It is getting dark and my friend Manuel, a local journalist, is
driving me in his battered old pick up truck through the ruined streets
of the tough and violent Panamanian city on the Caribbean coast – Colon.
Near the first corner where we stop I spot an old woman puffing on
something wrapped in a makeshift paper cone. The smoke is heavy and it
stinks: it is neither tobacco nor marijuana; it is something
unidentifiable and thoroughly vile. She spits on the ground and then
looks straight at me with provocative and bloodshot eyes. I say nothing,
she says very little; but those few words that she utters represent the
lowest grade of the language that used to serve such great poets like
Cervantes and Octavio Paz. Her Spanish is indeed as degraded as the
stuff she is smoking, but she does not care, nothing seems to matter to
her anymore.
Two kids aged roughly 8 and 12, are carrying some dirty carton boxes
on their heads. They first salute me with the thumb-up sign, than with
some complex gangster finger-twisting gestures. I try to imitate them
but cannot match the complexity and so I reply with a grin, which evokes
bewilderment on their faces and which they refuse to return.
The stench all around us is bad – of rotting food, an open sewage,
probably a decomposing rat or other unfortunate creature that passed
away somewhere nearby.
“Work quickly and get into the car!” says Manuel. “This is ‘red zone’ – ‘
zona roja.’”
“What is red zone?” I ask. “A brothel district?”
Almost every country in Latin America has its own terminology, at least for brutality, sex, and poverty and for public buses.
“No”, he replies. “Simply the most dangerous part of the city. The epicenter of the gang violence.”
I take a few more still images, then film for two minutes and finally get into the car.
“The best is still to come. Frankly you saw nothing, yet”, explains
Manuel. “But for the time being, let’s follow some common sense: don’t
buckle up, don’t roll down the windows unless you are really ready to
film; don’t make any eye contacts and please keep extremely low profile.
You are in the most dangerous place in the Western Hemisphere.”
Of course you hear the same warnings all over the region: “The
meanest streets of the Western hemisphere are those of Port-Au-Prince in
Haiti, of Tijuana in Mexico, of San Salvador, Tegucigalpa, Rio de
Janeiro, Cali or Medellin. And if you buy into the Western defamation
coverage of
El Proceso in Venezuela
, you would certainly believe that the murder capital of the Western hemisphere was Caracas.
But no matter how bad the other contenders are; Colon is unique in its hopeless decay and ferocity.
Abandoned church, Colon, Panama.
The city never truly recovered from the brutal US invasion of
December 1989, cynically code-named “Operation Just Cause”. The
operation was launched to oust the strongman Manuel Noriega who used to
be backed by the US, but at some point opted for the worst crime
imaginable in the eyes of the Empire: to part ways with the West,
embarking on a semi-independent course. To do it in the country that
literally sits on one of the most important waterways in the world –
Panama Canal – proved to be synonymous to committing a ritual suicide.
There had to be some fig leaf to justify the unlawfulness of the
invasion, in this case the drug trafficking in which Noriega was
involved.
During the invasion, thousands of people died. Entire cities, towns
and neighborhoods were leveled to the ground. The people of Panama and
entire Latin America were once again reminded that the Monroe Doctrine
was still the main ‘law’ by which the Western Hemisphere had been
governed. And so, in 1989, Panama joined the long list of devastated
countries that experienced the brutality of direct or indirect invasions
from the North: Granada, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Guatemala, Brazil,
Colombia, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay to name at least some.
The city of Colon was never rebuilt. Until now it feels as if the US
jets and helicopters were still periodically flying over its roofs, as
if the armored vehicles were driving through the fronts of cafes and
bars, as if the gunshots could be heard right behind the next corner.
Colon does not actually look like a city, but more like a huge ship
wreck, a frightening monument to destruction.
* * *
We are cruising slowly and despite Manuel’s warning I keep my window down, photographing and filming all along the way.
“If you use professional cameras: Leica or big Nikons, everything
looks better than in the real life”, I explain to Manuel. “You have to
get very close if you want to capture things accurately; if you want
your images to make an impact.”
He ignores my musing; he is scared. And I have no heart to tell him
that the Leica I am now using has almost no zoom; the zoom is my own
body, so I have to actually get very close to the street scenes of his
battered native city of Colon.
