ProNica – Nicaragua

Today was a crazy day at the Galería. A group of students are here for a week taking Spanish classes in the back room. While on a normal day, one or two tourists might stop by, today three groups of students came in addition to a steady flow of tourists, all asking Dona Mina to share her experience of the revolution. Because the mothers are going on strike, they spent the afternoon in the Gallery. I showed off some of the videos of mothers that I have already taken, and I got a bunch of other mothers excited to stop by and share their stories as well. By now, I know a lot of the mothers. They stop by to talk about their grandchildren or their latest ailments or wondering when the roofs Daniel has promised will finally come. One of the mothers brought me an article today from when she was in Costa Rica, talking about the pensions that widows of war receive in the neighboring nation. Tomorrow, at 9:00am, the mothers plan to gather again to go to the local municipal building and list their demands again.

My latest technological problem (of which there are about 10 a day): I have used up all of the space on my hard drive taking videos. I have an external hard drive now, but it’s difficult to take video onto it. Working with “Movie Maker”, the videos are also pretty hard to edit.

You may wonder how a group of old ladies, most of whom have never worked outside of the house, can go on strike. The Association of Mothers of Heroes and Martyrs is a group of mothers who lost their children in the Sandinista Revolution and Contra War. While some did join the forces during the decade of conflict, and still many more collaborated or risked their lives to bring their children food in the mountains, many have since settled into their houses. Mainly housewives or widows, they tend to support their families through cooking, cleaning, and selling the occasional Nacatamal (traditional tamale of cornmeal, tomatoes, raisins, rice, and meat) or Rosquillo (hard corn cookies) from their doorway. Thus as a group, you might wonder from what job they are going to strike. It was something I wondered myself when Doña Mina, the coordinator of the organization, threatened to do so yesterday.

At 1:00 today, Enoe, the secretary, sent a message to a couple of radio stations. “La Directiva invites the Mothers of Heroes and Martyrs to an urgent meeting in the Gallery,” the memo read. At 1:40, The hallway of the gallery, normally empty, is full with over 40 mothers seated in old wicker and plastic chairs. More filter in as Doña Mina gives her speech. “We are going on strike,” she explains, “until they listen to us. We have not been getting our aid packets and we want them to hear our struggle.” The mothers nod and clap. The monthly aid packets (a bag of beans, rice, corn, oil, and soymilk) have been corruptly distributed: some mothers haven’t been getting their monthly pensions. The local Sandinista party is in charge of handing them out in a nearby gymnasium, but some of the mothers haven’t received them for months or longer. So the mothers want control of the distribution; they want the paquetes and the pensions to come through the Galería of Heroes and Martyrs so that they can monitor them and hand them out themselves. They organized the mothers in the first place and petitioned the packets and they want to make sure the right people are getting them. Ohh, and the roofs that the president promised would come in April, and them May, and then June, and then July- they still haven’t shown up. So the mothers have gathered in the gallery, a block away from the central park. And they’re not going to leave anytime soon.

By 2:00, there are more than 60 mothers murmuring under the tin roof of the gallery, with a steady stream continuing to trickle in. Doña Mina continues informing them of the situation; “and we’re going to show up here every day until they listen to us,” she explains. The mothers nod. Though the music of the afternoon rain drowns out conversations and the thunderstorm has cut off the energy supply, the mothers sit in the dark, shouting and laughing. Some begin to sing and dance. Doña Mina has arranged a meeting at 3:00 with a representative from the mayor’s office, and the mothers are ready to show them that they mean business. If Don Victor, the representative, says “no” the mothers are ready to show up tomorrow and the next day. With posters and slogans, they will stand outside of the Gallery and shout to be heard. The mothers are on strike.

