Yesterday he was arrested and jailed. They were clearing vines and shrubs from the coffee bushes when the former owner showed up with a policeman. They had an impressive looking document, a “letter of assignation” without much legal validity, but in the pastel colors of the government and signed by a commandant. The owner had a court order ruling that the estate not be touched before ownership was established. He was in jail four hours, then another judge was found who could be persuaded to release him.

This is all routine. These men have all been arrested many times during the last 18 years of land conflicts, demonstrations and barricades, ever since the revolution was lost. But still, a bit sad that this is still happening now that “we” are back in power again….

They were all young during the revolution. Farm workers that became men and leaders with the revolution: militia soldiers, reservists, party cadres, union leaders on the state farms where they worked and lived.

These were the stalwarts who could not stand idly by as the revolution lost the elections and Violetta Chamorro began returning estates to the old masters. Estates that they had given their youth to, and masters that didn´t even know that the word “master” had lost much of its meaning while they had been in exile in Miami.

They became land squatters and barricade builders. Some of them became “recompas” – re-comrades: went back to the hills with guns in their hands and backpacks on their shoulders, just to show Doña Violetta what it would cost her, if she went too far in demolishing the land reform. A small guerilla war in the middle of the fragile peace of the 1990s.

“Farms in conflict”, they were called. Some sold their land as soon as they won title to it. Greed, insecurity, fear or debt won where the old landlords failed. Some of them stood the distance, got title, started farming, and stayed on the land instead of selling. Others had to work on as farm workers on estates that they felt were theirs.

They saw a unique opportunity when the World Bank and Vietnam together sent coffee prices crashing down in 2001. While the coffee consumers the world over cheered, hundreds of coffee plantations defaulted on their mortgages and went bankrupt. Thousands of farm workers suffered hunger, the streets of Matagalpa were filled with their children, begging and sleeping in the parks. 3,000 people went on the barricade, blocked the Panamerican Highway for months, demanding that not only rich people but also the poor should benefit from the government crisis relief plan. They were on the barricades in 2001. And in 2002. And in 2003.

Finally, something gave. Six estates – some of Matagalpa’s richest coffee plantations: mortgaged to the state, sold to the workers. “This is a whole mini land reform, maybe the last,” their leader proudly said.

It was these men who organized the food, the logistics, the shifts on the barricade: One estate, one week at a time. And who negotiated the government representatives into the ground. The agenda of the meeting today is different: Today they talk about the legal status of the co-ops, courses for the book keepers, about seed corn and productivity, about loans from the Agricultural Fund and fertilizer from Venezuela.

Their movement is under pressure. All the legalities of the land ownership of the co-operatives are still not in place. Even though their party has been in power for two years now. The estates are still valuable and forces within the party look upon them with greedy eyes. Their leader was not “born” into the inner circle of the party. He has shoved himself in, backed up by the 3-5-10.000 votes that he advises and the mobilized force they represent.

There are forces that want to squeeze him back out again. He has lost some battles, has been outmaneuvered a couple of times. There are promises that he has not been able to keep. Some of the men at this meeting have had feelers out to UNAG – another farmers movement – about membership there instead: their situation is untenable if they can not run their businesses and they can not obtain loans on their land. Maybe they should find another platform to fight from.

This meeting is to recover strength, stand together again. The leader has maneuvered: mended bridges, done a good job for the party during the local elections, made some deals, some new allies. Now, to gather the scattered troops.

These seven men can get 3,000 families to move in the same direction when needs be. They know what they can do together. They also know what the key to their progress is, even within the party: “I have told the party: “You can count on us, if we can count on you. But one good turn deserves another. We give and you give.””

These men are the old guard, the class conscious fighters. These are men who have broken into power from the bottom and they don’t have many friends up there. They know that it is only the active support of their members that wins them a seat at the table. “Tiene gente”- “He has people”: This is what they need both party leaders and class enemies to say when talking of them

None of these men are naive anymore. They have all made compromises. They have all let someone or something down in order to achieve a goal, all sacrificed something important: ideals, friends, their word, their honesty. They have all had to make a deal with the devil at some point. They maneuver, ambush, trick. They lead by being strong and loose when they show weakness. They never run for election without first making sure who will win.

They have all attended courses in sex awareness, they all know the strength the movement gains when the women are mobilized. But when push come to shove they are still male chauvinists. They are getting older and are thinking that it is time to own a well developed farm, have secure title, have a steady income. The movement needs more young leaders, but it is hard to let go: the distance from stepping aside to being out is very small.

