This essay is a review of the book “Carazo, center of Nicaragua” by Manuel Meza Fernández, local historian from Jinotepe, Carazo. An overall comparison of scripture from a positivist tradition that permeates the book and a tendency for Regional Studies is done. It is not however, to say that a trend is better than the other, but to propose from the regional studies, a new way of understanding history, in which society as a whole feels identified, but also, understood in its relationships with the environment

Martín Guevara, Wilmer

Repositorio Institucional UNAN-Managua

Torreón Universitariowww.faremcarazo.unan.edu.ni - ISSN 2410-5708 (printed edition)Year 4 | No. 9 | p. 64 - 69 | February  2015 - May 2015RevistaRewriting on the basis of  the Regional and LocalHistoriography: “Carazo, center of  Nicaragua”by Manuel Meza Fernández SummaryThis essay is a review of the book “Carazo, center of Nicaragua” by Manuel Meza Fernán-dez, local historian from Jinotepe, Carazo. An overall comparison of scripture from a posi-tivist tradition that permeates the book and a tendency for Regional Studies is done. It isnot however, to say that a trend is better than the other, but to propose from the regionalstudies, a new way of understanding history, in which society as a whole feels identified,but also, understood in its relationships with the environment.Introduction“The integrated study of man and nature allows us to treat one of the eternal contradictions ofhistory: man’s struggle with nature, to provide the resources that reproduce life”.Mares SorheguiWith this statement, which is part of the regional and local historiography, it is clearthat history should not be limited to partial trends, but must come to the unders-tanding of human beings in a totalizing way, as an integrating part of the context,in which it interacts and also establishes economic, political, cultural and social links inorder to survive and coexist. However, it is necessary to specify that the origin of the regional and local historiography,has its roots in the historiography from the French School of the Annales, whose focus wasthe study of space and its relationship with humans. This conception of history is echoedfrom the 60’s, after the Second World War where the localization tends to be magnifiedand the man-space-time relationship is considered. Following this premise, this critical essay also considers that this approach to regional his-tory can help improve the understanding of the regional characteristics of Carazo, regardingthe evolution of the history of Nicaragua in its various fields; political, economic, etc. orKey words: regional and local history, romantic history, Positivism, totality,man-environment relationship.Wilmer Martín GuevaraM.A. in Specific Didactic of the Social ScienceUNAN-MANAGUA, FAREM-CARAZOwguevara@unan.edu.niSectionSCIENTIFIC ARTICLES64even one of them in particular.On the other hand, if the Nicaraguan history books or any other of its territories in particular areanalyzed carefully, we will be able to demonstrate, as in the case that concerns us, that this ho-listic man-space-time relationship is not established, therefore, the main objective of the essayis to set some guidelines for how we could rewrite, from regional and local history, Carazo´s his-tory, written by Manuel Meza Fernandez.About the author and his workMeza Manuel Fernandez is a native of Jinotepe, head of Carazo, Nicaragua. Born in 1917, jour-nalist, poet and prominent historian of the municipality, also recognized by the local governmentin 2001. He wrote for anti-imperialist magazines1, which caused him to be imprisoned severaltimes under the rule of the Somoza´s dictatorship in Nicaragua.His love for Jinotepe, led him to write the history not only of his municipality, but also Carazo´s.However, his work is influenced, as can be seen along the text- by romantic historiography ofthe late nineteenth century, which exalted nationalism, although in this particular case “localism”,is understood in the context of the book, as the strong identification with his birthplace.Meza Fernandez’s work consists of many transcriptions of primary documents such as: frag-ments of several chronic like those of Oviedo or Ayón-  governmental agreements for the de-marcation of boundaries in Carazo as a new department, the judgment which ratifies such anagreement, the statement of Jinotepe´s transition to a village and then to a city; other supportingdocuments such as news about events of great importance as the overtaking of Jinotepe’s ba-rracks during Somoza´s dictatorship, inaugural speeches of important buildings of the munici-pality, list of important people of the town as lawyers, doctors, musicians, etc.In this sense, there is no doubt that the information is a lot valuable, but with inaccuracies, na-mely: temporal and spatial location of the facts, context, trade networks, forms of exchange, theuse of the