An American Cousin Plays for His Native Nicaragua

Los Angeles musician Jorge Bermudez hasn’t seen his cousin Enrique since 1969. And chances are they won’t meet this week, although Enrique is in town--for a session with President Reagan on Thursday.

But as blood relatives--one a guerrilla chieftain who will be meeting Reagan for the first time on the contras ‘ war to overthrow Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, the other a successful Latin and rock drummer whose first album is due out next month--the two may symbolize the complexity of politics, war and family allegiance in turbulent Central America--and its spillover into the United States.

For 32-year-old Jorge, whose mother left his father to bring him and his four brothers and sister to this country in 1955, the issues are perhaps less clear-cut and more personal than for the 54-year-old Enrique, a staunch anti-Communist whose code name is 380, his old serial number in the Nicaraguan National Guard.

In fact, Jorge’s one close encounter with a shaper of Nicaraguan history is somewhat hazy because it happened when he was 14 and made a brief visit to his homeland. It was there, in Managua, that he first met his cousin (“He probably only remembers me as the gringo cousin.”) But it was Anastasio Somoza who left the larger impression on him.

Escorted into the presence of the then-dictator, Bermudez recalls that Somoza, wearing a white shirt and a blue tie, was “in an office with a lot of military around him . . . shiny uniforms and everything.” He recalls that Somoza, who was overthrown in 1979 by Sandinista rebels, looked askance at the American kid wearing then-fashionable bell-bottom pants.

“I remember a kind of real sideways glance at me--’Look at this poor child. This is what they become when they go to America,’ ” he said.

Community Divided

Coming to Los Angeles from San Fransciso in 1983, Bermudez joined a Southern California Nicaraguan community now estimated at about 50,000. The community is divided along Sandinista-contra lines but the divisions probably are less intense than in Miami, which has a much larger Nicaraguan population, said Blase Bonpane, director of the Office of the Americas in Santa Monica.

While his cousin Enrique was serving as a military attache to the Nicaraguan embassy in Washington in the 1970s and then rose to the top of the contra movement after the Sandinistas gained power, Jorge was growing up in San Francisco, learning to play drums and eventually making a name for himself both in studio, concert and sound-track work. Bermudez, who also writes songs and sings, has played with musicians and groups such as Peter Case, Jose Feliciano, Pablo Cruise and the Temptations. He has formed a band, Bermudez Triangle, to showcase his brand of Latin pop music.

Although he has lived in the United States since he was 14 months old and expects to become an American citizen in November, Bermudez said the Nicaraguan conflict has not been an entirely vicarious experience. His family has suffered at the hands of both sides, he said.

For example, Bermudez links his father’s death in 1982 to politics. A longtime supporter and political worker for dictator Somoza, Bermudez’s father died in 1982 of complications resulting from alcoholism. Bermudez believes his father drank to drown the guilt he felt from working for the Somoza regime.

Nonetheless, Bermudez, who has three children, is grateful that he and his father, a remote and distrusted figure when he was growing up, had the chance to become reacquainted when his father lived briefly in the United States following the fall of Somoza.

“He never was good about writing or anything and I was prepared to be pretty cold to the gentleman when he got here. But he had some charm,” he recalled. “Now I know why my mom fell so hard for this guy. Within two minutes he had the kids eating out of his hand and I followed soon afterward.”

Bermudez also recalled with amusement that his father, fueled by rum, created a scene one night by yelling “Viva Nicaragua” repeatedly while his son performed at a San Francisco club.

In the waning days of Somoza’s dictatorship, Bermudez said his family suffered its most painful wound when another of his cousins was killed by retreating members of the dictator’s National Guard.

“Norma Hernandez, the first grandchild of our generation on my mother’s side, a real sweet cousin--she owned a botanica, a combination pharmacy and many other things,” he said. “She was in the store and for whatever reason, they came in and just raped her repeatedly and beheaded her. She was very nonpolitical; there was really no reason at all why this should happen.”

Land, Possessions Seized

Not all the family woes were related to the Somoza regime, he added. Family members in Nicaragua had land and property confiscated after the Marxist government came to power, he said.

Asked to estimate the size of his extended family, Bermudez laughed and said an accurate estimate isn’t possible. Perhaps because he has made a name for himself in music, he added, new relatives frequently track him down and introduce themselves.

He also noted that his family tree owes a branch to American foreign policy. An aunt married a Marine who was stationed in Nicaragua and moved to San Francisco, he said, adding that it was that union that enabled his mother to bring her children to this country.

Partly because his family links extend in so many directions, Bermudez refuses to choose sides in the Sandinista-contra battle.

“My position is definitely apolitical; it’s not leaning toward either side, only toward peaceful compromise,” he said. “. . . It would be pretty foolish for me to sit there and say ‘Rah, rah, rah, Sandinistas or rah, rah, rah, contras’ when the family’s been screwed over by both sides.”

He added: “I have to say that first I’m an American now. There’s no way I would have attained what I have right now if I had stayed (in Nicaragua).”

However, Bermudez is worried by public reaction to one of the star witnesses at the recent Iran-contra congressional hearings--and what that reaction might ultimately mean.

“It’s chilling to me that people are celebrating (Lt. Col.) Oliver North--and really kind of carelessly,” Bermudez said. “I kind of understand that Americans need a hero and that’s OK. But (North) doesn’t represent to them what he means to me. And that is that more Nicaraguan lives are going to be spent.

“I’ve got a 15-year-old son and if the draft were reinstated he could be drafted and have to go fight his own blood. That would be a real strange place for me to be. . . . “

When his album “Bongoland” is released next month, Bermudez said it will contain one song--”Adelante Nicaragua”--that expresses his wishes for his native country.

“The chorus to the song in English is ‘Straight ahead Nicaragua, you’ll have a better future I swear it.’ It’s very much a prayer-homage to the beautiful place I know to be Nicaragua.”