Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/042792/0427520.000

Text File | 1992-09-10 | 13KB | 247 lines

                                                                                PROFILE, Page 58

Under No One's Thumb


She still uses ex-husband Mick's name, but Bianca Jagger is back
in Nicaragua trying to be her own woman

By JOHN MOODY MANAGUA


    Her life was a picture-perfect photo op, sublime as
fantasy, and just as fleeting. Married to the monarch of rock,
a champagne-sipping intimate of the rich, the recognizable and
the royal, her fashions and friendships were grist for the
gossip pages. Today she professes no sorrow that the spotlight
rarely focuses on her; she is relieved, she says, that she
survived its glare. So smirk not, while considering that Bianca
Jagger -- yes, Mick's ex, Mrs. Rolling Stone -- claims she never
really enjoyed the trendy, fast-track life-style that she
epitomized for more than a decade. Now in her 40s, single,
vegetarian, and soon to be a grandmother, Jagger wants to be
accepted for herself. And, incidentally, to be President of
Nicaragua.

    Her aspiration -- unlikely as it may seem on first glance
-- is understandable. The job she covets, however, is about as
appealing as milking cobras in a closet. Nicaragua, to put it
nicely, is not among the world's trendier stop-offs, no place
for a lifetime Best Dressed Hall of Famer to sully her Calvin
Kleins. Listening to this and other gibes about not always
getting what you want, Jagger smiles politely. Then, in a voice
fashioned near the earth's molten core, she imparts a nugget of
hard-earned wisdom mined from her improbable life: "How much
longer do I have to apologize for going to Studio 54? If during
my years of marriage, I was insouciant and led a life of ease
and was followed by the media, that does not mean I am not a
person of substance who is concerned with serious and deeply
felt ideas."

    Yesteryear's jet-setter today wants to be seen as a
cerebral political and environmental activist. Although like a
backsliding glitz addict she sometimes lapses back into the
Manhattan social whirl, Jagger spends most of her schizoid
existence in her native Nicaragua. (The word bicoastal takes on
new meaning when one of the shores fringes the Gulf of Fonseca.)
In the early morning she can frequently be seen galloping
through the hills outside Managua on her Arabian horse, El Moro.
When she sees glitterati friends now, she often tries to wring
donations for the documentary film she is making on Nicaragua.

    The two-hour production, directed and narrated by Jagger,
will be released next year. She hopes it will give her a new
kind of celebrity, the sort reserved for intellectual and
artistic achievement. The untitled film inspects the differences
in Nicaragua since the pro-Soviet Sandinista regime was
dethroned in 1990 by a charismatic political neophyte, Violeta
Barrios de Chamorro.

    Jagger is no armchair filmmaker. She and a small
production crew have spent hours covering soporific press
conferences, violent strikes, and armed showdowns over property
disputes. Nor has she closeted herself in the capital, Managua.
The Jagger team tramped through Nicaragua's untamed mountain
paths and the malarial North Atlantic coastal regions populated
by the Miskito and Sumo indigenous communities. She has talked
more to peasants than to Presidents. And after two years of
filming, Jagger has concluded that Chamorro's government, like
those of the Sandinistas and the earlier dictatorship of
Anastasio Somoza Debayle, has betrayed the people it claims to
serve.

    That makes Jagger persona non grata to Chamorro and her
son-in-law Antonio Lacayo, the country's de facto leader.
Compounding her sin, Jagger is lending her fame and personal
credibility to Nicaragua's burgeoning ecological-awareness
movement. When the government tried last year to grant a
Taiwanese company logging rights in Nicaragua's endangered rain
forest, Jagger blew the whistle by writing an incisive op-ed
piece in the New York Times. Stung by public outcry, the Managua
government put the logging contract on hold and underlined
Jagger's name on its enemies list.

    When Blanca Perez Mora Macias was born in 1945, the
country was a bastion of machismo and women were little more
than chattel. Her father divorced his wife and left her to care
for their two children. Blanca's mother, who had never before
held a job, opened a roadhouse canteen to survive. As a divorce,
even a reluctant one, she was stigmatized. The injustice shaped
Jagger's view of life. Says she: "I did not have a happy
childhood. I was very affected by the divorce of my parents. At
first I felt let down by my father. Later I realized that I
should not judge him. I felt the pressure it put on my mother,
and that also put pressure on me. My mother was turned into
something less than a person by that very repressive, Catholic
society. I decided that under no circumstances was I going to
be a second-class citizen because I was a woman."

    Blanca's scorching eyes, delicate bones and sensuous voice
ensured that she would attract notice. But the young woman chose
another path, winning a scholarship to the Paris Institute of
Political Studies. "I loved Paris, but I was also full of fear.
I had never gone out on my own in Nicaragua. I was naive, but
even then I knew I didn't want to live in Nicaragua as it was
in those days. I saw my struggle as a woman as political, and
I wanted to be able to fight in the political arena." She
perfected her French to the point where she forgot Spanish. She
dressed in men's clothing, "perhaps in order to capture some of
the power they possessed."

    She also changed her name: Blanca became Bianca, the name
with which she introduced herself in 1970 to a bow-lipped
British rocker named Mick, of whom she knew very little. "It was
a coup de foudre -- how do you say in English? -- love at first
sight," she recalls. "Mick spoke French very well for an
Englishman, and at the time I spoke very little English. He was
unpretentious, charming and had a great sense of humor." They
married the next year, with Bianca three months pregnant.

    Some brides cling to memories of their wedding day. Jagger
has spent years trying to forget hers. The spring ceremony at
St. Tropez became a frenzied media circus. "We just wanted to
be alone," she sighs. "I suppose I didn't understand what Mick
was until then. He brought out an unhealthy curiosity among
people. It was a bad way to start a marriage."

    Being noticed only because she was Mrs. Mick Jagger was
painful. The birth of daughter Jade in 1971 added the
responsibilities of motherhood. Their life was an unending
concert and party circuit, a life-style she seemed to relish but
now scorns: "We became a kind of F. Scott Fitzgerald couple of
the '70s, a symbol of the times. I don't want to make it sound
like he forced me to do things I didn't want to do. I came from
a broken home; I was longing for stability. But when a woman
marries a famous man, she takes on his reputation. It wasn't me
who wanted to hobnob with royalty."

    The marriage ended in 1979. The girl whose most piercing
memory was her parents' separation found herself a divorced
woman with a daughter of her own. She kept the name Jagger, not,
she insists, because of its cachet but rather out of respect for
the institution of marriage.

    Her attention soon turned to her homeland. In July 1979
the Sandinistas ousted Somoza and installed a leftist
government. Like millions of others, Jagger was captivated by
the rugged rebels and believed their promises of justice for the
poor and equality for women. "I took my daughter to rallies to
try to make her understand what was going on. What I
encountered, though, was less than an open-armed welcome. One
of the things about the Sandinistas from the beginning was their
egoism. They felt it was a privilege to let you come close to
them."

    Though she never joined the Sandinista party, she became
friendly with its leaders. At their behest, she lobbied against
U.S. aid to the anti-Sandinista contra army. But as the
Sandinistas grew more repressive, Jagger shrank from their
embrace. "I feel they betrayed their own ideals. Their
revolution changed things that would never have changed in this
country if it hadn't taken place. I will always oppose the
contras, but now I can see them from a different perspective.
How can I say those men who joined the counterrevolution were
wrong if they felt their rights were being violated? And then
you begin questioning everything."

    Jagger made a string of B movies and television
appearances until, in 1985, she was struck by a car on Long
Island, N.Y., and left unable to walk for a year. It was during
her convalescence that she decided to become a filmmaker. She
studied drama at New York University, then began knocking on the
doors of foundations and friends to raise the $790,000 she
needed for the documentary on her homeland. "Most of them
politely said no," she reflects. "Some came right out and said,
`Who gives a damn about Nicaragua?' They forgot who I am and
where I come from. They just remembered Bianca Jagger, the party
bird."

    Chamorro's upset win over the Sandinistas gave Jagger an
opportunity to document an unfolding chapter in her country's
history. She was soon disenchanted with the ruling clan's
authoritarian manner and nepotism. "Dona Violeta was the promise
of all good things," Jagger says. "Nicaraguans felt as if the
Virgin Mary had descended and would bring peace and prosperity.
Now we see that it is all a mockery." The feminist in Jagger is
especially distressed by Chamorro's ceding of authority to
Lacayo. "I wanted Mrs. Chamorro to be a real President, using
the power that Nicaraguans have bestowed upon her. But she has
let this man take it away."

    Jagger learned about the plans to log the rain forest
while researching her film, and found herself at a moral
crossroads: Should she simply record the destruction of the
environment or publicize the danger in order to stop it? "I
wrote the New York Times article because I knew if I held off
until the film was done, the rain forest would be gone. It was
a choice between being a filmmaker and being a participant in
the life of my country. I decided to be an activist."

    The op-ed piece was devastating in its simple presentation
of facts and statistics, and it made Jagger an instant hero
among environmental activists. Says Mark Plotkin, vice president
for plant conservation of Washington-based Conservation
International: "Bianca is the one person who brought this to
worldwide attention in a way no one else could. Without her, it
would have slipped right through."

    She has interviewed former President Daniel Ortega
Saavedra repeatedly, and believes he has not yet accepted the
fact that he and his party were turned out of power in a
legitimate election. Chamorro and Lacayo have refused to see
her. They know the film's story line is already etched in
celluloid: Nicaragua has been betrayed once again. "Power really
does corrupt," says Jagger. "Whether it's the Sandinistas
impersonating revolutionaries, or other people [read: Chamorro
and Lacayo] impersonating democrats, those in power forget the
reasons for which they struggled."

    Jagger is counting on the publicity generated by her film
to underwrite her next struggle: a run for the presidency in
1996. "I believe in rights, and I believe in duty," she says.
"If I didn't, I'd stay in New York and be totally removed from
anything to do with Nicaragua." Her famous last name is one
asset. So too, she believes, is her commitment to progressive
government. "The collapse of the left worldwide has created a
vacuum in politics. There's a total disenchantment now, not just
with government but with power. There's room for a new
political philosophy that will respond to contemporary concerns.
I would like to create a party that doesn't just mouth words but
really cares about the poor, about women, about children."

    That last concern is much on her mind. Jade, now 20 and
single, is expecting a baby, and Jagger has a typical reaction
to the notion of impending grandmotherhood. She grimaces, buries
her face in her hands, then laughs richly. "It sounds terrible,
but I'll survive. I was the Nicaraguan girl who married a rock
star. Now I'm someone else. My philosophy is that with
perseverance and patience, people will realize who I really am."
It is a declaration that she can finally make, and believe, as
a woman on her own. She has even started wearing dresses again.