Solidaridad

I have found prison to be a healthy place to be.

I´d rather be in prison than be a lobbyist.

Though it can be chained, the truth cannot be silenced.

You cannot teach democracy behind barbed wires and the barrel of a gun.

Here was some of the lightly-drizzled wisdom shared on Sunday in Managua by Father Roy Bourgeois, a Vietnam vet who founded the world´s most influential anti-military movement, the School of the Americas Watch.
On Saturday, a fellow JV announced to me that Fr Roy was in Nicaragua with an SOAW delegation, aiming to persuade President Daniel Ortega to pull his troops out of training at Ft. Benning Georgia, the school whose graduates have gone on to murder Archbishop Oscar Romero, the four churchwomen in El Salvador, Sandino, the El Salvador Jesuits, and to lead oppressive, US-interest regimes throughout Latin America.

Needless to say, I followed him around.

I first caught him at 14th of September, a Christian Base Community (CBC) where I attend Sunday celebrations. Actually, he caught me. I showed up to 14Sept as usual, ready to tell the community about FrRoy´s 2pm talk at the North American cultural center in Managua, and then two large white vans pulled up outside. Many important-looking, kind-faced Estadounidenses rolled out with cameras and artisan garb. I'd never seen him before, but for his infamous searching laser blue eyes, I recognized Fr. Roy bringing up the rear. He was wearing a Romero t-shirt. With a few holes in it.
The CBC turned Sunday´s celebration into a call for justice and a dialogue with the delegation. ¨We have come, among other things, bringing an apology,¨ shared Fr Roy. ¨For countless years of suffering that our country has caused yours. We walk amid you humbly and hoping to learn.¨
Don Rafael, one of the community´s founders, monitored the encounter. ¨We´ve had good gringos in our midst before,¨ he said, glancing at me with a chuckle, ¨but we want to thank you for being in solidarity with us. May we work together to live the Gospel.¨
After a quick lunch at home, I headed to Casa Ben Linder, Managua´s North American culture house, where Father Roy shared some of his story. He has a softspoken voice, strained by past and present anger, and a tired angel-face.
A navy veteran who received the Purple Heart, Fr Roy´s true conversion came when he became a Maryknoll missionary in Bolivia. He witnessed firsthand the environmental, social, and psychological effects when the US treats Latin America as its backyard.
He first exercised civil disobedience at Fort Benning when he learned the US was using the base to train Salvadorans in war tactics, the same Salvadorans whose party had murdered Oscar Romero. Dressed as high-ranking officers, Fr Roy and his companions infiltrated the base with a boombox, climbed a tree at night, and played Romero´s final sermon into the barracks. It ends, ¨Stop the repression!¨
¨Needless to say,¨ Roy wisecracked, ¨they weren´t as amused by our efforts as we were.¨ The group spent a year and a half in prison, writing hundreds of letters to build up support for what would become the SOAW. Every year in November, thousands of protesters from all over the world gather outside Ft. Benning for a solidarity march and vigil. It takes three solemn hours for the throng to sing the name of every known victim of the School of the Americas.

My time in Nicaragua (at least for this round) is wrapping up. I leave mid-December. When this reality has hit my heart, I feel stripped from my core. I feel I will be leaving my soul in this country, and headed back to a place where the majority don´t (and say they can´t) live with their eyes and hearts wide open.
But Fr Roy´s visit reminded me that no matter where I go, I am not alone. There are people with me, people better than me. People who are willing not only to risk their comfort, but their liberty and their very lives, for the good of the most oppressed.

Richard´s Story: A Fourth of July Reflection

Today, as always, I finish mopping the hallway that floods during rainy season and dusting our humble collection, and I sit down to prepare a game for reader´s club. As soon as I sit down, I hear Richard tumble through the front door. ¨CHELA!¨(White girl) he announces, and three shushes of disapproval follow him as he shuffles to the table where I pretend to be very focused. He knows full well of the library´s low voices rule, and decides full well to violate it every day.


