In the years of my childhood, the December celebrations in Masatepe were exhausted with Christmas Eve, and although the small synthetic Christmas tree survived until after the end of the year in a corner of the room, on December 31 we went to the I went to bed before midnight, and I would wake up to the explosion of rockets that sounded distant, coming from the indigenous neighborhoods of Jalata, Nimboja and Veracruz, while the rest of the town remained silent, already dark.
Or is it that, perhaps, from some house where they were celebrating – what was called noisy parties back then – came the music from a record player that played the cumbia over and over again. The old yearsung by the Guadalajara vocalist Tony Camargo, “Oh, I do not forget the old year/ Because he has left me very good things/ Look/ He left me a goat, a black donkey/ A white mare and a good mother-in-law…”, from Colombian Crescencio Salcedo, the illiterate peasant who composed other gems such as “La múcura que esta en el tierra…”, which was given to the voice of Benny Moré, and “Se va el caimán, se va para Barranquilla…”, sung by the incomparable high school graduate José María Peñaranda, who elevated vulgarities of words to the category of art, it is enough to remember his famous tripe opera.
The old yearwhich dates back to 1953, was an inescapable classic, which sounded insistent on the radios and jukeboxes on December 31st, seasonal music par excellence, with which it would be paired years later, when I had left Masatepe and finished my studies in right, Five to twelveanother song of sticky nostalgia by the Venezuelan Oswaldo Oropeza, sung by another Venezuelan, Néstor Zavarce, more of a sentimental than a festive vein, as it invokes the inevitable theme of the long-gone mother, popular like few others at canteen tables: “Faltan Cinco Pa' twelve, the year is going to end/ I'm running home to hug my mom…”
The preponderance of the night of December 24 in a small town, where religious tradition prevailed over secular festivities, could not be disputed; and especially in a modest home like mine, where resources were not enough for two consecutive celebrations. For Christmas Eve dinner, a chompipe, the indigenous turkey, of traditional primacy in Nicaragua before the imported fashion of the gringo turkey, which was raised and fed throughout the year in the patio of the house, and when it was going to be sacrificed As a final grace, he received a drink of rum that was administered to him as part of the ritual ceremony, opening his beak amid flutters of resistance, I suspect not with the intention of making his death more bearable, but to soften his flesh.
It was one of the occasions when my mother would enter the kitchen, equipped with a cast iron stove with an oven and a chimney that blew the dark smoke over the ceiling, to brown the chompipe and prepare the filling, a rich baroque mixture where Enter the breadcrumbs, the pork, the abundant butter, the sweet rapadura, grapes and prunes, olives in brine, capers and pickled onions, whose recipe Tulita, my wife, keeps in her memory; her mother's recipe, since there is one for every Nicaraguan family.
Dinner was held on the last day of the year at my house in Masatepe, but early, and the chompipe gave way to a humble nacatamal, which for me was just as succulent, the corn dough marinated with achiote and composed with pork, potatoes, rice, and again the grapes and prunes and overseas capers, in their wrapper of roasted banana leaves, and which during our season in Berlin in the seventies Tulita used to make, with my modest help, in tribute to nostalgia culinary that always haunts exiles, wrapping them in aluminum foil because banana leaves could only be obtained by stealing them from the Botanischer Garten.
Back then in Europe, Latin America was still exotic, and the Germans were fascinated by the tricks of magical realism. If now we wanted to celebrate the new year with nacatamales in Madrid, in this third year of our second exile, banana leaves are easy to get around the corner, in the grocery stores of the Bangladeshis and Hindus of Lavapiés, or Well, the nacatamales, cloned to perfection by Nicaraguan hands, can be ordered at home.
But I return to my old new years. I went to know the festivities of December 31 during my student days in León, when I became Tulita's boyfriend and accompanied her to the gala dance of the social club, an occasion in which young girls were presented in society and paraded in long dresses, of the arms of her parents dressed in evening clothes, and I enjoyed the party as long as the orchestra didn't play, because I never learned to dance, while she was a virtuoso on the dance floor.
From the time in Costa Rica, where we went to live in 1964 after getting married and stayed for 12 years, I have no memory of the end of the year, because for the December holidays we returned to Nicaragua and spent them in Masatepe. We were there when the earthquake that destroyed Managua occurred, just after midnight on Saturday, December 23, 1972, a 30-second underground shock that left 400 city blocks devastated, first by the earthquake and then by the fires, with 20,000 dead. and a similar number of wounded, and the forced exodus of the entire population.
Due to its proximity to the capital, Masatepe began to fill with refugees who arrived aboard pick ups and trucks where they loaded the few belongings that they could have rescued, and camped on the sidewalks and in the church atrium, wandered in the central park and in front of my father's store, which occupied the corner room of our house, a crowd like in the patron saint festivities, only silent and disconcerted; and there was no Christmas celebration, nor New Year's celebration, because it was a mourning, and no one thought of gathering to celebrate in view of so much misfortune walking in front of the doors.
This has been our third New Year's Eve in Madrid. I don't know exactly what it means to become a Madrid resident, which must be something like truly getting into the people and the city. I, at least, try to make my own the view that opens from my window over the roofs of Lavapiés, the tower of the church of San Lorenzo, beyond that of El Salvador and San Nicolás, and that Tulita has painted in one of His paintings now hanging in my studio.
Perhaps a Madrid New Year means sitting in front of the television to watch the Puerta del Sol celebration, and meanwhile eating the grapes that already come in boxes of 12 units. And perhaps being from Madrid means that when I land in Barajas I feel, in some way, that I am returning home.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
#years