Note: We are at a meeting of the cooperative movement of the Nicaraguan farm workers union ATC in Matagalpa. Present are leaders from six cooperatives, three from the land struggles of the 90s, and another three from the struggles arising from the coffee crisis 2001-3 (the Las Tunas conflict). All have participated in the PROMAT 2
project, with support from the Danish Committee for Solidarity with Central America.

Roberto in the taxi, on the way to the bus station.

-Papa, I want to go home.

It´s Roberto. He is standing there, crying. He isn’t drunk, but he has been drinking.

It’s 10 o’clock. He already came by once before this morning. Then, he didn’t want to go home. He wanted to work all day so that he could go home with his pockets full of money. In order to save just a little face with his family back home in Esteli. But now here he is, back already, without a single coin in his pocket. Another day that started out full of determination and detoured to drink the moment he earned his first peso.

-I want to go home. This isn’t working at all.  They take it all. I want to gome home, Papi.

His voice is full of gravel, he is dirty, his face is beaten up, his pupils are two small black dots, one eye is still out of shape after he was beaten up in August.

Twice I have readied myself to drive him to the bus station, twice he just had to wash himself before leaving, and twice he reappeared two days later, totally destroyed by drink, in hopeless shape. This time I take him on his word. Before he knows it he, his shoe shining box, his bag, and his piggy-bank are all in a taxi on its way to the bus station.

– Just give me money for the bus, then you can take the taxi back home again, he says when we arrive at the bus station.

Not in a million years, I think, and keep him company to the ticket office, where I buy him ticket to the express to Esteli.

– I don’t want to go home after all, he says, I am too dirty.

– I promised your sister to put you on the bus, and that’s what I’ll do, I say. – Get in the bus!

– I’m hungry.

– You’ll get money for food when you are on the bus.

– Give me two cordobas for the toilet!

Before I give hum the money, I ask the bus conductor to put his stuff in the luggage compartment. Insurance. I follow him all the way to the toilet – and back. He doesn’t have a chance. At the toilet facility people look at me strangely. What am I doing with this boy??

Back at the bus, he tries one more time:

-I can’t. I don’t want to go home with no money in my pocket.

-I promised your sister to put you on the bus. She wants you home with or without money. That is how it’s going to be.

Finally, he gives up and gets on the bus.

-That was hard, aye?, the platform manager says with a smile, when the door to the bus has closed

Other people are also smiling. The man that sells newspapers, the lady that sells juice. I am the friendly Gringo helping a street kid out of the evil city. One of these small acts of mercy which this city, so rich in poverty and ruined lives, is rich in too. Something to warm the heart by, something to bring home from the market today.

They don’t know that only last night I was shouting at him as he stood crying at our gate. He wanted to go home, but he didn’t want to go home. Drunk as a lord. Did I say shouting? I was screaming. So un-Nicaraguan. I totally lost it. Luckily Maggan made me sit down and shut up, and managed to send him away with some kind words. Otherwise I would have kept on shouting all night.

I follow the bus with my eyes as long as I can see it on the road. Then I call the sister in Esteli:

– Listen, he’s on the express, the 10.45 .

– Thank God, she says. – God will reward you, because well, we can’t…

I say: – I promise he was on the bus when it left the station, but I won’t promise he will still be on it when it gets to Esteli.

I ask her to please make him stay in Esteli, not let him leave for Managua again. This town is is poison for him, I say.

She says that she knows, but he won’t listen.

This is like a scene in Pelle the Conquerer*, I am thinking when I put down the phone. So predictable. A story told a million times and Roberto is following the manuscript to the letter. A first class actor doing his own life.

And I? Also a stereotype, a clichè: the warm hearted Gringo that ends up in a helpless rage, shouting at this poor soul. My partner Maggan has the role as the sympathetic narrator, helping the viewer understand what is happening (this is obviously a genre piece of social realism): – He is sick, he can’t help it, it’s not his fault. Society is to blame. Stop shouting.  “People say Jeppe drinks,  but never say why Jeppe drinks!”*

I GET it. I understand.

But Roberto is an extreme case. An innocent soul in from the farm, lost in the big, evil city, also a seventeen year old alcoholic from hell. Both dumb and smart, a walking and talking concussion, a sight to hurt the eyes.

He disappeared in August, all of a sudden. Little by little we put the story together. He had gone to the dogs, totally, had been mugged down at the round- about , and was at last picked up by his family from Esteli, three hours and a day’s wage away by bus.

