Central Target. Sandino’s Specters in Post-Revolutionary Central American Contemporary Art

Abstract

How to deal with the specter of Sandino, a demanding object of love before whom, despite all the failures and disappointments that the Sandinista revolution experienced, it seems that one is always at fault? Is it still possible to recognize in the folds of the memory of “Nicaragua's most famous specter” a source of moral and spiritual energy capable of fueling the untimely power of a new revolutionary “tiger leap”?  My interest focuses on the attempted responses that emerged from Central American contemporary art in the “post-revolutionary” period, that is, from the electoral Thermidor that put an end to the FSLN government (1979-1990) until the return of that party to the government in January 2007. Of the many artistic proposals on this topic, in this article I will deal with those contributed by the influential artist and cultural activist Raúl Quintanilla, which I will study with the historical background of the different “lives” through which the surviving image of the specter of Sandino has lived until the end of the revolutionary period.