"WAR!....WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?"

(Excerpt from a letter written in 1984 while living in  the rural farming cooperative "La Quinta", situated in the north central mountains of Nicaragua.) 

On Tuesday, October 2^nd, the sound of mortar fire in the near distance shattered the normal tranquility of the mountains for most of the day.  At times like these, it’s hard to tell if the heightened sense of tension is coming from inside me or is being transmitted through the air.  Throughout it all life in the cooperative goes on in much of its usual pattern.  It just becomes more cumbersome to work in the fields while carrying a rifle.

The following day, a couple of truckloads of young soldiers drove past the cooperative, heading east to a small village by the name of Iziqui, about 10 kilometers further up the road.  There is a chicken raising cooperative in Iziqui that has been the target of contra attacks in the past.  There has been an influx of contras in the region and over the past month there have been numerous battles in the surrounding mountains.  (Far enough away from where I am that I have to read about them in the newspaper, folks, so be calm!)

Thursday, at about four in the afternoon there was a sudden collective decision that Contra activity was close enough and frequent enough to warrant sending the women and children of the cooperative into Esteli.  As the cooperative’s old, beaten- up red Toyota truck (with the only really experienced driver) was in town with the daily milk run,  they decided to make use a cut off military jeep (a Russian “WAZ”) that had been left at the cooperative by a small group of young Sandinista soldiers that had earlier been bivouacking there .  One of the other members of the cooperative sort of knew how to drive and took on the task of driving the jeep to take people into town.  However, in the process of backing up a muddy path to pick up an older bed-ridden man, he kept getting stuck.  As I stood by watching this, I figured that I should probably help out.  Without much of a thought, I became the official evacuation vehicle driver!  In the midst of the general confusion of women who were being evacuated  getting ready to leave (imagine having just a short time to gather kids, clothes and other necessities for an unknown amount of time), I headed into town for the first of three trips- six or eight women and children crammed into the back of the open jeep.  I had a sense of non-reality about the whole thing.  After all, I’m just a sheltered small town American guy.  But circumstances many times dictate behavior.  

As I drove towards Esteli, the sun began to set in a beautiful panorama of colors.  Three Sandinista army helicopters flew back and forth overhead, following the mountain ridge that ran along the road, heading to the battle zone.  Truckloads of young soldiers flew past in the direction of the cooperative, heading to the scene of battle that was somewhere farther east along the dirt road.  I dropped my first load of folks in Esteli and headed back to the cooperative to cram 10 more kids and 3 adults into the jeep for another run.  I completed a third trip into town in the growing twilight and then headed back to the cooperative.  Things there were tense but quiet.  There were a lot of jokes about how I had made three trips into town in the time it usually took to make one (“You were really flying, Gringo!).  I did at one point start to wonder what I was doing back at the cooperative instead of safely installed in somebody’s house in town, but I really didn’t want to make another trip back into the city.  Nobody slept much that night but , luckily, the actual fighting remained distant and nothing happened. 

The next day it was back to work as usual.  It was definitely quieter around the cooperative with no kids about.  Later a few families began trickling back.  Two days later, all the women and children returned.

Life goes on…