A month ago I had that sinking feeling when I heard his voice again at the gate. He was back in town, clean and energetic, strong and healthy, after a month by his father’s side in the bean fields, after a month at the family hearth. I was not happy to see him here, but I was happy to see him like this.

He was tired of eating  beans and only beans, and also felt that he had to do something for the family. His father and his mother were furious when they found him pennyless and had to pay not only their bus fare to Managua, but also the three fares back to Esteli. He owed them, and needed to repay them to regain his own self-respect.

He was clear headed and clear eyed, had goals, had ideas. Work in Managua until December and then go back to the family with money and Christmas presents. Avoid the bad friends. As his father had told him:

– “Somebody who wants to give you a drink is not your friend.” That’s what my father says. And that’s the truth.

It lasted less than a week. It was hard for him to get started. Each morning he found a reason not to do his shoe-shine-work. He stayed away for three days. His first bender. Had stuff stolen. Didn’t keep himself clean. Started having tooth aces, head aces, and sores. Talked more and more nonsense, even when he wasn’t drunk. Started to talk about going home.

He pulled himself together. Three nights in a row he put 30 Cordobas, 40 Cordobas in the piggy-bank I bought for him, and kept 20 or 30 Cordobas for his supper. But that was as long as it lasted. The last weeks every coin he earned he spent on liquor. The lies began: things that he asked me to buy for him were stolen, again and again. I realized that he was selling his stuff to drink.

Full of earnest regret,  three times in the last three days he has promised himself and me that there will be no more alcohol. Not another drop. And every night, he is back, whining, stinking of alcohol. The night before last he was crying, wanted home, couldn’t stand it anymore, drunk. Wanted money for the bus fare, for a meal, for anything. Had not eaten for 24 hours. Had no more shoe-polish. But he had found a way to get his booze. This was the night I screamed at him.

I sincerely wish that I never see him again. Wishful thinking!!!

Once we were travelling through Central-America a good friend asked me how often I responded when a beggar asked me for help. I said it depends on the situation. She said very definitely that she helped each time she was asked.

I admired her attitude and have since then tried to follow her rule. But lately, I have begun to understand the attitude that so many of my neighbours show. This cold hearted, despising, and despicable middle class attitude towards poverty: Don’t see it, don’t hear it. It’s your own fault. Stay away! I understand it because I myself have begun to show it.

– Don’t encourage them!, they all said, my neighbours, when I was still trying to help everybody who came to our door. They didn’t want me to attract beggars to our street. Last year when one of the kids that we had helped cleaned out our home for anything of value, several of our neighbours told us: – Well, you got what you asked for.

But still, it seems like we all have our favorite beggar. The exception to the rule, the redeeming good work that salves our concience:  For Don Alberto, it is the legless  knife-grinder, for the lady at the end of the street it is the homeless dogs, for me it is Roberto. As I said, just clichès.

How the hell can it be that a hundred year old novel, a play written two hundred years ago, is still being performed again and again and again by millions of people every single day? Have none of us really learned to do better?  I despair at my own predictable helplessness, at Roberto’s predictable and stubborn self destruction. His whole future is already behind him, but he is still just a boy.

It’s enough to make you a Marxist.

* A 100 year old Danish novel about the birth of the workers’ movement (by Martin Andersen Nexø). Alcoholism among farmers plays an important part.

** A quote from a 200 year old Danish theatrical comedy (by Holberg). Alcoholism among farmers plays an important part.

They are finally here. For all those of us who have wanted to start an agricultural cooperative but  cooperative but never could find the right end of the ball of string to start, finally a resource where you can get all the advice and information necessary to satisfy the farmer in us all.

(Este articulo en español)

The Danish Committee for Solidarity with Central America has recently closed down its project PROMAT 2, which supported the founding and development of agricultural cooperatives in Matagalpa, Nicaragua. The three partners in the project, UNAG, ATC and the Central America Committee have gathered a large portion of the experiences gained by the project, and especially by the participating farmers, and are now publishing them as manuals for the organized farmer.

The manuals are split into three: organization, administration and marketing; in addition a monthly calendar planner for 2009

The manuals are in simple and readable Spanish for the use of farmers elected to serve on the board or a commision of their cooperative. The calendar is designed as a daily tool for the active farmer to help organize his or her work in the cooperative.

Many of photographer Maj Britt Hansens pictures from the book Dreams and Hopes have found new use in the manuals.

The resources will soon be available on the UNAG Matagalpa website. Meanwhile, you can get download them here (PDF files 1.6 to 4.8MB):

Organization manual (sp.)

