photo: Jorge Eduardo Mejia/Tough Takedown: Sandinista wrecking crews had a hard time toppling the 'fragile' Concha Acustica

After a week of huffing and puffing, the Sandinista government finally managed to blow down Managua’s iconic “Concha Acústica,” the elegant shell-shaped structure that for the past decade overlooked the lakeshore Plaza de la Fe and served as a backdrop for free outdoor concerts and July 19 political rallies.

Originally commissioned by popular Managua Mayor Herty Lewites, a Sandinista dissident who died of a heart attack while challenging Daniel Ortega for the presidency in 2006, the Concha Acústica was one of most graceful and apolitical monuments in Nicaragua.

The Sandinista government, which has spent the past seven years littering the capital with hideous improvisations of its own stylings (a faux forest of Seussian, rubber-ducky yellow whirligig trees; a dour ALBA stone hedge; a feverish and glowing tribute to Hugo Chávez; and an unfortunately ugly monument to Alexis Arguello carved out of petrified mashed potatoes by an ungifted artist who had only a vague recollection of what the former boxing champ looked like) decided the Concha Acústica was no longer fit for public service.

The government’s official excuse for the demolition was that the steel-and-concrete monument, which sat alone in an oft-empty concrete field, was a shaky contraption at risk of falling in the next earthquake. That theory was quickly debunked when the Sandinista wrecking crew spent several exhausting days banging on the structure to little effect, and repeatedly snapping steel cables as they tried to pull it down with a crane. Finally, after five days of undeterred destructiveness, the demolition team managed to wrestle the resilient structure to the ground, where it can never threaten anyone ever again....Continue Reading

> via The Nicaragua Dispatch