The only
disruption to this otherwise peaceful time of year occurred the day following
the recent mayoral
elections, when certain defeated party members threw rocks and broke a
windshield of what is the only car in the whole community.
In the aftermath of the
still relevant Sandinista Revolution and subsequent Contra War, political
divisions in Nicaragua run deep, and political allegiances in even the smallest
communities are pronounced. There are two major political groups: Sandinistas
(Frente Sandinista Liberación Nacional, or Sandinista National Liberation Front) and Liberals (who are divided into two major parties, Partido Liberal Constitucionalista, or Constitutionalist Liberal Party, and Partido Liberal Independiente, or Independent Liberal Party). Living here, I
found out very quickly which families belong to which camps. While giving me
the initial tour of the community during my first day here three months ago, my abuelo plainly laid it out: “The houses from
the school up, we are Sandinistas. From the school to the river are
liberals.” So in a small and intimately connected community as this, there is a
boundary, simultaneously physical and ideological, on the map. The political
divide between those “de arriba” (from above) and those “de abajo,” (from below) happens to correspond
to a kinship split: from the school up is one family, and from the school to
the river is another.
The reasons
for the divide are not as clear, nor have people thus far aptly articulated
them to me. Some of the explanation is historical: peoples' and families'
political leanings tend to correspond to their encounters with the era of
Somoza tyranny, and the first Sandinista administration, especially the war.
My first
impression to this fierce divisiveness was: what sort of community development
can occur here if people are stubbornly stuck to their political ideas and
refuse to work together? It soon occurred to me, however, and likely has
already occurred to you, the reader, that the situation is not all that
different from the battle between Democrats and Republicans in the United
States. The major difference is scale: in a community of just 400 inhabitants,
I suppose any division is more pronounced.
Despite their
complaint about the other half of town, everyone who bothers to explain the
political division to me—without exception—concludes with the addendum that
when it comes to a serious matter—an emergency, an illness, or especially a
death—the whole community puts
their political differences aside and comes together.
I recently witnessed the
truth of this oft-repeated statement. An older man in the community died, and
that same evening, the whole community gathered at the home to participate in
the traditional vela (translation vigil, but it is akin to a viewing),
which involves a communal mourning, praying for the person's soul alongside the
dead body and members of the family, and eating.
Several women get there
early, and gather in the kitchen to start cooking and baking for visitors. Firewood
is collected, and giant pots are brought from several homes. (Most cooking and
baking here is done on fire). While some women devote their labor, other
members of the community donate ingredients: sugar, flour, coffee, corn
tortillas, beans, rice, meat, and other food items.
As the women are busy
cooking and baking, the guests begin to arrive. There does not seem to be an
exact protocol, but the rough series of events is that people arrive, and at
some point pass through the room where the body is, to say a few prayers, and
wish the person goodbye. Others choose to stay in that room for a longer
period, even all night.
From there on, people
engage in what has the feel of fellowship,
a party even. A big meal is served, in addition to periodic coffee and cookies
or bread throughout the night. The conversations are casual and lighthearted.
People are laughing, joking; the laughing becomes more frequent and hearty, and
the jokes become less sensible, as the hours pass and people grow tired. The
first night, people spend the whole evening at the home, until sunrise.
The following day is the
mass and burial, but it does not end there: people continue to gather and pray
in the evenings for the next eight days. These sessions involve an hour or so
of prayer and then coffee and baked goods. Women from the community donate
their time and the ingredients throughout the week. There is another all-night vigil on the ninth and final
evening. This nine-day cycle is repeated six months and then one year after the
death. Someone told me this is to represent the nine months that one is in the
womb, to symbolically join the beginning and end of life.
I spent much of the first
evening helping in the kitchen, because some of my closer friends were there,
and also to keep from falling asleep, both via motion and several cups of
coffee. While the vela struck me as a little excessive, it was unlike
anything else I had ever experienced, and it was neat to witness it.
It is an entirely public affair, the idea being to keep the family company, and
it was the public, communal nature of the nine-day ordeal that struck me as the
biggest difference between Nicaraguan and U.S. death rituals.
And it was true that the
whole community came together. Back to the topic of politics, people here
typically seem more proud to tell me that “when it comes to serious things and
hard times, the whole community is united,” than they are to defend their
political party, which suggests that the solidarity of the community really
does take precedence. But the daily grind in which many of the women “de
abajo” mill the corn for their
morning tortillas in town, a 3 kilometer walk away, rather than the mill here
in the community, simply because of political differences, in tandem with the
aftermath of the recent municipal elections, indicates otherwise.
Nicaraguans
like to say, "Cada cabeza es un mundo." Every mind is a world. I like the
saying and the idea, but as it turns out, Nicaraguans, at least in their
political tendencies, are much like their North American neighbors, in that
they negate their incredible capacity to think broadly and pluralistically,
and, by and large, divide into just two camps when it comes to the critical
question of governance. This encounter further challenges me to not subscribe
to such starkly bipartisan politics.
