 |  |
Update Nicaragua
Newsletter Archive
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Essay Archive | September 17, 2004 |
DREAMING NICARAGUA
Morning Coffee and the Contra War
Virginia sips coffee and reviews last night's short film in which she was the director, actor and sole audience member. Virginia remembers every detail of the film in a rapid fire recital that often leaves me scrambling to keep up with the story line. The films are dreams, nightmares or both. Images pour out of her mind, like metaphors for her story lines. The dreams flow like paradisiacal mountain streams, calm, clear, and teaming with fish and her nightmares flow like a rushing torrent of darkened waters threatening to wash her away in a violent, unstoppable current. She stops to drink more coffee.
| My wife Virginia was born in early 1979, at the height of the insurrection against Anastasio Somoza Debayle and his brutally repressive army. The local mid-wife, who assisted in the birth of Virginia's 4 brothers and 4 sisters at their family farm, was traveling on the day of Virginia's birth, so Virginia's father Andrés delivered her. Their farm was deep in the remote northern mountains of Nueva Segovia, Nicaragua, in the community of Las Piedras south of Quilalí, near the Río Coco. Las Piedras is profoundly rural, without running water or electricity, but blessed with fertile soil, fresh mountain streams and a moderate climate. Five months after Virginia's birth, Somoza and his army were finally disposed of by the Sandinista-led popular rebellion. Peace had finally come to Nicaragua and Quilalí, Nueva Segovia, a long-troubled area, once the base for Augusto Sandino's nationalist rebel army that fought the US Marines occupation of Nicaragua from 1927-1933. The peace would be short-lived. |  The Fall of Somoza. Detail from a early 90's Nicaraguan 50 córdoba note. |
With the victorious Sandinista rebels now in control of Nicaragua, a new group of rebels was already forming in the mountains near Quilalí and Virginia's family home. Attacks against the new Sandinista Government began the same year the Sandinistas took office and soon the new rebels would be joined by thousands more fighters. The new rebel soldiers were dubbed the "Contras" by the Sandinista Government, short for Counterrevolutionary. The rebels called themselves "La Resistencia Nicaragüense" (The Nicaraguan Resistance), but the name Contra stuck. The Sandinista Government soldiers were known popularly as "Compas", short for "Compañero" (revolutionary companion or brother). Virginia would spend her childhood, the first 10 years of her life, in the very middle of what would come to be known worldwide as the "Contra War".
Virginia often forgets we are seated at our little wooden table, enjoying our traditional northern Nicaraguan breakfast of bread and coffee; such is the intensity of her recital of the previous night's dream or nightmare and her desperation to quickly share all the details. When I first met her more than 3 years ago, almost half of Virginia's dreams dealt with combats, visits to her childhood home by compas (government troops) and contras (rebel soldiers), frantic moments escaping from her home in the dark night with her family as bullets and bombs lit up their farm. Being hit by bullets in different parts of her body was (and remains) a common theme, as is being forced to join one side or other of the conflict.
Virginia has also recounted to me numerous real wartime memories, reliving close calls she experienced with falling bombs and firefights, a girlfriend being filled with shrapnel, an uncle being blown apart by a bomb, the casual jokes of the compas when they traded canned sardines with Virginia for water that she fetched for them from the local creek, or a vivid recollection of automatic weapons crashing to the floor at midnight when visiting contras turned over in their sleep creating a noisy domino effect of assault rifles. Her memory never fails to amaze me for its encyclopedic scope and interminable finite details.
| One image that haunts me is one of her family dog barking war into the black night. Pet owners know when their animal is angry, protective, restless or just scared. Virginia's family dog always barked terrified when combat troops approached at night, it was a bark that woke up everyone in Virginia's family at once. They all knew exactly what it warned of. Their dog had become acutely sensitive to the oil used by both the contras and compas to lubricate their weapons. When that particular oil caught the nighttime breezes in the dark mountains of deeply rural Nueva Segovia their dog's horrified bark would send shivers down little Virginia's spine. It was time to prepare for armed visitors. Would they be contras or compas? How long before one side would encounter the other and Hell would break loose? |  Rebel General Augusto Sandino. Detail from 1985 Nicaraguan 1,000 córdoba note. |
Virginia's father Andrés was an expert at rural war diplomacy. Both sides of the conflict were always welcome in his home. Virginia's family was poor, but their cows, pigs, chickens, rice, beans, eggs and tortillas were always free for both compas and contras. It was a way to stay alive. However, if there was a combat, the only hope was to flee. Refuge was a one hour's run away, through the mud and darkness, at Virginia's grandfather's farm situated further east along the banks of the Río Coco. Miraculously no one in Virginia's nuclear family was killed by the Contra War, nor was anyone in her immediate family abducted by either side and forced to fight. Some friends and extended family members were not so lucky.
Today, 15 years after the war's end, Virginia's nightmares are less frequent and she seems to have finally left a good part of the experience behind her. When over coffee several weeks ago she burst forth with another mini-war film she had dreamt the night previous. I insisted she write it down. Seeing one of her dreams in print before me it is apparent that abrupt scene changes, rough edits, do exist. On paper her dream theatre is not as seamless as it seems during in her rapid-fire morning coffee delivery. However, in comparison to the absurdly abstract dreams of my sleep, the realism of her dreams still astonish me, even when held captive by the sterile ink of a printed page. Below is what she wrote down that day. I have translated it to English and added a considerable amount of punctuation.