Administration manual (sp.)

Marketing manual (sp.)

Calender 2009 (sp.)

]]> https://chele.wordpress.com/2008/10/07/everything-you-never-thought-needed-to-know-about-beeing-a-farmer/feed/ 0 sven Material para dirigentes campesinos Material para dirigentes campesinos Material para dirigentes campesinos Material para dirigentes campesinos Material para dirigentes campesinos https://chele.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/this-new-revolution-is-just-so/ https://chele.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/this-new-revolution-is-just-so/#respond Mon, 01 Sep 2008 13:50:26 +0000 http://chele.wordpress.com/?p=208 Continue reading →]]>

pink.

But we are still…

Amazed…

Delirious…

Sated…

Awed…

And so, so patient…

The pictures are from the festivities marking the anniversary of the revolution the 19th of July. Except for the next to the last, which is from Avenida Bolivar just across from the National Assembly. The crowd on it´s way to the plaza passes by the camp of the Nemagon pesticide victims. After 18 months of El Pueblo Presidente! – The People are the President! – they still have gotten just as little from Ortega as they got from Bolaños.

It is not a river. It is one of the main avenues of Managua. Everything is normal. It´s just the rainy season.

Sometimes Managua is called the Venice of Central America, because of the many canals that are supposed to lead rainwater through the city from the mountains South of the city to the lake to the North. Managua is catchment area for a very large area, and is very well situated if you are a vegetable farmer. If you want to keep your feet dry, not so well. There is a lot of water, and it comes fast.

With the global climate change and all, the showers seem to come less frequently, but dump more water when they do come. If city hall has been a little slow to clear the canals of garbage, things can become a little drastic (one important use of the canals is as a dump for barrios where the garbage trucks don´t come). The water from the mountains will erupt from a canal a flow through the streets.

Sometimes this means that a barrio like this, lying close to a canal, can be swept away in a moment, leaving people without shelter and sometimes dead. Sometimes, it just means an hour where your car is converted into a life boat, gently rocking in the current.

You can be waiting at a traffic light during just another rainy season squall, like this one:

But before the light turns green again, the median strip has disappeared:

And a moment later the driver of the taxi in front is sensibly standing in the rain, to be able to grab his car if it starts floating away:

Looking sideways, I can see the water getting closer to the top of wall that separates the sidewalk from the canal alongside:

A little later, canal and street are one, as you saw in the top picture of this post.

On the other side of the road, a group of workers from one of the nearby workshops, joking and cavorting with the high spirits often shown by Nicas when things have gone out of control and the only thing left to do is laugh, have struggled their way to the bus stop:

I think they are crazy. But they know better, and the water is already beginning to sink. Ten minutes later, the first bus is fighting its way through the water:

And ploughs steadily on its way, while one of the workers gives me a happy wave: “Oye gringo!”:

The taxi driver behind me, who few minutes ago had his engine flooded like this:

… now waves to me asking for a tow to the side of the road. That is quickly done, and I can happily drive along to pick up Maggan at the school. With a couple of inches of brown water on the bottom of the car, and only an hour late, but another daily life adventure richer.

An hour later, on our way home, we took the photo above of the barrio by the canal. Only the garbage dropped by the flood, still showed what had happened.

Oh, one piece of advice for Suzuki: For cars in the tropical regions: Do not use carpets that can not be removed. River water smells, even after the carpets are dry.

First posted in Danish on June 3, 2008.

The Danish solidarity brigade has finished their village stay and their Easter vacation, and arrived to a barrio in Ciudad Sandino. They live with the local CPC (the citizen’s power committee) and work at a local kindergarden, improving a playground for the kindergarden and a little park for the barrio.

The experience has given them new insight into how Nicaraguan local politics work…

The players

The kindergarden is an independant kindergarden for maquila-workers, it has existed for 9 years with support from a North American organisation.

The CPC is the new neighbourhood organisation promoted by the Sandinista government which, at least in its own eyes, now decides things for the community. For the kindergarden too, as the kindergarden of course also “belongs to the community”, and “ahora estamos nosostros a mando del barrio”: now we are in charge of the barrio.

The city (municipal) government is Sandinista, and is responsible for placing the brigade where it is now. City Hall coordinates local activities through local CPC, as it must do according to the Sandinista policy.

The apple of discord

The Family Ministry is promoting a program for collective vegetable gardens in city barrios to fight malnutrition among poor children. City Hall has allotted a vegetable garden to the barrio, based on need (a census has showed many malnourished children), and on the accept of the community (the CPC has agreed).