physical environment such as rivers or roads, etc. In addition, it should be emphasizedMeza Fernandez´s approach in the study of the town, from an isolated understanding of thedifferent aspects of the history of Carazo. As an exampleHere are three examples taken literally from “Carazo, center of Nicaragua”, which will be dis-cussed at first and then rewritten on the basis of local and regional historiography although ina limited way, due to reasons of space-in a second moment.First moment: analyzingExample 1. Book´s subtopic: Going back to his oldest time.A fertile soil, drinking water sources. Abundant and varied raw material to build with. One ofthe best climates in the country. All of this came from the niquiranos, the foundation of Jino-tepe. Mexican voice was spread to this region. Hunger and randomly made them search forthe father corn. They are fleeing from the drought. 350 leagues left behind. Meeting withthe natural. Those from Mexico remained and settled, accustomed to see what population1 1931: He wrote for the anti-imperialist Mexican magazine “La Patria Grande” in defense of General of free men and women AugustoC. Sandino, for which he is arrested by the contabularia and is taken prisoner to the prison in Managua. On the cover. 1945: He is editor of “Apie”, organ of the Association of Journalists of Carazo. He was arrested for covering the arrival of President Riosto Nicaragua to participate in the November 10 uprising against the Somoza dictatorship. On the cover.SectionSCIENTIFIC ARTICLES65Revista Torreón Universitario / Year 4 / No. 9 / February - May 2015 / ISSN: 2410-5708 (printed edition)of nahuales of the language of Mexico was there. (Meza Fernández, 2002, p. 46)This paragraph cannot escape the mind questions like: What is the type of soil or climate of theregion that describes? What language family exactly is meant by the “Mexican voice”? Who is“the corn father” or “the natural”? ¿Did they found Jinotepe or a place which would be later ca-lled Jinotepe? Why did they stay in what is now Carazo and not anywhere else in the country?This field of questions and others, I consider, could help a better understanding of the populationin this area. Example 2. Book´s subtopic: Political Life (Meza Fernández, 2002, pages. 28-45)Transcribe the following documents:Territorial limits •The agreement on November 17, pointing out the territorial limits between Villa de Jino-•tepe and Santa Teresa. Governmental Agreements approving the demarcation of the limits in Villa de Jinotepe.•Legislative decree about the electoral quarters in Jinotepe. •Decree in which Jinotepe District is chosen under the name of Carazo.•In this subtopic is the intact content of the documents listed, although in each, the dates and insome cases the places are mentioned, there is no reference -in documents- about who the pre-sident of the country was, then or what their political leanings were or who handled such poli-tical-administrative divisions and further, the reasons that led to this decision and the criteria fornatural, political, social, cultural or commercial delimitations.Example 3. Subtopic: Carazo had a trainOn April 29  the traffic to Jinotepe was opened  and on May 1899, the route to Diriambawith 44 kilometers long was inaugurated; although the engineer Jose del Carmen Muñoz,Director of Public Works, received the work in question, the event was attended by J. SantosZelaya, President of the Republic… The station was wooden floor all the way around thehouse, here the couples called the “in love” ... They had sales of candies, offered by someboys of the trade: rice pudding, caramel, motajatol and bread... Currently, the railroad disap-peared, it was sold as scrap. (Meza Fernández, 2002, p. 140)Despite this narrative, it is interesting from a regional perspective, allowing us to view everydaylife and even feel represented in this story, however prospects who devised and managed theconstruction of the railway, they should have been of higher dimensions. Surely, these peoplewere thinking in responding to trade and development needs of the country or particular socialsectors. Moreover, the author of “Carazo, Center of Nicaragua” concludes this subtopic with the state-ment “Today the railroad disappeared, was sold as scrap,” but: Sold by whom? What was it soldfor? Under the government of what political trend? How did the sale of the train affect the trade?Finally, this essay could be completed through many examples as the ones described, but toachieve the main objective of this work which is to provide guidelines for rewriting “Carazo,Center of Nicaragua” from a regional and local approach, not only locally. It will be referred toRevista Torreón Universitario / Year 4 / No. 9 / February - May 2015 / ISSN: 2410-5708 (printed edition)SectionSCIENTIFIC ARTICLES66a fundamental concept: “The Environment” term that is opposed to the position of the romanticand positivist