It was the 1980s and Nicaragua’s Sandinista revolution was captivating hearts and minds around the world. The olive-uniformed guerrillas had overthrown the hated Somoza dictatorship and were trying to build a more equal society by empowering women, giving peasants land and teaching the illiterate to read. But it was the Cold War and where others saw hope, the Reagan administration saw a communist beachhead in central America. It imposed sanctions and sponsored insurgents, the contras, to strangle the revolution.
For the left in Europe, North America and elsewhere, Nicaragua became a cause. A popular, progressive and legitimate government in an impoverished country in the developing world was under imperialist attack. It deserved and needed help. Thousands of Westerners took planes, boats, buses and motorcycles to this previously unknown backwater between Honduras and Costa Rica. Some were hippies, some were adventurers, some were socialists, many wore Birkenstocks. The Sandalistas were born.
It was a heady time. Central America was a military and ideological battlefield for the United States and Soviet Union. To those who were there it felt like the centre of the world, especially Nicaragua. The revolution was young and fresh and exciting. There was so much to do — schools to be built, coffee to be picked, classes to be taught, the truth to be told. And by God it was fun. If you had dollars, the beer was cheap and you could go dancing every night.
But the war with the contras dragged on, the economy collapsed, the Berlin wall fell and in 1990, during a ceasefire, an election was held. Almost everyone expected the Sandinistas to win. They lost. Nicaraguans were tired of conscription, of shortages, of sacrifice. It was a staggering result. The revolution was over. Washington’s glee was boundless. The Sandinistas went into opposition and their foreign guests, the Sandalistas, went home.
Or most of them did. Unnoticed amid the exodus of 1990, some foreigners stayed and have lived quietly in the country ever since. And, in a curious and unexpected epilogue, they have lived to see the Sandinistas’ leader, Daniel Ortega, back as president, having won the November 2006 election.
Ortega still rails against American imperialism and has nurtured ties with Iran and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. He has increased spending on anti-poverty programmes, notably health and education, but inflation in Nicaragua is surging, investment is dropping and aid donors are leaving. Ortega’s support for a total ban on abortion pleased the Catholic church but alienated traditional Sandinistas, especially women. The IMF and World Bank have been kept sweet. It is an ambiguous and remarkable comeback.
We visited some of the internacionalistas. Each had a story to tell: why they came, why they stayed and what they think of the Sandinistas’ return.
The farmer
Lillian Hall (47) visited Nicaragua in 1982 as a US college student and instantly fell in love with the revolution. The daughter of middle-class parents radicalised by the civil rights movement and Vietnam, she found her own cause in the countryside where peasants were learning to read and being given land. “There was still hope, still euphoria. People were really pumped up. It was beautiful.”
She completed her agronomy studies at Cornell to better serve the revolution, and returned in 1984. She lived in rural areas near the Honduran border, where fighting was heavy, advising peasants on livestock and crops. A greater contribution, she says, was raising awareness on visits back home.
When a contra ambush killed her friend Benjamin Linder, an American volunteer working on an electrification project, Hall identified the body. “The only picture of Ben I have is from the morgue with a bullet in his head. The rest of us were madder than hell and more determined than ever to stay.”
Despite the danger, Hall considers that a golden period. “We were younger and thinner, everything was intense, the grief, the happiness, it was intoxicating. There was a real sense of solidarity.” She rode horses, bathed in the river and acquired a Nicaraguan husband. “You would walk down the streets of Matagalpa and hear Norwegian, Dutch, Greek, English. We didn’t think the revolution would ever end. We thought it would be like Cuba.”
The 1990 election was a devastating blow to those hopes. Overnight, a revolution she would have died for ended. “Your whole identity, your passion, your youth, had gone into it,” Hall says. She blames the US for destroying a dream that could have blossomed into a model for the world.
Nevertheless, she stayed, bought a small farm, raised a son and endured what she says was a decade-long collective depression in which neo-liberal economics destroyed Sandinista accomplishments such as land reform.
The 1990s brought individualism, greed and cultural erosion. “Time healing all wounds is the biggest crock of shit,” she says. “Ben didn’t die, 50Â 000 people didn’t die, so we could have shopping malls and Pizza Hut.”
Hall thinks it unlikely that the return of the Sandinistas will stop the neo-liberal rot. “It’s good that free health and education are being brought back, but things have not changed that much.”
