Nicaragua of the late 1990s has returned to the “popular” and academic backwaters that characterized Nicaraguan studies prior to 1979. Since the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas in 1990, researchers and internacionalistas have moved on; laudably, anthropologist Les Field has remained. In his continuing ethnographic research on a handful of potters in San Juan de Oriente (just south of Masaya) and in the Matagalpa/Jinotega region in Nicaragua, Field has enriched our understanding of artisans throughout their odyssey of daily work and life struggles whether at the national cultural center or at the economic margin.
The Grimace of Macho Ratón is uniquely written using the seventeenth-century central Mexican play, El Güegüence—which depicts convoluted Spanish colonial policy juxtaposed with indigenous lore—as the backdrop and format for the book. Field, in his pursuit of Nicaraguan national identity through the study of artisans, relates the central theme of El Güegüence as a celebration...
