Nicaragua: La Lucha Sigue

 10/12

Sandino presente

La lucha sigue Reflections on the Misa Comunitaria-Popular en Solidaridad con Nicaragua, Holy Rood Church. Washington Heights. As I enter the church, it all looks so familiar. Strangely, I am confronted by a tall, well-dressed, blonde white woman. “Why are you here?” she asks. I notice she is wearing a yellow wrist band, most likely indicating she’s on some kind of security team. “I am here for the mass, for the presentation,” I say. She eyes me suspiciously, then directs me to a check-in table for vaccination and ID checks.

My friend is with me. He is a former Sandinista militant and diplomat. He tells them that he is here to worship. And that he is here with me, his pastor, so they let him in. We will later learn that two dozen or so other Nicaraguans are being kept outside the church, denied entrance. The police were called by the security people, arrived, and quickly left. I see the ageless Joe Friendly with his long gray hair, baseball cap and video camera. He’s videoed every peace event I’ve been to on the Upper West Side for over 30 years. I guess his presence makes this event official. Sandino el Hijo The mass has been billed as a service for “Libertad, Autonomía & Solidaridad Frente a las Sanciones Estadounidenses. Dejen a Nicaragua vivir en paz.” The service unfolds in predictable ways. I could have been in a Managua “Street Mass” in 1982 with fireworks and a bullhorn- wielding priest or a “People’s Mass” in 1983 with litanies declaring parish martyrs “Presente.” But this Mass was even more partisan than those had been. The first reading was a poem by Rubén Darío. The congregation responded: “Palabra del Señor. ¡Gracias a Dios!” Sandino is referred to as “Tu hijo”; his portrait hangs beneath a draped cross.  As much as I love Darío and Sandino, this was a bit beyond what my Reformed tradition feels comfortable with.

I agree with the pastor’s analysis that: “...imperialist capitalism is the principal enemy of the people and the earth”. But I’m surprised that the “therefore” seems to be unquestioned support for “la lucha”, that is, the current Ortega-Murillo regime as the true embodiment of the Sandinista revolution. I know the chants ....Sandino vive, vive, vive....la lucha sigue, sigue, sigue... I am in the sweltering heat, crammed body to body, in Cine Sandino in Jalapa. We’re on our way to the border to put our bodies between the Contras on the other side of the Honduran border and the Nicaraguans. My friend, Jorge Lara Braud, a liberation theologian of the Reformed tradition, is preaching. The chants ring out. The glint of machetes waved by campesinos flash in the air.

Every time I hear those chants, see Sandino in his Tom Mix cowboy hat, I wish I could be there again. I had been thrilled to stand in solidarity with “The People”, to stand with the Nicaraguan “David” against “Goliath” US. The service proceeds as if nearly 40 years had not passed. I want to sing with full voice: “Adelante, el frente Sandinista” and join in the lucha against “el yanqui, el enemigo de la humanidad." I want to sing: Si Nicaragua venció, El Salvador vencerá y Guatemala prepara ya con fusiles de libertad Somos Centroamérica, una nueva humanidad

But then I remember...Carlos Mejia Godoy and his brother Luis Enrique are in exile; banned from their beloved homeland. The composer of “El himno Sandinista” cannot be in Nicaragua. Denis Moncada When the pastor introduces Denis Moncada, the current foreign minister, my Sandinista friend rises with his Nicaraguan flag. The tall blonde walks over and stands in front of him, seeking to block him. She uses her selfie mode to photograph him. Father Barrios  la bandera When the Eucharist is celebrated, I debate going forward, but ultimately do. The body of Christ is larger than any partisan expression. My friend comes forward too, bringing his flag. He seeks to engage the pastor but is met only with a smile.  When the service is concluded, there is a break to celebrate birthdays and then Moncada speaks again. The classic litany of revolutionary successes: The literacy campaign, the campaign against childhood diarrhea, more healthcare, etc. All 40 years ago. (To make similar claims for their response to COVID would be disingenuous....that has been an unmitigated disaster.) The history of US intervention is recited. And today, he assures us, el pueblo has the right to choose their leaders. (With the seven leading candidates in jail? I ask myself) And the people can voice dissent, continues Moncada. So long as they don’t threaten security.

Just before Moncada speaks, the Nicaraguans waiting outside are finally allowed in. Up to a point. I hold on to the image of a Nicaraguan woman, humbly dressed, seeking to come down the aisle, only to find the tall, blonde protector blocking her way with one of those large golf umbrellas. She moves from side to side as the woman seeks to pass. I’m certain the blonde woman felt that she was “defending the people” (¡No pasarán!) but I found the image to be full of irony. An old white woman, typical of the octogenarian peace activists I know so well, asks the obvious question about CIA designs on Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, and Moncada gives her just the answer she expected. (I love my old West Side Peace Action activist neighbors. When the Soviet Union fell, the joke was there were more Communists on the Upper West Side than Moscow. My church hosted many of their meetings.)

