MONDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1999
This Was Real!
By Joanne Klinnert[Joanne Klinnert now lives in Minneapolis, MN.]
I remember that moment with sharp clarity. The defining moment presented itself in Achuapa, Nicaragua, on February 12, 1986. It was Ash Wednesday. I was part of a travel seminar sponsored by the Center for Global Education, Minneapolis. It was my first time in Nicaragua. The focus of the trip was on farmers and we had spent the day and night in this northern village with the people there.
The Nicaraguans were proud of their Revolution. They were proud to have land to cultivate. But the contra incursion was in full force.
We were out in the fields when the warning came: "Take the children. Get on the bus and leave." Something was moving among the trees and it was feared that it was a contra attack. I was furious as I realized, "This is who the U.S. government is attacking! These children are the enemy! This is real." I have not been the same since. I knew then that I had to return to this land.
It took 4 years before I returned to live in Nicaragua in 1990. When I heard the shocking news that Violeta Chamorro had been elected president, I wavered in my plan. Did I want to go to a country once again ruled by the U.S.? Many organizations, no longer in favor with the new government, had to leave. I decided, "Now, more than ever." As it turned out, we three Franciscan Sisters, arriving in Managua in 1990, were a sign of hope. As members of the Ecumenical Committee assured us, "When others left, you came."
The work of the Revolution began eroding. Health clinics faltered, schools required tuition and fees, land ownership was disputed. But the concept that people were in charge of their own lives was so imbedded during those heady days of the Revolution that it remained, even while the infrastructures crumbled. A revolutionary song, "Commandante Carlos", says "Carlos is not dead; he will never die." We can only hope that if the seeds of revolution could take hold in the lives of us who were affected at a distance, they can survive and live again in the people who planted and cultivated the Revolution.
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