Nicaragua: The Great Leap Backwards?

Nicaragua: The Great Leap Backwards?

Interview, Introduction, and photographs by Phyllis Ponvert

We older people, who have lived under three governments, never thought we would be moving backward, a great regression.

I lived in Nicaragua for nine months in 1991/92, during which time I interviewed and photographed a number of Nicaraguan women - women who I first came to know as friends. I told them that after my trips to Nicaragua I always came back to Ann Arbor and spoke and wrote about my experiences and the people I had met. This time I hoped to bring back stories of Nicaraguan women in their own words.

I first met and came to know Tomasa Hurtado Vallecillo in the mid-late 1980s during three trips to Juigalpa, as a member of Ann Arbor Sister City delegations. Her brother, Candido Vallecilo was the Sandinista mayor of Juigalpa during the first years of the Nicaraguan revolution. Tomasa's mother, Mercedes Vallecillo, was a Sandinista activist in the years bef ore the 1979 revolution and continues to work with Sister City projects. What follows is excerpts from an interview with Tomasa Hurtado Vallecillo, conducted in June, 1992.

I was born in Juigalpa in 1933. My parents were Vicente Hurtado Morales and Merceditas Vallecillo Perez. My mother is still alive and at my side. My papa died five years ago. My papa was of peasant origin. He was a wonderful father. He always lived with us. We were 6 sons and three little daughters. All are still living. My mama was always a mother who denied herself and was dedicated to her husband, to her children, to her household, and she also was a seamstress. Today she still is very active in her housework, in everything.

I have six sons and two daughters. In spite of all of the difficulties, I have been able to give my children an education. My two older sons, for ecomomic reasons, are not as well prepared. But yes, they studied, and even though life has brought many changes, I have finally prepared my sons to be professionals.

Today, my husband and I live a life of the poor, but we are very close and we have many friends. Life in Nicaragua today is very difficult. Sons of workers like myself aren't able to study because life is very hard. The economic situation in my country is too hard.

In my youth I did not have the joy of studying. I lived together with my parents on a farm. We were peasants, nothing more. Life in the countryside was quite difficult at that time. Our youth was spent sharing the work with our parents, making tortillas, grinding the corn by hand. To cook our food, we cut up firewood in the country side with a machete. We herded the cows. We made cheese.

My mama was the cook on a farm. She cooked for a great many workers. My papa earned 15 cordobas and my mama earned eight cordobas a month. It was too little with so many children. We did not have the pleasure of going to school. The little that we children know, we know from my mama. It was because she taught us at home. She taught me to read and to write. I was the smartest. I learned to sew, to weave, and to make embroidery.

I have been married twice, and now I spend my time looking after my children and my grandchildren. One of my daughters is a single mother and I take care of her children - look after them so she can work and help me. My life at the present time is spent living together with my children, my husband, my grandchildren, and in having friends; poor, but with dignity.

Also, I spend a little time in organizing work. Within my neighborhood, Zone 8, I am the head of the Communal Movement (CM). I enjoy it. To be an organizer is a privilege because one has contact with different groups. Maybe, if it weren't for my organizing, I would not have had the great pleasure of knowing my friends in Ann Arbor. So it gives me a lot of pleasure to be an organizer.

Tomorrow, the ninth of May, we will begin a project helping our friends in Ann Arbor to build three classrooms at the Rosa Lanza Elementary School, l'll meet with the commission we have formed. l'm in charge of beginning the work which we hope to finish within six months. We hope that someone from Ann Arbor will come and take part in the inauguration of the classrooms so that we feel satisfied and they will feel sure that together we have made a reality of the dream that we always shared [the classrooms have since been completed].

Right now children are experiencing a critical time with education and health problems.

I have been very involved with the Communal Movement since 1981. The Movement is an organization- which has valued and continues to value the well-being of the poor, the well-being of social projects- which works on behalf of the dispossessed, who at times get thrown out on the street. So we, not with violence, but in friendship - with words of conviction - go to the municipal government or another organization to convince them to let that person stay in their house. Because now, there's a critical living problem.

So, the Movement is always in favor of the poor- looking out for the well-being of children, the old, of those wounded in the war - be they Sandinista or from the Nicaraguan Resistance [Contras], We cry out for the same rights - the Resistance as well as the army. The same need, the same hunger that the Communal Movement and the rest of the people have is shared by the Resistance - those wounded in the war, the widows, the children orphaned from both sides. So, those of us here don't look out only for ourselves, or for a certain group. We look out for everybody regardless of religion or ideology.

Yes, there are problems right now. One example is the problem in getting enough water to Zone 8. We went before the delegate from the water commission and told him that the water situation was really critical and that we need to make people aware of the dangers of cholera and how to prevent it. We also told him that availability of water and treating the water is one of the most important factors in preventing cholera. If INAA [the state water company] doesn't give us water, where are we going to get water? We were able to get the delegate to open the pipes so that water could come here to Zone 8. It doesn't come every day but we get water every other day or every two days, and that's sufficient because we can fill enough containers with water.

In addition, MINSA [the state health department], with the help of the Communal Movement, has a campaign against cholera - closing contaminated wells, giving out Clorox, and explaining how to treat the water. Also, we're giving out oral rehydration packets and telling people they have to give this to children and adults at the first signs of cholera or diarrhea.

Before, with the past government, we had a great responsibility as revolutionaries. For example, if someone was having a problem getting a family member to the hospital, each of us had an obligation to go and bother their neighbors and say to them, "Look friend, or brother, or compañero, do us a favor. In the house next door to you, there's a problem. There's no one to take your neighbor to the hospital. Do us a favor. Go on and take them."

While now, some high government official, or the manager of some organization could live right next door to me, and even if I am dying, they won't give me a hand, much less offer a car to take me to the hospital- while we still have a creed of charity, more than ever.

We in the Movement have had a role in helping people in which entire families have died and been buried. One that I know about involved the son, the papa, the mama, and the brother. So we organize ourselves and go from house to house to ask for donations for the casket. Can they give us coffee? Give us rice, sugar? We arrange the wake and bury the dead. Meanwhile, there are others sitting behind closed doors watching television, and if I knock on the door they refuse me, saying, "We have nothing. We can't help." It didn't used to be that way.

I have lived under three governments: under Somozismo, the Frente Sandinista, and today under the UNO. This government is a Somocista government without a Somoza because it has the same policies. Today we're even worse than under Somoza. At least before we had jobs, but nowthere are no jobs. We older people, who have lived under three governments, never thought we would be moving backward, a great regression.

Under the revolutionary government, things were better. First, they were concerned about education. The first step that the government undertook was the literacy campaign which taught the peasants, everybody,  to read and write so they weren't ignorant anymore.

The current government, the old Somocistas that came back from the U. S., think that the worker they left here ten, eleven years ago is the same person. And no! They met up with a different people. These are not the blind, ignorant people with a black band over their eyes that they left behind; people who couldn't see. The Revolutionary government came and got rid of ignorance by teaching people to read and write.

On Sun. Jan. 30 at 2pm, Phyllis Ponvert and Debbie Billings will read from their interviews with Nicaraguan and Guatemalan women - at Common Language Bookstore, 215 S. 4th Ave.