¨Hola, Richard,¨ I smile, noticing scars he has from his ear and under his eye, and the glaring gap between his two mustard front teeth. I decide to give him my time for a few minutes, though I always struggle between paying attention to kids and the tasks that keep the library functioning. ¨Como estás?¨

Richard has never been the politest kid. He is barely nine, but cat calls me from corners, and loves screaming GRINGA or CHELA everytime I pass his house. Though I know nothing of his family, I assume he has a hard home life. There are some kids with hard home lives who are still angels. I would not use this word to describe Richard. I feel like every moment he´s about to lift my skirt or tear a book to shreds.

This morning he wastes no time starting a fascinating conversation. ¨Is it true that you´re a gringa?¨ The direct way he asks the question demands my immediate presence. ¨Gringa¨ is, to many Nicaraguans, a derogatory term for someone from the United States, referring to the ¨green¨camoflauge of US troops, who have never been the nicest people to invade Nicaragua.

¨It´s true,¨ I answer, resolved to ask him not to call me that word any more. ¨What do you think of that?¨

¨Is it true that gringos are bad?¨

I blink into his unblinking eyes. I am suddenly aware that this eight-year-old may know more about the history of his country than I supposed.

¨Some of them are. Do you think I am?¨

¨No, you´re not. But they are. Mi papa has a video where they kill Sandino. And they kill a lot of children like me. So they´re bad.¨

Richard has taken my breath away. The United States did fund the dictatorship that led to Sandino´s assassination. And in the 30s, 40s, and 80s, US troops did commit atrocities against civilians, even children, who stood up to their regime. This still happens around the world.

I know this. I just never expected that an eight-year-old Nicaraguan would.

He continued spouting history, of the Battle of San Jacinto, where Nicaraguans finally defeated the despot William Walker, a gringo who had declared himself president of Nicaragua, and of Somoza, and of the current favored politically party, the Sandinistas, who historically opposed external meddling. My mouth and eyes widened steadily.

¨Richard,¨ I gush. ¨You´re right.It´s sad. Gringos did kill many people. There are many who are very, very bad.¨

¨But you´re not bad, chela, right?¨

¨I don´t think so, Richard. What do you think?¨

¨What´s your name?¨

¨Heather.¨

(He makes the characteristically confused face). ¨Je-ders. Like that?¨

¨Yes. Very good,¨ I giggle.

¨Can I call you that now, chela? Jeders?¨

¨I would love you to call me that, Richard.¨

He takes off pirhouetting through the library, oblivious (or perhaps not) of our stern shushing. As I´m leaving the project for lunch, I hear him call at me through the gap in a tin fence. ¨Gringos are bad! Gringos are bad!¨
My blood begins to churn more quickly, and then I hear him say, ¨But you´re not, Jeders.¨

My apologies for the gap in blogging. If you don´t care to hear my reasons, which actually do explain a lot of how I´m doing lately, you can skip this paragraph. Firstly, I like to think that with six months left in Nicaragua, I´m more involved in the reality here, and less connected to computers. I also limit my time online and on computers because it helps me lead a simpler, more intentional lifestyle. But I´ve also not blogged recently because I´ve been in a whirlwind of thoughts about privilege, race, and my role here. Some day I´d like to be able to express these questions in a precise blog.

                But because I´m still too ¨in it¨ to blog about it, for now, here are some moments of privilege that have hit me recently. Moments like these, and many more, are transforming me in Nicaragua.

• When I return in December, I´ll be thinking, ¨How wonderful were those two years with the poor of El Recreo.¨ But I´ll be saying that while surrounded in comfort. I don´t think the majority of my friends here would say, ¨Oh, how wonderful my whole life in El Recreo.¨ Would I say that if I knew I´d be spending the rest of my life here?
• I made friends with an English-speaking 27-year-old, a kind, gentle young man. He is very different from the aggressive, sexually charged young men I encounter on a daily basis. Every day I pass his house on the way to work and see him with his mother. When I see them, both of them leap to their feet and invite me in. They´ve also invited me to a wedding and a quinceañera. His mother even shoves him towards me when we´re together. Yes, we´re friends now, and I am grateful for our times together. But what was the fundamental reason for the way they´re treating me? The color of my skin. He would not have sought me out otherwise.