I see a girl – she is walks by; she almost levitates. Her legs are
fully and provocatively exposed but the entire upper part of her body is
covered in white. She looks like a fragile ghost, or, from the waste up
as a saint, but with provocatively painted lips. There is definitely a
strong doze of poetry in all that I see around me. She smiles at me; I
nod.
And then the children appear, young girls, as young as ten. They make
suggestive motions while I am trying to look the other way. The poetry
is gone. The images become extremely raw – everything here seems to be
overexposed.
There are young boys with the stares as sharp as knives. And there
are two old men having a dispute, their fingers pointing at each other’s
faces menacingly. There are entire families with children living on the
streets.
The decay is everywhere and it is quite an unimaginable decay; entire
blocks of houses turned into skeletons, half-fallen churches, open
garbage dumps, child sexual workers and gangs of desperately looking
tiny boys. I see no guns but I see knives and gang symbols, I hear
extremely violent music, the toughest grade of Panamanian rap.
“The violence came with the invasion”, says Manuel. “It never left.
The tanks left but the violence did not. Then gang culture got its
inspiration from the streets of LA and other US cities, as hopelessness
translated itself into increased immigration to the North where many
families ended up living in the toughest ghettos. The children became
the foot soldiers of the gangs, moving back and forth between the North
American inner cities and their native Panama.”
It all did not sound unfamiliar. I have witnessed the same pattern
for years in places as far apart as Honduras, Samoa and Cambodia.
“This building was bombed by the US forces”, Manuel points at the
huge, ghost-like, still surprisingly inhabited skyscraper. “If you want
to film it, do so, but do it very quickly.”
To Manuel’s desperation I take my time. The building and its past
fascinate me: the story is just incredible – the US forces bombed the
tower inhabited by hundreds of civilians simply because it was tall and
because it was ‘there’. I recall my work in Grenada, a decade after the
US invasion. I studied in disbelieve what was left of the mental
hospital blasted to pieces in 1983 in the so-called
Operation Urgent Fury,
with all its patients inside, simply because it had a green roof,
unlike the rest of St. George’s with its iconic red roof tops.
We pass by the place of worship belonging to Jehovah Witnesses.
Houses of Christian sects are all over the city, and so are the mosques,
even one huge Hindu temple. As always, wherever there is no hope left
and fear reigns, religions move in, quickly and efficiently, instantly
filling the void.
What is striking is that in Colon even the houses of worship are
fortified: with several layers of barbed wire, some armed with
surveillance systems.
Colon almost quater century after the invasion.
* * *
In the very center of the city I hear the howl of the ambulance
sirens. I spot a tall hospital, not far from the ridiculously out of
place looking Radisson Hotel and decaying cruise ship port. There is a
crowd of desperate relatives at the entrance to the medical facility.
Everything in Colon seems to be overanxious, loud and unsettling.
Observing the state of its infrastructure and services it is astonishing
and hardly credible that the country ranks 58 on the Human Development
Index (UNDP, HDI, 2011), above nations like Kuwait and Malaysia.
The contrasts are everywhere and they are monstrous – on one side is
the port designed for the cruise ship liners, with several empty
restaurants and the Radisson Hotel. Not far away is the dark and
frightening city overrun by violence, desperation and permanent decay.
As we come closer to the port, it strikes me that there are no
civilian ships. Instead I see one huge US battleship docked at the pier.
“But they are not supposed to be here, are they?” I drop my naïve
rhetorical question, listing Philippines and other places where the US
marines are actually ‘not supposed to be’ docking their ships.
“But they are”, Manuel shrugs his shoulders.
“Is this a cruise ship?” Two well-groomed women with very good middle
class accents approach me after spotting me filming the vessel. I smile
and reply that this is actually a war ship, with the cannons sticking
out in all directions. For a moment I think they came for sightseeing:
two nice and naïve teachers or young doctors or office workers. But then
I see miniskirts and incredibly high heels, and the piercing scent of
cheap perfume penetrates my nostrils.
I move to the main entrance to the jetty: “No dogs” it says: “The Entrance”.