Thirty-one years ago Monday, the Sandinistas marched into Managua and took the city, marking their triumph against the forty-three years of the Somoza family dictatorship. They celebrated their victory as they mourned the loss of the many dead and the complete destruction of pueblos and campos alike. This past Monday, 500,000 people gathered in the central plaza of Managua to celebrate this historical moment. Some went to remember the overthrow of Somoza, others the Triumph of the Sandinistas, others still to hear the president speak. Hundreds of buses lined the greenways leading to the plaza: Sandinista-sponsored caravans carrying people to the capital. Figuring nothing ever happens on time here, we completely missed the music performance, arriving just in time to catch President Daniel Ortega’s speech. We were right, nothing happens on time. But sometimes it’s early.

Red and black flags painted the blue sky with swift stroked. A birthday-cake shaped moon bounce drew the kids. Venders wove in and out of the crowds selling food and FSLN (Frente Sandinista Liberación Nacional) music and T-shirts. It was a Sandinista party. Wearing his signature baseball cap and button-down shirt, Daniel touched on just about every social project the government is doing, no matter how small. Whether or not the Sandinistas are better than their predecessors at implementing social projects, they are certainly better at advertising them.  He mentioned the aid packets he’s sent to the mothers as well as the roofs he has promised them. New health centers, schools, and pensions to the people all made the list. A rhetoric-heavy speech, Daniel remembered to repeat again and again the value of the juventud (youth), of clean water, and the evils of poverty. He chose to fill the seats around him with young people, all wearing pink FSLN shirts, clapping and dancing at his every suggestion. Employing a new tactic, he broke his speech into segments, playing music between each part. “Es el gallo en ha bajado ya tiene preparado/ al pueblo trabajador” (he is strong like an armed rooster and he has prepared/ the people to work) blared as he raised his arms to the sky in between speeches and his wife danced and clapped at his side.

This summer, I have been reading a lot about Nicaragua’s recent history. While the Sandinista revolution was a violent one, it also succeeded in empowering many citizens. Women fought and died alongside their male compas (comrades), earning national respect. Everyone knows someone who died in the decade of violence: grandparents tell their grandchildren of the hardships of the war and the rights they demanded as they rose up to defeat a dictatorship. Mothers who lost their children have learned to petition and demand respect and rights from local governments. People frequently march through the streets to show solidarity or to shout that their voices be heard. The revolution mobilized a nation. But what struck me most about this day of remembrance was not the powerful political force of the people or the rhetoric and policies or even the Peron-like populism that Daniel has mastered. Instead, a simple snapshot of the day stays with me:

A camera man zooms in on a group of jovenes.  They all wear FSLN shirts, the girls tying them tight around their waists in the latest fashion. The boys brace themselves in a circle and toss one of the girls into the air. She shrieks and the group burst into laughter. The cameraman smiles at his successful snapshot of the Sandinista youth. The chavalos grin and giggle that they have made it onto TV. “To be young and to not be a revolutionary,” the back of one of the shirts quotes Allende, “is a contradiction against biology.” When the Sandinistas took power in 1979, their goal was to consolidate a revolution. When the people elected them in 2006 after 16 years of opposition rule, they celebrated their success. In their enthusiasm for the idea of revolution, the young people seem to have taken that message to heart. But in this snapshot of jovenes, it seems that the Sandinistas have not consolidated a revolution, they have commercialized it.

As the Pan-American Highway curves into Estelí, a silhouette of Sandino welcomes visitors and natives alike. The signature cowboy hat sits atop the shadowed outline. Augusto César Sandino was the only revolutionary leader to refuse surrender to the United States Military occupation in the 1920s and 30s. The same day he finally signed a peace treaty with the National Guard, Somoza’s (chief of the National Guard and soon to be dictator of Nicaragua) men took him the airport and shot both him and his brother dead. Sandino, from whom the Sandinista revolutionaries took their name, has become a greater symbol of the revolution than Carlos Fonseca, the most famous founder of the revolution. Thus it is fitting that it is Sandino who greets the masses into Estelí.

Estelí, the city “tres veces heroica” (three times heroic) for the three insurrections the Sandinistas fought there against the National Guard, was a revolutionary valley amongst the mountains of guerilla warfare. Somoza’s stronghold during the war, Estelí took some of the most brutal destruction and was therefore one of the last cities to fall to the Sandinistas. Somoza’s air attacks bombed much of the city to rubble; the buildings that remained stood pockmarked with bullet-holes. Estelí celebrates its “Liberation day” this Friday, only three days before the national triumph of the Sandinistas.

