Juanson World

In April I made the transition from Europeanized Buenos Aires to dusty Santa Cruz, Bolivia. I feel the same as I made the trip from the "Switzerland of Central America" to the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. While the landscape was similar, the human aspect of Nicaragua was a drastic contrast to Costa Rica - trash in the potholed streets, naked children wandering dirt roads, and rusty corrugated tin roofs sheltering "houses" throughout endless slums.

While I met with some activists who were trying to effect change in their country, my friend observed a march that consumed Managua all morning. Led by actors of civil society, the marchers were protesting "the Pact," which is the alliance between Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega and jailed ex-president Arnoldo Aleman which has paralyzed the government of Enrique Bolaños of the PLC. While the protest supposedly was led by members of civil society, the number of political party flags flying indicated the solid political undertones of the event. (Not to mention the fact that I found my friend passed on out the bed of our hotel room, the unlucky victim of teargassing.)

As the march raged on, I sat in the air-conditioned office of Monica Zalaquett, who has led the Center for Violence Prevention (CEPREV) for the last eight years. Using her innovative curriculum, CEPREV has intervened in 21 of the most dangerous barrios in Managua and drastically reduced the indicators of violence. "The government is not able to do this," she told me. "We can only acheive this outside the framework of the Nicaraguan state."

She told me that Nicaraguans had never expressed their political freedoms because they never existed. I asked her, then, if today's march was a step forward in the rights of the citizenry. She winced as she realized that her desire to accomodate our meeting had prevented her from marching herself.