I film for just a few seconds, before one tough looking and uniformed
US marine comes running towards me: “No filming!” he screams.
I try a Kafkaesque approach on him: “But could I photograph?”
“Yes, but not too much”, he barks at me. Whatever that means. I
switch one of my still cameras to an HD video mode and film a little bit
more.
The ship is being refueled.
“How many people died during the invasion?” I ask an old man who is
smoking some cheap cigar, right next to a huge plastic replica of a
bottle of local rum serving as advertisement.
“Thousands, sunny”, he says, laconically.
”Some say 3,500 in the whole country,” I suggest.
“More”, he says. “I think more died in Colon alone”.
“Father, but how is life now?” I ask him with my exaggerated Chilean accent, to make sure he does not take me for
gringo.
He pretends that he is thinking; although we both know the answer
that is coming. He spits tobacco on the ground before speaking.
“Life is shit, sunny”, he replies pensively, leaving no space for further inquiries. “
Una mierda, hijo.”
* * *
Then it is night and I feel hungry and near my hotel what is open are
only several North American fast food joints and a disproportionally
huge casino. I go through the security, then enter the casino. It is
Friday but nobody is gambling. The roulette and blackjack tables are
empty and so are the stools in front of flashing and noisy slot
machines.
Life music in café is very loud but good; a corpulent local starlet is pouring out her heart in classic
boleros, and then teasing the audience with good Columbian
cumbias.
It is all as it should be on a Friday night: “I die without you… You
are my life… If you leave me…” It all goes well, and the dish of
shredded beef and friend plantains is delicious. One could easily forget
that the city outside resembles a war zone and that the gangs and child
prostitutes are roaming the streets.
But then the music stops and the expression on the face of the singer
changes. Something is going to happen, I think. With one bizarre,
unnecessary and vulgar gesture she lifts up her skirt above her waste.
The audience roars.
As I am leave the casino, I clearly hear the gunshots nearby.
* * *
The same night I stalk a police officer, whose name is D. Rodriguez.
He is bored, guarding nothing more exciting than a large parking lot. He
is eager to talk, as there is nothing better to do than to talk. I ask
him how bad is really life in Colon? He thinks for a few seconds than
begins his long litany:
“To tell you the truth, earlier, things were much better
for the poor. No matter what they say, Noriega was actually helping many
poor people. In his days, most of the families were able to get by
easily. Now they squeeze you with taxes and regulations but you get
almost nothing in return. In the past, one could encounter plenty of
respect. One man; just one police officer would be able to guard an
entire prison… Now forget it: security forces are being taken hostages;
there is no safety in this country, anymore.”
I ask him about the terrible state in which his city appears to find
itself, but he does not seem to understand my question. He is a man of
concrete questions and answers. He was born and raised here and this is
all he knows; there is no point of comparison.
“It is falling apart, I know”, he says. “They – the administration –
do nothing. But it is like this for decades, at least since the
invasion…”
* * *
But others do seem to know and they compare.
In January 2009 Grisel Bethancourt wrote for
La Critica:
The City of Colón is the most violent in the Republic of
Panama, according to an analysis of crime statistics taken from around
the entire country announced by the Minister of Government and Justice
Dilio Arcia. According to Arcia, this conclusion is derived from the
numbers of homicides in Colón during 2008. There were 33 homicides for
every 100,000 residents, which is greater than the 27 homicides for
every 100,000 residents in Panama City. This report on the violence
occurring along the Atlantic coast form part of the diagnosis of the
criminal situation faced by the entire country. Most of the murders in
Colón are tied to gang activity, said Arcia. In 2008 there were a total
of 652 homicides in the entire Republic of Panama, where gang activity,
the settling of accounts, quarrels between rival groups and revenge are
the main causes. Even though Panama is not a drug producing country,
most crime is tied to drug trafficking and 80% of the murders are caused
with firearms. The statistics also indicate that in the prisons the
average age of the inmates is 30 years, and more than two thirds of the
inmates started their criminal careers at age 12, where school drop-outs
are a big part of the problem.
The editor of the publication replied:
At 33 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, Colón could very well be the most dangerous city in Latin America.
