The exile of the Mejía Godoy, the musical lineage of Nicaragua

Shortly before noon, the nephews arrive at the Central Market of San José with a güira, the marimba mallets, and the uncle –whose gray hair shines under this unusual sun in this overcast city– comes with the guitar protected in a heavy black lining.

They have been summoned because they have finished fine-tuning the last details of the joint concert tour that these artists of very different styles, but who are nourished by Nicaraguan popular song, will do in Spain during the next days of May.

Luis Enrique Mejía Godoy greets his nephews effusively.

Carlos Luis and Carlos Emilio Guillén, alias El frijol, respond with a smile.

The three are part of a larger clan that, in short, have composed emblematic songs from the Nicaraguan soundtrack.

The Mejía Godoy are a cultural institution without whose musical traces the overthrow of the dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979, the Sandinista Revolution itself, the brief exercise of democracy in the nineties and, four decades later, the perversion of the revolutionary ideal at the hands of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.

The nephews are founders of La Cuneta Son Machin, a project that since 2009 combines modern rhythms, folklore, tropical music and what in Nicaragua is called "cumbia chinamera", those tunes that are danced in cantinas and suburbs.

While Luis Enrique is a troubadour of The New Latin American Song, the song is protest, political, but at the same time navigates in boleros, waltzes and ballads.

It is difficult to imagine the council of two dissimilar styles on one stage, but since the end of 2022 they began to do so in exile in Costa Rica.

The need for reinvention and complicity has motivated this tour of Spain, where the Nicaraguan diaspora and exile have already received them separately with enthusiasm: their songs are Pinolera idiosyncrasies.

“I am a totally open-minded musician,” says Luis Enrique in the Central Market of San José, after sipping a beef soup and singing one of his signature songs, Pobre la María

, between sections.

.

The nephews join him and as the chorus gains momentum, shoppers and customers who recognize the song stop to hum.

They take photos and videos.

They are Nicaraguans who rarely in Costa Rica shed the shell that hides their nationality to blend in with this host country, where there are still xenophobic remnants.

“It is not because they are my nephews that I make music with them.

They have nothing to do with my musical format, but for me it has always been a very constructive experience to communicate with other generations”, explains the singer-songwriter who experiences the second exile of his life, this time more numerous, accompanied by his musician nephews.

The Mejía Godoy family at a bus stop in San José (Costa Rica). Miguel Andres

Luis Enrique is one of the oldest of the Mejía Godoy family.

Along with his brother Carlos (the author of

, the fundamental song of a country hit by dictators and in perennial search for freedom) are two of the most important singer-songwriters in the Central American country.

Not only because of the vastness of his musical work as a couple or singly, but because the bulk of his popular music that accompanied the Sandinista Revolution was resignified as of 2018, when Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo led the repression of protesters who demanded changes in protests that ended with the murder of 356 people and that a group of United Nations experts considered crimes against humanity.

Carlos and Luis Enrique left Nicaragua in the last quarter of 2018, in a context of political persecution against all those who participated in the social protests.

The brothers had plenty of reasons to leave: their old songs were not only hymns that the demonstrators chanted in the massive protests, accompanied by the slogans

, but they also composed new songs dedicated to the murdered students and their mothers.

At a time of maximum social unrest in 2018, Carlos Mejía Godoy returned to the indigenous neighborhood of Monimbó and created a sequel to his historic song

.

He called the piece

and it is a tribute to the city of Masaya, which was the cradle of the insurrection against Somoza and the civic rebellion against Ortega and Murillo."40 years have passed since those days of glory / and history repeats itself , the massacre of youth / 40 years have passed and we have not learned the lesson / but the people do not forget so much perfidy, so much betrayal”, sings Carlos, exiled in the United States.

“We made songs for the Sandinista Revolution before, during and after, but we have been dissidents since 1990. Since then, we have nothing to do with the Sandinista Front.

People know this because we never went back to the activities of the Front, because we prohibited (Ortega and Murillo) from using our songs”, recalls Luis Enrique in San José.

“It cannot be clearer.

However, time passed, the Ortega-Murillos returned, took power and got drunk.

And now they don't want to get off!

That makes it something else: a dictatorship.

And with the events of 2018 it became a criminal dictatorship.”

The Mejía Godoy walk on the central avenue of San José.Miguel Andres

songs of exile

Luis Enrique left the country and has not returned since then.

He settled in Costa Rica, a country he knows well: in 1967 he came to study medicine, but family favors kept him away from hospitals and led him, inevitably, to the stage.

In 1974 he was no longer able to return to Nicaragua due to his musical activism against Somocism.

After the revolutionary triumph, the singer-songwriter returned to Nicaragua and said to himself: “I never want to leave Nicaragua again, except for tours.

So that's why we made our nest there: the Mejía Godoy Foundation, the House of the Mejía Godoy family and everything that means deciding for the future”, says the composer of

The Casa de los Mejía Godoy was a pole of art and culture in Managua.

Carlos and Luis Enrique founded it and for more than 20 years it was the quintessential stage for national music, but above all for the new generations of the Mejía Godoy family.

passed through these stages

.

All artists who marked the nineties and the following decade of Nicaraguan music until today.

There were nights when they all joined in a single concert, called

From professionals to

of the Mejía Godoy lineage.

The show house was closed in 2018 due to the crisis caused by the repression of the regime.

At the time of announcing the closure, Carlos and Luis Enrique said that the country had been "filled with horror at the genocide of more than 200 Nicaraguan brothers, which still does not stop, including children of different ages."

From that point, there was no return.

In April 2022, the founder of

, Carlos Luis, was not allowed to enter Nicaragua, despite the fact that he has never made political comments.

Immigration authorities prevented his return when the musician returned to the country after a family trip in Washington.

They were dates marked by the hunt that the regime launched against critical musicians and artists.

Carlos Luis's cousin, his sidekick in La

, El Frijol, also left the country.

The Mejía Godoy in San José. Miguel Andres

“It has been a difficult situation and I am going through different stages”, says Carlos Emilio Guillén.

“First the stage of nostalgia, denial and acceptance.

And then, once installed, let's see the opportunities that exist”.

That has been, for example, reuniting with other exiled musicians and rearming

in exile.

His uncle, for his part, gives recitals in San José and this Sunday, April 30, he takes the stage with the writer Gioconda Belli, who is traveling in Costa Rica, near the volcanoes that have heated up her work. .

“Poetry and music are lovers who decided to separate.

Then they got back together on the song”, says Luis Enrique.

La Cuneta Son Machin

has also begun to win over the Costa Rican public, but in particular they have brought smiles and a lot of underhanded dancing to a very troubled exile community.

“Although we do not have a strictly political discourse or are activists, the greatest gift that La Cuneta can give people is joy and energy.

That people for a moment forget what is happening.

That we be a kind of catharsis in this day-to-day exile”, says El Frijol.

Uncle Luis Enrique listens to his nephews talk and a gesture of pride is born under the thick black glasses he wears.

Like him, but in his own way, Carlos Luis and El Frijol use music as a way of expressing themselves.

With the certainty that only members of lineages condemned to tell and sing about what happens with their towns have, the old singer chisels into the staff what his music has.

"I have always sung reality," says the uncle.

“I am sensitive to everything that the social and economic life of my people means… And I am not a political sniper, I am a conscious artist like many thousands in Latin America, in Europe and everywhere”.

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