primary health care,’ História, Ciências, Saúde-Manguinhos, 24(2), pp. 411–428.
Boyer, D. (2006) ‘Ostalgie and the Politics of the Future in Eastern Germany’, Public Culture, 18(2), pp. 361–381.
Burton, E. (2018) ‘Solidarität und ihre Grenzen. Die “Brigaden der Freundschaft” der DDR’, in F. Bösch, C. Moine, and S. Senger (eds) Internationale Solidarität. Globales Engagement in der Bundesrepublik und der DDR. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, pp. 152–187.
Christiaens, K. (2014) ‘Between diplomacy and solidarity: Western European support networks for Sandinista Nicaragua’, European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire, 21(4), pp. 617–634.
Coffey, M.K. (2012) How a revolutionary art became official culture: murals, museums, and the Mexican state. Durham: Duke University Press.
Díaz, R. and Weegels, J. (2022) ‘(Un)Making the Insurrectional City: Illicit Infrastructures of Care and Repression in the 2018 Nicaraguan Protests’, Journal of Illicit Economies and Development, 4(3), pp. 337–350.
Featherstone, D. (2012) Solidarity. Hidden Histories and Geographies of Internationalism. London & New York: Zed Books.
Field, L. (1999) The Grimace of Macho Ratón: Artisans, Identity, and Nation in Late-Twentieth-Century Western Nicaragua. Durham: Duke University Press.
Field, L. (1999) The Grimace of Macho Ratón: Artisans, Identity, and Nation in Late-Twentieth-Century Western Nicaragua. Durham: Duke University Press.
Francis, H. (2012) ‘¡Que se rinda tu madre! Leonel Rugama and Nicaragua’s Changing Politics of Memory’, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 21(2), pp. 235–252.
Greeley, R.A. (2012) ‘Introduction’, in A. Anreus, R.A. Greeley, and L. Folgarait (eds) Mexican muralism: a critical history. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 1–13.
Grupo de Expertos en Derechos Humanos sobre Nicaragua (2024) Violaciones de los derechos humanos a la libertad de circulación y a la nacionalidad. Geneva: OHCHR, p. 70. Available at: https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/ghre-nicaragua/index (Accessed: 27 June 2024).
Guevara, A. (2014) Performance, Theatre, and Society in Contemporary Nicaragua: Spectacles of Gender, Sexuality, and Marginality. Cambria.
Helm, C. (2018) Botschafter der Revolution: Das transnationale Kommunikationsnetzwerk zwischen der Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional und der bundesdeutschen Nicaragua-Solidarität 1977-1990. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter.
Horvay, R. (2011) ‘Political Detainment in the German Democratic Republic: Public Discourse and Personal Memory’, Forum : Qualitative Social Research, 12(2).
Hilton, A. (2002) ‘Humanizing Utopia: Paradoxes of Soviet Folk Art’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 3(3), pp. 459–471.
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (2021) IACHR Updates Death Toll Records of Human Rights Crisis that Started in April 2018 in Nicaragua. Available at: https://www.oas.org/en/iachr/jsForm/?File=/en/iachr/media_center/preleases/2021/302.asp (Accessed: 21 February 2024).
Iriye, A. (2001) Cultural internationalism and world order. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.
Kunze, T. and Vogel, T. (2012a) Ostalgie international: Erinnerungen an die DDR von Nicaragua bis Vietnam. Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag.
Kunze, T. and Vogel, T. (2012b) ‘Vom Nachleben eines Staates’, in Ostalgie international: Erinnerungen an die DDR von Nicaragua bis Vietnam. Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, pp. 9–12.
Kunzle, D. (1995) The murals of revolutionary Nicaragua, 1979-1992. Berkeley, Calif.: Univ. of California Press.
La Prensa (2023) ‘Impiden a artistas pintar mural en homenaje a Miss Universo, Sheynnis Palacios, en Estelí’, 21 November. Available at: https://www.laprensani.com/2023/11/21/vida/3241777-impiden-a-artistas-pintar-mural-en-homenaje-a-miss-universo-sheynnis-palacios-en-esteli (Accessed: 30 November 2023).
Ladd, B. (2018) The ghosts of Berlin: confronting German history in the urban landscape. Chicago ; London: The University of Chicago Press.
Lancaster, R.N. (1988) Thanks to God and the Revolution: Popular Religion and Class Consciousness in the New Nicaragua. New York: Columbia University Press.
Laursen, O.B. (2019) ‘Anti-Imperialism,’ in C. Levy and M.S. Adams (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 149–167.
Louro, M.L. et al. (eds) (2020) The League against Imperialism: lives and afterlives. Leiden: Leiden University Press (Global connections: routes and roots).
Manjapra, K. (2019) ‘Anti-imperialism and Interregnum’, in P.E. Gordon and W. Breckman (eds) The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought: Volume 2: The Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought), pp. 289–310.
Müller, T.R. (2010) ‘“Memories of paradise” - Legacies of socialist education in Mozambique’, African Affairs, 109(436), pp. 451–470.
