Overlapping narratives, conflicting memories: rethinking the historic center of Managua

Abstract

The different elite groups of the country have used the historic center of Managua as a territory to print and superimpose their narratives, at the same time it has served as a scene of conflict between the dominant memories. The present work takes as a starting point the reading of this urban center as a document of memories. It stops at the analysis of some spaces that make up said center and places them in three temporalities: the Sandinista Popular Revolution and the rupture of the Somocista temporality, 1979 onwards; the end of the revolutionary period and the entrance to neoliberalism, 1990 onwards; the return of the Sandinista government as of 2007. You wonder what narratives the government elites projected on the historic center of the city of Managua? Who were and are its actors? What actions did they launch and how are such actions inscribed in the place, materializing and legitimizing their narratives about said space? Through what sociopolitical processes did other actors break with this narrative?