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Letter from Central America
Tegucigalpa, 3 May 1999
In the six weeks we've been here in Central America, preparing for our
assignment in Belize, we've come across some widely differing views of
development, some elaborated some implicit, including speeches by the
Colonel, the President, the Priest and the Taxi-Driver.
The Colonel
Soon after our arrival the Spanish school announced it had organised a talk
on "Honduran geography" for us. It was something they did for all the new
arrivals. So we trooped back to school one day after lunch and were led to
an empty classroom. To be fair there was a map of Honduras on the wall.
Then we were introduced to a retired colonel from the airforce. He spoke to
us in English for half an hour. The closest his talk came to "geography"
was the news that the army was divided into three brigades, one covering
the El Salvador border, one the Nicaraguan border and one the coast.
That's unless you count his oft-stated belief that one day El Salvador
would attempt to re-arrange the geography of the region by invading
Honduras, once its population became to big for its territory.
The rest of his talk was a lament for 'the lost decade' of the eighties.
You knew where you were in the eighties, "revolutionary wars" raged in
Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua and the military aid flowed in from
the US. Central America armies had lost their way in the 1990s. Their
budgets were falling, they had no clear role. All this might change though
once the Republicans retook the White House. While waiting for the second
coming of Ronald Reagan (so far only Ronald McDonald has arrived) he would
have to content himself with the lovely new Israeli gun the police have
recently been issued, the Galil.
We were too dumbstruck to ask him any questions. What did he make of the
reports that Honduras was being considered as a possible new outpost, now
that the US was handing back the Canal and getting out of Panama? What
were the lessons of the Pinochet case for the military in Latin America?
Why had such a youthful and enthusiastic officer such as himself retired
from the army 10 years ago? So the lesson was over and he wished us well.
A few discreet enquiries later revealed that he left the army to serve
eight years in a US gaol for smuggling drugs.
The President
The President was our very own Mary McAlese, who visited Honduras for three
days during Holy Week. We attended a reception for Irish development
workers and assorted fellow travellers. We enjoyed the free food and free
bar, but the President was undoubtedly the highlight; she was both
professional and personable. And her husband had a very trendy short
haircut and a very dapper linen suit. Mary spoke well, starting in good
Spanish, and did not seem bound by the notes the DFA official placed in
front of her. Her strapline was that development workers were "the hands
of Ireland's solidarity". Returning development workers help Ireland remain
an outward looking country and enrich the social and spiritual fabric of
the nation. I think Comhlámh could be happy with her take on the role of
the development worker. A few issues of Focus on Ireland and the Wider
World, or a briefing on "Bringing it all Back Home" and she'll be plugging,
sorry affirming, development education.
The Priest
The priest was a short man who celebrated Easter Sunday mass in the small
rural community of Chacaraseca ("dry furrow") near the lovely city of Leon
in northern Nicaragua. We were in Leon to meet up with a friend and
colleague from Dublin, Maeve Taylor, who had lived and worked in Leon for
two years. Characaseca is a well organized community, which has been the
subject of considerable solidarity and aid over the years (the organization
attracted the aid, rather than the aid causing the organization, of
course). It is also a community that is slowly rebuilding after the
devastation wrought by Hurricane Mitch. The first signs of growth of
recently re-sown crops are evident. Plenty of jumping off points for a
sermon on resurrection and life after death. Butthe priest, for whom the
village was no doubt one of many stops that day, had other ideas. The
Gospel reading was from John, and the priest was determined not only to
declaim the good news, but to make the closing argument in his very own
resurrection trial. There were three crucial pieces of evidence: the empty
tomb, the neatly folded shroud, and the testimony of Peter.
The empty tomb particularly excited him. "The tomb was empty!" he
declared. "THE TOMB WAS EMPTY!!" he boomed. And then "The tomb was empty;
what was the tomb?" A few of the congregation responded, but the Jury was
definitely hung, and the priest's new found desire for audience
participation was not satisfied: "The tomb was EMPTY! What was the TOMB?"