In his book
What Uncle Sam Really Wants, Noam Chomsky wrote about the state of post-invasion Panama:
The US put the bankers back in power after the invasion.
Noriega’s involvement in drug trafficking had been trivial compared to
theirs. Drug trafficking there has always been conducted primarily by
the banks – the banking system is virtually unregulated, so it’s a
natural outlet for criminal money. This has been the basis for Panama’s
highly artificial economy and remains so – possibly at a higher level –
after the invasion. The Panamanian Defence Forces have also been
reconstructed with basically the same officers.
In general, everything’s pretty much the same, only now more reliable
servants are in charge. The same is true of Grenada, which has become a
major centre of drug money laundering since the US invasion. Nicaragua,
too, has become a significant conduit for drugs to the US market, after
Washington’s victory in the 1990 election. The pattern is standard – as
is the failure to notice it.)
* * *
One of the managers working at the Hotel Four Points by Sheraton at a
suburb of Colon called Rainbow City originally comes from the capital.
He is ready to compare and to talk, but does not want to be named:
“Life here is very tough. Not much seems to be working
here now: the medical care is terrible and so is education… Noriega was
no saint, but during his government the poor and the middle class were
just fine. The rich of course hated him, as he was making their life
difficult. Like the President that we have now – for decades he has been
an arch enemy of Noriega.”
The name “Rainbow City” where we speak comes from the days when the
North Americans were building the Panama Canal. It is said that when
they came here, they began housing and racially segregating local
workers, similarly as they had been doing at home in the United States.
“Of course I did not experience those days of segregation”, says
Manuel. “It all happened before I was born, but my parents and
grandparents told me all about the past. There were shops, even
supermarkets for the whites only and others for the rest of the people.”
Then he returned back to the invasion:
“It all depends to whom you decide to talk, of course.
You hear one thing from the military and from the official press, which
is owned by the rich, and you hear the opposite things from those whose
children were killed during the bombing and invasion. What I can tell
you is that this country was used as one enormous training ground by the
US military. They tested all sorts of latest and the most sophisticated
equipment here, to check it and to see how it would work in much more
challenging war scenarios. They even brought some stealth bombers to
this backwater. Why, to fight against the owners of Laundromats and
minimarkets? And don’t forget that we have very good jungle here. You
know what I mean by ‘good’ – it fits to thousands of diverse war
scenarios.”
“Many Panamanian people died”, concluded Manuel. “Yes, many people
died here – in Colon; they were bombed, they were shot. But you know
what? You will hardly find anything that would remind you of those
horrors. Although the whole city looks now like one enormous war zone,
like something that had been bombed to the ground, there are almost no
bullet holes left and no remnants of the structures that were bombed.
All proofs of the crime were painstakingly removed.”
Manuel does not want to have his real name mentioned. He would lose
his job if he would be associated with the opposition intellectuals and
their reports.
Before we part, he drives me to a former police station in the center of the battered city.
“It was totally destroyed; bombed. Now you only see the gate.
”Apparently everything had been destroyed around here”, I say.
He nods.
* * *
The next day I drive around, to posh marinas outside the city where
to speak Spanish is clearly considered déclassé and where catamarans are
flying flags of the United States, Canada and European Union. I drive
to the series of ancient fortifications now designated as a world
heritage site by UNESCO.
Above all I want to see the Panama Canal; that fortified monster, the
engineering masterpiece, the pride and damnation of this country.
As enormous ships are majestically pulling through the locks, as
tugboats and locomotives are performing their precision work, as the
flags of dozens of countries from around the world are flying above the
vessels and along the Canal, one could not avoid thinking about the
striking contrast between this ribbon of high technology and precision
connecting two oceans, and the naked misery just a few miles away.
Between the city of Colon and the Gatun Locks, frenetic construction
is under way: the new canal, new locks and new waterway that will
increase maritime traffic through Panama.
The companies that were awarded construction contract belong to
Belgium, Spain, Italy and other nations. And the ownership of the
original Canal had been officially transferred from the United States to
Panama in 1999.
But it is no secret that the sole superpower is firmly in charge of
this strategically crucial country with only around 3.5 million
inhabitants. Since May 2009, the super-conservative, pro-US supermarket
magnate Ricardo Martinelli runs the country.
