Emilio Álvarez Montalván, Nicaragua’s Pro-Democracy Sage, Dies at 94
|
Version 0 of 1. Emilio Álvarez Montalván, a former guerrilla, political prisoner and government official who in the last quarter-century of his life was often called the wisest man in Nicaragua, died on Wednesday in Managua. He was 94. His family announced his death. Dr. Álvarez, an ophthalmologist, was a cultural historian, diplomat, newspaper editor and trenchant critic of dictatorship. His death brought an outpouring of tributes in Nicaragua. The commentator Carlos Fernando Chamorro called him “the country’s most lucid and respected politician.” The novelist Sergio Ramírez, a former vice president of Nicaragua, said Dr. Álvarez had “witnessed an epoch and participated in it,” adding: “He was still making plans to rescue the democracy we have lost so many times. He was committed to the democratic idea, which is why his loss is so profound for us.” Don Emilio, as he was universally known, was the only Nicaraguan to have been offered high posts by the dictatorial Somoza regime, the democratic government of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro and the Sandinista administration of President Daniel Ortega. He declined them all. Instead, he devoted himself to studying, writing and treating patients. He also led several organizations pressing for democracy and political openness. In 1996, at the age of 77, Dr. Álvarez surprised his friends by agreeing to become foreign minister. “I had passed by the bordello so many times,” he explained. “Finally I decided that I’d like to see what goes on inside.” He spent less than two years in that post. “Politics is dangerous for me because it requires qualities that I don’t have,” he said. “I’m more interested in studying why Nicaragua remains so backward.” That interest led Dr. Álvarez to publish “The Political Culture of Nicaragua,” considered a classic analysis of his country’s collective psyche. In it he describes Nicaraguans as outgoing, imaginative, hard-working and compassionate. Among the negative aspects of their national character, he cites short-term thinking, excessive embrace of tradition, eagerness to cater to foreigners, an impulse to solve problems through violence, openness to corruption and a weakness for charismatic dictators. The main reason Nicaraguans have been unable to consolidate democracy, he repeatedly argued, is that too many are poor and uneducated. “You need a large middle class to achieve democracy,” he said in one of his last interviews. Emilio Álvarez Montalván was born on July 31, 1919, in Managua, which he said was then “a village that was dusty in summer and muddy in winter.” A widower, he is survived by six children. In 1978, his son Carlos, who had returned home from Vanderbilt University for summer vacation, was killed by a National Guard soldier who mistook him for a rebel fighter. At age 20, after deciding that Nicaragua was boring because “nothing was happening,” Dr. Álvarez left to study ophthalmology in Chile and Argentina. He later took advanced courses in London, Paris and New York. In 1949, after a decade abroad, he returned to Nicaragua. The dictator Anastasio Somoza García was then in power, and in 1954 Dr. Álvarez joined a group plotting to kill him. Their plot failed, and he served 18 months in prison. Two years later Somoza was assassinated, and Dr. Álvarez was again arrested, although he was not involved. Upon his release he decided that for the sake of his family, he would give up the career of armed revolutionary and instead become a leader of the opposition Conservative Party. He remained a fervent critic of the Somoza family dictatorship, publishing a stream of columns in the main opposition newspaper, La Prensa, which he helped edit. In recent years Dr. Álvarez relentlessly criticized the authoritarian Ortega government. “Somoza governed with 80 percent repression and 20 percent corruption,” he said. “Now the percentages are reversed.” Dr. Álvarez reserved special scorn for Mr. Ortega’s most ambitious project, a proposed interoceanic canal that is supposed to be built with Chinese money. He saw it as inspired by “a part of our culture called the magic sense of life, which tells us that suddenly we’re all going to become rich, suddenly we’re going to have an important friend, we’re going to win the lottery.” He was outraged but also amused by the ways Mr. Ortega used a democratic facade to guarantee his permanence in power. “Democracy is being used to corrupt democracy,” Dr. Álvarez said. “We’re like babies when you don’t change their diapers.” |