Otieni Sumba, E. (ed.) (2024) Echoes of the brother countries: What is the prize of memory and what is the cost of amnesia?: or: visions and illusions of anti-imperialist solidarities. Berlin: Archive Books.
Parrott, R.J. (2022) ‘Tricontinentalism and the Anti-Imperial Project’, in R.J. Parrott and M.A. Lawrence (eds) The Tricontinental Revolution. 1st edn. Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–40.
Perla, H.Jr. (2009) ‘Heirs of Sandino: The Nicaraguan Revolution and The U.S.-Nicaragua Solidarity Movement’, Latin American Perspectives, 36(6), pp. 80–100.
Raussert, W. (2023) ‘Mobilizing the Grid. Collaborative Creativity in Public Space, and Radical Artistic Flows from South to North. From “Sandinista” to “Zapatista” to “Occupy Wall Street”’, Oltreoceano, (21), pp. 79–93.
Rieber, A. (2016) ‘Afterword: Promises and Paradoxes of Socialist Internationalism (Personal and Historical Reflections)’, in P. Babiracki and A. Jersild (eds) Socialist Internationalism in the Cold War : Exploring the Second World. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 327–343.
Rocha, J.L. (ed.) (2020) Autoconvocados y conectados: los universitarios en la revuelta de abril en Nicaragua. Managua: UCA Editores.
Rodgers, D. (2009) ‘Searching for the Time of Beautiful Madness: Of Ruins and Revolution in post-Sandinista Nicaragua’, in H.G. West and P. Raman (eds) Enduring Socialism: Explorations of Revolution and Transformation, Restoration and Continuation. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 77–102.
Rösch, C. and Balbier, U.A. (2006) ‘Mehr als eine Fußnote. Das Verhältnis zwischen der DDR und den Vereinigten Staaten von Ameriak’, in U.A. Balbier and C. Rösch (eds) Umworbener Klassenfeind: das Verhältnis der DDR zu den USA. 1. Aufl. Berlin: Links (Forschungen zur DDR-Gesellschaft).
Schindler, M. (2022) ‘Adiós Nicaragüita’, Informationsbüro Nicaragua e.V., 22 February. Available at: https://infobuero-nicaragua.org/2022/02/abschied-von-nicaragua-ein-beitrag-von-matthias-schindler (Accessed: 20 October 2023).
Schwenkel, C. (2022) ‘The Things They Carried (and Kept): Revisiting Ostalgie in the Global South,’ Comparative Studies in Society and History, 64(2), pp. 478–509.
Selejan, I.L. (2021) ‘Vandalism as Symbolic Reparation: Imaginaries of Protest in Nicaragua,’ The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 39(2), pp. 19–38.
Sierakowski, R.J. (2019) Sandinistas: A Moral History. University of Notre Dame Press.
Torres Rivas, E. (2007) ‘Nicaragua: el retorno del sandinismo transfigurado’, Nueva Sociedad, 207(1), pp. 4–10.
Travis, P.W. (2017) Reagan’s war on terrorism in Nicaragua: the outlaw state. Lanham Boulder New York London: Lexington Books.
Vannini, M. (2012) ‘Memoria e Imagen. Políticas públicas de la memoria en Nicaragua, (1979-2010)’, in. Second International Seminar ‘Memoria, Cultura, Ciudadanía’, Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua y Centroamérica, Managua. Available at: http://historia.ihnca.edu.ni/almidon/demo/files/doc/ponencias_segundo_seminario/MVANNINI.pdf (Accessed: 11 October 2021).
Weber, C. (2006) Visions of Solidarity. U.S. Peace Activists in Nicaragua From War to Women’s Activism and Globalization. Lexington Books.
Weis, T. (2011) ‘The Politics Machine: On the Concept of “Solidarity” in East German Support for SWAPO,’ Journal of Southern African Studies, 37(2), pp. 351–367.
Weiss, H. (2017) International communism and transnational solidarity: radical networks, mass movements and global politics, 1919-1939. Leiden Boston: Brill (Studies in global social history, volume 26).
Whigham, K. (2022) Resonant violence: affect, memory, and activism in post-genocide societies. New Brunswick Camden, New Jersey Newark, New Jersey London: Rutgers University Press (Genocide, political violence, human rights series).
Witkowski, G. (2015) ‘Between Fighters and Beggars: Socialist Philanthropy and the Imagery of Solidarity in East Germany,’ in Q. Slobodian (ed.) Comrades of color: East Germany in the Cold War world. New York ; Oxford: Berghahn Books (Protest, culture and society, volume 14), pp. 73–94.
Young, J.E. (2000) The texture of memory: Holocaust memorials and meaning. Nachdr. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
Young, R.J.C. (2016) Postcolonialism: an historical introduction. Anniversary Edition. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell.
Yurchak, A. (2006) Everything was forever, until it was no more: the last Soviet generation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Copyright (c) 2024 Samira Marty