Civilians were looking for refuge. A combat between the compas and contras was about to begin. I began to look desperately for my own refuge, though I did not know where I would be safe. I took off running, running and running until I arrived to a shady farm filled with coffee and banana trees located near a mountain river. I was running with a pistol in my hand to fire at the contras, because the compas were near my family's house and I feared the contras would kill us all.
Afterwards I quietly returned alone to the combat area near my family's house. I arrived to the local police station and went to hide inside their storage area, where the police kept their supplies of rice, beans and corn. I got inside a big empty wooden box and I felt safe, sure that the police station was well guarded. At the same moment a firefight broke out and I suddenly realized that one of my brothers was in front of the police station. I had had no idea that my brother was there and only realized it when I heard his screams of pain after being hit by a bullet. I was very scared and did not know whether to help my brother or stay in hiding, but I never had a chance to decide, for at that very moment three contras arrived to the police storage area and discovered me in my hiding place.
I quickly hid my pistol so that the contras would not think that I was involved in the fighting. "I was only escaping the bullets", I told them, "I was a civilian and I had nothing to do with the police" (who like the government army were compas). I explained to them again that "I was only escaping the danger of combat".
The contras seemed to believe me, but as a test they gave me one of their pistols and instructed me to shoot some civilians who they said were anti-contra. I invented all kinds of excuses to not shoot anyone, though I was getting scared, knowing perfectly well that the contras might kill me for not obeying orders. In any case I was forced to join the contras against my will and to save my life I obeyed. I walked amongst many civilians posing as a contra, with a firearm concealed in my clothing. What the contras never imagined was that I was actually working for the compas and I was searching for contra spies.
I waited patiently behind a tree, watching some women that I know from real life, but in the dream they were contra informers. I aimed my gun to shoot them, but I did not have the strength to kill them, remembering a conversation Richard had with an ex-contra. When Richard had asked him, "How many did you kill?" The ex-contra had replied to Richard that "In battle one never knows exactly when you kill someone". So I thought to myself that I WILL know how many people I have killed. This kept me from shooting the contra spies, though I continued observing them. After several minutes I was once again pointing my pistol at the women and getting ready to pull the trigger when I noticed that a little girl who was with them. She was watching me. Silently, the little girl shook her head no at me, once and then again. I lowered my gun, I could not kill them.
 "Compas" Volunteer Army. Detail from an early 80's Nicaraguan 20 córdoba note. | Afterwards I was walking in an open field, dressed as a civilian. I walked to a house in the countryside behind a cornfield. There was an armed contra standing guard at the cornfield making sure that not a single compa passed. I explained that I was just a civilian and the guard let me past. He did not know that I was there to spy for the compas. Inside the house I encountered a boy contra fighter about 12 years old. The house was filled with baked goods and I asked the young contra to give me some. I ate lots and lots of bread that was very delicious. |
Afterwards I walked around the yard of the house. I was enjoying the beauty of the countryside when I heard lots of shooting. I ran to escape the flying bullets until I reached a hilltop. To avoid the bullets I rolled myself into a ball and began to roll down the hillside. When the fighters saw me rolling they yelled "She is a compa informant!" They began to shoot at me as I rolled and rolled and rolled down the hill until I arrived at a coffee hacienda. The woman of the hacienda gave me a place to rest and I slept. Later, the mother of the young contra fighter (who had given me bread) passed by the coffee farm on her way into the countryside; she was looking for her son. The contras had taken the boy with them to fight compas.
Finally there was a huge gathering of people, some kind of celebration. All of us decided to dance and not fight. There were lots of Sandinistas, both civilians and military with red and black handkerchiefs around their necks yelling. It was as if they had won.
I was on my second cup of coffee and exhausted from listening to her dream's twists and turns, which she related in a series of marathon sentences. Virginia had hardly been able to breathe in between those epic sentences, but now she sipped her coffee. The dreams or nightmares of war make Virginia neither happy nor sad. They are recounted and forgotten. No doubt they are necessary and recounting them is a kind of final cleansing, but their ultimate disposal is also part of that process and it was with great reluctance that she permitted me to save one of them.
| My wife is one of the lucky ones who grew up on the front lines of a war. Her scars are confined to the depths of her memory. How many children are running screaming from bullets today while country "leaders" boast the benefits of war in front of waving flags? How many children are crying in terror underneath their beds before bombs fall on their homes, the "collateral damage" an entire family burnt to a crisp? How many children are ripped into pieces while arms manufactures sip red wine on their private jets? Those who promote war, gain wealth and power from war, rarely are forced to taste its horrors, war's reality. If there was true democracy in the world, this would be the first thing that those who have really known war would vote to change.
Richard Leonardi Managua, Nicaragua |  Compa Germán Pomares. His death by "friendly fire" sparked the first "Contra" attacks. Detail from 1985 Nicaraguan 20 córdoba note. |
All Nicaragua News newsletters are copyright of Richard Leonardi.
Copyright © Richard Leonardi