Viva la revolución sandinista

From my earliest teens I have had an interest in current affairs. But my curiosity was not satisfied by news reports in the Daily Mirror, which I bought regularly for Dad before going to school, so sometimes I told him that the Mirror had sold out and took home the Guardian or Independent instead. Dad didn’t take long to discover my deception and from then onward I was under strict orders to return home with the Mirror or nothing at all.

As my interest in the news continued, I became aware of how little I knew about international affairs and began to feel embarrassed at my ignorance. When asked at work about my allegiances, I used to claim I was “apolitical”, which embarrasses me even more today. However, all this changed when, at age of 19, I joined a sociology A level evening class in Rochdale technical college. The teacher, Dave Bartlett*, gave out reading material to help students understand what was happening in the wider world from a distinct political perspective: Marxist. I can’t recall whether Mr Bartlett was a Marxist himself, but I became fascinated by this very different political philosophy. After that course, the lens through which I viewed political developments changed decisively. Watching the nine o’clock news, I became aware that the reports were riddled with lies and deception, and I could not comprehend how I had not been aware of it before.

Local politics seemed dreary to me, so I began to focus more closely on international events as a more vibrant alternative. Developments in Chile caught my attention because I’d just read Dr Sheila Cassidy’s** book about her ordeal at the hands of the right-wing junta in that country. The junta was led by General Pinochet, a brutal dictator who ordered that any activists with leftist leanings be detained, tortured, and frequently murdered. Joining the Community Party, then, seemed like the right thing to do once I started university. I chose sociology as my major, not English literature as I’d originally planned, because I believed it could offer the means to deepen and expand my interest in politics.

That was when the socialist revolution in Nicaragua, led by the FSLN,*** aka the Sandinista National Liberation Front, took place… just two years before I started university. In response, the US government, with the connivance of British and other so-called democracies around the world, mounted a strong opposition to the revolutionaries who had taken power from yet another right-wing dictator, Anastasio Somoza. The more I learned, the more passionate I became about the revolution and its potential, particularly in the areas of health, education, and self-determination. My views were commonplace in Barcelona, where I was working as a teacher after graduating, and it wasn’t long before a few of us English teachers set up a new group to support the Sandinistas, Foreign Workers in Solidarity with Nicaragua. After a couple of years, I decided that I wanted to support the Sandinistas in a more tangible way… by travelling to Nicaragua to be part of the revolution. This was to be the most intense learning curve of my life, but, of course, I didn’t know that then.

At the end of June 1987, I flew from Madrid to Augusto Cesar Sandino international airport in Managua via Havana in Cuba. Quite a few Spanish brigadistas were on the same flight and we got to know each other a little better when we reached our hotel in Havana. It was a one night stopover, to get some sleep and rest before boarding the Managua-bound flight in the morning. Most of the brigadistas went to the hotel swimming pool, while the remainder of us decided to go for a stroll in the area. That stroll alerted me to the poverty experienced on the island. Paint was peeling off the façades of otherwise beautiful colonial era buildings, hotels included, buses roared and wheezed past leaving clouds of diesel fumes hanging in the air, and people were clearly having to “make do” with unsuitable clothes and shoes imported from Russia. Never had I witnessed such poverty.

The following day, we boarded our flight to Nicaragua. It was a relatively short journey over the stunning seascape of the Caribbean and, as we fastened our seatbelts in readiness to land, I looked out of the window; what surprised me was I could not see any signs of a metropolis beneath us. Managua seemed to have more open spaces than any other capital city I had visited. I knew there had been a devastating earthquake in 1972, but I’d presumed that repairs had been carried out since then, and normal life had resumed. This was the first of many presumptions I made that were wholly wrong. I was about to learn that poverty-stricken countries are unable to recover from such natural disasters without significant aid and support.

Poverty, indeed, misery, was at the root of almost everything I learned, everything that tested me, in Nicaragua over the following weeks.

We landed in Augusto Cesar Sandino international airport, and three hours later the pick-up truck arrived to ferry us to our hostel in the city. As I waited, I noticed that many people were wandering around the airport with plastic carrier bags full of cash, notes of the national currency, the córdoba. Such was the rate of inflation that a stack of notes would barely be enough to buy a bag of rice. The owners of these wads of notes were in the airport search of foreigners, like us, willing to exchange for dollars at a more favourable rate than banks were offering. None of us volunteered to exchange because we had been warned to avoid the black market before we left Madrid. Other locals were in the airport to escape the heat outside, which was stifling, but we were not aware of that until we left the air-conditioned building. When we did, we walked into what felt like a “wall” of heat and humidity. 

