If you need an excuse to curse in Spanish, here’s a great one: Nicaraguan folklore tells that white owls are really evil spirits. Should an owl flap toward you, swear at it in the foulest of language…and the evil spirit will vanish.
Sadly, I may be a goner–my driver Carlos and guide/translator Lester refuse to teach me anything worse than hijo de puta. (Last night in Granada, I would have welcomed some exotically bad words to use…there was no water whatsoever in the shower.)
We’re in Leon, a colonial city that receives nowhere near the same amount of tourists as Granada. First impressions of Leon are that it’s more sprawling, far scruffier, and even more hellishly hot than Granada. Rather than being colorful, the churches are blackened and gloomy. The air itself feels like a potter’s furnace.
Perhaps because Leon is a university city, it also seems far more politically active. Giant murals showcase revolutionary struggles, monuments are decorated with red-and-black Sandinista flags, and on the main square, graffiti promises “Death to Bush.”
I notice few tourists…and apart from us, there are no visitors at all in the Museo de Tradiciones y Leyenda. (The Museum of Tradition and Legends.) With its life-size figures depicting headless priests, skeletons pulling a death carriage, and witches that turn themselves into pigs, this is a treat for folklore enthusiasts.
If you have a morbid interest in Nicaraguan jails, it may interest you, too. During the Somoza era, the building served as a prison; drawings on the walls show the horrors to which prisoners were subjected. Lester says it doesn’t look that dissimilar to some of today’s prisons. Turns out that he was held in one for a short period for taking part in a student protest. (If you find yourself incarcerated here, you can expect some painful beatings…and meals that vary from “dog food” to bowls of rice topped with greasy chicken skin.)
Captions–all in Spanish–explain the stories behind each folkloric figure. For example, La Llorona has a reputation as a tearful baby-snatcher. If you leave your kids alone, she’s likely to steal them away as replacements for her own child…who she drowned in a river. But for the nastiest apparition, the prize goes to Toma tu Teta.
[Ed. note: Those of a delicate disposition should NOT read on…]
Toma tu Teta–a non-crude translation would be “take your breast”–was the hideously deformed daughter of a wealthy man. Although having half of the bosom of a surgically-enhanced porn queen, the creature also possessed some of the physical characteristics of a man. The caption coyly doesn’t give full details of exactly what those manly attributes were…but one can take a likely guess.
Desperate for love, the ghost of Toma tu Teta is said to roam the streets in search of good-looking men…and after finding one, has her/his wicked way with him. Not content with rape, the terrifying creature then chokes him to death by thrusting a mighty mammary down his gullet.
Sweet dreams,
Steenie Harvey
Roving Europe Editor (on loan to Nicaragua), International Living
