Decentering Managua

In Sergio Ramírez’s short story “De las propiedades del sueño (I),” written before 1972, the political opposition of a small Latin American country experiments with “collective dreaming.”¹ Should enough people concentrate their dreams on a single object, such as that “the tyrant be overthrown and the people take power,” their dream could be realized. The only catch: the object of their dream must doze as well, but “tyrants never sleep.” In “De las propiedades del sueño (II),” written after 1972, the tyrant in question leans on the balustrade of his palace atop the fortified hill overlooking his capital city.² He