historiography denied by the French historian Hipólito Tainte (1828-1893) and PaulVidal de la Blanche (1845-1918 ) cited by Garcia Ballesteros (1983), who defined the overall en-vironment as the interrelationship between man and the space in time.It should be noted in any case, that this relationship is not simply the use of natural resourcesfor the survival of man, as it was clarified at the beginning of the essay, but it must be understoodon the one hand, this man as a social subject, changing, with new needs and of course withnew knowledge and skills; and secondly, to natural space, with resources or resistance in on-going evolution, sometimes by natural processes and sometimes by human impact. But, despiteunderstanding both components and their characteristics, we must also view them in an inte-grated way, linked to each other, and within specified times.In this sense, we must understand Carazo not only as the center of Nicaragua, but as a particularmean, but that is located within a broader context. But how do we explain to this region fromthe key concept in which has been manifested? Well, we will try to make an approach from theprevious examples:Second moment: RewritingExample 1. Book Subtopic: Going back to its old timeCarazo´s history, if he want to understand it from a regionally approach does not begin with itssettlement, it certainly has more remote history, which refers to Incer (2011), president of theAcademy of Geography and History of Nicaragua, when he says the Pacific emerged from theseabed, becoming part of a primitive continent stretching from Yucatan to the Antilles, about60 million years ago and more recently in the last million years, lakes and volcanoes were for-med. (2011)This explains at the outset that Carazo, just for being part of the Pacific of Nicaragua has soils,younger than other parts of the country as the region of “Las Segovias”2. In addition, Pacificsoils are volcanic, so they are fertile and suitable for agriculture. Incer expands us in the expla-nation of the soils in the Pacific when he says that they contain soluble salts and minerals ex-pelled from the interior of the earth, along with its loamy (not too clayey or very sandy); Likewise,it should be noted the regularity of the relief in the city, which as part of a plateau, is known as“La Caraceña”.The features described about the soil and other reasons that due to  lack of space, are not dis-cussed in this essay were those that led to the first immigrants to settle in this space, which isvery similar to the “Anahuac” valley, where they came from. Simultaneously, it helps to unders-tand why they did not initially placed in the central region or the Caribbean, which has verydifferent characteristics to which they were accustomed.Example 2. Book Subtopic: Political LifeThe documents contained in the book are interesting, but each of them has an intention thatthe author does not explain. Also, they are not located in a historic time, but in the content ofthe documents, some dates are mentioned, for example, in the agreement, dividing the townsof Jinotepe and Santa Teresa, published dates from 1866; in the legislative decree, which Jino-tepe becomes constituency of Granada, it is dated 1883; and in the deed of the public land, the2 Original name that was assigned to the geographic región of the “Northern Part” of Nicaragua, currently that region is formed by thefollowing departments: Jinotega, Madriz, Nueva Segovia, and Estelí.SectionSCIENTIFIC ARTICLES67Revista Torreón Universitario / Year 4 / No. 9 / February - May 2015 / ISSN: 2410-5708 (printed edition)date of 1892 arises.These data is located quickly in the late nineteenth century, under the period of 30 years ofconservative government in Nicaragua, when coffee cultivation was at its peak and Carazo wasthe quintessential coffee in the country, especially the territory from Diriamba, Jinotepe and SanMarcos, better known as the “Triangulo de Oro” for growing grain.The production of this crop is closely related to the document “Ejidos” in which it is stated thatan amount of 7,300 rods were donated to the prefecture of Carazo in 1982, at the request ofthe prefect and sub-delegate of Finance Camilo Zuniga .But this donation was, according Kinloch Tijerina (2012), to be sold to medium and small produ-cers worth 38 pesos per block, for those benefited in relation to his salary rising from 30 to 45cents a day. According to the same author, between 1877 and 1902 the state gave to the muni-cipalities of Carazo plateau 11,393 blocks as public land.However, the favorable situation changed rapidly for the small and medium coffee producersfor two reasons: changes in the international price of this product and population growth, whichled to medium and small producers to sell their land or, the worst case, they were removed dueto debt, which consequently provoked to change from a balanced land tenure to a large statesituation