Monumental Questions

After I’m dead I’d rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.
Cato


Should a nation honor an assassin? What if the target was a bloody tyrant? Is a desperate act—which the assassin claimed he performed out of patriotism—worthy of a monument?

Nicaraguans are currently facing these questions.

Managua’s city council, led by Mayor Dionisio Marenco, of the Sandinista Party, recently approved funding for the construction of a monument honoring Rigoberto López Pérez who, on September 21, 1956, shot Anastasio Somoza García. (It’s worthy to note that the only council member who voted against the resolution was Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Barrios: the son of Violeta Chamorro, Nicaragua’s former president, and Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, the newspaper publisher allegedly murdered, in 1978, by Anastasio Somoza Debayle’s henchmen.)

On that fateful evening, Rigoberto López Pérez emptied his revolver into Anastasio Somoza García, the founder of the Somoza dynasty, while the Nicaraguan strongman attended a campaign reception in the city of León. The dictator’s bodyguards killed López Pérez on the spot, and Somoza García died eight days later in the William C. Gorgas Hospital—in the former Canal Zone—where he had been flown at the behest of President Dwight Eisenhower, who also sent his personal physician to try to save the life of his Cold War ally.

In a letter López Pérez left behind for his mother, he said that he hoped his sacrifice would bring an end to the Somoza regime. Sadly, the assassination had the opposite effect: both of Somoza García’s sons moved quickly—and ruthlessly—to secure the family’s reign. And in the ensuing months, dozens of members of the opposition were imprisoned, tortured, and killed; and the Somoza clan remained in power for another twenty-three years.

Considering these circumstances, the assassination underscores the widely held belief that violence begets violence, thus making such acts difficult to justify—even when the intent is to eliminate a despot.

And this is what troubles me about the current Sandinista leadership: their preferred political tactic is to intimidate the opposition—including dissidents within their party—through the specter of violence.

It is also why I’m opposed to the monument: to so honor Rigoberto López Pérez is to pay tribute to violence. I admit to feeling pity for the assassin’s misguided sacrifice; particularly because, had he survived, he might have left a literary legacy—his dream was to become a well-known poet.

And in this regard Rigoberto López Pérez already has what amounts to an honor that’s far more respectable than the projected monument. In the novel Margarita, está linda la mar, winner of the 1998 Alfaguara Prize, Sergio Ramírez—the Nicaraguan writer and former vice-president during the Sandinista era—immortalizes the young poet. I believe that if given a choice, Rigoberto López Pérez, a shy, quiet man with the soul of an artist, would have preferred the literary tribute.

In Margarita, está linda la mar, Ramírez masterfully interpolates two historical incidents that are separated by a forty year gap: Somoza García’s assassination and the return of Rubén Darío, Nicaragua’s greatest poet, to his hometown of León, where he has come to die. What is poignant about the novel is that the author never idealizes López Pérez’s act. As a result, the reader ultimately feels deep compassion for the assassin because she or he experiences the pointlessness of the lesser poet’s sacrifice. Instead of bringing an end to a dictatorial regime, Rigoberto López Pérez unwittingly unleashes a tidal wave of blood, suffering, and repression. What’s worse, his act helps to perpetuate precisely what he sought to stop—the creation of a family dynasty. Thus, his martyrdom was in vain.

There is no doubt in my mind that Rigoberto López Pérez would’ve been thrilled to be commemorated by way of a remarkable novel that links him to Rubén Darío—his hero and one of the greatest Spanish-language poets of all time. In this way, he would surely realize, his misdeed, rather than being honored with a dull, grey monument set in concrete, is guaranteed to live on, poetically, in the imagination, in a timeless tribute destined to touch the hearts of readers everywhere.