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PARTISAN REVIEW
literature, which presumes that all troubles are over," resulting in a
new form of revolution-"socialism for radical tourists."
These books are in fact two sides of the same coin. The Rush–
die book is an unabashed and easily transparent piece of propagan–
da, while the Davis volume seeks to appear as a balanced account
that disparages both the Sandinistas' cheerleaders as well as their
deprecators but ends up, as does Mr. Rushdie's, blaming any faults
in Nicaragua on the
contra
war waged against the revolution by the
United States.
Mr. Rushdie takes his title from a limerick he came across. It
tells of a woman who rode on a jaguar, only to find that the jaguar
was the one who smiled, since she became its next meal. Mr.
Rushdie escapes the irony that, like the woman, he himself was
swallowed by the revolution whose darker side he fails to acknow–
ledge, and that his sponsors have good reason to have a smile on
their faces. Indeed, much of his book reads like a paen to the San–
dinista
commandantes,
whom he finds to be "men of integrity and great
pragmatism, with an astonishing lack of bitterness towards their
opponents." Mr. Rushdie has only sympathy for Daniel Ortega's bit–
terness at being condemned for buying those famous designer
eyeglasses in New York. After all, Ortega's spouse Rosario Murillo
explains, they were a gift from a wealthy American friend, and "we
cannot get such things here, but still." Rushdie does not check back
to find the Ortegas paid for them with an embassy Diner's Club
card, and that they spent more for the purchase than they received in
a check for medical supplies from devoted American supporters
meeting at the Ethical Culture Society. Nor does he describe the lux–
urious mansion in which · the couple lives, filled with the wealth of
the millionaire Nicaraguan from whom they confiscated the house,
despite the fact that the man was a supporter of the revolution. But
when Mr. Rushdie visits Violetta Chamorro, the widow of the slain
editor of
La Prensa,
Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, he scornfully records
that "she wore a great deal of jewelry; gold bracelets and earrings,
and quantities of black coral." There is no such description of the
lavish gowns and makeup worn by Madame Ortega, whose outfits
in her Western and Hollywood appearances are among her most
noted attributes. Evidently, when Rosario appears so bedecked, it is
not
to
be viewed as a failure to make "concessions to the spirit of the
'new Nicaragua'."
As a writer, of course, Mr. Rushdie is opposed to censorship,
and he is saddened when a Sandinista editor at the official FSLN
