Nicaragua: The Remains of the Revolution

Kevin Kunishi takes us the mountains and jungles of Central America to document the aftermath of a decade of war.


Los Restos De La Revolucíon by Kevin Kunishi
Daylight Books

For those of us under 40, the Central American wars of the 1980s remain a kind of hazy point of international political awakening, if they register at all. Through the ’80s, the world outside of home, school, and my Midwestern hometown came into sharper focus. These places south of the United States—El Salvador, Panama, Nicaragua, as well as Grenada—existed in the background as bits on the nightly news, occasionally pieces in the newspapers and magazines and, as I grew older, recurring references in the punk music I discovered.

Kevin Kunishi’s interest in the Cold War battleground of Central America, Nicaragua specifically, was sparked while he studied history as an undergrad at the University-California Santa Barbara in the early 2000s. Pursuing his interest in the region, Kunishi visited the the still-healing Nicaragua in 2009 and 2010, 20 years after the war, well after Americans stopped caring. And really, it’s not like most Americans ever cared that much, even when the bullets (that their tax dollars helped buy) were flying.

In his first book, Los Restos de la Revolucíon (The Remains of the Revolution), Kunishi takes us to the mountains and jungles of Nicaragua, showing how the land and people have reconciled with a decade of war. A bucolic shot of a green hill poking from a mountain was the site where a Sandinista helicopter crashed. A simple image of a tree branch carries extra weight when you learn it is at what used to be a prison run by the Somoza regime. From that branch prisoners were hung upside down and tortured, often until death.

Kunishi connects with people who’ve lived with the legacy of the war: a former Contra rebel blinded by a grenade attack; a Sandanista solder who lived with 40 others in a tiny cell for three months; and the younger generation, teenagers graduating school, who offer evidence of a country moving strongly in a new direction.

The photos have a fine-art bent to them, part of the current canon of photography that proudly blurs the line between photojournalism, documentary photography, and fine art. The photos document, they tell a story (even if that story is the afterward) and yet they’re easily at home in a gallery, if not on the wall of your home. There is an eerie stillness to many of the images, which is not unlike what I image visiting these sites would be like. The sound of chirping crickets and an uneasy wind rustling nearby trees is all that’s missing.

Those in the Bay Area have an opportunity to meet Kunishi and see the images as lush, lively prints at his exhibition opening and book launch, held at RayKo Photo Center in San Francisco on October 11. Everyone else can indulge themselves in the succinctly edited book, Kunishi’s debut monograph, out on Daylight Books in November.

Red and black Sandinista graffiti painted on a rock wall. The black signifies death and the red refers to a rebirth or resurrection.
 

“The first grenade hit and killed the guy in front of me. You could see his intestines. On the way out, another grenade hit, blew me back and cost me my sight. The and and smoke landed all around me.” —Pedrito, Quilalí, former Contra

 

United States-issued M67 fragmentation grenade unearthed after 20 years.
 

José Morales holds a photograph of himself training in Cuba at age 11. Cuba provided the Sandinista government with military “advising,” education, health service, and economic support.
 

“The Sandinistas would gather up families and burn their houses down. Those who did not leave the mountainside were considered Contra so they would kill them by burning them with gas. We saw what they did.” —Raul, former Contra
 

Omar, Jinotega, 2010
 

Pedro’s pistol, stuffed in his pants for protection while he walks around Lake Apanás.
 

Josefina on her Graduation Day, 2009

 

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate