newhavenleon.org Blog

I was recently standing in the courtyard of what used to be a jail run by the dictator Somoza’s National Guard troops, where political prisoners were tortured. I was standing there with Benito, who had been, at age 17, a political prisoner. He pointed out a giant mango tree in the courtyard, and described how the National Guard would hang prisoners from the tree in order to beat them, or actually hang them to death, or lower them with ropes into a well. Nicaragua’s National Guard had been established by the US Marines at the end of their decades-long occupation of the country in the early part of the 20th century, a history so recent to Nicaraguans that when the last Somoza fled the country in ’79 (with millions of public funds in his pockets), people referred to the event as the departure of “the last Marine.”

I can’t help but think of the US’s current adventure in occupation, and the young soldiers who recently testified at Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan – chilling and moving testimonies (completely ignored by mainstream media) by young people deeply and horribly affected by what they have seen and done. (http://ivaw.org/wintersoldier)

Benito picked up a couple of mangoes that had fallen from the tree, and began to eat one. I love mangoes, and the one he offered to me was perfect and juicy – but I gagged on my third bite and left the rest of it for the birds. My friend didn’t seem to mind that the fruit had been nurtured with the blood of his companions; in fact, he made a couple of macabre jokes as he was eating. Who can be squeamish with food prices as they are, anyway?

When visitors listen to folks in the rural community, they hear that the constant fires from the sugar can fields in close proximity are causing respiratory problems; that those community members with cattle have a hard time keeping them healthy because of chemical contamination from the cane fields; that the irrigation systems in the cane fields are lowering the water table for the entire watershed region; that the cane company is buying up the land surrounding them bit by bit, land that is supposed to be protected because it is indigenous. Then they learn that the company is able to do this in part because of a loan it received in 2006 from the World Bank (or rather, the International Finance Corporation, the arm of the WB that deals in private-sector loans), based in Washington, D.C., with money from CitiGroup. Then visitors also hear that the cane company is the only source of regular work in the area, that the cane company has repaired roads and given out free backpacks to the school kids. They hear the teacher at the school say “they are buying us, so that we remain silent, and it is working.” They hear from small-scale cattle farmer from the neighboring community who couldn’t remain silent and spent 45 days in jail last year for his trouble.

A student sports his new backpack — “educating throughout Nicaragua: ISA.” ISA is Ingenio San Antonio, the mill of the sugar cane company.

The Yale undergraduate delegation spent a night out in Goyena last week, between two days of working with community members on painting the new preschool. In the evening, some of the young people in the community took them on a walk to the river that runs through it. The line of people walking, Nicaraguans and Americans, grew long and scattered as their paces and conversations broke them into groups of threes and fours.

People were hot and tired after a day of painting and bilingual conversations in the dusty heat of the dry season… not too tired to take advantage of the shallow river, though; plastic flip-flops and sneakers alike were abandoned on the bank as the entire gang waded in. The Nicaraguans showed the Americans a small spring just upstream. Some people practiced handstands, others their water-squirting techniques.

It took me forever to get them all out of the water and on their way back to Nueva Vida for dinner — it grew dark, and we squelched back to dinner by the light of the half-moon. I looked back at the group, again stretched into a long lazy line of Nicaraguans and Americans, and couldn’t tell who was who. I could pick up pieces of a Spanish-English lesson going on from a couple folks, but mostly I just heard laughter.

Anabel, 19, part of the leadership of Aristides Sanches, one of the sub-communities of Goyena, at the river.
Walking back from the river, though the fields by the light of the moon.

Benito takes us to the fortín, the old fort up on a hill overlooking León. It was used by Anastasio Somoza’s National Guard as an “interrogation” center in ’78-79, when Nicaraguans were struggling to resist and overthrow the US-backed dictatorship that stole millions of dollars from the public sector with the help of brutal military repression. Benito had been part of the Sandinista resistance as a teenager; and at age 17 was kidnapped by the National Guard, taken to the fortín, and tortured every day for a week. He says he considers himself lucky because most prisoners of the National Guard were murdered and deposited on the streets of León to terrorize other resisters into silence.

Benito makes a point of saying that he and other torture survivors and veterans had to “overcome” their experiences themselves, that there was no treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Nicaragua in those days. He repeats it fifteen minutes later, with a smile on his face.

We take a delegation of first-time visitors to Nicaragua to Old León, where the Spanish conquistadores built churches and traded indigenous slaves. People “disobedient” to the invaders were punished by literally being thrown to the dogs, dismembered and bled to death by the jaws of Spanish canines. I think of the use of dogs by the US military to intimidate prisoners at places like Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantánamo Bay.

Around this part of León, the people are called Sutiaba. Nicaragua Sugar Estates, Ltd (NSEL) is buying up Sutiaba lands to produce sugar for export, and to make Flor de Caña rum, popular among better-off Nicaraguans and tourists alike. They’re funded in part by a loan from the US-based private-sector branch of the World Bank, while most residents of these Sutiaba lands themselves are not even considered credit-worthy by micro-loan institutions.

I read in the newspaper that four Miskito leaders had come from the Northern Atlantic region of Nicaragua to the capital, and were trying to meet with president Daniel Ortega. The paper said they were threatening to hunger strike until they were able to meet with Ortega in person, to express their grievances for the way the state had handled the cleanup of destructive Hurricane Felix, which hit the Atlantic Coast in the fall. In the same paper, it was reported that a group of Mayagna people had blockaded state efforts to build a road through their land.

The European invasion and conquest of these lands began more than 500 years ago, but it does not feel far away at all. This history is right behind us, wherever we go, breathing down our necks with thick hot air that stinks of oppression and theft.

After leaving Old León, we take the group to the nature reserve at the Isla Juan Venado in Poneloya. There we get a glimpse of the wealth of this land. This region is not naturally poor, rather, its people have been impoverished. Now they follow its wealth by heading North.

My first Saturday in León I go out early in search of a guitar, and step into a beauty-salon stall at the central market where the two women inside look bored but friendly. One woman goes off in search of someone who knew where to find one, and the other, Cristina, sits me down and peppers me with questions. She seems exceptionally curious about me, and when I start asking questions back, I find out why: she’s a stranger here, too. She’s from the Dominican Republic, and when she couldn’t get into the US, she came to Nicaragua looking for work. People from Nicaragua go to Costa Rica to find jobs – what a state the DR must be in.

I remember visiting a women’s jail in Guatemala a few years ago and playing basketball with the women inside. The overwhelming majority of them were not Guatemalan; they were from Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. They were trying to go North, and had gotten as far as Guatemala before they ran out of money and found themselves stealing food or selling their bodies to survive in a strange place. I also think of an old friend in the US, from the Andean region of Latin America, who had crossed from Mexico to the US in the trunk of a Geo with three other people. I wonder if Cristina will try to cross all these borders someday, to risk life and limb on Mexican trains. She was talkative, but did not want to answer definitively when I asked where she was living.

The other woman comes back with an address across town where I can find a guitar. Before I go on my way, Cristina tries to convince me to straighten my curly-frizzy hair, like she has done. She is dark skinned, and here women with light skin and straight hair are considered more beautiful – more like the blondes up North.

A friend has good news: she got into the national university in León, the only student from her rural community of Goyena to pass the entrance exam this year, among the handful who managed to attend high school. Her mother, raising four children alone while their father works in Costa Rica, is pleased and proud of her oldest.

For space and time to study, my friend had hoped to get a scholarship to live in León, but she found out that this year they’re reserved for students who come from the Atlantic Coast So she’s living with a relative, an hour by bus from the city. She passed the entrance exam by three points, and must study hard for the next six months if she’s going to be accepted to study medicine, as she hopes. She spends two hours a day on the bus.