Please sign on as an individual to the “Hands Off Nicaragua!”
solidarity letter calling on the US
to stop interfering in Nicaragua!
Sign HERE
Remembering Ben Linder’s legacy through the Ben Linder Solidarity School
By Erika Takeo
(Erika Takeo is a North American based in Managua, Nicaragua. She is the coordinator of the Friends of the ATC, the solidarity network with the Rural Workers Association.)
Written by Ben Linder to friends in September 1983:
Somoza left the country in shambles. Flat broke. He took everything but the debt. Granted, there are still problems now, but there is a feeling of hope, there is a feeling of building a new country. At times this exuberance leads to false hopes. Many more times it leads to a say in life that has never before been experienced for the majority of Nicaraguans.
It is hard for us to imagine the meaning of a paved street. In Nicaragua there are two seasons – wet and dry. When it is wet the mud is two feet deep. When it is dry the dust permeates everything. Eating becomes like a picnic at the beach, all the food crunches with dust. Slowly more and more streets are being paved.
But that is only the physical benefits. The more important changes are the feelings of being in control. This is in control of walking out at night and not being afraid of being shot by the police, as was the case before 1979. It is establishing control of the neighborhood and the workplace. It is in education, healthcare and word. This is control. Granted there is still a long way to go, but people are still fighting. Not fighting against the government, but rather fighting old habits, old customs and the results of centuries of oppression. Unfortunately, at the borders, the struggle goes on militarily. The old enemies keep fighting with more and more U.S. support. It is such a waste. I guess our government knows quite well how to drain an economy through military spending.
Pardon me for speech making, but it is impossible to get a feeling for Nicaragua without a feeling of political struggle.
Ben Linder was a young North American from Portland, Oregon, who traveled to Nicaragua in the 1980s during the first phase of the Sandinista Revolution. After studying engineering at the University of Washington, he hoped to put his skills to work in order to improve people’s lives and support the projects implemented by the new revolutionary government in Nicaragua. Ben obtained work with INE (the Nicaraguan Institute of Energy) where his passion was investigating how to implement electricity projects in the rural northern part of Nicaragua, a region that had never had electricity and that suffered decades of abandonment under the Somoza dictatorship.
In 1985, Ben and a team of Nicaraguans were able to complete a hydroelectric plant in El Cuá, Jinotega, to be run entirely by locals for the community, training a young peasant woman named Hilda Granados as one of the plant operators.
Despite the ramping up of the US financing and arming of contra battles in the mountains, making the region very dangerous, after completing the plant in El Cuá, Ben continued working to fulfill his dream of implementing a small hydroelectric dam near San José de Bocay. On April 28th, 1987, while constructing the weir along the river in the woods, Linder and two Nicaragua co-workers were tragically murdered by contra soldiers. Ben’s death created international outrage. US tax dollars were being used to kill its own people.
Ben’s story is a true example of internationalism which we are constructing today through an online institution in his name, the Ben Linder Solidarity School.
The Ben Linder Solidarity School was founded in 2020 by the Friends of the ATC, the solidarity network with the Rural Workers Association (Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo – ATC) of Nicaragua, out of the necessity to continue organizing and training young people in the difficult international context created during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, our first school took place over the span of thirteen weeks with 60 weekly students connecting online from over a dozen countries, carried out entirely bilingual in English and Spanish.
The course material in the Ben Linder Solidarity School is based upon the strong tradition in the ATC of formación, which roughly translates into English as “political education.” While a central focus of the school is Nicaragua and the Sandinista Revolution, a major part of the class material also comes directly from the international training processes organized by the global peasant movement La Via Campesina, of which the Nicaraguan ATC is a founding member. Students in the Ben Linder Solidarity School come away with a strong understanding of the current international state of our food system and what peasant organizations have done to lead the way to build food sovereignty, using agroecology, as the one solution to fight climate change.
The Ben Linder Solidarity School is also explicitly anti-imperialist. Two classes in this year’s school focus specifically on the history of US and foreign intervention in Nicaragua and Latin America, and the concluding sessions focus on building a truly anti-imperialist international solidarity with the Sandinista Revolution and popular organizations.
We invite you to carry on Ben Linder’s dream to accompany the revolutionary struggle in Nicaragua and improve the quality of life of rural peoples by participating in this year’s Ben Linder Solidarity School. This year’s course will take place online over ten weeks, every Saturday for two hours (9am-11am Pacific time) beginning on August 7th and finishing on October 2nd. We ask participants to fill out a short application online by August 4th here and shortly thereafter this year’s course coordination committee will follow up with you with additional information about your participation.