The pick-up vehicle that collected us from the airport parked outside the Arlen Siu hostel, where we had been allocated beds for the evening. The Arlen Siu was in a middle-class suburb with lots of green leafy plants and banyan trees growing throughout the neighbourhood. The instant we pulled up, a tropical downpour began and by the time we grabbed our luggage and raced into the hostel, we were soaked. The contrast between the darkness outside, where there no streetlamps, and the fluorescent lighting in the hostel was startling. When my eyes had adjusted to the difference, I began to make sense of the scene that greeted me; it was unlike anything I’d encountered before.

In front of me was a broad semicircle of deckchairs and sun loungers, arranged around a huge colour television. Young men and women, mostly men though, were absorbed in a television programme. In the space between the screen and the audience were three buckets, strategically placed to catch the deluge coming in through holes in the roof. The scene was anachronistic: a modern television set and yet there was water pouring in through holes in the roof. Except for the buckets, nobody was doing anything about it and nobody seemed worried. Clearly, Nicaraguans were very different to anyone I had met before, They appeared to be resigned to the destitution that marked their lives.

The television continued to occupy its audience while a group of us watched them watching their soap opera. There was no mention of food even though we were starving.  Eventually, one of the Spanish group asked if they could help us and we were pointed in the direction of our bunkbeds.. As we were going to be driven up north, to Estelí, the following day, it made no sense to unpack anything except nightwear. In any case, there was no storage space so we placed our rucksacks etc., under the bunkbeds. That was when I wandered into the bathroom, as I habitually do before getting into bed. When I approached the toilet I saw the seat had become a sort of ringroad for mini cockroaches, also known as alemanes (Germans). I was appalled! Even more so when they didn’t flee, so I had to hover over the seat and hope that none of them made their way into my underwear. Between starvation, heat, transport problems, floods and cockroaches, my introduction to the challenges of daily life in the developing world was complete for Day 1.

In spite of utter exhaustion, I slept very little that night. The journey from Barcelona, plus PTSD and the stress of trying to adapt to this new situation had detonated my anxiety and insomnia. My entire system had gone into overload just as my “big adventure” had begun. Still, there was nothing to be done except put up with it as best I could. So it was that after 3 nights of little or no sleep I clambered on board the pick-up truck taking us to Estelí in the north, the town nearest to the Honduran border, where the counterrevolutionaries, aka the contra, were based.

Three hours later, we arrived in Estelí, which was to be our base for the next two months. Roads and footpaths in the town were not tarmacked, but most people seemed to have no problem making their way through the mud. I looked down at my brand new brilliant white trainers and wondered why I had bought them especially for my summer in Nicaragua. Not only because of their unsuitability for muddy roads and fields, but because they were drawing the attention of dirt-poor farmworkers who had been condemned to wear plastic sandals or worn out sneakers. I was ashamed of my apparent oppulence.

II

We arrived at our destination: a farm at the end of the high street. But what happened in the following few minutes made me want to scramble back into the pickup and return to the Arlen Siu hostel. We were guided into the barn where straw mattresses, aka our beds, were stacked up in the corner. One by one, we laid the mattresses on the floor and surveyed the scene: it was dire. Dust, straw, spiders’ webs, clumps of soil, sacks of various sizes, stuffed with I know-not-what, lay in the corners where we had shoved them so that we could arrange our mattresses in a row. Each mattress lay at right angles to a long wooden bench stretching the length of the barn. It was to serve as our dressing table, chest of drawers and wardrobe for the two months we were going to live and work in Estelí.

I paused for reflective thought, possibly for the first time since I had landed in Nicaragua. What was I doing with this brigade of Spanish volunteers? I was supposed to be a volunteer in a project to improve the language skills of primary school teachers of English. I was to give them lessons that would improve their ability so that they could pass on these skills to their pupils. How had I ended up with these people in Estelí? This is the situation in which I learned a new word in Spanish: desmadre: or chaos. Nobody seemed to know what was happening from one moment to the next, never mind one day to the next. Anyway, since I had arrived in Estelí, I decided to make myself useful by joining in the Spanish brigade..

This meant participating in agricultural work the following day. Very early that morning, the roosters woke me and a few of the other brigadistas. I pulled on my dazzlingly white trainers and inquired about breakfast; on being informed it was a plate of plain boiled rice my spirits sank even further. Rice could only worsen my chronic constipation, so I reached for a cup of All Bran that I’d started to eat the night before. I dug my spoon in and something moved amongst the bran: an enormous cockroach was feasting on my breakfast. I was revolted, so I threw the cup and its contents into the nearby patch of weeds. What was I going to eat on my “sojourn” in Nicaragua?