“Panama’s Torrijos was succeeded by the right wing
Ricardo Martinelli, who comes from one of Panama’s oldest economic and
political oligarch families”, wrote Annie Bird for The Red Phoenix.
“JIATF-S, a unit under the U.S. military’s Southern Command (SouthCom),
left Panama for Miami 19 years ago when the U.S. left the Canal Zone.
Last year JIATF-S came back to Panama providing “Operational Support” in
a newly reopened U.S. military base which serves as the Center of
Operations for the Central American System for Regional Integration’s
Regional Security Strategy (SICA-COSR). COSR will most likely be the
regional center for the JIATF-S’s C4I border surveillance program, which
creates technology canals of radars and other electronic surveillance
equipment linked to Colombian and Mexican border control technology.”
Elsewhere in Central America
The legacy of the US invasions and interventions is still visible all
over Central America, it is scarring entire communities, entire
nations.
“Gang violence, drug culture, extremely high crime rate: these are
all legacies of the imported conflicts and wars”, legendary Spanish
priest padre Pepe explained to me several years ago, who is, since 1985,
fighting gang violence in El Salvador by trying to bring opportunities
and skills to the youngsters who were recruited to some of the most
brutal gangs in the world, particularly “M18” and
Mara Salvatrucha (MS13).
In San Salvador, at
PolÃgono Industrial Don Bosco, I
witnessed hundreds of young men and women learning trades and trying to
find their place in the society. Some of them had terrible histories
shattering their young lives: they had to kill, to murder in cold blood,
in order to survive and to prove their allegiance to the gang. Many of
them lost relatives during the civil war, some were ‘sent’ to the United
States for education. Some joined the gangs here, others in California
or elsewhere.
The gang-wars in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico and at
much smaller extent in other Central American countries have been
reaching epic proportions for many years. Activities of the gangs are
range from extortion, killings, rape, arson and illegal gambling to bank
robberies and property fraud. The brutality is unimaginable: beheading
and body part dismembering are the usual forms of executions. One of the
former members of MS13 once confessed to me that after being gang-raped
a female victim had her chest cut open with a knife and her heart eaten
by the gang members while she was still alive.
In Central America, as in the real war, there are usually two sides
to the ‘conflict’. It could be the war between two gangs, or as it was
for years in El Salvador, a war between the gangs and equally (or even
more) brutal vigilante paramilitary groups like the
Sombra Negra
(“Black Shadow”) death squad, which consists of the members of the
military and police and executes on the spot anyone suspected of
belonging to the
maras.
As brutal as the gangs are, their members are products of the
violence that was often brought to this part of the world from outside.
This was clearly the point being made by a great French filmmaker
Christian Poveda who spent years documenting Salvadorian gangs and who
himself was murdered by
maras in 2009. Poveda often described
maras as “Victims of society”.
In June I drove to the same neighborhood of Soyapango where the
filmmaker was allegedly murdered. I filmed the gang insignias and then I
asked the driver to come back to allow me to take still photographs. As
we were making the second approach, our car came under fire.
The same afternoon I visited the town of Guazapa, a place where some
of the most terrible atrocities during the civil war took place. I was
shown electric poles with the bullet holes, the places where the
military and death squads (many of them trained in the United States)
charged against the civilians. I was taken to the places where the
people were murdered in broad daylight.
I crossed the river, stopping at the concrete wall where the names of
the victims were once engraved into the simple monument, but were now
fading. The river flowed lazily by and it was getting dark and eerie.
“This was the border between the land controlled by the revolutionary
FLMN and the rest of the country”, explained my guide, a basketball
trainer Henrique (not his real name). “Thousands of people were
massacred here by the military, by paramilitaries, by the US covert
operations. The slopes of the volcano are like some massive graveyard.
And why? Just because the majority of our people wanted their left-wing
government!”
The area is dotted with craters from intensive bombing (not unlike
those I saw in Laos and Cambodia), with some remnants of schools and
peasant houses.
The civil war in El Salvador (1980-1992) took, according to the
official counts, between 70.000 and 75.000 lives, but it is widely
believed that much more than 100.000 people were killed or disappeared
in this small country with just slightly over 6 million inhabitants
(2012 estimate).
