Middle aged men

Yesterday he was arrested and jailed. They were clearing vines and shrubs from the coffee bushes when the former owner showed up with a policeman. They had an impressive looking document, a “letter of assignation” without much legal validity, but in the pastel colors of the government and signed by a commandant. The owner had a court order ruling that the estate not be touched before ownership was established. He was in jail four hours, then another judge was found who could be persuaded to release him.

Papi, I want to go home

Roberto in the taxi, on the way to the bus station.

-Papa, I want to go home.

It´s Roberto. He is standing there, crying. He isn’t drunk, but he has been drinking.

It’s 10 o’clock. He already came by once before this morning. Then, he didn’t want to go home. He wanted to work all day so that he could go home with his pockets full of money. In order to save just a little face with his family back home in Esteli. But now here he is, back already, without a single coin in his pocket. Another day that started out full of determination and detoured to drink the moment he earned his first peso.

Everything you never thought needed to know about being a farmer

They are finally here. For all those of us who have wanted to start an agricultural cooperative but  cooperative but never could find the right end of the ball of string to start, finally a resource where you can get all the advice and information necessary to satisfy the farmer in us all.

This new revolution is just so…

pink.

Managua, the Venice of Central America

It is not a river. It is one of the main avenues of Managua. Everything is normal. It´s just the rainy season.

The vegetable garden war in Ciudad Sandino

The Danish solidarity brigade has finished their village stay and their Easter vacation, and arrived to a barrio in Ciudad Sandino. They live with the local CPC (the citizen’s power committee) and work at a local kindergarden, improving a playground for the kindergarden and a little park for the barrio.

The experience has given them new insight into how Nicaraguan local politics work…

Roberto

“Good morning, little dad,” he calls from the gate with his hoarse voice.

Roberto is here again. He is sitting on the sidewalk, an empty look in his eyes, resting his battered face against the wall, smelling of cheap booze. He was beaten up a couple of weeks ago, his cheek is still swollen, full of sore crusts. He has a sandal on one foot. He has a brand new backpack in his lap, the price tag still on it.

Autonomous women lash out at Daniel Ortega

“Political Messianism and church rhetoric about obligatory motherhood, that is what the red-black heaven offers the poor.” That is how a Nicaraguan women’s organization judges the Sandinista government.

In an advertisement placed in the major Nicaraguan newspapers on March 8, 2008, the Nicaraguan Autonomous Women’s Movement lashes out at Daniel Ortega and his government.

They describe Nicaragua as a country where women’s right to participation in politics is a “grim joke”, and where the government pursues an “anti-women” policy which reduces women to “day laborers” and “breeding machines” without any rights, and with a “death sentence for complications during pregnancy”.

The movement describes the president personally as the symbol of “masculine impunity” for crimes of violence against women, and compares his gender politics to German Fascism, which viewed women with an optics of “Kinder, Kirche, Küche” (children, church, kitchen).

Dry season on the road to Terrabona

On our way to the evergreen Jinotega we make a breakfast stop at the road to ever dry Terrabona…

The valley of delight

At last we found time to visit the Danish solidarity brigade in their village Las Delicias in Pantasma, up north in the Jinotega mountains. Delicia means delight, and the people who named this place were not far from the truth. It really is a delightful valley, Las Delicias.