The city and the CPC have apparently agreed that the vegetable garden should be placed on the kindergarden grounds. The CPC is supposed to ensure that the local community takes care of the plants, prevents theft, and harvests and distributes vegetables.

But the kindergarden teachers feel that they don’t have time to take care of the garden (they mostly work on a voluntary basis already) and are also afraid that a vegetable garden will attract thieves. Also, they don´t feel that the CPC has any right to decide on how their grounds should be used. Instead of a garden, they want a playground.

“I don’t know anything about politics, and don’t want to go up against politics, but I have worked in this kindergarden for nine years, and I know what is good for the kindergarden and for the children,” says the principal.

The disagreement has led to harsh words, rumor mongering, and even tears.

The Danish brigade is living with members of the the CPC, and working for the kindergarden, and just doesn’t want any trouble. They have asked everyone concerned to a meeting to sort out the disagreements, and have invited me to attend as a sort of reinforcement (the brigade is, by the way, doing a very good job, and I must say that the coordinator Lærke and the rest of the brigade have kept a straight course during this little crisis.)

In the photo: The fractions have retired to separate debriefings after the tough negotiations. The brigade analyses the course of events in the foreground, in the background the City Hall representative tries to pour oil on troubled waters…

Cutting through

At a meeting between representatives of teachers, parents, the CPC, the City Hall and and the brigade, the City Hall representative cuts through to the chase and decides that the brigade will not work on the vegetable garden. If the kindergarden really is so ungrateful, they can escape getting a vegetable garden altogether. Anyway, the kindergarten will at some point or other be forced to plant vegetables since it is a ministry policy that all kindergardens should have one. Only this time it will be with out help from the City, but that will be their problem.

Instead, she decides that the brigade will work on planting the little neighbourhood park, which is supposed to become a recreative space for the young people of the barrio. She promises that the building materials will be there on Tuesday.

Furthermore she scolds the CPC representative for not being able to create concensus in the community, and for her inability to convince neighborrs to participate in trhe work alongside the brigade. She explains to everybody that the brigade visit is their test as a local organisation, and tells them straight out to pull themselves together. She tells them to go from door to door to convince people to unite and support the park project, and also to recruit the local leaders; a North American who lives in the neigbourhood, the Evangelical priest and his flock, etc. These are tasks which the CPC representative obvioulsy feels uncomfortable with.

“These are the problems we get when neighbourhood leaders are inexperienced, and when you have a barrio where 60% have never even passed fourth grade,” City Hall representative explains when I give her a lift back to the town hall.

She is right, of course. Any real democratization and decentralization process will at some point run into these kinds of problems. Anybody who has been to a meeting in a homeowners´ or tenants´ association back home in Denmark knows that. And the CPC is, in fact, a decentralization of power: it is the local CPC that decides which neighbours have access to the government’s small business loans, adult education programs, etc. And if you are looking for work with a public employer, you must get a recommendation from your CPC.

But it doesn´t help when the CPC has such an obviously narrow social basis (that is, when it is identical with the local party faithfull), and, furthermore starts it´s work in the barrio with an attitude of “now it´s our turn at the cookie jar”, without any consideration for all the others who have contributed to the barrio, and who also have an opinion. An attitude which, I am afraid, is far too common among Sandinistas today.

Meanwhile, the brigade has contributed to the building of a wonderful playground.

And they have learned a lot about how Nicaraguan politics work.

Now, only time will show if City Hall actually can get hold of the materials for the park…

Previous post about Brigade 2008

First posted in Danish on April 11, 2008.

“Good morning, little dad,” he calls from the gate with his hoarse voice.

Roberto is here again. He is sitting on the sidewalk, an empty look in his eyes, resting his battered face against the wall, smelling of cheap booze. He was beaten up a couple of weeks ago, his cheek is still swollen, full of sore crusts. He has a sandal on one foot. He has a brand new backpack in his lap, the price tag still on it.

He sits there mumbling to himself, until he notices me on the terrace.

“Help me, little dad, they stole my sandals again!”

“That’s because you were drunk.”

“No, I wasn’t drunk, not this time.”

“You’re still drunk, you stink of booze.”

“I am not drunk, it’s the hangover. I bought new sandals yesterday.”

I remember that his shoe polish box had been sitting on my terrace all day, yesterday, so how did he earn money to buy new sandals? Not to mention booze. I don’t feel up to asking him.

“Where did you get the backpack?” I ask instead.

