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Published: September 5th 2009
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Col. Sandino
this town is full of beautiful murals, notice where Col. Sandino has placed his boot.... for all the US has done here (they sent Marines here for the expressed purpose of killing him) i can´t say i blame him.. It seems like everyone in this town has a war story.
I´m in the northern city of Leon, waylaid here for a week while I wait out a flat spell of no waves. To make a long story short, I fell in with a rowdy crowd of Australians back in Popoyo and we were on our way to El Salvador when we stopped over here in Leon for the weekend. However, the modern miracle of internet surf forecasting told me there would be no swell til next weekend, and so Í´ve decided to stay here and enroll in language school for a week. the Aussies went on their way and now here i am, sweating it out in this hot city for the time being. I´m staying with a family in the barrio and am enjoying the relative tranquility of home life after a few nights out on the town.
As for this town... well, like i said it´s hot. and by hot i mean really hot. and there´s no ocean to go jump in a few times a day, so its that much hotter. yet for what it lacks in climatic ambience it more than makes up for
another amazing mural...
...depicting the day when troops killed students who were protesting in the streets... in historical interest. this town is old, over 500 years i think, and is home to the biggest cathedral in central america. this city, along with granada, are the remaining vestiges of the spanish empire, and in its cobblestone streets one can still see the past and present live side by side as horse drawn carts trot alongside tricked out land rovers.
anyways, this town is and has always been the home of the liberal politics in nicaragua, and throughout its long history has been the site of much conflict. in the seventies the sandanista revolutionary movement was particularly strong here in Leon and one of the Somoza's last acts while in power was to randomly drop incendiary bombs all over the city. In fact, during lunch today, my host told me that as his mother was laboring to give birth to him, one of Somoza´s bombs exploded in the street not thirty meters from where she laid. Like I said, it seems everyone in this town has a war story.
yet this next one really blew me away. my teacher Dennis looks like any normal guy you might see walking down the street but his story, and
my teacher
this guy was amazing it´s roundabout connection to my own personal life is anything but normal. you see, Dennis spent the years of his youth here in Leon protesting the heavy hand of the Somoza dictatorship, demonstrating in the streets, getting locked up as a political prisoner, getting tortured in jail for months.. (he told me they pulled out his fingernails, and that he had to stand in a giant basin full of human excrement up to his waist nearly everyday for two months with his hands tied behind his back) As an ardent supporter of the Sandanista revolution he then spent the next ten years or so in the mountains of northern Nicaragua, part of the people´s army that fought the U.S.-funded Contras.
Trained as a sniper, Dennis spent lots of time high in the trees, with just some food, some water, and an AK-47, where he picked off those Contras unlucky enough to cross his path. There in the highlands the people´s army fought against what were basically U.S.-funded mercenaries who sought to restore the Somoza dicatatorship in the name of ´free enterprise´ and 'democracy.' During this war thousands of people died as a result of Reagan imperialism in which the
on the roof...
from the museo de la revolucion, with the cathedral in the background. U.S. trained and fully funded Contra death squads that killed and tortured indiscriminately those that were suspected of supporting the Sandinista revolution. (this is obviously a quick summary of a complicated and varied historical event, for more info please feel free to do your own research) but the story continues.....
....one day an unidentified plane came flying overhead and was shot down. It was this plane that forever changed the face of the Contra war and set the stage for a worldwide exposure of the up til then clandestine support of the Contras by the U.S. For not far from where the plane was shot down, an American named Eugene Hasenfus was found. You see, this American was working for the CIA, and had in his possession some papers in which was written a phone number that happened to be a direct line to the White House. This was not the greatest PR for the US, and the Sandanistas worked it for all it was worth. The next day, this guy's face was pasted on the front of newspapers all around the world, and US was exposed as a supporter of a brutal war regime.
Well my friend
Missile launcher
this was a weapon used by the contras, notice how the instructions are in english
Dennis here, since he had a bum ankle at the time (he had been shot by a Contra), was given the task of watching over this particular prisoner of war. Eugene was actually the first north american he had ever seen, for back then no gringo would be crazy enough to go on a surf trip to nicaragua. well, over time spent together they learned to communicate through gestures and body language, and Dennis shared his food and water and helped the prisoner recuperate from his wounds and through bouts of malaria. the two eventually became friends, finding connection and oneness in the sense that they were both merely human beings living out their lives here on the same planet. That the two were able to transcend the political, cultural, and linguistical boundaries and find common ground in the midst of a situation wherein they could have easily killed one another... this is the beauty of their story, does it not prove that kindness and understanding is more powerful than hate and war? however, the story continues....
Eventually, Eugene was sent back to the United States, but not before he disclosed the US involvement in funding the Contras. Implicated
in the following investigations were many US politicians, the most notorious of whom was Lt. Col. Oliver North of the US Marine Corps. This scandal revealed all sorts of other underhanded backroom deals made by US politicos in the Reagan administration and had long term political repercussions in the US. Eugene Hasenfus went back to wherever he was from, yet over the years he remained in contact with Dennis, sending cards each Christmas and even sending textbooks so that Dennis´daughter could continue her studies at the university.
Yet despite the 'happy' ending of this particular war story, I, as an American, felt somehow responsible, somewhat guilty for the countless suffering inflicted by my country on the people of Nicaragua. How do you reconcile the fact that one person's opportunities and freedoms are determined solely by what country they happen to be born into? On some level, the reality in which I am able to tramp around this country in relative luxury is somehow based on the injustices committed and perpetrated by the government that my people have elected; for all of the prosperity and decadence that we enjoy in the US can only exist if others around the world
live in poverty with next to nothing, on less than $5 per day. And so, while I sat and sweated in the sweltering heat of this ancient city and listened to these war stories of profound pain and courage, I couldn´t help but feel a sinking feeling at my very core.
This sinking feeling was partly due to a somewhat personal connection I have to Ollie North, the man who took the brunt of the political bombshell of the Iran-Contra scandal. You see this guy Ollie North has moved on from the Marine Corps, and now has a TV show called 'War Stories' that features veterans accounts of battle experience. Well, a few years back he interviewed my grandfather, whose war story about the disasterous Dieppe raid in France during WWII was featured on the show. And so this man who was partly responsible for providing the weapons, the ammo, the training, and the money that killed so many people has shaken hands with someone from my own family.
How's that for a few degrees of seperation? I meet the man who killed many of the men(contras) who were supplied by a plane manned by another man (Eugene
Jesus es mi Senor
jesus is pretty popular down here, this painting was in the cathedral, and is part of a series of paintings that are considered to be masterpieces. Hasenfus) who was sent by the CIA who were told by another man (Oliver North) who happens to be the same guy that put my grandfather on his TV show. That's about four degrees of seperation. I guess Walt Disney was right, it is a small world after all.
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Yer Momma
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Cuidado!
Okay, that was pretty heavy for my breakfast reading. Cuidado! At first I thought you were holding a camera. Then I was trying to figure out what you had on your head when I realized why I should "watch out!"