Despite everything, Hall still adores her adopted country. “They say you can’t choose where you’ll be born but can choose where you’ll die. This is where I want to die,” she says.
The translator
Nick Cooke (53) visited Nicaragua in 1982 as part of a Canadian auto union delegation and was excited by what he saw. “The Sandinistas were trying to do something new. After the US invaded Grenada in 1983 the stakes got higher, so I figured, I’m going to get myself down to Nicaragua before they invade.” He returned the hard way: riding his Honda Hawk from Toronto to Managua in 16 days.
He found work translating articles for pro-Sandinista publications. It paid a pittance but he eked out a livingÂ. “I was excited,” he says. “I think our biggest achievement was raising awareness — a lot more people around the world heard about Nicaragua. I think that contributed to the US decision not to invade.”
Cooke married a Nicaraguan and stayed on after 1990. “The 1990 election result was like getting the air kicked out of you, but I figured I’d been here long enough to want to know how the movie turned out.” The answer: modest economic and social progress but enduring extremes of inequality and poverty. Cooke is not optimistic Ortega’s return will change that. “Managua is different now, people are more stressed out trying to survive,” he says.
The publisher
Louise Calder, now 56, was not looking for revolution; she just wanted to stir up her life a bit. Born in England to a rail engineer father, she had graduated and taught for a while and then drifted into social work with teenagers.
On reaching 30 she decided to travel. With backpay from her trade union in 1981 she worked her way south from Mexico through Belize, Guatemala and Honduras before reaching Nicaragua.
She knew next to nothing about the country but felt welcome. “I was completely infatuated with the ideals. People were putting in all sorts of hours for it, they didn’t seem to sleep.”
After checking her teaching qualifications, the education ministry posted Calder to Esteli, a northern town, to teach English to somewhat reluctant students. “There was some resistance to the language,” she says. “They resented it as imperialist pressure.”
She moved to Managua to proofread a bilingual Sandinista magazine before transferring to Bluefields, a sleepy, humid town on the Caribbean coast, to help run a new monthly magazine called Sunrise. “The idea was to explain the revolution in terms that people could relate to. Some called it Polyanna-ish. I loved it.” Circulation was less than 5Â 000, but in a small community the magazine had a big impact and she stuck with it for almost a decade.
The 1990 election shocked her. The war was the result of US aggression, she says, but in hindsight she considers the movement’s defeat inevitable. “People were worn down — the young men coming back in boxes, the rationing. They had sacrificed enough. Not everyone is Che Guevara.” The Berlin wall had fallen and the Soviet Union was tottering. “The Sandinista endeavour was not communism, but it was a thing of its time. The revolution was a wonderful experience for a lot of peopleÂ, but that’s life. Things change.”
The bodyguard
Erik Flakoll (53) visited Nicaragua in 1980 for a brief stopover, and with only $50 in his pocket, “to see what the fuss was about”. He stayed. A black belt in martial arts, and “very enthusiastic” about the revolution, Flakoll found work at a college instructing Sandinista special forces. He became a soldier and survived skirmishes near the Honduran border as the war with the contras escalated. “We were a small unit but feared,” he explains. They wore East German uniform cast-offs. “The camouflage was for pine forests, not the tropics, but they were free.”
Later, Tomas Borge, the interior minister, hired him as a bodyguard and assistant. “Being a bodyguard is usually very dull,” says Flakoll. Rising to the rank of sub-commandante, he coordinated security for foreign trips, including one to India, and also served as an interpreter.
Flakoll’s commitment was initially unshakeable. “I was willing to lay my life down for the revolution. The literacy campaigns, the solidarity — all these intangible human values were very important,” he says. Only after the war and election defeat did he regret conscription, which rounded up boys as young as 14 to fight. “At the time I was so into it I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Everything was justified by the war.”
After 1990, Flakoll joined Barricada, the Sandinista newspaper, and slowly grew disillusioned with party leaders. Ortega’s policy of “ruling from below” degenerated into croneyism, he claims. When the party ousted Barricada’s editor, Flakoll quit and joined Oxfam as a press officer.
He is now an independent documentary filmmaker with three children. He lives alone in his “bachelor pad” on the fringes of Managua. And he still drives the battered Russian-made Lada given to him by the government in the 1980s. — Â