As time went by, I managed to reach an accommodation between what was available to eat in Estelí and my vegetarianism and constipation. Mostly, this involved sneaking off to vegetable stalls and buying mango or avocado to eat in a quiet corner of the farm. By this stage I’d made a few friends among the Spanish brigadistas and one of them, Cristina, came with me on these forays for food. The secrecy was really an act of diplomacy because the Nicaraguan farmworkers who toiled alongside us in the fields earned a daily rate that was less than the cost of a mango. Those of us who ate a couple of mangoes and an avocado, plus a beer in the evenings, were spending at least three times what they earned in one day.

Poor diet was one of the factors that made me consider returning to Barcelona early. My struggle to carry on working in the fields, and the difficulties of living with 12 other people in the barn were beyond what I was capable of enduring. Every night cockroaches crawled over us as we lay on our mattresses and there was nothing we could do about it. We all used a single tap to shower, while keeping an eye on what might be crawling around our bare feet. My anxiety levels were higher than ever and they refused to calm down. At night, if I needed to use the toilet I headed to the vegetable plot outside the barn because there was no light in the filthy toilet and I saw, or I imagined I saw, sinister movements in the inky blackness.

The harsh living conditions were testing all of us and tempers amongst brigade members sometimes frayed, especially where Cristina and I were concerned. Both of us were insomniacs and we found labouring in the fields very challenging, mainly because we were getting little or no sleep. On top of that was the fierce heat of the sun, which made it impossible to work after 10.00 in the morning. Our task in the fields was to weed the black bean crop, but even after a week I was so exhausted that I still found it difficult to distinguish between the bean shoots and the weeds. So, I welcomed the decision to move us into the tobacco barns out of the pitiless glare of the midday sun.

If working in the bean field was one kind of hell for me, then the tobacco barns turned out to be another. Our job was to pack tobacco leaves handed down to us by children, mostly boys, who agilely moved from beam to beam above our heads in the barn, passing down the laths from which we removed the tobacco leaves. I worked with Cristina, but more than likely I slowed her down because I was squeamish about being handed the laths, given that cockroaches roamed freely among the leaves. It was impossible to be handed the lath and remove the tobacco leaves without being invaded by the cockroaches that inhabited it. I hated it and dreaded work in the tobacco barn as by now, I preferred the fields.

My squeamishness and apparent lack of commitment to “the revolution” had not gone unnoticed among the brigade and a few of them were critical of me, and Cristina as well. To those around me, I must have seemed like a spoiled brat, fussy about what I ate, unhappy about where I slept and picky about the nature of my contribution to the revolution. I honestly cannot blame them and didn’t defend myself when the criticisms started. A few of the others were also having a terrible time, but they were not singled out for criticism, as I was. The truth of the matter was that PTSD was making it impossible for me to adapt to the unforgiving conditions of life in rural Nicaragua. Fleas in the beds, flying cockroaches, crawling cockroaches, poisonous toads in the barn, no decent shower, and rats…

It was the rats that finished me off. A couple of weeks into our time in Estelí, the brigade decided that, for the sake of our health, we should clean the barn. Mattresses were first. In pairs we carried each one outside and gave it a sturdy beating to remove insects. That was when a nest of baby rats, bald, pink and shivering with fear, fell out of my mattress. I froze in horror at what I was seeing. And so did those around me. One of them, an agricultural worker from the south of Spain, picked up a brick, placed it on the nest, and slammed his boot down on it with some force. I swore and rushed off before he lifted the brick to expose the grotesque mess under it.

A week after this incident, a large rally was held in Matagalpa. Our brigade and many other foreign brigades were encouraged to participate in it. Public transport had to be supplemented by whatever means were available, so a lorry was commissioned to help out. Everyone piled in the back, supposing it would be cooler than riding in the cab, and that is where Cristina and I went to be a bit more comfortable. The journey took a couple of hours, mostly along bumpy roads, so I was glad to be on a seat, as opposed to being jolted around in the back, like cattle. Suddenly, without warning, there was a powerful downpour and our comrades in the back were fully exposed to it. Each and every one of them got soaked. I foolishly smiled and waved to them from the comfort of the cab, but my joke was perceived as taunting, which I suppose it was. They were not in the mood for mirth: things had turned very sour indeed.

When we finally reached our destination, several of our comrades vented their anger on Cristina and me. We were going to ride in the back on the return journey, “make no mistake about that” was the warning. It repeated itself in my head throughout the rally, so much so that I could barely concentrate on what the speakers were saying. Afterwards, there was time to relax before climbing into the back of the lorry and during that time we struck up a friendship with some Norwegians who, on learning about our plight and sympathising, gave us some of their waterproof gear, which was top quality, designed and made to withstand even tropical downpours, we noted with satisfaction. In the event, we didn’t need these generous gifts because it didn’t rain at all on the journey back to Estelí. Again, certain brigadistas were not amused at all.