I visit an old man – the only member of the family of over 30 that
was massacred during the war. “They came with a truck, loaded all of us
to the back of it and then shot and killed everybody just a few
kilometers away. I was the only one who survived.” We agree on a formal
interview and filming in the future. As the darkness begins to descend
on the villages around Guazapa, my driver begins to panic. “This area
is controlled by
maras”, he explains.
Henrique calms him down. “They will not attack us. I coach many of
their members. We play basketball together.” Sport is his way to draw
young people away from violence.
“Most of them are good kids”, he says. “But look at this country:
when they were children, their parents and relatives were disappearing,
being slaughtered like animals. Weapons were everywhere. Death was
hiding behind every corner and life was cheap; it had hardly any value.”
Now former FMLN guerillas are governing El Salvador, and things are
slowly beginning to improve. But the legacy of violence will remain in
the country for many long decades.
The US involvement in El Salvador (and in the rest of the region) has
had a devastating impact on the local societies. Even with the new
winds blowing though Latin America, it is very difficult to change the
old power structures that are firmly in place. Not only financial, but
also moral corruption has been implanted here for generations.
In 1987, John Stockwell, former high-ranking CIA agent, gave a
powerful speech on the Secret Wars of the CIA. He mentioned El Salvador
where the war was then still in full swing:
They don’t meet the death squads on the streets where
they’re actually chopping up people or laying them down on the street
and running trucks over their heads. The CIA people in San Salvador meet
the police chiefs, and the people who run the death squads, and they do
liaise with them, they meet them beside the swimming pool of the
villas. And it’s a sophisticated, civilized kind of relationship. And
they talk about their children, who are going to school at UCLA or
Harvard and other schools, and they don’t talk about the horrors of
what’s being done. They pretend like it isn’t true.
But it was true and it is true even now. In El Salvador the civil war
fought for ideals and sovereignty ended two decades ago, but the
violence never stopped – it mutated to senseless gang wars and endless
assassinations. There are thousands of literally sick elements of
society, including members of the
Sombra Negra, who are simply too accustomed to killing and too sure of their impunity.
* * *
In Guatemala, one of the most racially divided and feudal countries
on earth, the civil war (1960-1996) took almost a quarter of a million
people: 200,000 were killed and 50.000 disappeared. The conflict was
mainly between the right-wing governments and the military and
indigenous Maya groups, which actually represented the great majority of
the country. Left-wing guerilla MR-13 fought for 36 years both the
pro-Western fascist governments and the US direct (Green Berets
“advisors”, for instance) and indirect interventions.
Even before the war, the U.S. government ordered the Central
Intelligence Agency to launch Operation PBSUCCESS (1953–54) and halt
Guatemala’s “communist revolt”, basically progressive forces – “October
Revolutionaries” – who took control of the country after 1944,
implementing countless socially- oriented reforms; another terrible
crime in the eyes of the Empire.
In the neighboring Honduras, the United States established its
continuous military presence and from there it was supporting
(illegally, even according to the US Constitution) the terrorist
Contras across the border in Nicaragua.
The military of Honduras was taking for years direct orders from the
United States and there were entire waves of extra-judicial killings in
the country’s history, backed by the CIA. Notorious “Battalion 316”
performed the worst ones. There were also kidnappings and disappearances
of countless Left wing opposition figures (including members of
‘Cinchoneros Popular Liberation Movement’) by the armed forces.
Recently, in 2009, the Left-Wing President Manuel Zelaya had been deposed in what was widely believed to be a US-backed coup.
Both Guatemala and Honduras are suffering from some of the highest
levels of gang violence and delinquency anywhere in the world, the fact
linked directly to the militias and death squads supported and trained
for decades by the United States, as well as by the past wars ignited
and fueled from the North.
* * *
Nicaragua is different.
There is no other country in Central America that had suffered more
in the hands of the Empire. An adventurer William Walker declared
himself a King here in 1856 before being driven from his ‘throne’ by
other Central American countries one year later.