"EMPTY!" came the chorus. He did it a third time, just to make sure
everybody was onside. No doubt the meter was similar to "Christ is risen,
He is risen indeed", but the effect was markedly different. All I could
think of was Bruce Forsyth appearing to the apostles gathered in the upper
room that night: "Nice to see you, to see you. . .NICE!" For the priest
however the testimony of Peter was the clincher. Nevermind that the two
Marys discovered the empty tomb, all they did was run go get Peter; it was
he who WITNESSED the empty tomb. I don't know if the priest didn't notice
that 90% of his congrgation were women, or if he just didn't care. The
sermon was disappointing. I wasn't expecting liberation theology, but 35
years after Vatican II some reading of the "signs of the times" would have
been nice.
All was not lost, however. When the mass was over, but before the priest
could dismiss the congregation, the ancient North-American nuns took over.
The indomitable and eternally optimistic sort you find in the most
unlikely places across Central America. They had been accompanying the
community throughout their Holy Week observances and captured the mood
straight away.
Then a community leader was on his feet introducing and thanking the
members of a visiting US high-school group. A new arrival from New York was
announced, (a very dodgy self-appointed child-sponsoring development worker
with little Spanish who had come to stay a year - "some sort of cooperative
would be good") and Maeve was welcomed back. Soon a whole host of people
was standing in front of the altar facing the church. The priest was left
twiddling his thumbs, out of sight, behind the altar. He slipped out the
back door without giving the final blessing, a relationship of mutual
indifference confirmed. He seemed to think he could do without his
parishioners, and they certainly felt they could do without him.
The Taxi-Driver
Leon is a colonial city in northern Nicaragua, and was the scene of heavy
fighting in the war against the Somoza dictatorship. Twenty years later
the town still has a Sandinista mayor, and unlike Managua the revolutionary
murals have not been whitewashed. Outside of the town there is fort which
was a stronghold of the Somoza National Guard, a prison and torture centre.
We took a taxi to see it, as it was too hot and too far too walk. As we
came over the brow of a hill just below the fort a post-apocalyptic sight
awaited us. The sun was going down the other side of the plateau and
backlit the city rubbish dump, which smouldered quietly and sent plumes of
smoke drifting skywards. The silhouettes of scavenging children dotted the
scene. One of the children stepped out of the tableau and directed the
taxi-driver to the entrance to the fort.
We asked the taxi-driver to stay and bring us back down when we were
finished. He agreed and asked could he come and see the fort with us. As
we began to clamber over the low stones that formed the wall facing the
hill, Maeve asked him had he been here before. "Not until this moment". He
returned the question, almost rhetorically, and of course when Maeve lived
in Leon she had been to a commemoration of the day it fell to the
Sandinistas on July 15 1979. Oh well, he been to a few of those alright.
The polite exchanges continued until we were standing on top of the central
keep, which reaches down into the mountain more that up towards the sky. We
had a commanding view of the city laid out on the plain below, looking
remarkably leafy from our new vantage point, and the volcanoes and
mountains beyond. It was very still. And in his gentle voice he slowly
began to tell the story of the battle. His company was pinned down on the
far side of the city by the artillery fire, but another group got around
behind and made an assault on the fort. Finally the National Guard made a
run for it, but they were cut off over there, he pointed of to the right,
and many were taken prisoner. Two days later, Somoza fled the country and
two days after that the Sandinistas entered Managua.
He remembered the repression on the Somoza times, the fear, the
disappeared, the prisoners pushed into the lake over beyond that mountain,
from a helicopter. He remembered the hope of the Sandinista years, the
participation, the war. And now once again, for the new government, "the
poor do not exist". We moved away from the inner keep, conscious of its
dungeon and its history, and stepped on to the outer walls. Suddenly we
could hear the city. Not so much the cars as the voices: a surprisingly
joyful cacophony. He was still an active member of the party, they were
already preparing for the next elections, and twenty years on it all
remained to be done again.