William Walker didn’t know any better. We all have talents and abilities. Some people are just better at plundering, pillaging and enslaving than others. Hey, if the American Civil War ended, and you were having a blast and then your side lost, what would you do? Become a pig farmer? Wack Willie was just following his bliss when he burned this entire town, along with this ancient convent to the ground while retreating after his failed attempt to conquer Central America and turned Nicaragua into an autocratic dictatorship modeled after the Confederacy. Unfortunately, Wack Willie’s bliss was all of Central America’s nightmare. Many of Wee Willie Walker’s mercenaries
are entombed in this convent far from their precious cottonfields, a warning to would be rambos everywhere that gold and glory are not the only posible fruits reaped by hired guns.

This structure is also a place where there once lived a monk who did some good for the world. It was from this very place that Bartolme de Las Casas, chonicler of the history of New Spain, wrote a famous letter to the Spanish Crown regarding their genocide of the Indians. It went something like this.

Dear Crown,
We’ve already wiped out 95%. Do we really need to go any higher than that?

And of course, true to original design, the edifice still retains its classical aura and the very same flush toilets that Bartolome of the Houses and Wee Willie walker once used to exorcise their biological functions. The restrooms here are clean, empty and devooid any running water or toilet paper, which is the average condition of the toilets in Central America. Running water and electricity are more or less intermittent luxeries here in Granada, ironic considering that the town edges right up to the shoreline of the tenth largest freshwater body of water in the entire world, the murky and polluted Lago Nicaragua.

– Justin Teerlinck