“It’s brand-new, look, brand-new. It’s already broken, but it’s brand-new…”

He opens it to show me. It’s one of these cheap Chinese back-packs where the zipper always breaks the first time you use it. It’s the type that poor parents give their kids on their first day of school, and that NGO´s give to the poor as “incentive” to show up at courses and work shops.

“Where did you get it?”

“I got it from a friend. It’s brand-new. Look. I got it from a friend. I’m not a thief. Give me a new pair of sandals, little dad!”

“They will just get stolen when you are drunk.”

“Oh, please, give me the money for a new pair of sandals!!”

” I am not giving you money for any more sandals. You will have to earn that money yourself.”

“Yes, little dad,” he sighs, accepting defeat.

Over time, I have given him three pairs of sandals. He couldn’t keep any of them for more than a week. The places where he sleeps are not safe, and when he is drunk he can not protect himself.

“Little dad, I am hungry, give me some food!”

I have some tortillas and some beans in the fridge, and I go inside to fix him a bowl. He starts mumbling again. I stop inside the door, listening. “Not a thief. Not a thief. Never steal. Rather beg, never a thief. Ohh, I should kill myself. I wish someone would shoot me in the head…”

I am convinced he stole the back-pack.

When I return with his beans there are tears on his face. He starts to eat, slowly. I go inside and fetch him a glass of water.

“I can smell coffee.”

“I got you water.” Miser! I scold my self in my thoughts.

He is 16 or 17 years old. We have seen him around for a couple of years. He is a country boy from Esteli but has lived in Managua since he at seven ran away from home. He limps on one leg from when he was run over by a car a couple of years ago. His father in Esteli had to sell a an acre of land land in order to pay for the operation that saved his life and put together his leg with four giant nails.

The father now works on rented land and has never forgiven the boy. Roberto is not welcome home unless he brings money. Several times he he has planned to go home for Christmas or Easter, but has given it up. He does not have the courage, I believe.

I go inside to have my morning coffee. I am reading a crime novel by Michael Connely. It is about misery, desperation, and death. In Los Angeles.

“Thank you, little dad,” he says from the sidewalk. I go outside to Roberto. He hasn’t eaten all the food.

“Put the rest in a bag for me, I can eat it later.”

When I bring him the bag, he says:

“I don’t want to drink anymore.”

“The alcohol will kill you, Roberto. You earn money, but you don’t get anything out of it. You use the money on booze, or it is stolen when you drink.”

“I don’t want to drink anymore.”

Unlike most boys who live on the street he doesn´t sniff glue, use crack or smoke heroin. His vice is a farmer´s vice, not a street kid´s.

He has straightened himself up several times. When he is straight, he bathes every week, begs for clean t-shirts, takes care of himself.

“You get treated the same way you treat yourself,” he once told me, proud, clean, in clean clothes, all ready to start anew, earn money, be the reliable worker he claims he is. The very same night he was back in the gutter, dead drunk, beaten, and without shoes. Everything had gone wrong.

He is able to earn good money but not to keep it. Once he had saved up almost 1000 cordobas, an uncle kept it for him. Then he was hit by the car. The uncle took the money as payment for having to leave work and drive Roberto to the hospital. Sometimes I think: why not shoot the whole family?

“You need help, Roberto, you should go to a center where they can help you.”

“I know a center. I was at Casa Alianza. Twice I´ve been at Casa Alianza.”

He has told me this before, he was at Casa Alianza for half a year when he was younger. They treated him well, he went to school. They liked him. They were very sorry when he ran away from them. He was back in Casa Alianza in December, the last time he decided to straighten up. He only stayed for two weeks. Afterwards, he said the others stole from him in the dormitory. He couldn’t take that.

After that he went on an enormous drinking spree. He didn’t drink so much when I first met him, two years ago. He must have been 14 or 15 years old. He was still a boy then. He still is, but he is really also a man.
At Casa Alianza you only get two chances.

“You must try another center. You need somebody to help you.”

“No, no more centers for me. I have to take care of my self. I am almost a man now. I have to do something for myself. I don’t want to drink anymore.”

“Are you going to work to day?”

“Yes, give me the box!”

I fetch the shoe polishing box for him. I keep it for him sometimes, along with a couple of t-shirts in a plastic bag.

“Good by, little dad. Thank you, I wish you a very good day!”

“Good by, Roberto, I wish everything goes well for you to day!”

Sometimes I feel that is is our greetings that mean most to him. The polite exchange of good wishes just like he learned as a child back home in the village. To be acknowledged by name.

