Dina Hernández, August 18th 2021
A few days ago the Supreme Electoral Council extended the deadlines for registration of candidates for the November 2021 elections and the electoral roll has already been placed in all voting centers for review by citizens. The electoral climate is already close at hand and the parties are already ready for their campaign. Sandinismo is in the heart of the people, the militancy feels committed to the process we are living and to the party. There is no concern, what people feel is joy and motivation, taking into account what we lived thrugh in 2018 and what our grandparents and parents lived through earlier. What was lived through in the past will not return, there is no need to feel fear because people know Sandinismo well, since they created it. Sandinismo lives in the memory and heart of the people. Here my grandmother recalls,
“I spent my childhood in Potosí, Rivas. It was really horrible because back then was the era of the Somozas, the National Guard would knock on our doors,and we would get up and hide because they would take away the older people they found and they would never come back. At that time I didn't know how to read, I didn't even know what voting was, everyone went to vote except the kids and if people didn't go to vote they might be taken away at night. They also gave out alcohol to all the drunks, and they went to vote because they were given the liquor. As a young girl I used to cry at election time.
They arrested me when I was 14 years old and they caught me in the atrium of the church after mass with my baby of a few months, I was talking with a man and a woman - who is still alive - and out of spite she called the National Guard. They told me that they were taking me just for being in the atrium of the church, that it was forbidden, they took me and put me in a room without letting me know about my daughter, a guard came in and touched me and I asked him about my child. When the boy who was with me saw that they were taking meaway, he ran directly to his father. The man arrived and asked to see me, he talked to one of the senior guys in the National Guard, he fought and fought until he got me set free.
As time went by, when I was 15 years old, I came with my mother and my daughter to San Marcos, to Piquín*, which used to be called El Porvenir. My mother took me to Piquín and it was really dreadful, there in Piquín the Somozas were the owners. My mother went there to work because it was the coffee harvesting season. Somoza celebrated his birthday by butchering cows, making grill roasts, using only the best of the beef, the rest of meat and everything that was left over he ordered his workers to throw it in a hole and pour diesel on it, so we couldn't take it out and eat it, instead of giving it to us they would throw it away and the worst thing was to pour diesel on it.
To be able to live there we had to work, I already had another child and I would go with my little cart to cut coffee, I would take my two children there, sometimes in the pouring rain. Usually you had to try and get on with the boss to get a job or to live there. But I decided to leave that hacienda when a snake almost killed my second child and in any case those people were very bad.
I left there to work where some chelas had a kitchen... The elections came, and they told me I had to vote, I didn't know what that was since I had never done it before. When I said no and they fired me for not going to vote, their surname was Somoza too. In all my life I have never voted for those people. I went to the Cinco de Julio district, formerly known as the Barrio de los Perros. Once the National Guard almost killed me when I was hanging out some washing to dry, the shooting started, I threw myself to the ground and nothing happened to me. I watched through a small window as the National Guard came from the direction of La Concha. Food was scarce and we had to go to a place where they gave us things like sugar or soap .
Then the guerrillas entered the house where we were, but not like in Somoza's time, when it was all force and aggression... and so I began to compare the time of the Sandinistas with the time of Somoza, although I knew nothing... but there I began to be a sympathizer of the Sandinistas. As time went by I heard the news that the Sandinistas had won...I felt happy, I had never lived under their government...but I did live through the time of the Somozas, and you could see young people were already walking freely with the flags, the whole Sandinista movement was being born.
All my life I have gotten by on my own. To learn to read I went to the improvised schools to study, but I didn't like it because people came to the windows making fun of me, but then the organizers were kind enough to give me a teacher who came to teach me at home. Then with the war and the US blockade we moved to Chinandega where the Hondurans came to exchange coffee for clothes, we went to bring eggs and sweets, where they gave us things and there I went....that's how Sandinismo was born from the heart.
For the military service they took the boys because it had to be like that, there was no other way, I didn't go through the door of a school but it had to be like that... whoever had the will went, for example here when they took my boy Armando, it hurt me a lot but I knew it had to be like that, but I asked my Lord, - that is why we have a Lord, so that we can ask Him from our hearts to help us - and nothing ever happened to Armando. When the Contra attacked the boat where I had gone to see Armando doing his military service, I had been back two days - I don't remember the name of the boat - they burned it with all the boys inside, I cried because it was so awful - and I said how is my Lord. When the Sandinistas won everything was joyful, but there was fear because the other side could do us harm, since in the house where I rented everyone was Liberals, I was the only Sandinista.
At that time we moed away from there and started to move from one place to another... then we came here. I got my land thanks to the Sandinistas. I was so happy when Orlando and Jaime came to tell me that the house was mine, I didn't believe it, knowing everything that had happened with Julia's place and with Yessenia's house, I sat down and cried knowing that I was going to have something that was really mine. When the Sandinistas lost they wanted to evict us, they came to ask for their land, but Daniel was going to help us. I came from Rivas to a meeting that they summoned us to but they had already negotiated with Daniel, that all those who were in the settlement were going to stay there, that they only wanted part of their former hacienda... I will never say the Sandinistas did not help me knowing that it is because of the Sandinistas that I have my house, my land, where now my children, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren live...".
My grandmother while telling, stopped from time to time to dispatch one or another product of her mini pulperia of the neighborhood, her memories made her get angry and enunciate one or another strong expression. A few months before the elections she will continue telling us stories that for her grandchildren seem distant realities or fables of "Pancho Madrigal". The fact is is that today we live another reality in this blessed and always free Nicaragua of ours. And so we come to understand that a vote for Sandinismo is something from the heart...and as my grandmother said, we must vite without being afraid.
* Piquín - a hacienda near San Marcos, Carazo