Today, Estelí is still a valley among the mountains, but now the mountains tout organic farming communities and tourist adventures. Though only one house remains bullet-ridden, the city has not forgotten the revolution. President Daniel Ortega’s pink posters proclaim “Viva la Revolución”, reminding that the city approaches 31 years since the Sandinista Triumph. Murals of the revolution cover walls throughout the city: faces of Carlos Fonseca, Jose Benito Escobar, Francisco Luiz Espinoza, and even Ernesto “Ché” Guevara. Stripped of the titles they held under Somoza, the streets are now named after fallen Sandinistas. Each barrio has a plaque remembering those who died in the revolution. Even the music in the streets is from the FSLN, the Sandinista political party. Once Somoza’s Stronghold, Estelí is now the city of Sandinistas.

I know that there is only a month left, but I figure a month is enough time to start writing about the Gallery. Over a month in, I’m finally feeling like I have a grasp on how things work around here. The hardest part is that so much has already happened.

A brief summary of what I’m doing:

I’m working at the Gallery of Heroes and Martyrs in Estelí, Nicaragua, an exhibit remembering the lives lost in the Sandinista Revolution and the Contra war. The Association of Mothers of Heroes and Martyrs- mothers who lost their children in the decade of violence- supports the Gallery and advocates for the mothers. I’m living with Doña Mina, the coordinator of the organization and a mother herself.

My project is a digital collection of histories of mothers who lost their children. I’m interviewing mothers and compiling their stories to having a living testimonial in the Gallery. Of course, I’m also doing smaller projects around the Gallery- publicity work, trying to get a little gift display started, translating the information on the walls to English for the tourists that come around these months.

Some challenges.

-I looked over a lot of the film I took today and couldn’t help but laugh. I am filming with a simple web cam.  The idea is just to get clips of mothers telling their stories so that people visiting the gallery get a broader idea of the impact of the violence and the revolution. In some interviews, mothers lean out of the camera frame to whisper secrets in my ear. “The mother that was just in here, she is just pretending to be sick,” they let me know before continuing their testimony. One mother got so excited by her story that she stands up and begins walking around the room to illustrate her story. Simultaneously enraptured and trying to get the web cam to follow her around the room, I end up with several minutes of film zoomed in on her stomach and then following her waving arms around the room.

-In Nicaragua, the houses are built for the climate. Many have windows with only metal bars across them to allow a breeze. Thus in the Galería, we frequently get the pleasure of the blaring salsa music from the neighboring Casa Cultura and the cheering from the basketball game in the nearby recreation center.

-Ownership: I’m only here for a month, so any project that I’m working with people at the gallery on has to be something that they are invested in. This means some ideas that I think are really good won’t fly.

Some highlights:

-The mothers are so open with their stories. Doña Mina, the coordinator, is behind me in my project, and so she earns me a lot of trust with the mothers. Whether I’m interviewing them or not, I hear so many stories about the revolution and life today. They are generally willing to stop whatever they are doing and sit down with me.

-People who come in to the gallery curious. Mothers stop by every day to ask questions or just chat.  Doña Mina, the coordinator, is a wealth of stories.

-Any question I have about the revolution and politics today (or really any question at all), someone has an answer for. Often, many people have many different answers.

Last week went by in a blur. Trying to get the library painted in a week was stressful and exhausting but well worth the effort. Monday we got the estimates done for paint by a friends brother. Then they suggested that their father, Ruben, could help with the painting job. On Tuesday morning Payita, the librarian, and I worked all afternoon to get the walls cleared of dusty posters, drawings, tape, etc. On Wednesday we labored all morning washing the walls and scrubbing them down as best we could so that we could paint on thursday. I found this project a nice way to get to know Payita better, and also to realize the incredible resolve of just a couple who are willing to help in what was quite a ton of work. Ruben and his cousin Chago painted from 7am to 5 in the afternoon on thursday and all morning friday without pay and hardly any breaks. They were like a machine that just kept going it they were INDEFATIGABLE I thought Id never get the chance to use that word. This week I also got much closer to Payita, and though she´s going through some personal difficulties I can´t help but feel an enormous amount of respect and inspiration and the incredible amount of work she does in such horrendous conditions. And by that I mean that I found out she makes an appalling 600 cordobas a month- not even 30 dollars, and the library is an unairconditioned infierno without even a well working fan. She works with patience and resolve and kindness with all the kids who venture into her domain of books and cuentos and offers the little bit of resources she has to give to anyone who sincerely comes to learn. I am figuring out that the most I have to give while I am here is not really the materials afterall, but my time and my concentration and my attention. Really what a lot of the kids look for when they come in I think is not necessarily to draw or paint, but to feel like they are special and appreciated. This is universal of course with children but I think it is at least one thing here that I know I will not run out of, and that is sincere affection for what the kids are and are creating. Even if by the end of the day Im worn out and want to just lay down on the ground and melt. Because the best moments I have had, the most gratifying feeling is knowing that the chavalos look forward to coming to class and having me be there. And there is nothing that makes me feel better than that. The photo is of Ruben and Chago working on the outside of the library, where the before and after difference of their work is remarked. I will post more photos when I return to Achuapa, at the moment Im visiting Molly in Esteli, we went on a hike today to this mountainside southeast of esteli where a humble campesino man carved a sculpture into a cliff using only a blunt machete and a rock. It was an incredible experience and an entirely new post all together. I am behind on writing and struggling to catch up, unfortunately time moves fast here and emotions come and go like the rain. For now I am getting to know people and myself better every day. And am confronted with stories and histories of this people and nation every day that are stacking themselves up like little cuentos in the corner of the room, waiting to be shared and read.

So I can´t believe it´s been almost a week since I last posted. I guess I intended at first to wait until I had at least started to do something, and all of a sudden I´ve been swept up in this storm of happiness and anxiety and exasperation and complete relaxation. It´s been a ride already and I don´t know where its headed. I have greatly benefitted however already from a dose of structure in the last couple of days, establishing my routine. That is, I get up around 8 (if this sounds earler, my host mom gets up at 4am every morning to start making tortillas) and Gladys my host mom makes me a breakfast batido (a milk’based smoothie) with bananas and sometimes pineapple for energy. Then I wash a couple items of clothes by hand, put them out to dry and take a cold shower. Gladys heads to work at 9am, at which point i start to get my things together and dawdle a bit, getting to the library about 10am. The morning is my planning period. From 10 to 12am I do practice examples for the afternoon activities. Today was my first day of doing this, as I felt it would be nice to do Father´s Day Cards for this weekend. It is a simple popup card, but as with any art activity that goes on, it is not easy to be doing anything for long without a gang of anxious nibbling youngsters to come flocking toward the activity. So I started with two compañeros, Randel and Katherin (la negrita) and we started going at it. I showed Rafaela, the librarian, what I was doing when I was finished and she was so intrigued and delighted that she wanted me to teach her how to do it as well! So we all sat and talked and drew for 2 and a half hours making these precius little animal cards, which i will enseñar later with fotos. It so happens that Rafaela has to go to this taller, workshop, tomorrow, its like a meeting for teachers and librarians. She exclaimed Oh Kati! You came just a tiempo (just at the right time) because now she has something to show and teach all of the other teachers this very simple but FUN and Easy to do little card. It made my heart shine and shine. Also this little boy Randal who was very shy and cold to me at first I called over to work with me and he is small but learned very fast and is also quite artistic. He warmed up to me real quick with a little bit of patience and now its like I have a little sidekick.
As for little Leonardito, I have had many adorable moments with already. He is only one year old so he is just learning to walk but he has to keep momentum to stay upright or he falls down PLOP right on his butt. On Tuesday Gladys and I had to watch him while Margini, his mom, went to a job interview in Managua. This was the first time he had ever been left along by his mother and so when I woke up and walked into the kitchen my host mom said to me, Kati, estamos jodido con este chavalo. Kati, we are f*ed with this little boy. We did fine though! And Margini got the job!
I don´t know if its the Choloquine malaria stuff or just being so far from home or maybe its the spirituality in the mountains within which we are nestled, but MAN have I been dreaming up a storm. This morning I woke up with mother on my mind and had to cry a little bit to know that she has come all this way to accompany me here to this foreign place. I know that by working with kids and especially in doing art with them this channel will only get stronger and make me stronger but in the course of everything sometimes all I want is just to be completeltey utterly myself and know that in her arms that will forever be enough.
On the friend making front I have made a band of chavala friends from the girls who live on the corner. They are sweet girls, and have been very open and warm to me from the start. Whether this is because I have been tutoring them English on the side I don´t know, but one of them has invited me to her 16th birthday out on her farm and also they are big volleyball players. One of them Alma, (meaning soul coincidentaly) is particularly nice and we are going to dance tonight! Yip!
This one girl who keeps coming into the library for help with her English homework is a gorgeous, terribly timid girl who I think was at first afraid of me (imagine!) but has recently shown a great interest in art classes and even showed me some of her little ink drawings that she sketches between the pages of her algebra homework. What amazes me is actually how much kids here like to draw or actually do draw despite the fact that, for example, sketchbooks or really any kind of real art supplies is virtually unheard of here. All the library has for example is a little tin of stubby broken colored pencils and a little jar of sorry looking paint brushes.
Among other side projects that I have initiated with Rafaela are, for one, putting locks on the outside latrines so that teenagers don´t close themselves in there and engage in risky behavior (yes, it has been happening) (*on a side note *there was, until a couple of years ago only ONE flushing toilet in the entire town of Achuapa. Meaning for 4,000 people) Also, I am going to get some kids together and repaint both the outside and the inside of the library, which is desperately filthy and tired looking. Finally I have started a sketch journal club, where, though the kids don´t know it yet, I am going to try to get them to start writing for an hour every day. This being al ulterior motive because some how I haven´t found much time to write yet and the library is always practically empty the last hour of the day so I figure if I start writing maybe some kids will join me.
That´s it for now! Time for rice and beans!

After a bumpy one and a half hour ride from Esteli to Achuapa, I laid my eyes for the first time on the place that would become my home for the next two months. We came in with the rains, which pounded on the horsecrap laiden streets and many closed door store fronts. But when the sun emerged in the morning, we found ourselves in a great valley, with achuapa nestled again in the palms of mother mountains. There are oxen carts pulling wagons and horses greatly outnumbering any other form of transportation (rivaled only maybe by little motorcycles or bicicletas). We made our way to the natural medicine clinic, where my host mother Gladys and the homeopathic doctor awaited us to conduct energy exams. Among us were diagnosis of swollen ovaries, pancreas and of course, abounding tightness in our stomachs. For one of us with migraine probelms, the simple solution of mugwarts and incense made the burning sensation quite real and the headaches (hopefully) less. We also visited the Achuapa Co-op, which is the sole supplier of (i now can´t remember what kind of oil it is) to the Body Shop in England. I think its some kind of nut. This morning we went to Lagaritillo, the site of a peasant community that was attacked by the Contras. It is one of the only communities of such attacks which has maintained the revival of this loss through continued celebration and memorial to the lives lost. They have a plaque and annual reanactments on the day of the attack (Dec. 31st). It is also one of the only peasant communities that has used this tragedy as a factor which has unified and help to make constructive efforts toward collective progress– a few years ago, the community opened the only peasant run Spanish school in Nicaragua. This is a community only a few kilometers outside of Achuapa.
So school starts Monday!
I have so many ideas for what I want to do– murals, planning for the music festival in August, classes and possibly getting a women´s baseball team organized.. we´ll see.
Hasta pronto, pues.
Adios

