Coyotepe

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Perched on a hill outside Masaya, Nicaragua, with a stunning view of the town and volcano-riddled countryside, is an abandoned stone fortress called Coyotepe. It´s construction dates back more than 100 years, but its infamy comes from its use during the Somoza regime, when it housed dungeons and torture chambers for political prisoners. It was also the location of an infamous massacre, when during the revolution, as the Sandinistas stormed the hill, the National Guard slaughtered all prisoners inside moments before the fort was captured.

I arrived there this morning, entering through the rusted gates to the sound of a young couple laughing. They stood on one of the domed turrets, the man taking pictures of the woman, who posed with her head turned, trying to accentuate her good side. The man scampered around, alternately kneeling and then standing on tip-toes, searching for a way to include the town, the lake, and a volcano in the backdrop of the photo, wanting to document the perfection of the moment as his lover became steadily more impatient.

They left quickly and I was alone in the fort, except for a teenager from the local boys scouts chapter, whose job it is to collect the 50 cent entrance fee.

I descended into the outer wall of the fort, an area filled with sentry posts, sleeping quarters, and graffiti. Literally every wall is splayed with cliche scribbles including "Susan loves Juan", "Real Madrid are Kings", the occasional pornographic sketch, and, for reasons that I´m sure will never become clear to me, two swastikas.

After walking around the outer wall I was planning to leave because all passages to the centre of the fort were sealed off by locked iron doors, but after asking the kid at the gate, I was shown one unlocked door. I took my flashlight out my backpack and entered.

I don´t think I have ever been anywhere so haunting.

Some of the large cells had small, rectangular shafts of light casting eerie shadows on the concrete floors, but most were completely black. Bats fluttered in and out of my peripheral vision, letting out screeches that echoed through the chambers, and all I could do was imagine the sounds and smells of 30 years ago, the panicked, desperate humanity that had been extinguished below the spot where tourists now came on daytrips to enjoy the view. I wish I could describe the feeling, but I just don´t think I have the words.

Upon leaving I felt that something had been violated at the fortress, like the history of the place had been obscured by the waves of teenage spray paint and carefree daytrippers. I wondered how Nicaraguans could flock to the site and show so little reverence for its tragic history. At first that struck me as heinously ignorant, and disrespectful to those that had died... but I think there might be more to it than that. I need to remember that the war isn´t "history" here, but more of a developing present. It is not that people refuse to see the scars, it is that they have photos of dead loved ones hung in their houses, and feel their loss constantly, and so don´t need to roam to historical markers to have their minds directed towards the atrocities of the war.

I think maybe the casual treatment of the fort is not an apathetic forgetting, but a desperate want to not NEED to remember. So many places in this part of Nicaragua are symbols of violence, oppression, and loss...I think people here, at least some of them, would like to come to the fort and just see a fort.

Or such is my guess.

Love you all, and I´ll keep you posted.


-Tim

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