and a sharper social inequality. So far, it is noticeable that the policy of the suburbs inthe short term, it was always intended to benefit the large landowners, who had the resourcesand technologies for massive production of coffee.Example 3. Subtopic: Carazo had a railwayMeza Fernandez mentioned in the body of the book the productive activities of the city in thelate nineteenth century. In this regard he writes:Jinotepe: ... of sturdy agricultural tradition ... has since the mid-nineteenth century, com-•mercial agronomic movement ... since its inception in coffee cultivation, to which devotespriority attention and increases each day to form the basis of the national economy.Diriamba: the highest part of the plateau ... bases its economy on coffee production.•San Marcos: strong center of activity during the coffee harvest season is the result of its•main financial effort within the agricultural line.The author mentions in the book other trade products such as livestock or sugarcane, but whatprevails in the towns of Carazo and in Nicaragua as an export-like product was “coffee”; butwhat does this have to do with the railroad? This is a question that Meza Fernandez did notwonder, since in his work he refers to them in isolation.Then, considering the high production of coffee, it became necessary, to take coffee out of thefarms to brokerages and then to seaports where they would be exported internationally from.This indicates that the transport to international markets was not direct, but the railway wasused during its transportation in the country.From here, you can notice the need to integrate network space through trade or to study space,as it is defined by the human geography: “one economic variable,” but trying to go further. Onecould understand this unification of space not only from a commercial point of view, but politi-cally and ideologically, as the latter stretches of railway in Carazo, were built under the dicta-torship of the Somozas, who owned much of the farms coffee in the region.Revista Torreón Universitario / Year 4 / No. 9 / February - May 2015 / ISSN: 2410-5708 (printed edition)SectionSCIENTIFIC ARTICLES68ReferencesGARCÍA BALLESTEROS, A. (1983) Vidal dela Blanche en la crítica al neopositivismoen geografía. Revista de la UniversidadComplutense de Madriz, 25-39.INCER BARQUERO, J. (2011) GeografíaDinámica de Nicaragua. Managua: HISPA-MER.KINLOCH TIJERINO, F. (2012) Historia deNicaragua. Managua: IHNCA.MEZA FERNÁNDEZ, M. (2002) Carazo,corazón de Nicaragua. Managua: PAVSA.ROMERO, J., CHOW CRUZ, A., FRANCO, F.,MADRIGAL MENDIETA, L., HERNÁNDEZSÁNCHEZ, N., NORORI GUTIÉRREZ, R., . . .REYES MONTERREY, J. (2010) Historia deNicaragua. Managua: Ciencias Sociales.Moreover, Fernandez matches Meza Romero and others (2010) when they say that in the latenineteenth century the roads were in a significant delay and that the ways of Nicaragua weremule paths. However, for Meza Fernandez, after the railroad, the economy and lifestyle of Ca-razo´s population improved; and immediately the question of whose economy the existence ofthe railroad came to benefit? To answer this, we must take into account factors such as power relations of social classes butnot from a Marxist tradition, but from a subaltern approach3; other products generated in theregion, such as sugar cane in the town of Santa Teresa; or producing salt and fishing settlementsof the Pacific coast; relations that existed between the people of these low economic areas andseparated from trading activities with the residents of the upper part of the department that de-veloped around the railroad, among other areas.In conclusionTrying to explain the history of man without the interaction with their environment, would onlyleads us, as it has happened so far- to partialize history towards a sector (political, social, reli-gious) of the population. Meanwhile, the environment cannot be understood without the evolu-tion of man in time.In this sense, we can say that the work of Manuel Meza Fernandez, is full of valuable information,which is also inspiring, but through an approach like that of the regional and local historiography,could help Carazo´s population to fully rediscover themselves, to know who they are, wherethey come from, what their potential is based on the context in which they are currently living,etc.3 It’s a field of academic specialization, near to the post colonialism, began in India by Ranaji Guha in 1982.SectionSCIENTIFIC ARTICLES69Revista Torreón Universitario / Year 4 / No. 9 / February - May 2015 / ISSN: 2410-5708 (printed edition)

Rewriting on the basis of the Regional and Local Historiography: “Carazo, center of Nicaragua” by Manuel Meza Fernández

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Rewriting on the basis of the Regional and Local Historiography: “Carazo, center of Nicaragua” by Manuel Meza Fernández

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