In Her Own Words: Interviews with Nicaraguan Women
Randall, Margaret
Last year, writer and activist Margaret Randall returned to Nicaragua to talk to women about their participation in the revolution. She had interviewed many of the women 10 years previously for...
...We argued that this wasn't productive, that our own children were going to turn against the revolution because they were inevitably going to identify it with the loss of their parents...
...I respect you...
...A society different from the one I grew up in...
...And of course this is something we women have talked about...
...You're one of the leaders of this revolution...
...I always thought he might find out what I was doing...
...If I find political apathy unpleasant in an adult, I find it all the more disagreeable in a child...
...And I also didn't want anyone ever to have to ask him for help, I mean in terms of getting me out if I got arrested...
...My father agreed...
...I didn't think I could do that...
...There were a number of us in the Front who were daughters of Somocistas...
...lAccording to a number of our male leaders, women continued to be seen as "meat" or "cattle, " as our macho slang would have it The quickest and easiest way for political women to acquire a "protector" and gain direct access to power was by sleeping with those in power...
...As his daughter at least I tried to help my father do an n acceptable job as ambassador...
...The impossibility of this in my own life has been very painful for me...
...Vidaluz Menses...
...We'd led troops into battle, we'd done all sorts of things, and then as soon as the Sandinistas took office we were displaced from the important posts...
...The following excerpts are taken from Sandino's Daughters Revisited, which will be published by Rutgers Unives University Press and New Star Books in 1994...
...And I believed and continue to believe in the ideal of a society with justice for all...
...One day I called him up and invited him to lunch...
...Gioconda Belli In Her Own Words...
...Besides, I remember at the beginning of the revolution it was practically a mortal sin if you mentioned your family...
...Of course my dream was to have one of those families where everyone was committed to the struggle: husband, wife, and kids...
...So as I say, a few of us began getting together to talk about t things...
...Fathers and Daughters ith my father, well, it was much more difficult...
...Making a revolution is a very absorbing task...
...After all that had been accomplished, then we could talk about feminist issues...
...It's one of the contradictions you have to deal with...
...It was systematic...
...But I can tell you that some time later this same man started literally stalking me: it was invitation after invitation, insinuation after insinuation...
...I gave him a book called The Diplomat's ABC...
...The sons and daughters of the National Guard were constantly faced with the possibility of having to face our fathers in battle-in an armed confrontation, or if they picked us up...
...They kept telling us that we had to put off talking about women's problems until we'd won the war, until the economy was back on its feet, until...
...Party of the Erotic Left P I.E...
...It just hurt too much: the thought that my own father would be forced to arrest me...
...We even thought of designing a logo: a woman's foot with painted toenails...
...He'd tell them: "Your mother is more interested in the revolution than she is in you...
...But it became apparent that we didn't...
...But I always tried to respect my children's choices, even when it hurt me terribly that three of them didn't opt for the revolution...
...I wanted to separate my life from his as completely as possible...
...It takes a lot of time and effort...
...Scan tell you there were plenty of sexual pressures...
...And it's frustrating to realize that I wasn't able to pass that ideal on to all my children...
...My father was a comandante with the police at the time...
...And I lived with that all along...
...By that time [the early 1980s] we women had experienced a real loss of power...
...Emotionally I knew I wasn't strong enough for that Then Somoza asked my father to accept the appointment as ambassador to Guatemala...
...whatever...
...She had interviewed many of the women 10 years previously for her book Sandino's Daughters (Vancouver New Star Books, 1981...
...If a woman said, "I can't go to that meeting on Sunday because I have to be with my children," that simply wasn't acceptable...
...He left the table and for quite some time he wouldn't even say hello...
...And I tried to interest my sons and my daughters in the tasks of the revolution...
...It makes me very sad...
...We had family obligations and they were important I remember quoting a phrase of Jean Paul Sartre's: "I don't believe in the revolutionary who says he loves his people but is unable to love those closest to him...
...Vidaluz Meneses In Her Own Words...
...I said that he could invite the Nicaraguan students in Guatemala to use it...
...I had to tell him, "Look, I admire you tremendously...
...I was never privy to the behind-the-scenes discussions so I don't really know what was on his mind...
...I remember he hardly touched his food...
...It wasn't easy for us to juggle our roles as mothers and as revolutionaries...
...Daisy Zamora In Her Own Words...
...When they launched their tear gas bombs, it was horrible for me...
...Women's issues just kept on being put off, eternally...
...As a mother I fought against that sense of guilt...
...But it was hard...
...We'd had to content ourselves with intermediate-level positions for the most part...
...stands for Party of the Erotic Left...
...I became more and more involved in the struggle against the dictatorship...
...And a whole process of displacement had begun...
...By now we're talking 1976, 1977...
...And who knows what my life would have been like if I'd had that sort of safety net...
...But this wasn't a popular point of view...
...We couldn't talk about abortion "because it means fighting the Catholic Church...
...I wanted him to learn something about diplomacy...
...I was relieved when he completed his 30 years with the National Guard, and was ready to retire...
...So I'm asking you to respect my decision and I hope we can remain friends...
...I was incredibly relieved because years before, when I'd been involved in those student demonstrations, I remembered the Guard showing up on the street that borders the campus...
...We didn't call ourselves the P.I.E at first, but later--joking around-we adopted the name...
...Believe it or not, I'm not attracted to you just because you're a comandante...
...I remember telling my mother that it would be a good idea if my father organized a library with Nicaraguan books there at the embassy...
...I dreamed about a family where everyone went out to do whatever task they were involved in, and then came back together and shared their experiences with one another...
...I suppose I was afraid like everyone else, but my worst fear was having to confront my father...
...All the insinuations, the pressures, my children's father trying to turn them against me...
...One of my younger sisters went to help him set that library up, I bought books for it here, and she and my mother went to organize it...
...Our most important problems always seemed to be considered secondary...
...It hurt me because they're my children...
...Even in our own organization, in AMNLAE, we thought we would have a voice...
...It comes from Ana Maria Rodas, a Guatemalan poet who has a book called Poemas de la izquierda erotica (Poems of the Erotic Left...
...Mothers and Children MA y husband tried to make me feel guilty-and I've IViseen this happen with other women-guilty about my children...
...That's how we chose the initials: P.I.E...
...But when I've talked to my sons and daughters about this, I've told them: "Look, what you have to understand is that the revolution is for everyone, and we must all situate ourselves in that reality...
...For her, society comes first, before her own children...
...I didn't want hi to be seen as ridiculous, as one of those ignorant law-and-order types...
...The crisis was becoming more and more acute...
...that it would be a nice gesture, a contribution...
...But I need you to understand that I'm a free person, with all the rights that implies, and I'm absolutely capable of deciding who I want to have a relationship with...
...Many of our children-particularly in the middle class where we had the privilege of having domestic help-were left alone for long periods of time...
...it was so complicated...
...In fact when I left the Ministry of Culture, one of the comandantes wanted to send me to Foreign Relations, also in the capacity of Vice Minister...
...A group of feminists began getting together, more than anything to talk about what was going on in the women's movement, because it was clear that the Sandinista women's movement operated more in line with male interests, with the so-called "interests of the nation...
Vol. 27 • July 1993 • No. 1