As the Nicaraguans pose questions about political prisoners, they are loudly chanted down. And the priest calls an end to the “dialogue.” When a woman attempts to deliver a letter signed by over 500 solidarity workers, including Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsburg, and the founders of “Witness for Peace”, it is torn up and thrown back in her face.

confrontation on the steps What happened later, outside the church, disturbed me profoundly. The Nicaraguans gathered on the sidewalk; the Ortega supporters looked down on them from the steps. From above, the self-styled progressive Ortega allies, mainly white, with a few Latinx and Afro-Caribbean folks, leaned over and waved a large FSLN flag in the Nicaraguans’ faces.  A white guy in a black sport coat and white cowboy hat with a hammer and sickle pin began to taunt los Nicas. “I’ll pay your way to Nicaragua,” he says. “You hate your own country.” This to people who can’t go back. (Our group includes a just-exiled student. And others whose names are “on lists.”) Another, even louder, white guy yells : “You people rape and murder nuns! Literally!” He is somehow confusing working-class Nicaraguans in 2021 with 1980s Salvadoran death squads. (Yes, I visited the surviving sisters of the murdered nuns in 1982 and shared dinner with them...) “You are self-hating Nicaraguans ....You kill your own people...You hate your own people...You should be ashamed of yourselves.”

The well-dressed white man is yelling at a crowd that includes workers, people who fought in the revolution, a former diplomat, an exiled student, relatives of political prisoners. My friends ask me to speak and as I begin, yet another white guy in a suit begins to shout at me: “Are you here for the CIA? Will you even now dare to denounce the CIA?” One of the Nicaraguan women says “White privilege...” The Orteguista chants go on: “El pueblo unido”... Seriously?

I am shaking. We eventually leave and head to a local Salvadoran restaurant for pupusas. Later we notice a small number of the Orteguistas at an outdoor table, enjoying native food in solidarity, I suppose. I consider going over to attempt a rational conversation but think better of the idea.

I am filled with so many thoughts....

First ...for many on the American left, it is impossible to let go of the myth of what we wanted Nicaragua to be, what we thought Nicaragua had become.

As Bruce Cockburn sang: “In the flash of this moment, you’re the best of what we are...don’t let them stop you now, Nicaragua.” We want to hold on to that and not confront the reality being suffered by Nicaraguan people today.

Perhaps more darkly, for the die-hard Orteguistas, there’s probably a dose of old-fashioned Leninist “end justifies the means” ethics in play here. If to defeat the capitalist imperialist project led by the CIA one must deny the reality of a generation of Nicaraguans and abandon them, so be it. The ultimate triumph will justify such actions.

As one who has lived as part of the Christian left, I saw in the Sandinista revolution a true sign of hope. I loved quoting the mythic story of Father Miguel D’Escoto who, when told by a Cuban that they could see a place for Christians in the revolution he said: “No. In Nicaragua
Christians are the revolution.”

I believed liberation theology was the new reformation. (I have taught liberation theology at Newark School of Theology.) I made nine solidarity trips to Nicaragua in 7 years. I believed...

Learning a more nuanced truth has been hard. I returned to Nicaragua about 10 years ago, and

then again in 2019. What had been a fluid situation in 2011 was now calcified. To cite only a few examples, I found:

• Former Sandinista Foreign Minister and presidential candidate Victor Hugo Tinoco in prison.

• Hero of the Revolution Sergio Ramirez declared an “enemy of the people” with a warrant out for his arrest.

• Los hermanos Mejía Godoy and Katia Cardenal - the voices of the revolution – forced into exile.

• Over 300 dead protestors

I have met with exiled university students whose academic records have been erased with malicious intent, as if they never existed. I have met with mothers of murdered children, and with former revolutionaries, who have had their houses raided by black-and-red bandanna wearing mobs, people who had put their lives on the line defending these colors of the revolution.

I understand more than ever the importance of my Reformed Calvinist conviction that no person, no party or movement can ever fully represent the will of God. All will fall short; all will be held accountable. The challenge has always been to discern how long one can be in critical solidarity before active opposition becomes necessary. That discernment requires study. And courage. Sadly, the truth is, you can start with Jesus’ Gospel of Love and wind up with the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, or with the Doctrine of Discovery and the Salem witch trials or

believing that Donald Trump is the second coming and that vaccinations are the Mark of the Beast. You start with Marx’ passionate regard for the well-being of humanity and wind up with Khmer Rouge genocide and Sendero Luminoso and well-dressed white guys yelling at Nicaraguans,  the “everyday people” as Sly said. Ultimately, I find myself with my old compañeros, Miguel Unamuno and Ignazio Silone. Unamuno, the chancellor of Salamanca University, responding to the chants of “Viva la muerte” in the Spanish Civil War. Ignazio Silone, author of “Bread and Wine”. Both antifascist, anticapitalist, Catholic, existentialist, humanist Christians. Trying to deal with the fickle paradox of political reality. That is where I am. I can only be a Christian, a follower of the path of Jesus as I perceive it, seeking a more just, humane, inclusive, and sustainable world. The people of Nicaragua have suffered long and hard, forced to live through the same realities over and over and over again. But they are persistent. A movement is growing that seeks to forge alliances between political prisoner support groups throughout the region and develop an ongoing contextual theological exegesis of their struggle to rebuild spiritual resilience.

In the 80s, the world still was trapped in an East/West, Left/Right paradigm. Today it is authoritarian autocracy versus participatory democracy. We need to understand that shift and how to respond. The sound of angry shouts still rings in my ears....  for Nicaragua The people of Nicaragua will live.....

witness