Sandinistas and the Pig Witch - an unlikely couple.

I have always had reservations about visiting somewhere like Auschwitz. I worry that the solemnity of the place would fail to impact properly on me and I´d find myself thinking about what I was going to have for lunch. For things like that I´ve always preferred to stick to the history books over real life.

Depictions of torture on the side of La Veinte Uno

Bit, if there´s one thing they know how to do in Central America it´s an atmospheric museum. In San Salvador we visited the house of Archbishop Oscar Romero whose assassination (along with six Jesuit priests, the housekeep and her daughter) is credited with kicking off the El Salvadoran Civil War. The clothes that the nine had been wearing that night, still bloodstained and ruptured by bullets were hung in the museum, invisible man style for the full effect.

If that disturbed our English sensibilities that we were totally unprepared for the Museo de Leyenda y Tradiciones General Joaquin de Arrechada Antigua Carcel de la Veinte Uno. Technically it is the National Guard's 21st garrison which until 1979 held and brutally tortured an assortment of political prisoners, freedom fighters and lunatics. I was expecting akin to Stasi Prison with its chillingly stark rooms that barely suggested what took place within them.I'd forgotten I was in Central America. Interestingly in the few rooms of La Veinte Uno the white walls were covered in simple black drawings depicting the set up of each room and the activities the prisoners might have been engaged in. Outside, the garisson's walls were further drawings of the methods of torture used on the prisoners.

So far, so affecting and quite a moving tribute to the inmates. However the rooms were far from empty. In some bizarre attempt to remind visitor's of Nicaragua's rich cultural history, as well as its violent one, they had set up life sized plastic models of characters from Nicaraguan fairy-tales. And so began our tour round possibly the weirdest museum I have ever visited. We learnt, in the same breath, about the horrors inflicted on prisoners and also about the Pig-witch, a pig with the head of a woman who runs about robbing people.

In fairness to this strange museum the cast of Nicaraguan fairytales are an interesting lot but it does detract slightly when you walk in to a cell and come face to face with Toma tu Teta.

Toma tu Teta (Grab the tit)

Eyeballing her enormous nipples scared me more than any hauntingly bare room ever could. Toma tu Teta is a character who due to her massive breasts and manish arms is unable to get a man. Instead she runs around town, chasing unsuspecting men and ordering them to 'toma tu teta' (grab the tit) whereupon she will force them to suckle until she is satisfied and runs off!

My other favourite character was el Duende. Anyone who's her studied the Andalucian poet Garcia-Lorca will understand el Duende to be the dark, momento-mori of inspiration that is necessary in the creation of great art.

El Duende - inspiration or gnome?


To the Nicaraguan's he is a gnome. A gnome who steals away unbaptised babies at that. I could only smile as I remembered my Spanish professors warning that understanding Lorca could only be achieved through an understanding of el Duende. A gnome.

So after our confusing experience at the museum we fled from lefty, Sandinista Leon. Leaving behind its political murals and chaotic streets we exchanged it for conservative Granada where our liberal souls have been ashamedly soothed by its pastel painted order, where the museums focus on the pre-Columbian and gloss over all that nasty business with Sandino and the company, in Leon at least, he keeps.