Skip to main content

WAR AND PAIN


In 1984 I was living and working in a rural farming cooperative in the north central mountains of Nicaragua.  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 day, I hitched a ride into the nearby city of Esteli.  I arrived in town around 10 a.m.  Walking from the main highway up to the town center town where I hoped to meet up with some other North Americans, perhaps pick up some mail and later have an inexpensive restaurant meal before heading back out to the cooperative, I came abreast of the town’s post office where, unusually, there was a large crowd gathered in the lobby, spilling out into the cobblestone street.  Inquiring, I found that word had come that a group of 20 to 25 young postal workers who had left a few days earlier for a stint of coffee picking in the nearby mountains (a semi-voluntary practice of government 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.  The looks of anguish and fear on the faces of the parents and family members gathered at the post office was stark and compelling.



I stayed in town throughout 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 main Catholic cathedral, was overflowing with townspeople.  As dusk descended on the area, the crowd parted when a caravan of pickup trucks entered into the square - each carrying one or two makeshift coffins containing the bodies of the young telephone workers.  Word had 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 reported that the contra fighters 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 as they had wrapped their arms around each other as they were burned alive.

That evening, the crowd of townspeople walked slowly through the streets of Esteli, following the trucks as they delivered, one by one, the remains of the young workers at 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 respect to the family.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

¿Til Death do us Part

A few months ago, I entered into an online writing competition sponsored by a group call NYC Midnight (https://www.nycmidnight.com). The challenge was to write 1,000 word short story in 48 hours. Guidelines given were that the genre of the story should be "Romance", the setting for the story "A cottage") and at some point in the story a "Whisk" should appear. I didn't win anything, but got some good feedback, both positive and constructive.   ‘Til Death do us Part   There is so much more to love than simple romance. John and Stuart show us what a lifetime of commitment means to true love. I returned from my walk at around three in the afternoon. The sun cut through the trees to give the cottage a surreal glow. The sound of Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma” wafted through the windows and out into the surrounding forest. It was John’s favorite piece, and I was glad that I had bought it for him on one of our first Valentines Days together. These days, I w...
Post a Comment
Read more
As I hear from friends and family in the U.S. regarding their experiences hunkering down into government mandated and/or self-isolated protection from the Coronavirus pandemic - working from home, limiting their excursions to markets and other locations in search of basic necessities, avoiding contact with other than immediate family and household - I cannot help but reflect on the situation in Nicaragua (where I live now) and dozens of other countries where I have worked as an International Development Specialist. These countries are normally classified as "underdeveloped" or "emergent" (adjectives that tend to focus primarily on economics). In the context of these nations, where a significant portion of the populace survive on a day-to-day basis through their participation in informal business and markets, “social distancing” is a whole other ballgame. In Nicaragua alone, an estimated 2.4 million women and men (@1.7 million living below the poverty line) leave...
Post a Comment
Read more

ALL THE WORLD IS KINDA LIKE A STAGE

In the summer of 1975, while pursuing a degree in Theatre Design at Penn State University, I headed to Dayton, Ohio to work as a stage carpenter at Wright State University.   The summer theatre season put on by the University included six productions:   the musical Man of La Mancha based on the story of Don Quixote; the psychological thriller Veronica's Room (by Ira Leven –author of Rosemary’s Baby); the classic black comedy “ Arsenic and Old Lace ”; “ After Magritte ”, a surreal comedy by Tom Stoppard; “ The Real Inspector Hound ”, a one-act audience participation ‘whodunit’ also by Stoppard and, finally, Shakespeare’s “ Twelfth Night”.   You can well imagine the craziness of pulling together SIX plays over a four month period, all on the same stage!   The set designer, whose name is lost both to me and the internets) was considered one of the best of his time.   In order to meet the heavy schedule, we first completed the first set – in this case for Man...
Post a Comment
Read more