Many of León’s colorful murals are products of the 1980s which have been painstakingly maintained. Other new ones still spring up each year. Perhaps the most famous is located across from the north side of the main cathedral—a long, horizontal piece telling the history of a proud and turbulent nation.

Starting on the left with the arrival of the Nahuatl, the mural traces the planned interoceanic canal, the exploits of William Walker, Sandino’s battle with U.S. Marines, the revolution of 1979, and a utopian ending image of a fertile, peaceful Nicaragua; flanking a doorway across the street, Sandino steps on Uncle Sam’s and Somoza’s heads.

One block to the west the CIA, in the form of a thick serpent, coils through the Sandinistas’ agrarian reform, literacy campaign, and construction efforts, to strike at a Nicaraguan hand at the ballot box. The trend seems to be reviving in the 21st century; to wit, the intricate anticorruption mural on the basketball court.