April 2004

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A Journey to Nicaragua
by Jake Schindel

When I first thought of going to Nicaragua I was scared. I did not know what I would run into. Would everything I think I know turn out to be right or blatantly wrong? What about theft? Malaria? Political insurgencies? Who knows? I had never been to a third world country before, and I did not know what I was to encounter there. Then I took reassurance in the fact that many people I know have been to Nicaragua and lived, so presumably there would be no danger to my life.

In the airport in Managua I was shocked and amazed not to see chalkboards instead of the high-tech computers. All the guards lingering around had matching uniforms and had telecommunications. My notion was that Nicaragua was the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. It is. So why all of this and no donkey-drawn carts? Well, after I got outside and left the sanctity of the liberal controlled area of Managua I got a better picture of things. There are areas where Nicaragua seems closer to Miami than to the rural regions of Appalachia.

Digesting slowly this drastic difference in equality as we traveled through Managua, I realized that this is what my service is to be for this trip: it is to overcome the naiveté that most North Americans like me have about countries like Nicaragua. My first objective was to be objective or at least as objective as I could be in that situation. Watch what is going on. Watch how people are interacting. See what they are doing and what makes up their daily lives. One thing I knew for sure was the most important thing I should come home with is a better sense for where the items that are produced in Nicaragua come from in relation to the consumers of those same items such as coffee, bananas, and crafts.

After leaving Managua we went to Matagalpa, which was about two hours away by the highway which cannot be high on anyone's list. It ended up taking about three hours longer because the van we were traveling in broke down a few times. Matagalpa is a poor city about the size of Hanover. There was a lot of traffic, but it seemed a good deal more like a frontier town than Managua. We spent one night in seeming civilization before venturing out to the campo which means the jungle. Now we were to see how the crops were produced, processed, and provided for the cooperatives.

The cooperatives, I was to find out, were orderly and organized to great efficiency. The goods from each farmer were stockpiled by the various members of the community and then shipped to the second-level cooperatives on the way to León. The shipping was no easy task because these people seldom had anything close to usable for transportation of any goods. So they must work together to get the goods to the markets or to the cooperatives. Without cooperation there is little chance any individual farmers will be able to make enough money to keep their lands or feed their children. The most important function of the co-ops was that each level took out some of the profits to pay for socially held property and socially beneficial programs. These programs included fresh water management, money management, birth control education, etc.

Coffee was something I really wanted to know about, so I made sure to take notes when we visited the coffee farms. When I first saw coffee plants I was interested in the fact that they were shade-grown and organic. Now this sounds like North American Liberalism because to these people often these terms mean nothing. We make such a big deal about them here, but there it only means a few dollars more per pound and a lot more work. Keep that in mind. Sometimes they have been educated about the advantages of an organic product, but often your coffee is only as organic as the farmer upstream. Shade-grown here is natural because coffee is a shade-grown plant and actually grows better under bananas and papayas. While shade-grown and organic are important adjectives for your next bag of coffee, remember that these farmers are not factory farmers and organic equates to a lot of work. Be proud and respectful with each sip.

Everywhere I went I saw newspapers. Even in the country people were listening to the radio, and at dinner they were discussing politics. This was my place. These were my people. Nicaraguans know what is going on, not like us in America who pick up a paper if we have the time and then only read the sports page. As I listened I made notes, but the only conclusion that I could come to is, “This could all happen in America.” Often American politics is raised above other countries because of arrogance, when in reality, politics are the same. There are the conservatives who are attached to very old ways. They are nationalistic and isolationist. The liberals are the globalizers. These are the nouveau riche of Nicaragua. They want Nicaragua to be an extension of the United States. They are growing in popularity. Last but certainly not least are the Sandinistas. These are not the same Sandinistas that we all heard about on TV with Ollie North. Now they are entrenched in the government, and instead of fighting for the rights of the people they are fighting for personal salaries. Most of the country is pro-Sandinistas because they talk a good line but, “This could happen in America.”

Nicaragua has suffered many years of rebellion and violent conflict. My ears hurt from hearing about guns and death, but the Nicaraguans are looking forward, not back. When I reached León I saw a peaceful protest over bus fares for the university students there. We also learned of a workers’ protest on the Pan-American Highway to take place in the near future to fight for rights and better wages for farmers on plantations. Banana farmers gathered on a lawn leaving León for a week-long camp to protest chemicals that were being sprayed on the plants by the landowners. So these are not complacent people; they know that they must fight everyday for their fundamental rights. There is much knowledge to be gained from people of the earth that live everyday to fight, peacefully, for what is theirs.

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Images from Nicaragua

Don Wilfredo, president of one of the first-level cooperatives

A house with political graffiti

Last updated April 18, 2004

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