In the early 1980s, fifteen-year-old Fátima del Rosario Hernández gave up education, health and youth itself to keep Nicaragua free, joining many other teenagers to combat the Reagan/Bush Contras as they pillaged and murdered innocents throughout the land. Once the war was finally over, with the loss of countless companions, she dedicated herself to build lasting peace via the vital coffee-picking and literacy crusades. Eventually coming home, she immediately volunteered to coordinate health brigadistas in her impoverished barrio of La Primavera, a task she continues even today while seriously ill, and during COVID.  Largely due to the after-effects of that mountain warfare, Fátima now suffers from serious PTSD, while her spinal column is slowly disintegrating. As if all that wasn’t enough, she was recently thrown from a motor-taxi, shattering her pelvis. Without specialist operations she will probably never walk again.

To help fund both these and the long term aftercare they will entail – and, through Fátima, to honor all those fallen companions who sacrificed themselves at her side for today’s peace – AfGJ/Nicaragua Network are co-sponsoring a benefit concert featuring unique bilingual versions of the beautiful, powerful music of Víctor Jara, Chile’s martyred singer/songwriter, composed by Paul Baker Hernández, Fátima’s former husband.  They were inspired by working with Joan Jara to heal the very stadium where Víctor was murdered by Russian roulette during the US-backed coup of 9/11, 1973.  

Paul’s own actual ‘career’ began in the 1960s, when Dylan’s ‘Times They Are a-Changin’ blew up his silent Trappist monastery, via a very loud bootleg tape.  Duly Bob-struck, Paul concocted the scrap wood guitar he still plays, heading out to live with Salvadorans attacked by death squads in LA, beard Queen Elizabeth in her strictly private Balmoral Castle to protest nuclear weapons, sing ‘We SHALL Overcome’ for Britain’s largest-ever crowd (300,000+1, Pope John Paul), and even work for a time as Nicanet’s ‘Man In Managua’.  At 81, he’s now dedicated to healing the planet by sharing Víctor’s dream, co-opting Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’, occupying Trump’s golf courses, and getting Elton John and Pope Francis – rabid footballers both - to compete at Messi-style juggling an ‘Earth Ball’ while calling on the world/UN to adopt a ‘Declaration of Global INTERdependence’.  Original songs include, ‘Anyone for Starbucks? (The World’s Greatest Singalong.)’, ‘That Unprintable Cell Phone!’, and, ‘I Thought I Heard Sweet Víctor, Singing in the Night’, this last inspired by playing Víctor’s own guitar. More on this work here!