Cristina and I decided that we were wasting our time in the brigade and we agreed that the most sensible course of action was to return home via Cuba. So it was that we tucked our money and passports away safely and boarded the bus for Managua. Changing our tickets to include a two-week sojourn in Cuba was not straight forward, but we managed to do it. That would leave us some time to explore other parts of Nicaragua after we had formally left the brigade. That was when the unthinkable happened on a local bus in Managua. My money and passport were stolen.

Playing the incident back in slow motion this is what happened. A woman on the crowded bus pushed up against me in a way that made me suspicious, so I moved away from her while clutching my bag even closer to me. A couple of stops later, the bus pulled over to let people off and she took advantage of the doors being open to lunge at me and disappear into the crowd with my money and passport. It all happened so fast that there was little I could do to prevent her from robbing me once she had targeted me. Replacing my passport and obtaining more money took 3 weeks of visiting airline offices and the British embassy, which was not at all helpful, but that was unsurprising given the UK government’s hostile policy in relation to the Sandinistas.

Minus my passport and money, I returned to Estelí with Cristina to work until the end of the month and gather up my belongings. Some members of the brigade couldn’t hide their smirks when they discovered what had happened to me. Others were sympathetic, and some even gave me some money to help out. I’d hit rock bottom. Nothing that occurred to me in those weeks was made any easier by the fact that my glasses had fallen off and the lenses smashed. This was in the days when real glass was used, not durable plastic. My eyesight was poor, around – 6 in each eye, so from then on I lived in a world that I could only squint at. In moments of desperation, I would hold up a piece of the cracked lens and peer through it, through what was only slightly larger than a sliver of glass.

A few days later, we were having black beans and rice for lunch when the farm manager tapped me on the shoulder to inform me that someone from the ministry of education (MINED) wanted to talk to me. A woman parked outside the front of the farm in a jeep wearing an olive green uniform smiled as I approached. She had come to take me the village where I would be giving a course to primary school teachers of English that would improve their abilities and their confidence in the classroom. I was utterly dismayed and somewhat ashamed to inform her that I couldn’t participate in the project because I was returning home in three weeks’ time. The look on her face was one of sheer disappointment. When I realised how bad this bit of news was, I felt more ashamed of myself than I had ever done before in my life. That heavy blunt feeling is still with me whenever I recall what happened.

It was decided that I should break the news to the head teacher myself. We drove for about 40 minutes through the countryside, until we reached a tiny hamlet comprised of a few rustic houses built around what must have been the main street. Hairy pigs and hogs foraged in the mud for food and a few of the inhabitants sat around fanning themselves in the heat. My appearance was a surprise to them and I smiled to let them know I was friendly. The MINED representative showed me around the school, which was very basic and had few resources; the juxtaposition of their poverty and their excitement about the importance of me participating in their project was humbling. When my guide ushered me into the director’s office as the teacher we WERE going to have, I could hardly look at him in my shame. A tall man dressed in the olive green Sandinista uniform looked at me dismay. He repeated the word “were” and I felt I owed him an explanation, so I broke it to him that I had been in the country for three weeks waiting for someone to contact me, and nobody had, so I was going home.

Yes, I could have returned to Managua and changed my ticket for a second time so that I could stay in the country for longer and take part in this very worthy project. But I didn’t. I was too worn out by the experience as a brigadista, by hearing the phrase “no hay” over and over again, telling me that supplies had run out.” No hay” was even more common than “viva la revolución Sandinista!” Yet enthusiasm and hope lived on in Nicaragua despite enormous setbacks. It was humbling for me to witness this: That in people who were “dirt poor,” living in miserable conditions, such optimism about the future still prevailed. This was the most overriding impression I was left with as I boarded my cubana de aviación flight for Havana.

Nicaragua had one more surprise in store for me. As I looked out of the airplane window onto the tarmac below, I saw a high-level delegation of Sandinista ministers, including Daniel Ortega, boarding my flight****. Cristina and I wondered whether we could meet them. And that is why we pleaded with the Cuban flight attendant to intercede. As it was, she came back to us to give us the good news, so we made our way to the front of the aircraft. The entire delegation was keen to meet us. They wanted us to tell them about our experience as international brigadistas. Knowing that a true account of what we had been doing during our stay in Nicaragua would only dismay, I informed President Ortega that I had been working with English teachers to improve their skills. It was almost true… He was delighted by my contribution to the revolution and made me promise that I would be back soon to his country. I vowed that I would return..… 

 

*Sadly deceased

** Dr Cassidy was a UK citizen living and working in Chile at the time of the coup. Her book, Audacity to Believe, recounts the story of her detention and torture under the Pinochet regime

*** Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional aka the Sandinista National Liberation Front 

**** We learned that they were going to consult President Fidel Castro about the Esquipolos II peace proposal between the Contra and the FSLN.