Political divisions run deep, absence of death permitting

Breeze delights the days of November here in this small valley. It has grown cooler, and the leaves have started to turn shades of yellow, orange, and red; others have already dropped to the ground. The year’s second harvest is coming to an end, which means that I again find myself spending many afternoons on someone or other’s porch de-graining beans. Citrus is in season, so at least once a day, someone gifts me mandarins or oranges. All these thousands of miles south, it feels and smells much like autumn in New York, which is a nostalgic and welcome reminder of home.

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.

But with the elections both here and in the States—as well as the nine days of prayer—having ended, I can, at least for now, sit on the porch, de-grain beans, try and start some projects involving community members from both sides of the divide, and simply enjoy the cool breeze.