There is a little kid dando vueltas in front of me. We are now in Esteli, the Sandinista stronghold of Northwest Nicaragua, where the walls of the city are vibrantly painted and we rest in the lap of surrounding mountains. The climate is cooler and the streets a little bit less hectic than the bustling narrow calles of Matagalpa. Still the time is flying and I don´t know where the last three days have gone. On Monday we travelled from Managua to Matagalpa, staying the night at La Casa Materna, a little house run by a clinic that takes in highrisk pregnancy mothers and makes sure that they receive transportation and care in hospitals that they otherwise would not have access to. One mother had walked 4 hours from a rural community on the Atlantic Coast before getting on an 8 hour bus ride to Matagalpa. Over the course of 19 years, and of handling over 14,000 pregnant mothers, only 2 lives have been lost under the care of the Casa Materna. This rate is virtually unheard of in Nicaragua much less the developing world. After this visit we went to visit a campesino coffee farmer, who struggled for 8 years to keep his land despite threats and direct attacks from the terrateniente (landowner) who the land had been seized from during the Sandinista revolution when all of the rich hacienda owners fled after the fall of Somoza. His story of resistence against such injustice was extraordinary but also infuriating in terms of the emotional devastation and inequalities that were wrought on his family during that time. After almost a decade of lawsuits, unlawful incrimination, physical assault and trauma, Vicente has finally can finally claim his 7 acre coffee farm his own, thanks to much help from the Ben Linder House and ProNica, among other organizations. We also made a trip to the small community of San Ramon, where a group of women started a nutritional program, a natural medicine clinic, art classes and a recycled paper making cooperative. The efforts of strong Nicaraguan women bearing the problems of this society are tremendous. Today in Esteli we had the pleasure and fortune of meeting two more, one, Mama Licha who started a free women´s clinic, and another Dona Mina, who started a museum to honor the fallen Sandinista fighters after losing her own in the Revolution. I breath easier among all the difficulties knowing that great great compassion and dedication and heart beats under the weight of many struggles ahead for these people.

The last few days have been a whirlwin- everything from flying into the Managua airport awaiting a city… that wasn’t there. The greenness and lack of actual buildings a visual testament to the destruction that was wrought on the country’s capital decades ago, and was never repaired. Thursday was mostly waiting for the rest of Haverford’s delegation to get here, and then the adventures, the heartwrenching, hairpulling, thousand smile moments began to pile. Up and up and up. Un montón de cosas. Friday was a tour of Managua, a city that I’ve been told is violent, that tourists, especially little white girls, should stay away from. On Friday morning we recieved a talk from our lovely tour guide Lillian Hall, before taking to the capital’s streets. She gave an informal lecture on the history of Nicaraguan politics, which are such an integral and fascinating element of modern society. To understand the pieces that put this country to where it is–a history that is viscerally a part of the national consciousness–is mind-blowing and I am experiencing history and politics in the most visceral and engaging way than I ever have.
All of yesterday we spent in San Marcos, at Los Quinchos, a kind of refuge and rehabilitation center for children who have experienced drug addiction, domestic violence, and have been victims of sexual assault. What overwhelmed me other than the vibrancy of the children, was the efforts and the enormous hearts of the people have organized the program, and also the clear want for affection that the children express with even the slightest sign of acknowledgment of their existence.
In the midst of all of these trauma realities, spending so much time listening with Lillian is like experiencing a constant expelling of little sparks, little dharmas of truth and experience and in the smallest way they have been the most eye opening, the most impacting.
We were driving out of Managua and we stopped at a random stoplight. Two guys start washing our window, and Molly goes, uh oh, do we have to pay these guys. Lillian rolls down her window and calls them by their first names, asking them how they are and how they’re families are. She says once we start get going again that she’s known those guys for 13 yrs, and that they owe her big time, that she has given the guy loans and that they are old friends. This is just one example of what an essential role Lillian is in this community. I am repeatedly astounded by how much this world needs the work that she does.
That’s all for now. The night is hot and we are forming a Havercircle in the dining room.

Hasta la próxima!