A year ago, one of the screws in his leg had worked its way out of the leg, and he had to take very good care of himself. He went to two hospitals, and he was on waiting lists for months, sent from from one appointment to the other. It took so long, and the leg finally got so swollen, that a doctor at last agreed to take out the screw.

During the weeks before the operation he saved clean clothes and money for food for a week at the hospital. The morning before the operation, he had to wash himself. It was a big deal, it took several days of careful preparation. Planning for the shower on the market, looking after his clothes, his money, and the coins for the bus. And he had to be on time at the hospital. All the while, in deathly fear that the operation might kill him.

After the operation he was on pain killers and penicillin. Living the way he does, it is a hard job keeping the doses right. He kept careful count of the hours and the days, sitting outside the gate and counting the hours over and over again on his fingers. He kept himself clean and his wound clean. He made it, his leg did not putrefy, he did not poison himself. I was proud of him.

It will be a miracle if he gets to be twenty.

Roberto is a shoe cleaner in Bello Horizonte, Managua. He lives under some cardboard boxes down at the traffic circle. Sven is a solidarity worker and also lives in Bello Horizonte. He lives in a house with a terrace, a living room, a dining room, a kitchen, four bed rooms, three bath rooms. The house is secured with fences, chains, and barbed wire.

More Roberto (photos)

“Political Messianism and church rhetoric about obligatory motherhood, that is what the red-black heaven offers the poor.” That is how a Nicaraguan women’s organization judges the Sandinista government.

In an advertisement placed in the major Nicaraguan newspapers on March 8, 2008, the Nicaraguan Autonomous Women’s Movement lashes out at Daniel Ortega and his government.

They describe Nicaragua as a country where women’s right to participation in politics is a “grim joke”, and where the government pursues an “anti-women” policy which reduces women to “day laborers” and “breeding machines” without any rights, and with a “death sentence for complications during pregnancy”.

The movement describes the president personally as the symbol of “masculine impunity” for crimes of violence against women, and compares his gender politics to German Fascism, which viewed women with an optics of “Kinder, Kirche, Küche” (children, church, kitchen).

A divided women’s movement

The declaration of war (see translation below) from the Autonomous Women is in part a sign of the deep fissure created between the Sandinista government and progressive women´s groups. And partly a sign of rapprochement between one wing of the progressive, ex-Sandinista women’s movement and the right wing opposition to the Ortega-government .

The Nicaraguan Autonomous Women’s movement and the Feminist Women’s Movement are presently the most active networks of women in Nicaragua . They have both roots in the strong network of Women Against Violence, but have parted ways over the stand on the Sandinista Front, FSLN, not on the Sandinista gender politics, on how to fight them.

The Autonomous Women demonstrate together with right wing parties in a joint fight against the pact between FSLN and the Constititionalist Liberal party, and its leader, Arnoldo Aleman, a convicted felon serving time for corruption while he was in power. The Feminists, on the other hand, feel that a progressive fight for women is undermined by an alliance with the right wing, who often are just as reactionary in their view on sex.

Same fight – Different friends

Both groups have led similar, but separate, campaigns against the law against medical abortion, which was voted into law in August 2006 by all the major parties of the Nicaraguan parliament. The law threatens pregnant women, as well as doctors, nurses, and even the cleaning lady with prison, if a medical procedure to save the pregnant woman’s life or health hurts the unborn baby. The law has already claimed several women’s lives.

The Autonomous Women’s high priority to the wider issue of who should be in government, is seen in their March 8 declaration, which ends in an appeal to vote against the pact – i.e. FSLN and PLC – in the upcoming municipal elections in November. They share language and message with the right wing opposition when they claim that the Sandinista government threatens democracy it self and call on the revival of Nicaragua “as a republic”.

More info

Visit the Autonomous Women´s Movement (sp.)

Previous posts on women´s rights in Nicaragua

Translation of the declaration:

Orteganism and women: hate politics

On March 8, 2008 we, the Nicaraguan women, are gathered to deny President Daniel Ortega in his ambition to install an authoritarian regime, which has, already, deprived the women of their basic right to control of their own body, and which threatens to deprive us of the right to free and open elections with competing candidates, in order to renew the pact that has brought the country stagnation, poverty, and corruption.

Ortega’s new regime is marked by power lust, demagogy, and hate of women. It made its debut by removing the medical abortion exception in the old criminal code, and later ratified its death-sentence for complications during pregnancy in the new criminal code.