At the beginning of the 20
th Century President Zelaya
dared to make an attempt to regulate foreign access to Nicaraguan
natural resources and the United States reacted by predictable fury,
invading the country in 1909 and staying, with one brief interval, until
1933. Nicaragua was converted to a de facto colony. Shortly after the
Marines left, long and horrible era of Somoza Dynasty (1936 – 1979) was
installed and sponsored from the North. Anastasio Somoza GarcÃa was a
strange brew, a fascist and
caudillo, but above all the fateful
servant of the Empire. His offspring followed the same line; Anastasio
Somoza Debayle, first the head of the notorious National Guard later the
President, was ‘educated’ at West Point.
During the brutal dictatorship of Somoza clan, Nicaragua lost almost
all of its coastal pines; there was unbridle deforestation, soil erosion
and the land grabs by ruling elites. Hundreds of thousands of people
were constantly on the move – relocated, displaced, forced to abandon
their land. Lethal pesticides like DDT and Dieldrin were poisoning the
land. The US interests and the local elites were ruining the country,
systematically and without mercy.
The violence of destruction reached unimaginable heights.
But unlike elsewhere, the opposition was well organized and
disciplined. The fight against fascism did not only include weapons, it
encompassed education, revolutionary pathos ventilated through poetry,
literature and music.
After the devastating “Managua Earthquake” which killed 10.000 and
left 500.000 homeless on December 1972, the government had stolen much
of the money from international relief funds. This was the last straw
and on 27 December 1974, a group of FSLN guerrillas went to action and
the war for the liberation of Nicaragua erupted.
For almost seven years the government used death squads and bombed
civilians. Martial law was declared and entire villages were razed. The
US was unconditionally supporting its ally. The Soviet Union and Cuba
felt obliged to join the fight and support FSLN.
On July 19, 1979, Somoza dictatorship was over. The new – Sandinista –
government was proclaimed, led by 35-years old Daniel Ortega. Young
revolutionaries took over the city, with their songs and good humor,
bringing hope to a ghostly capital.
Fabulous creative energy was unleashed; several years of rebuilding
the nation began. After brutal pro-US dictatorship, Sandinistas had to
fight malnutrition, pollution, widespread misery and illiteracy.
But success and the independent course unleashed, as always, a furious reaction from the United States, who embraced
Contras, established by Somoza’s National Guard and strongly supported by former Nicaraguan business elites.
Contras were allegedly funded by the CIA elements involved in cocaine trade in Central America, and the United Sates itself.
In Reagan years, the US unleashed nothing short of a war against the
poor Central American nation, destroying its ports, infrastructure and
terrorizing civilians.
Contras were brutalizing local population, making excursions from their bases in Honduras and Costa Rica.
As always in similar scenarios, the US was enjoying absolute
impunity. Although the International Court of Justice (ICJ) condemned
its actions in 1986, the U.S. refused to pay restitution to Nicaragua,
even after The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution in
order to pressure the U.S. to pay the fine. Only El Salvador and Israel
voted against.
Brutality of the civil war exhausted the country and broke its
revolutionary spirit. Sandinistas lost elections in 1990, and then again
in 1996.
I drove all around the country in October 1996. The remnants of the
violence were everywhere. Destroyed towns and villages, the bullet
holes. In Rama, I hired a small boat and sailed down the Rio Escondido.
There, some of the most vicious fighting had been taking place during
the war. And it was there where I witnessed the most symbolic remnant of
the war – long and ghostly wreck of the cargo boat rotting in the
middle of the river; the boat sank by
Contras. Its name was “Hope”.
Imagine “Free and fair” elections (that is how they were described by
Western mass media) where most of the people you ask say they would
vote for Sandinistas, but vote for the Right-wing instead, too scared of
the threats coming from the US embassy that is almost openly suggesting
that the war would resume would the Left win again in democratic
elections.
In those years I tried to make sense of all that was happening in
Nicaragua and I spoke to Daniel Ortega and I spoke to Eden Pastora,
Commander Zero, first the hero of the Revolution and later the leader of
one faction of the
Contras, the man who apparently refused to
accept the US command and tactics and suggested to his North American
counter-parts to “eat shit”.