...The truth is that I will never be Nicaraguan. I will never be fully received. I will never experience the truth of this poetic fire of a place, because my view is tainted by the culture that has formed me...

I say that I have come to unlearn some of what I grew up around. That is my heartfelt intention. Consumerism. Individualism. Pride. Comfort. As a JV I supposedly try to leave those things behind and follow people who live more in line with the Gospel. But by spending thousands of dollars to fly here and be among these people, I am merely perpetuating the privileges I have tried to leave behind? Is my presence like that of any other rich white person amid less rich non-white people, regardless of my intentions? By being here, am I unintentionally zapping Nicaraguans of their culture (at least what foreign invaders have left of it)? Perhaps the most harmful question that occurs to me is, what should I be doing instead?

I approached Zach with some of these questions. What am I doing here? Should I even be here? What is my role here?

¨No me importa,¨ he said. (It doesn´t matter to me). ¨Lo que me importa es que estés.¨ (What matters is that you are here)

I chuckled, took a deep breath, and reflected on this. Sometimes, I need to let go of spiraled intellectual baggage, and just be in Nicaragua. After my deep breath, Zach said, ¨pues, almorcemos?¨ (Well, can we go eat lunch now?)

Always, Zach. Well, at least til December.

Yo Soy Elias

A few months ago I wrote about the life of a girl from El Recreo from her own eyes (see ¨Me Llamo Katerín¨), in the style of Angela´s Ashes.

Well, lately another boy (teen) at the library is tugging at my heartstrings lately. His name is Elias. He´s very thin and very poor and very determined. I will let him explain the rest...

Yo soy Elias. I think I´m 13 years old, but I don´t know because we don´t celebrate my birthday. I love soccer. I love mi mamá, although I don´t think she loves me sometimes. I have two sisters and a brother whose tongue hangs out the side of his mouth and he can´t speak so he can´t leave the house and mi mama calls him Mudito (Little Deaf One). I don´t like my sisters but I have to take care of them because mamá doesn´t.

When I finish with school in the morning, I go look for women with big bags. I offer to carry for them and sometimes they pay me. Then I can afford lunch. Or I pick up plastic bottles near the basketball court and sell them to recyclers for a few reales. Sometimes I buy myself una coca-cola. Once I bought mamá an ice cream, but she yelled at me for wasting money, so I don´t do that anymore.

After looking for money I go to the library to do homework. It´s so boring and I don´t see why I have to copy pages and pages of text books into my notebook. I don´t know why I need to learn if some day I´m just going to wind up a vago like mi papá. That´s what mamá says anyway.

I finish homework as fast as possible so I can do something more fun. Like soccer with the boys on the field. But sometimes there aren´t any games going on because someone has stolen the ball, so I hang out in the library.

The gringa librarian´s mom came to Nicaragua and made Valentine´s Day Cards with us. I don´t have friends or a girlfriend so I didn´t care about them, but I made one anyway because they had glitter pens and salvaje (savage cool) paper. But when I was going to leave the gringa approached me and told me that they were missing glitter pens.

I have taken things from the library before. One time I took a pencil. They have so many and I didn´t have one in the house. But I didn´t take the glitter pens. So I lifted up my shirt and emptied my pockets so she could see. She stared at my tattered jeans and the plastic bag I use to hold them up around my waist. Then she said sorry and let me go. Whatever.

I went back to the library a couple days ago for game day. They let us play games on Fridays. Most of them are missing pieces and I don´t know how to play the rest, but it´s something to do, so I go. I was going to borrow Monopoly but I saw they had new books on top of the cabinet. I don´t usually touch books, but one of them was about the 2010 World Cup. ¨SALVAJE!¨ I yelled. Then I forgot the gringa´s strict rules about voices in the library. She came up to me shushing but was smiling. She told me I could read it. I didn´t know we were allowed to touch the books.

