Cumplirle al Pueblo es Cumplirle a Dios

Within a week I will complete one year of living in Nicaragua, and four new Jesuit Volunteers will arrive to begin their two years here. Life is quite hectic. Four of my six community mates will be returning home to the U.S. in mid December, Jenna and I will coordinate orientation activities for the new volunteers, and work will be filled with cultural celebrations and end-of-the-year evaluations. The past few months have had their ups and downs, and life here has continued to be challenging, stressful, and rewarding all at the same time.

Los Bancos de Confianza

Life in the microlending banks at the Project in El Recreo continues to be a wonderful experience. I am assuming more responsibilities and integrating myself into the bank team, and many of the women in the banks are very warm and welcoming to me. Often on house visits the women gift me fresco (juice) and helado (popsicles in a bag). Most of the women have a plethora of adorable grandchildren running around their houses, so while I miss my former students a lot the banks serve as a good opportunity for playing with kids! The emotional burden of working in the banks, however, is quite heavy. These women are exceptionally impoverished and always teeter on the brink of health and economic crises. Many of the men in their lives either abandoned them with many children to care for, or they are still around but spend all the money on booze and are abusive to the women and their children. Above all I am very grateful to be a male figure in the lives of these women that seeks to protect and empower them as opposed to violate and dehumanize them.

“Poder para el Pueblo”, “Todos Contra Ortega”

"Power to the people", "Everyone Against Ortega". These are the slogans of the two opposing parties in Managua’s recent mayoral elections, posted on billboards at least every 100 yards on Managua’s main roads. The election was between the Sandinistas (The leftist ruling party of President Ortega) and the PLC (the right-wing opposition). For weeks leading up to the elections streets were blocked off with demonstrations, mostly pro Sandinista. Many people who dislike President Ortega and his tendencies of consolidating power and slowly moving Nicaragua in the direction of a dictatorship reluctantly unified and supported the PLC opposition candidate. Pre-election propaganda was suffocating, and accusations of electoral fraud were made weeks before the election even happened. The Sandinistas control the Electoral Commission, the Supreme Court, and most election observers and ballot counters were Sandinista supporters, so a fraudulent Sandinista victory was suspected from the beginning.
It turned out that the Sandinista mayoral candidate (a former boxing champion with a middle-school education) defeated the PLC candidate (a Harvard-educated businessman) by a 52% to 46% margin. The result was heavily disputed as ballots were presumed to be miscounted and many were found in the trash. Sandinista supporters took to the streets to “defend the vote”, and PLC supporters took the streets to demand a recount. The situation quickly became depressing. Fights broke out between demonstrators and people were beaten and stabbed to death, police violently cracked down on protestors, journalists were assaulted, major intersections were blocked off, cars were set on fire, etc. Sandinista caravans were a common sight; 10 or 15 school busses packed with people waving their party flags out the window on their way to the major intersections where the demonstrations were held. The political demonstrations and violence continued for 2 weeks until a recount produced the same result. The Sandinistas then held a huge party in the streets and everything finally died down. Now the boxing champion and protégé of President Ortega is the next mayor of the capital, and a lot of Nicaraguans are deeply concerned about their country’s deteriorating democracy and propensity toward violence.

Barrio El Recreo

El Recreo has seen a disturbing rise in violence and despair, pretty much proportionally to that of the rest of Managua. Surprise police drug raids happen way too often within a one block radius of the Project, and gang violence is getting a little out of control. Last weekend was one of the worst in years according to my coworkers who live in the neighborhood. They said that you couldn’t sleep Friday or Saturday night because of the noise of machetes scraping pavement, yelling, and gunshots. Two youth were killed over the weekend from machete and gunshot wounds, and a number of others wounded. The father of one of my former students was hospitalized with machete wounds, and one of the boys killed was the next door neighbor of my coworker. The gangs in El Recreo are territorial, and when pandilleros from El Recreo Sur cross the road into El Recreo Norte, 20 year old boys machete each other to death. The nuns in El Recreo said that the saddest part of it all was that 10 years ago a lot of these gang members frequented the Project. The same kids that went to class together in the morning and sat next to each other during lunch at the Project are all of the sudden arch enemies because they live 3 blocks apart. Lucky for the three of us Jesuit Volunteers who work at the Project, the violence has mostly been on weekend nights between gang members, so we’ve been immune because we’re never in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the senselessness and brutality of young men with nothing to do but drink and harass people does concern me. As Dona Aura (the cook in the Comedor) put it, if good people in El Recreo back down because of fear, then violence and recklessness take over. What the Project offers, she says, is an alternative to that violence for the women and children of El Recreo. Hopefully the Project can teach kids the basic values of caring for one another and empower women to stand up against the violence in their homes.

JVI Staff in Town

Well, we Jesuit Volunteers had the pleasure recently of receiving our Program Coordinator, the Executive Director of JVI, and the President of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps here for a couple weeks. We had a 5 day end-of-the-year retreat with our Program Coordinator Kristen in which we stayed in a freezing, beautiful mountain village and reflected on our last year together. It was kind of a check in on cultural immersion, simple living, social justice, and community life. Megan and Kevin, the respective directors of JVI and JVC then came down to check out what we do here and spend some time in all of our work sites. It was wonderful to get some encouragement and support and share our lives and experiences here with the people who do all the office work and coordination necessary for us to do what we do here in Nicaragua.

Happy Thanksgiving, and thanks for reading!

Peace and Love,
Michael







Me with Kevin (President of JVC), Kristen (JVI Program Coordinator), and Megan (Exec. Director of JVI), in the Casa de la Mujer during their visit to the banks in El Recreo.


Me and Maria Hernandez during a weekly bank meeting with the women. Myself and the other women sitting down are "cobrando", collecting the weekly payments from the women and putting some of their money into savings.


One of our final exercises during our retreat was to prepare a sort of prayer/reflection for the four volunteers who will be returning to the states in a few weeks. We set up a little altar which we used to express hopes and fears for the major changes coming up.


Beautiful sunset and view of the countryide and volcanoes in the distance during our retreat.