Winnie Narvaez Herrera, Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign, October 14th 2021
‘We can't understand Nicaragua without understanding its political history.’
Ben Linder
From 13 – 23 September, Friends of the ATC, organised an agri-cultural brigade to Nicaragua to study the history of art, music, agrarian reform and farming, all grounded in the Sandinista Popular Revolution,
The brigade, mostly of young people from the US, also spent some time visiting the campus of the Latin America Agroecological Institute (IALA) Ixim Ulew in the department of Chontales where they did some agricultural work and helped paint a mural dedicated to food sovereignty.
The "Friends of the ATC" is a solidarity network with the ATC (Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo), a historic revolutionary organisation that has two main áreas of work: promotion and practice of agroecology and the defence of the rights of peasants and workers through trade unions.
This solidarity network organises various activities such as delegations, virtual schools, exchanges and internships.
A fundamental part of ATC/CLOC-Via Campesina's work in Nicaragua is to share Nicaragua's political history through this solidarity network, a history that encompasses the struggle of peasants and farm workers.
A direct result of the brigades is the organic creation of political communication networks, essential to raising the profile of the country from the perspective of grassroots organisations.
We understand that solidarity, as described by Eduardo Galeano, "is horizontal and implies mutual respect". The exchange among people from different places becomes a very rich pedagogical element for learning.
According to Van de Velde, "education has to be conceived of as a genuinely dialectical element in the liberation of one’s character enabling the learner to develop her/his critical awareness, to encourage creativity and to play an active role in her/his historical moment, with a great sense of human solidarity".
The international solidarity of Friends of the ATC aims to engender a political approach to life built from experience. It is closely connected to the recognition and self-recognition of injustices.
During one week, [the agrocultural brigade] carried out agroecological activities such as weeding crops, looking after bio-intensive beds [for pigs], etc.
In the following I will describe my experience sharing with one of these brigades in Santo Tomás - department of Chontales - at the Latin American Agroecological Institute ( IALA- IXIM ULEW)
Critical awareness, creativity, activistm, solidarity and the power of symbols
A day with an agrocultural brigade of the ATC starts with revolutionary music resounding from a loud speaker at 5 am. This is certainly motivating.
In everything we hear, Victor Heredia's verses [particularly] resonate with me:
"I have a poem written more than a thousand times.
In it I always repeat that as long as someone
proposes death on this earth
and weapons are manufactured for war,
I will tread these fields, surviving".
Before going to work we gathered to perform the mistica, an exercise of emotional and cognitive connection with the history and struggle of the Latin American peasant movement.
Some slogans that we used are:
"Let's change the system, not the climate".
"With women in the house, agrarian reform is delayed".
"We are not birds in the air, nor fish in the water, but men and women who live off the land" Bernardino Diaz Ochoa
Participating in this moment before going to work the land gives us emotional strength that generates willingness to work and binds the group together.
Also while we work in the fields there are similar moments: "Alert, alert, alert that walks, the peasant struggle for Latin America and tremble, and tremble and tremble imperialism, all Latin America will be socialist".
In addition to working the land, there are tours of the site and we also participate in painting a mural. During the course of the day there are other unplanned pedagogical experiences such as spontaneous interviews among the participants, exchange of writing, music, objects, photographs and poetry.
Living agroecology in Nicaragua
"In Nicaragua, a series of policies aimed at restructuring agriculture with a visión of sustainability, laid the groundwork for the approval in April 2011 of Law No. 765 on the Promotion of Agroecological or Organic Production through the regulation, promotion and encouragement of activities, practices and production processes with environmental, economic, social and cultural sustainability that contribute to restoring and conserving ecosystems, agroecosystems and sustainable land management. The law was regulated in 2014, through Regulatory Decree No. 2/12 - General Regulation of Law No. 765" (FAO 2014 P.17).
Agroecology is more than a production system. It is transition, it is questioning attitudes imposed by technicians, it is listening to each other to be able to ask and share, to understand.
"You don't go to someone who has one apple and demand that from one day to the next they shouldn’t use chemicals, you ask them to give you a furrow and in that small furrow you plant without chemicals, it is a process" Carlos, a Venezuelan, part of the IALA team, explained while picking beans. "We don't practice organic agriculture for reasons of class, but for the right to the land." As Comandante Daniel said: "you no longer have a rifle, you now a pig, a cow, and tools".
A fact that is rarely talked about is that Nicaragua is internationally admired for its freedom to produce, save and distribute its own seeds. This situation is radically threatened in other places such as the European Union, where, in addition, most countries did not sign the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas, approved in December 2018.
It is worth mentioning that Miguel D'Escoto, former foreign minister of Nicaragua, exercised a revolutionary presidency of the UN assembly in 2008, with profound questioning of the prevailing economic model and mobilising grassroots struggles such as Via Campesina.
X-raying international solidarity
Internationalists have a clear purpose. They observe the problems of their own countries. Some are part of Black Lives Matter, others fight for the independence of the countries from which their families originate (e.g. Puerto Rico), others for agroecology and others for the respect of ancestral territories (destruction of cemeteries of enslaved people for real estate speculation). But they also understand the international responsibility of their countries in relation to ours.
At one point I overheard a conversation between two young people from the brigade. They were talking about the importance of trust and care for each other for the survival of their movements, of being aware of whether everyone is meeting their basic needs.
They highlighted the way in which they have to survive the pressure of extreme right-wing movements in the US that have full power in the government. They also spoke of their appreciation of recreational spaces in Nicaragua "in the city where I live only people who have the money can go to the comercial centre" and admired the dignity of life and work in the countryside in Nicaragua.
This made me wonder if Genuine Cooperation is:
(1) an aspect of the solidarity encounter that implies commitment, purpose, encounter, action, resultst or
(2) the engine that moves solidarity, as a result of what people have experienced in their own context. Once one's own experience has been named and systematised, this develops into a need to get to know the context of others who suffer from the same oppression.
It implies committing oneself to making one's own struggle stronger, beyond a personal responsibility. It is a consequence or an extension of one's own struggle.
Genuine cooperation as a political-pedagogical action that intersects with solidarity.
With solidarity as the axis, we listen to each other to interpret the different experiences, question them in order to deepen and be able to understand and discover ourselves, we enjoy knowing that we share similar struggles: anger, joy and longing, we commit ourselves to continue fighting, to engage in dialogue through the different virtual platforms, to write, to communicate, and to accompany each other in this process.
In this sense, political communication is fundamental, through it we integrate ourselves materially in the struggle, it is that gives life to whatever meeting has just taken place.
In addition to communicating to other places what has been lived but not told of the country, it enables us to develop politically by giving us our voice and reflecting [our experiences].
Solidarity holds the clue to genuine international cooperation. As stated by Van de Velde: "international cooperation (...) - one is an interventionist vision, while the second aims at a process of accompaniment and is based on a mutually shared vision".
He also agrees with Rosa Maria Torres' statement that "it is about building the framework for genuine international cooperation, which implies the two operating together, with dialogue, respect, learning and contributions from both sides, working to change, not the consequences of their problems, but their causes, some of them located in the North and others in the North-South relationship".
Starting from shared structures of justice allows us to establish co-operative relationships on equal terms.
This exchange enabled me, as a young Nicaraguan citizen, to understand the close historical relationship built between the people of the United States and the people of Nicaragua, between peoples.