¿Til Death do us Part

"AN EYE FOR AN EYE MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD BLIND."

In 1984 I was living and working in a rural farming cooperative in the north central mountains of Nicaragua.  I was a student, there to learn about the lives of people living in the midst of a revolutionary, left-leaning country and the effects of a civil war financed, in part, by the U.S. government then led by Ronald Reagan.

I had been at the cooperative for a few months, contributing what I could through manual labor while I documented the lives of its members.  On this particular day, I hitched a ride into the nearby city of Esteli – a town known for its revolutionary zeal and the harsh battles fought there during the 1979 insurrection against the long-time dictator Anastasio Somoza and his National Guard.  I arrived in town around 10 a.m.  Walking from the main highway up to the center of town where I hoped to meet up with some other North Americans who were working in a language and solidarity school, perhaps pick up some mail and later have an inexpensive restaurant meal before heading back out, I came to the town’s post office where, unusually, there was a large crowd gathered in the lobby and spilling out into the cobblestone street.  I stopped to ask what was going on, and found that word had come that a group of 20 to 25 young postal workers who had left a few days earlier for a week of coffee picking in the nearby mountains (a semi-voluntary practice of public workers to assist in the recollection of the all-important exportable and cash generating crop) had been ambushed by a group of anti-government contra rebels operating in the region and that most, if not all of them had been killed in the attack.  The looks of anguish and fear on the faces of the parents and family members gathered at the post office, waiting for any scrap of information that might deny the information, was stark and compelling.

I stayed in town throughout the rest of the day to find out more and to see if there might be something - some little thing - that I could do to help.  By 6 p.m. the city square, located in front of the Catholic cathedral, was overflowing with townspeople.  Dusk had descended when the crowd parted to allow passage for a caravan of pickup trucks entering the square - each carrying in their beds one or two makeshift coffins containing the bodies of the young telephone workers.  Word circulated as to how they had died:  while travelling in the back of a large open bed truck along an isolated dirt road heading toward the coffee plantation, they were attacked from the side of the road by mortar and machine gun fire.  One survivor, who lay gravely wounded by the side of the road, reported that the attackers poured gasoline on the truck and set it on fire.  We heard that the bodies of some of the young people had to be cut apart because they had wrapped their arms around each other as they were burned alive.

That evening, the townspeople walked slowly through the streets of Esteli, following the trucks as they delivered, one by one, the bodies of the young workers to the doorsteps of their families, where a wake of friends and neighbors would be held that evening and the following day in the humble living rooms of their home.  Many of the townspeople participating in the procession passed silently and sadly in a single file line through the houses of the deceased in order to pay their respects to the family.

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I think there has been ample discussion over the years as to the rights and wrongs committed by both sides of the Nicaragua conflict – at the individual, political and global levels.  The repercussions of that time are still felt today and still generate heated debate over who was at fault and what should or should not have happened.  But at the bottom line, many more than these 20 or 25 young workers have died in equally horrific ways as a result of the conflict – way too many a result of unclear and flawed reasoning on both sides.   As I write and share this recollection drawn from almost 40 years ago, I wonder what more suffering will be brought about by other wars fueled by politics, greed, avarice and other types of unclear and flawed reasoning.