Fill out the application HERE.
Nicanet Delegation Holds Press Conference & Releases Statement
An international delegation organized by the Nicaragua Network/Alliance for Global Justice, with members from the United States, Brazil, Canada, and Mexico, that visited Nicaragua from July 18 to July 25 held a press conference in which they called on the US government to halt its interference in the country’s internal affairs and to end the sanctions it has imposed against the country. The press conference and statement were covered by a number of Nicaraguan media outlets.
The Nicaragua Network delegation at the Casa Ben Linder where members
read a statement opposing US interference. (Photo: El Digital 19)
Here is some of the statement: Our delegation, organized by the Nicaragua Network, had the opportunity to visit Managua, Granada, Estelí and Masaya. We have seen the beauty of this country and its people — a people struggling mightily to live in peace and prosperity despite constant U.S. aggression and brutal sanctions.
We heard from health care providers, teachers and vocational instructors in Estelí who are working to make sure that working class people and campesinos have access to medical attention and education – in addition to access to housing, employment and income promotion programs. As one teacher explained, the current system under Sandinista leadership is one of “inclusion” as opposed to the policies of “exclusion” of the neoliberal governments of 1991 to 2007.
In contrast to the countries of the global north, Nicaragua has managed to contain one of the most serious pandemics of the last decades with a free universal public health system, with personalized attention and follow-up for infected patients, and with a model that seeks to adjust to the particular characteristics of each region, including the needs of indigenous and afro-indigenous communities.
In Masaya, we heard from those who lived through the U.S.-backed terror of the coup attempt of 2018. We heard from city security forces [guards of city equipment] who were kidnapped and tortured by opposition forces who took over the city. The U.S. mass media – aligned with U.S. political, economic and military interests – led the false, unsubstantiated narrative of a repressive government. We heard direct testimonies of victims of the 2018 violence and saw massive destruction of infrastructure that the city has yet to fully recover from.
One individual lost his arm during the torture he suffered. The burning of the mayor’s offices; the destruction of the city works building along with sanitation and street-paving trucks; and the burning down of the historic Masaya market, was proof to us that the instigators engaged in outright terrorism. At the same time, we saw the heroic efforts of the security workers and government and people of Masaya to rebuild and to continue providing vital services to the citizenry.
In Granada, we heard similar testimonies, including of the opposition’s torching of the centuries-old municipal building which William Walker did not manage to destroy during his burning down of that city in the 1850s. We also heard how the historic combatants who defeated Somoza came out during the 2018 coup attempt to confront the opposition violence and, along with the police, to restore order and peace. ….
The tyrannical government — that of Anastasio Somoza — is now gone despite the backing of the U.S., which tried to reinstall Somoza’s National Guard in the form of the Contras in the 1980’s. That the U.S. now claims to care about Nicaraguan democracy is a cruel joke.
The U.S.’s constant attempts to undermine the peace and prosperity of the Nicaraguan people; to sow divisions which exploded into violence in 2018; and to undermine the sovereignty of Nicaragua are unacceptable. We denounce these attempts as immoral and illegal, just as the International Court of Justice found these efforts to be unlawful in its 1986 decision in the case of Nicaragua versus the U.S.
We call upon the U.S. government and allied NGOs to halt their interference in and sanctions against this country and to let Nicaragua live in peace as a sovereign nation just as the UN Charter unequivocally requires. Recent polling by M&R Consulting demonstrates massive opposition to such foreign interference, 85%, amongst the Nicaraguan people.
We thank the Nicaraguan people for opening up their hearts to us during our trip to this country of lakes and volcanoes, and we stand with you against all U.S. meddling, sanctions and provocations.
In solidarity, Nicaragua Network – Alliance for Global Justice / Answer Coalition / Black Alliance for Peace / Jornalistas Livres / Observatorio de Derechos Humanos de los Pueblos / Pan-African Community Action / PSL Party for socialism and liberation / Voices with vision, WPFW Radio / * In an effort to call on the U.S. to stop interfering in the lives and future of Nicaraguans, we invite individuals from all over the world to support the Hands Off Nicaragua sign on letter. See full statement in Spanish HERE: https://www.el19digital.com/articulos/ver/titulo:118724-declaracion-de-… (El 19 Digital, 23 July 2021)