I´ve never read a book for fun, but this was different. They had player bios and team stats. Then Melvin saw me reading it and came and joined me to read the Brazil chapter. I guess we forgot what time it was and the gringa never came to tell us to lower our voices because when she tapped us on the shoulder it was time to close the library. She was still smiling.

I still don´t like books. But if they´re about soccer, I guess they´re okay. Maybe I´ll go back to the library tomorrow. And learn the gringa´s name. And I wonder if they ever found those glitter pens.

Elias (left) and Melvin, huddled over ¨A Todo Fútbol,¨ a book donated by a family friend. One of my favorite moments at the library in El Recreo.

The Culture Virus

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Warning. I’m about to bash my country’s government’s atrocities in Latin America. Surprise!

When my friend Zach first met me, he thought I was twenty-eight. At first I thought it was appearance-related. Due to my mature face, figure, and demeanor, I have been called my father’s wife or sister more times than I can count. But Zach assured me my physical and emotional maturity weren’t the deciding factors. “Es que, all of you estadounidenses (people from the United States) confuse me. You seem much older than you are.” I wondered what nationality could have to do with maturity, so I asked for clarification.

“It’s like Americans are more…developed? Educated? Like you’ve reached a higher, wiser way of being.”

RED FLAG. Bueno, the US is responsible for a lot of good things. Like an escape from famine and religious and political persecution. And jazz music. And big dreams. But let’s face it. The way we have dominated the world doesn’t work. If you don’t agree with that, you should stop reading this blog post. But my argument is that Zach is very mistaken.

Perhaps mistaken is the wrong word. Brainwashed might be appropriate. For as long as I’ve known him, Zach has exhibited symptoms of “internalized oppression.” I first learned about it in my post-colonial literature class and comprehend it more fully thanks to my new favorite light reading material, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paolo Freire, the father of popular education. In this process, by which imperialist societies dominate developing countries, “the invaders (in this case, the United States) penetrate the cultural context of another group (Nicaraguans) in disrespect of the latter’s potentialities; they impose their own view of the world upon those they invade.”

For those whom colonial studies are completely foreign, I will explain the example of internalized oppression that is applicable to this blog—though examples are plentiful (the UK to the Americas, France to Lebanon, Russia to Cuba). The US has occupied Nicaragua since the 1700s—with its troops, dictators, and more subtly, its culture. Thanks to years of invasion, Nicaraguans like Zach perceive their invaders as superior. When Zach thinks of the States, instead of seeing the military bully who funded a war against the people’s revolution in the 80s and 90s (read about that here), an overspending, neoliberal monster, he thinks of shiny skyscrapers and limitless opportunity. But at what cost? As cell phones, designers, and consumerism invade, traditional Nicaraguan values of family, simplicity, and art are lost.

Zach loves made-in-China Hollister and American Eagle. He listens to Justin Bieber and the Jonas Brothers. He clings to catchy English phrases like candy. Although he hates it, he’s studying accounting because he thinks it will help him find a job that will get him enough money to move out of El Recreo neighborhood and support a family. A noble quest that I have no right to judge. But I can’t help wondering whether he’s pursuing happiness, or the unattainable, unsustainable “American dream” of white picket fences and a mini-van, which he must see in all those glossy magazines and on the Disney Channel. Did I mention he can't afford a good education, but prioritizes getting the Disney Channel?

Interesting, too, is the fact that I am doing exactly the opposite of what he’s doing, I’m an Estadounidense who chose to leave suburbia for El Recreo, a barrio of tin houses, trash-lined river beds, and drug sales. I am an upper-middle class North American who hopes never to purchase meat, own a microwave, or buy new made-in-China clothing ever again (yay thrift stores!). My habits confuse him. What’s wrong with her, he must think. But I also hope it occurs to him to think, what’s right? He’s certainly done the same for me.