FSNL’s “gender policy” denies that women are citizens with civil rights. It gives priority to the traditional family, sells out on the women’s human rights, and reduces them to mere breeding machines, even when they may die from it.

“Equality” of political participation is reduced to the grim joke that women were given 50% of the power when Ortega without legal authority, and without her proving any competence, announced that he shares a “joint presidency” with his wife Rosario Murillo, a “joint presidency” which does not exist, and which nobody ever has given a single vote.

Through the “No Hunger Program” the government has positioned women, not as agents of economic development as peons whose only task is to breed chicken and pigs.

The latest demagogical manipulation has been the passing of the Equal Rights Law. This law is is merely a rhetorical gesture since, apart from any good will it might show, it has no influence on a regime which shows no respect for either institutions or laws.

The best proof of the contempt shown womens’ lives are the closed doors that women meet when they turn to the courts as victims of male violence. In more than half of the cases, courts decide in favour of the violent man. The symbol for this male impunity is the President of the Republic himself. He was never tried for the sexual abuse of his stepdaughter. First he claimed immunity as member of the parliament, then he permitted a tardy application to the court, and, finally, the court refused to hear the case because of an alleged statue of limitations.

The motives for the unfounded accusations that the government, through the state prosecutor, has brought against nine prominent women leaders, is revenge, persecution of the Women’s Movement, and to scare the rest of the civil society.

Altogether the gender policy that the government of “reconciliation and national unity” supports is quite similar to that of the German fascism that glorified the traditional female qualities Kinder, Kirche, Küche (children, church, kitchen): Political messianism and church rhetoric about obligatory motherhood, that is what the red-black heaven offers to to the poor.

The government patriarchal and undemocratic gender politics threaten to succeed because of a policy of pacts, tricks and manipulation. They threaten women’s rights, and the rights of all Nicaraguans. Therefore, on the International Women’s Day we call on all women and all citizens to defend democracy, and to mobilize ourselves to fight the pact and the corruption during the coming election, keeping in sight the hope that Nicaragua will be revived as a Republic.

Managua, March 7, 2008

For Democracy, for Autonomy, and for Freedom

Bring down the Pact!

The Autonomous Women’s Movement of Nicaragua

Originally posted in Danish on March 10, 2008.

On our way to the evergreen Jinotega we make a breakfast stop at the road to ever dry Terrabona…

Along the road, Terrabona´s beautiful dry season growth. On the slope a typical emigrant’s house – when ever you see a house like this in Terrabona, several years under construction and with good materials, you can be almost certain that the builder lives and works in the US, and is building the house for his homecoming – or for dear old mom.

At last we found time to visit the Danish solidarity brigade in their village Las Delicias in Pantasma, up north in the Jinotega mountains. Delicia means delight, and the people who named this place were not far from the truth. It really is a delightful valley, Las Delicias.

In Las Delicias most farmers grow beans and corn, a few have cattle. Most of the men are retired soldiers from the Contras. A few years ago, when they decided to form a co-op, they turned to the Sandinista farm workers’ organisation, ATC, to seek advice and support – to me another sign of the relatively succesfull healing process that Nicaragua went through after its civil war. Also a sign of the importance of our ENDEFTI-project, which helped build ATC´s capacity as a leader in the co-op movement in Jinotega.

Through their co-op, the farmers hope to open a pharmacy, to market their beans, and maybe to obtain agricultural loans.

When we arrived, the brigade was holding their Saturday meeting with their families. The work schedule for the last two weeks of work was arranged, and a “women’s day”, hosted by the brigade, was planned.

Also, the board of the co-op proposed that the brigade participate in the construction of a community house for the village and the co-op: The house would give the community a lift, the pharmacy and the bean-store could be situated here, meetings could be held here, and, maybe they could even organize a baby-sitting facility here. Some of the families that still hadn´t had the help of the brigadistas in their fields, offered to donate their days of harvest-labor to building the community house, since the house would benefit everybody. And (of course), the brigade agreed to use the money they collect by sending letters home, and their last week of work, on the community house.

A good meeting, good atmosphere, good village, good brigade.

As can be seen, this year’s brigade is being followed by a documentary- film-crew.

After several weeks in front of the computer it was wonderful again to be out in the country, eating the the dust from the country busses and cattle trucks.

And Jinotega is beautiful. Even a Matagalpa patriot like myself has to admit that….

More info:

• Click on the pictures to see them in large format, and to place them on a map.
• More pictures from brigade 2008 on my Flickr site.
• Previous post about brigade 2008