One thing was clear to me: no matter how broken the country felt, no
matter how depressing were regressive policies of the right wing
governments, it was obvious to anyone that Nicaragua was “different”
from other Central American nations. It was a place where people still
knew how to dream about a better world. There was much more solidarity
and awareness here than anywhere else in the region.
When the Left (Republicans) lost the civil war in Spain, they used to
say: “We lost, but we had better songs!” Even when I worked one year in
Costa Rica, a ‘region’s star”, I felt relief driving across the border
to Nicaragua. They had always better jokes and much better songs there.
To have good songs and good education certainly helps. The nation
finally pulled together and in November 2006 Daniel Ortega won elections
once again. Of course he is far from being a perfect leader. Pastora,
who came back and is now a cabinet minister, is also far from being
‘clean’. But what a difference between Nicaragua and those other Central
American countries that also went through the deadly spiral of violence
like Guatemala, Honduras, or Panama!
* * *
After coming under fire in San Salvador, after seeing all that
hopelessness and decay of the city of Colon in Panama, I arrived in
Nicaragua. I came for just two days, for B roll I had to collect for one
of my documentary films. I rented a car and after checking in my hotel
in Managua, drove to splendid Granada on the Lake Nicaragua.
It was already late afternoon when I arrived. Before entering the
city center, I noticed a large and welcoming park in front of the
historic train station. It was dotted with impressive modern sculptures
of great Nicaraguan poets. Each sculpture had one poem engraved in white
color to its black surface. I read the names and the poems with
reverence: Ernesto Cardenal, Enrique Fernandez Morales, Manolo Cuadra,
Jose Coronel Urtecho, Joaquin Pasos…
Children were playing all around the park and lovers were sitting
underneath those engraved poems, holding hands, embracing and kissing,
whispering promises that were whispered by those who are in love since
the very beginning of the world.
There was something moving and good about this entire atmosphere. It was an image of peace, of simple joy, of goodness.
It hit me that this was all very symbolic – this was the spirit of
Central America, the beautiful and tender part of the world with its
great ancient civilizations and communal and sharing spirit. In this
world many great poems and songs were born. The couples would dance here
until the early morning hours while the stories would flow often for
days and nights. The beautiful land and the sea produced more than
enough to sustain those few millions who lived here.
But outside of Nicaragua and Costa Rica, the violence is still
torturing and scarring the people; blood is still flowing, women are
crying at night remembering all those horrors they had to witness,
remembering the men they loved and lost, the children they breastfed and
lost, and all that injustice that is impossible to ever forgive and
forget.
All that injustice… And all that violence unleashed by the
generations of those who only knew wars and monstrous
dictatorships, the
death squads.
Chances are that the child who grows up playing on the metal replica
of old steam train under the statues of great writers will grow up to
recite poems to his first love, somewhere in the park like this one in
Granada. Chances are that a child who played with knifes and grew up
witnessing indescribable violence will join some gang, will turn to
killing and raping with no second thought.
In Guatemala, in El Salvador, in Nicaragua: people were certain what
societies they wanted to live in. At one point or another they opted for
progressive, humane governments. But their choices were drowned in
blood. The Empire; the United States of America, put business and
colonial interests ahead of any considerations for human lives. Hundreds
of thousands of men, women and children were slaughtered. No apology,
no compensation ever came.
Entire nations ruined, entire cities ruined. The gangs, the violence,
the misery – this is what replaced the hope and natural strife for
justice.
Two countries, two places only in this tortured strip of land between
Mexico and Darien Gap are now rising from the ashes again: Nicaragua
and El Salvador. Honduras tried but was cut in the middle by yet another
US-backed shameless coup. The only way for Nicaragua and El Salvador to
survive is to join hands, to cling with all their strength to their
bigger brothers in South America, those who are uniting, those who are
finally coming through, those who, after centuries of servility, are
standing proudly on their own feet.
Andre Vltchek is a novelist, filmmaker and
investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of
countries. His book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific – Oceania –
is published by Lulu . His provocative book about post-Suharto
Indonesia and market-fundamentalist model is called “Indonesia – The
Archipelago of Fear” and will be released by Pluto Publishing House in
August 2012. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania,
Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and Africa. He can be
reached through his website.
All photographs by Andre Vltchek.
