A Holy Week conversion:
Brown, Sheila
INTERVIEW IN MANAGUA
A HOLY WEEK CONVERSION
ONE WOMAN'S TESTIMONY
I was part of a Witness for Peace Delegation that visited Nicaragua from January 4-16,1988. Among the twenty-two formal interviews...
...My child was large and fat...
...Three of my five sons went into the mountains during the literacy campaign...
...We then became involved, through the Cursillo, with Christian Base Communities, which had developed in poor neighborhoods...
...In your Congress, a life and death decision is being debated, as a question of budgets...
...The third is an electrical engineer...
...And so, for us, the party was over...
...I realized that this is the program of life...
...he studied in Belgium and is working in Germany where he is employed by a Nicaraguan electrical firm...
...We learned to accept fear, guilt, sin, and an abiding sense of the devil...
...Toward the end of the interview she traced her history as a middle-class, Catholic Nicaraguan from the days of Somoza to the present...
...The answer: to read, to have land, to be healthy...
...I then realized that one had to move from individual prayer to collective prayers, that the womb of one's heart must be opened to the motherhood of all...
...The kingdom of God will not be established on earth, that will only come in the end...
...I feel the strength of God to rebuild under incredible difficulties-in the campos and in the city-we have great shortages of power, water, food...
...He was imprisoned, escaped, and fled the country...
...It is the solidarity, the accompaniment in suffering and death that we hope to see in the Resurrection...
...It was terrible...
...The oldest is twenty-nine and in business administration working for the government...
...In Holy Week, everyone in Nicaragua, who can, goes on vacation...
...As soon as I returned to Managua, I started researching statistics on infant mortality...
...We suddenly became aware...
...Fourteen of our colleagues here in the ministry have been killed in the war, killed while building resettlement villages, not while fighting...
...My children have taught me a lot...
...The baby arrived all covered up in a blanket...
...We were educated, middle-class people, and when one lives surrounded by the poor, one becomes used to it...
...I remember the day I sent my sons off in the trucks...
...Among the twenty-two formal interviews we conducted was one with Maria del Socorro Gutierrez, Secretary of Urban Housing at the Ministry of Housing...
...Many are starting to experience the Calvary that we are going through...
...We are not a tourist country so to come here is to know the life of the people...
...Senora Gutierrez is an attractive, energetic woman around fifty years old, who spoke with us about the situation of women in Nicaragua as well as about her work in housing and resettlement...
...So groups like yours are very much appreciated...
...Many said, "Be careful, they are Marxist-Leninist:" We asked them, "What is your program...
...The fourth is in the army and is a psychology student...
...We see the presence of God in the struggle between good and evil...
...The question is, do you go with the project of life or with murder...
...So we knew we had to do something...
...the second is twenty-seven studying for his master's degree in Mexico...
...We are all children of God...
...The process of struggle brought people together...
...We are in the desert, but we will reach the promised land"-a land of freedom and dignity...
...My doctor brother started helping the sick poor...
...A few weeks ago, I was in the countryside and some contras-I heard that they were drunk-attacked a truck and killed a young boy and the driver...
...We have two hundred thousand displaced persons...
...We felt a great sense of sorrow and shame...
...We all decided to go to the beautiful tropical island of Grenada in Lake Nicaragua...
...we felt God was speaking to us through the Bible...
...I am concerned for my sons in the the army, as I know that many have fallen...
...SHEILA BROWN is a contractor and cabinet maker in New York...
...The interview was conducted on January 15,1988, and notes taken of a simultaneous translation of Senora Gutierrez's remarks.a Gutierrez's remarks...
...In our twenties, we were exposed to the Cursillo-to the living presence of Christ...
...When we removed the cloth we realized he was near death from starvation...
...At the funeral only a few would join the procession, as people are frightened...
...Nothing could be done...
...Some campesinos came to us and asked if we could help their sick nephew...
...Our only worry was whether we would get too fat...
...As we came to know them, we realized they could easily be dead the next day...
...They were smiling and laughing and reassuring their mothers that they would be all right...
...I thank you for coming and trust that the Lord will enlighten you...
...Gradually more joined, and by the time we reached the graveyard there were nearly a thousand...
...So we feel the collectivity of motherhood here...
...We knew of the deaths of the children....Many families disappeared and their bodies turned up on the hills...
...I prayed that all would come back, and knew that this was not possible...
...People are sealed off by the wall of comfort that isolates them from information...
...We started hiding people...
...We signed denunciations of their actions, and these were circulated throughout Managua by the Capuchin priests...
...INTERVIEW IN MANAGUA A HOLY WEEK CONVERSION ONE WOMAN'S TESTIMONY I was part of a Witness for Peace Delegation that visited Nicaragua from January 4-16,1988...
...Many complain-there is no oil, no sugar, no beans and rice-but when talking about what to do, all come together in a most impressive way...
...Although her testimony does not answer the larger political questions about the situation in Nicaragua, it is an important addition to our understanding...
...For all of us this was a very exciting process...
...I have six children...
...We want only to build, but there is a force of destruction here...
...Realizing this, we started collaborating with the Frente (Sandinistas...
...This was like Biafra...
...And the sixth is my fourteenyear-old daughter...
...I'll tell you how that happened...
...The fifth is in the army...
...But something happened and we suddenly discovered that we were in a state of sin because of the shameful state of poverty all around us...
...The Guardia at first didn't bother the nice neighborhoods, but for the poor the reference text was the book of Exodus-it offered tremendous hope that God would grant freedom...
...We packed all the food and, of course, the Bible...
...They started persecuting us...
...I was raised without ever reading the Bible, and worshiped without understanding, as all was in Latin...
...Before this, as Catholics, we had recognized that faith is a gift from God...
...We read the Bible as though starved...
...The campesino baby died on Good Friday...
...We are fulfilling a commitment when building these houses that is sealed with the blood of man...
...The kingdom of God is within, but we must realize the values of God in the present...
...We chose not to use weapons, but we became more and more involved with the campesinos...
...It places you in a dilemma...
...When the Guardia [Somoza's militia] started striking hard on the campesinos, one had to make a choice...
...We operated not on love, but on guilt...
...I have been to the United States, to Virgina...
...All the activities of Nicar-agua are sealed in blood...
...It is my conviction that we are now living through a crucifixion...
...there were many young men all with rifles, some with guitars...
...All values are based on justice and dignity and these are based on love...
...I came to realize that for most campesino women there was a terrible struggle for children to survive...
...Your tax money comes back to Nicaragua to kill Nicaraguans...
...We had new personal relationships, started a search for justice, and came to recognize God's presence in all...
...SHEILA BROWN SENORA GUTIERREZ: My story goes back many years...
...There is so much comfort, but no access to real information...
...After Vatican II, my family, my friends, and I became involved in the Cursillo movement...
...We said, of course, because my two brothers, who are doctors, were with us...
...It is like those who pass by in the story of the Good Samaritan...
...We arrived at 5 A.M...
...Our principal purpose is to provide shelter for all of these...
...They cut off the fingers, the testicles, the ears...
...If this is Communism, and maybe it is (but I have never read it, and have no time to study now) but if this is Communism, then Communism is welcome...
...on Wednesday...
Vol. 115 • February 1988 • No. 3
