News from León

The afternoon sun poured out of a cloudless blue sky onto the baked, dusty front yard in front of Marta’s house. I made my way to the open-air kitchen where twice a week eight or nine young women from the community meet to learn how to sew. The hum of sewing machines, punctuated with lively voices and bursts of laughter floated through the air. “¡Buenas! ¿Como han estado?” (Hello! How have you been?) I called out to the girls as they looked up from their sewing machines and patterns. Shy smiles, downcast eyes, and quietly spoken greetings met me as I stepped into the breezy, dirt-floor kitchen.

PML has spent over 20 years building relationships based on solidarity and community empowerment. Whether the relationships are between Minnesota delegates and their host families, between volunteers here in León and our Nicaraguan Advisory Council or between community members where PML carries out our small scale development projects, equal relationships are fundamental. Here are some relationships I look forward to being strengthened in 2005:

Matagalpa, Nicaragua – On November 20, the Saturday preceding the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on November 25th, numerous civil society organizations including El Colectivo de Mujeres de Matagalpa (The Women’s Collective of Matagalpa), and El Grupo Venancia, both long-standing, highly respected feminist organizations in Matagalpa convened in a colorful, lively, vibrant show of solidarity against violence inflicted on women, adolescents and children. This annual march and cultural festival are becoming increasingly well-known across Nicaragua and draw people from across the country to participate in the march and festivities denouncing violence against women, adolescents and children.

The Sandinista Front, by far the largest party in the Democratic Convergence, swept into power in almost all Nicaragua's principal cities and municipalities during Sunday's municipal elections. The FSLN dramatically increased its control of municipalities from its current 55 to 88, more than half Nicaragua's 152 municipalities. The results dealt a dramatic blow to the Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC) and especially to its imprisoned leader, Arnoldo Aleman. The PLC's overall tally of municipalities controlled was reduced by almost half, to about 43. As if to add insult to injury, the FSLN even took El Crucero, the town set in the hills above Managua where Aleman has his primary residence.

There are few, if any, commodities more precious than water. But in our fast-paced, breakfast-on-the-run, age of electronic communication the accessibility of water tends not even to show up on our high-tech radar screens. The truth is, however, that while perhaps you or I do not need to worry about pure water spilling plentifully into the kitchen sink whenever the faucet is turned, a disproportionately high number of people in the world do. In fact, some one billion do not have access to clean drinking water and nearly three billion do not have sanitation services (National Public Radio Online). Additionally, the World Health Organization has estimated that 80% of diseases are related to unsanitary water sources and substandard sanitation (BBC Online). The lack of access to clean water is in fact such a critical issue that many predict it will be the cause of the next World War.

Twenty years ago, at a cotton cutting, we discovered the existence of a generous project with staff who were getting involved with our people through education and development. Today we celebrate that we are still together, and still learning, as we continue to confront our problems of under-development and misery.

We have learned that organization is vital for our fulfillment, and that with both organization and friendship we each can advance and develop together. We are people of different cultures but with a history we have forged together.

There are only two daily buses that go to where I'm going today -- I'm on the second one that leaves at 12:15, more or less, or whenever our canvas-covered truck fills up with people and goods. After taking off from the terminal at the church, we scoot through León picking up more people. By the time we reach the dirt road that heads toward El Chague, our little truck is bursting beyond capacity. I'm the only gringa, so every courteous smile reeks of curiosity. Suddenly, one of the women realizes I'm from The Project and asks if I'm going to the community meeting today. "Si," but I'm arriving a little early to do some interviews.

How low does one have to fall to "hit bottom?" How long does it take before someone intervenes? In the case of coffee growers in Nicaragua, the fall was long, slow, and precipitous. Growers, their workers and their families in Nicaragua's coffee regions, endured the worst of conditions for several seasons before their government found a way to respond. In fact, before help finally arrived last September, children had died because their families had lived for months at starvation levels and many acres of delicate coffee plants had suffered serious neglect. Additionally, over 600 farms in northern Nicaragua were days from complete financial failure. *Finally the Nicaraguan government agreed to a program of aid to rescue an agricultural resource they had neglected in hard times in spite of it having been, for many decades, the country’s largest agricultural export.

Falling coffee prices have hurt coffee-producing nations worldwide. But on one Nicaraguan coffee estate, the glut has led to homelessness and hunger for workers whose families had been there for generations.

Los Milagros, Nicaragua » Even when they lost their jobs and their bosses destroyed the only food they had, the peasants stayed in the homes their families had occupied for generations.

But when the babies began to get sick and the adults were weak with hunger, they finally left, setting out on foot through mountains so high they were gazing down at the clouds.

The hunger crisis is the result of various factors, not only the severe drought that we are experiencing in this part of the country but also the fact that in the northern part of Nicaragua events have triggered mass unemployment. In the last month or so, the drought, combined with falling coffee prices and the precarious bank situation, has led to the bankruptcy of several big and important coffee plantations and cooperatives. This in turn triggered the mass migration of peasants to the city in search of food, which has quite overwhelmed city officials and created a lot of attention to the crisis. That is mostly in the northern part of the country in and around Matagalpa.