Ain't Life Granada!

I like to blog long and philosophically, but my time in Managua was so filled with happenings I had very little time to think about the meaning of my experience. I’m in Granada for a couple of weeks to write, edit videos, relax and get some sun. After investigating (in a minor way) the mining situation in El Salvador, and visiting the protest encampment across the street from the Asamblea Nacional to videotape interviews with the ex-bananeras in Managua, I have a lot of work to do. Somehow I’m not getting to it because Granada is even more interesting.

I'm staying at Oasis in Granada, and an Oasis it is. (t's beautiful, with comfortable beds, free coffee all day, wireless internet, a beautiful (and really clean) pool, an inexpensive and delicious breakfast served in the morning, and lots of interesting travelers eager to share travel tips and perspectives on life in Nicaragua.

At the same time, I’ve been participating in a “lively” (or perhaps “deadly”) exchange on FaceBook about the protests in Vancouver against the 2010 Olympics. I’m fortunate to have a few intelligent, sensitive people, committed to seeking justice “on my side” (although I hate the necessity of having to being on one side or another, and hope that one day we will all be on the same side against injustice, exploitation and the everyday violence of poverty). If it were not for this comradely support, I would be depressed by some of the supercilious comments I am reading about “violent” protesters (and those who don’t take a stand against them, like me). These are the people who seem to live comfortably in that bubble of unreality that is my community. They seem to think there is nothing wrong as long as their own lives are running smoothly. Concepts of justice and compassion do not appear to figure in their thinking. I prefer to think that it is only to their ignorance and fear, rather than hostility toward these ideas, that keeps them inside the bubble of unknowing. Ignorance dissipates with knowledge, and fear can be overcome.

Meanwhile, the realities of the larger world -- those I am seeing in the places I travel to, those I come across in my research and those brought to my attention by people I meet -- keep expanding the range of dots to connect and keep taking me further outside the bubble. Seeing more than most people do, or even questioning my own “received knowledge,” has repercussions that are difficult to predict and sometimes unexpectedly unpleasant, but they always lead to an expanded awareness.

As it is in San Salvador, El Salvador, and the Sunshine Coast, Canada, the daily experience of most people here in Granada is far removed from the machinations of the governments that rule over them. People learn to live with the contradictions, the lies, the corruption, the impunity and the exploitation that surrounds them. People get by to the best of their ability, hoping for better days. The difference I’ve observed in Central America is that the poorer people have a stronger sense of community in adversity than I’ve seen in North America, and they have demonstrated time and again their willingness to rise up together against the powers that be.

The people of El Salvador briefly experienced a sense of collective power when the FSLN won the election last year. Now they are learning that simply replacing a right-wing military government with a left-wing “revolutionary” government has made little or no change in their daily lives. “No matter whom you vote for, the government always gets in,” the saying goes -- and the first order of business for any government is to secure its continuity in power. Power no longer comes from the people, the natural persons. It is conferred or withheld by the legal persons, the transnational corporations and the banking institutions.

In El Salvador, the apparently (and avowedly) moderate left-wing government of Maurcio Funes presides over a country of incredible beauty and an abundance of natural resources, a crumbling infrastructure and rampant gang violence. Although his party, the FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front) was born out of a revolutionary movement," Funes compares himself to the US president, Barack Obama, who has already proven himself -- to the disappointment of followers who were expecting "change"-- to be decidedly big business-friendly. This is not a good sign.

In the New World Order, big business-friendliness and improving the conditions of a nation's people have a negative correlation. Is that happening here? Despite the recent assassinations of anti-mining activists in the Cabañas region and the death threats being made against journalists keeping the story alive at Radio Victoria, the anti-mining issue appears not to be any way near the top of the Funes government's agenda. Little progress has been made to find and bring to justice those responsible for the killings and there is no ongoing coverage of the anti-mining struggle in El Salvador's mainstream press.

To learn more about the anti-mining activists' struggle and to add your name to a petition calling for the government of El Salvador to: investigate the murders of the anti-mining activists, to provide effective protection to activists organizing campaigns to defend their land from the despoilation of mining, and to make mining illegal in El Salvador, please visit the PetitionOnline site.

My first impression is that the people of Nicaragua seem, in general (and I realize it's a sweeping generalization, based on only the few people I've met and spoken with), a little less oppressed than the people of El Salvador. One San Salvadoran, noticing the number of flag-emblazoned t-shirts people were wearing at Playa El Tunco, asked me if I'd ever seen anyone wearing a t-shirt with a Salvadoran flag. I shrugged, and he said, "That's because we're not proud of our country."

I will be posting on some of my experiences in Managua and Granada over the next while. From now on, my blogs will (I hope) be shorter and more frequent, with more photos. Too much is happening for me to let it pile up and then try to bring it together. That would take a really long essay.