-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the July 20, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
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WW REVIEW: "LIVING LIKE THE SAINTS"
"Living Like the Saints"
By Liston Pope Jr.,
N.A. Gilbert & Sons, New York, 1996, 300 pages
By Deirdre Griswold
Considering the great dramatic content of revolutions, it
is remarkable that so few novels have been written about
them. There can be no other explanation than the tremendous
counter-revolutionary pressure under which Western
capitalist culture is warped and stultified.
Even the French Revolution--a great social overturn, but
one that went no further than establishing a bourgeois
republic--gets more knocks than praise in European
literature, most notably in Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two
Cities." The promise of its memorable opening sentence--"It
was the best of times, it was the worst of times"--is
frittered away on a plot shackled to the British
bourgeoisie's compromise with monarchy.
The best-known novel about the U.S. Civil War--the closest
thing to a social revolution in this country, although it
fell short of real emancipation of Black people--was the
thoroughly reactionary and racist "Gone With the Wind."
It is a joy, then, to pick up a book with the somewhat
unlikely title of "Living Like the Saints" and find that it
is a beautifully written narrative about the Nicaraguan
Revolution. Liston Pope lived in Nicaragua for several
years in the 1980s. He dedicates the book to Nora Astorga,
the guerrilla fighter whose daring exploits especially
thrilled women, and who survived Somoza's prisons only to
die of cancer not long after the revolution.
There are well-drawn central characters in this book,
whose lives of struggle and sacrifice should move even the
most blas� North American reader. Pope portrays with
tenderness and love those who never lost hope but persisted
in their resistance to the gut-wrenching ferocity of the
Somoza dictatorship. He deftly weaves in the connections
between the state, the oligarchy and their patrons in
Washington.
But surrounding the central characters is an aroused
multitude. The story focuses on insurrections in the city
of Masaya, a hotbed of Sandinista sentiment and
organization. The battles are a neighborhood affair.
Everyone knows who to turn to, how to pitch in and help the
experienced guerrilla fighters, who occasionally filter
into the city and as mysteriously disappear again.
Many of the heroes are children, including the
unforgettable character of Alma, who takes up the cause
when her brother, a revolutionary poet, is snatched up by
Somoza's National Guard for imprisonment and sure torture.
The title indicates that Liston wrote largely for
religious progressives inspired by the Central American
revolutions and liberation theology. But he is not a
compromiser and does not spare reactionaries in the church.
His depiction of the role of the leading priest in the
city--based on a true character--will surprise you.
The Nicaraguan Revolution was one of the casualties of the
tide of reaction that swept over the world in the 1980s.
While there's no question that the people had fought for
the same kind of profound restructuring of society achieved
by the Cuban Revolution, the Sandinistas got rid of Somoza
but were never able to uproot the bourgeoisie. The rich and
privileged kept up a constant sabotage of the revolution
from within, aided by U.S. imperialism from without.
All the more reason not to forget the tremendous struggles
and victories of the revolutionary period. Pope's book
makes them come alive with passion, wit and humor.
It is available at leftbooks.com or by writing to Liston
Pope Jr., P.O. Box 237132, New York, NY 10023-3031.
- END -
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