Exiled Nicaraguan singer, activist makes Santa Rosa home

Carlos Mejia Godoy places a blue bowl of rosquillas (ros-key-yas), a crispy, round, baked corn and cheese Nicaraguan snack, on a round kitchen table in west Santa Rosa.

He briefly talks about the dish as he begins an interview interspersed with metaphors and anecdotes about God, nature, his childhood, and most notably, Nicaragua.

“The rosquillas of Somoto are –” he pauses, and lets hiswaving arms finish the sentence, indicating this delicious concoction, which originated in his hometown of Somoto, Nicaragua can be found beyond Sonoma County — in Miami, New York, and San Francisco, as well as across Europe and most of the Spanish-speaking world. All the places, the exiled singer-songwriter and self-described open-minded and accepting individual has performed.

Mejia Godoy rose to fame in Nicaragua in the late 1970s, and was known for his associations with the Sandinista National Liberation Front movement, which overthrew the Somoza family’s 43-year dictatorship of the country in 1979.

Many of his most popular songs touch on themes of social justice, nature and his beloved Nicaragua to which he says he dreams of returning to someday, but can’t.

“Everyday (in his mind and heart) I am here,” he said as he points to his painting of a white church in Somoto surrounded by red, flowery malinche trees. Despite this, he is currently seeking political asylum in the United States.

In 2018, he criticized the leadership of Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega who initially became head of the country’s provisional government in 1979 and was then elected president from 1984 to 1990 after the country’s first free elections.

Ortega, a Sandinista who is now considered a dictator, is in the midst of his fourth straight term as president since winning his most-recent election as president in 2007.

Mejia Godoy and his wife, Xochitl Jimenez, fled to Costa Rica where they stayed for a year before coming to his sister’s home in Santa Rosa in 2019. They were stuck here during the pandemic and opted to stay.

“Sonoma County is very pretty. I’ve visited the vineyards. I’ve been to some towns. I like it. But more than anything, I like California,” he said.

He continues to perform locally, but he also took up a new craft during the pandemic: painting.

“If I hadn’t spent so much time outside of Nicaragua, I don’t think I would have begun painting,” he said.

A self-taught painter, he works throughout the night, vibrantly recreating Somoto as he dreams it, he said. His home is his muse.

Mejia Godoy’s presence in Sonoma County caught the attention of Jon Silver, a Santa Cruz County-based filmmaker, who created a documentary about Mejia Godoy.

“Living in Exile: Carlos Mejia Godoy” premiered on May 18 at Café Frida Gallery, in Santa Rosa, and recounted Mejia Godoy’s journey from Nicaragua to Santa Rosa.

For the film’s debut, Mejia Godoy’s colorful paintings were on display around the cafe’s patio and he performed with a pair of musicians who drove hours to attend the film’s showing.

The cafe was packed with fans who have known his music for decades — many of whom couldn’t believe he was there in person.

Helmut Salazar, one of those fans, left Nicaragua in 1996. He now lives in Santa Rosa.

“If you speak against the government, nothing good is going to happen to you,” he said. People he knew “evaporated from Earth.”

Though Salazar was happy to see Mejia Godoy, a household name in Nicaragua, he said the occasion was also bittersweet.

“I don’t want to imagine how he feels being here, after living all his life in Nicaragua,” Salazar said.

“It’s unfortunate that we have to go through this again.” he said, referring to Ortega’s dictatorship, a predicament Mejia Godoy and his contemporaries fought against.

Mejia Godoy is hopeful for his return to Nicaragua and keeps busy “inventing” words, poetry and ideas and filling himself with “positive things to avoid getting carried away by the anguish of exile.”

He misses some parts of his home like the daily Spanish-language crossword puzzles and food he can’t easily get shipped to him, unlike the rosquillas that previously filled the now nearly empty bowl in front of him.

He turns 80 at the end of June and wants to write a few books about his life, though he said writing doesn’t come as easily to him as music and painting.

He also plans to continue performing. “Birds don’t retire,” he said, adding that they sing every day of their lives, just as he intends to do for the rest of his days.

He smiled widely as he talks about the unwavering, childlike curiosity he embraces daily.

“Everyday I learn,” he said. “I never lost the capacity for wonder.”

You can reach Staff Writer Jennifer Sawhney at 707-521-5346 or jennifer.sawhney@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @sawhney_media.