Dear Friends,

Well, I have now been in Nicaragua for nearly three months. In that time, I was assaulted on the streets, New York and Washington were attacked, and another neo-liberal President was elected. Other than that, things are going smoothly.

The reaction here to the attack on New York and Washington gives a lot of insight into the Nicaraguan mind. People watched TV and read papers constantly, following every bit of news available. Complete strangers would come up to us North Americans to express their sympathy and condolences.

At the same time, people here also know what so few people in the States want to accept—these attacks didn’t happen spontaneously. For over a century, the U.S. government has been doing shameful things in the name of freedom and democracy. This time, it cost us. There is nothing that could justify these acts, but there are many things that could have prevented them. Nicaraguans were grief-stricken, but not surprised.

Once the grief abated, Nicaraguans were back to their old tricks of using this sad situation for political leverage. The Liberal Party (which, make no mistake, is very conservative) accused the Sandinistas of being terrorists, while the Sandinistas insisted they had been the victims of terrorism in the 1980s.

While the enormity of the attacks on the United States was still sinking in, I was attacked in the streets of Managua. I was walking to dinner with my girlfriend, Jenna, when two men jumped me. They tried to hold me and get my wallet, and I tried to fight them off. The police showed up surprisingly quickly, and the two took off running, with the police firing their guns after them. They didn’t get anything from me, and I walked away with only a few scratches, but I found myself thinking very violent thoughts for weeks afterwards.

As I calmed down, I reflected on the parallels between the attack on me and those on the United States. Being a North American here in Nicaragua, people see me as rich and at least somewhat powerful. This, of course, contrasts sharply with my own self-perception, but in the big picture, I am rich compared to most Nicaraguans. I am powerful, at least powerful enough to travel from one country to another, and to talk to government officials, and to communicate with thousands of people at a time through letters and the Internet.

Generally, people react to that power in one of two ways, reflecting the love-hate relationship Nicaragua has with the U.S. Either they resent it, or they genuflect before it. Neither is pretty, but as President Bush says, "You’re with us, or you’re against us."

The Liberals took that simplistic theme and ran with it—for President. We are friends of the United States, they said, and the Sandinistas are their enemies. We’re with the U.S.; they’re against it. Daniel Ortega promised that if he were elected, there would be peace with the U.S., but it seems the U.S. government is not interested in peace. Governor Jeb Bush took out a full-page ad in a newspaper here (confusingly titled to appear to have come directly from George W. Bush) saying quite explicitly that Ortega was the enemy of the United States and that Enrique Bolaños was friendly to U.S. interests. Likewise, the U.S. State Department said it would have "serious reservations" about a new Ortega administration.

Bolaños was elected.

My work here in Nicaragua is to analyze the social and political situation in this, the second-poorest nation in the hemisphere. As the elections show, the relationship between Nicaragua and the U.S. largely is the social/political situation.

This is why U.S. citizens need to know more about Nicaragua. This is not the only nation in the world where our government is doing as much to hinder healthy growth as it is to promote it, but it is a good example. What happens in the U.S. has ripples across the globe. If we would be responsible Christians and responsible citizens, we must seek to understand these ripples better.

I am very pleased to be working with CEPAD, the Council of Protestant Churches of Nicaragua. This is an organization that understands the current situation in its cultural, economic, and historical context, and further, understands the ripples of decisions made in the United States. It takes a realistic and practical approach to addressing the physical and spiritual needs of all Nicaraguans, starting with the poorest.

The work that I do is a direct extension of CEPAD’s outreach. The poor can never achieve sustained and sustainable development until they are free to chart their own course, and this will never happen as long as U.S. policy favors those who are already wealthy and powerful. This means U.S. citizens must be informed enough to work to change government policy.

With that in mind, I invite you to visit the CEPAD Report website, at http://www.cepadreport.org. New articles are added once or twice a week. The paper version is also available in a format suitable for printing from your own printer.

See you on-line!

In peace,

Esteban
(Steve Herrick)