The Long Road To Jalapa

The sun pauses for a moment on the edge of the Honduran mountains that ring the tiny town. The market stands empty where earlier in the day onions were spread out over the ground and fresh rolls sold for pennies a bag. The bell in the church tower next to the community peace garden, which is dominated by a broad-leafed banana tree, gives forth a few rings, and the voices of children giving glory to Mary drift out of the church's windows. A rooster crows—they crow at all times of the day and night here—and a few dogs bark.

Someone once told me that Jalapa is "at the end of the world." It was meant as a compliment to the dusty, little Nicaraguan town which exudes character and warmth to the peaceful stranger who comes to its isolated streets.

There is one telephone in Jalapa (it works most of the time), and transportation is mostly by foot, horse, or oxcart. Time seems to hide itself here; the community is called together to the church or the park, over which towers the emblem of Lions Club International, by a sound truck that roams the streets announcing the day's events: a town meeting, a children's rally, a funeral.

When the sun finally slips behind the mountains, stars pop out by the millions in Jalapa's sky. At night one can occasionally hear the call of a child, the clopping of a horse down a street, or, if you're in the right part of town, the seemingly misplaced North American rock music filtering out of Sandra's Place. A report of gunfire now and then from the mountains reminds the town that all is not at peace in Jalapa.

Jalapa may seem like the end of the world to a foreigner's eye, but it is the center of the world for the people of Jalapa and the surrounding valley, which is the agricultural hub for all of northern Nicaragua. Ironically, by virtue of its isolation, the town has become the focus of attention from unwelcome intruders and their primary supporter, the United States government.

After the overthrow of the brutal U.S.-supported Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza in July, 1979, the Sandinista leadership of the new government set free most of the members of Somoza's terrorist National Guard. The former National Guard made their way to the Honduran mountains on Nicaragua's northern border and began to plot a counterrevolution.

These counterrevolutionaries, or contras, have made repeated incursions into Nicaragua, employing the same methods of terror they used under Somoza. Located just six kilometers from the border on a peninsula of land that juts into Honduras, Jalapa has been an ideal target for the contras in their effort to capture a town and set up an independent territory with a provisional government. One of their strategies has been to cut off Jalapa by taking over the only access road the town has to the rest of Nicaragua.

Contra activity began in Jalapa in March, 1982. The first evidence: numbers of people found beheaded outside their homes. Since that time there have been four major attempts to take Jalapa, and bands of the marauders continue to roam the hills spreading terror, using state-of-the-art camping equipment supplied by the CIA. For almost two years the contras have been unable to prevail militarily. Their most recent slogan: "We cannot win, but we can kill."

While the people of Jalapa have suffered terrible tragedies, crop production in this area has also suffered. The contras have focused on disrupting the harvest, and crops have sometimes been brought in under a rain of bullets. Because of the war, only 50 per cent of the rice crop was planted last year, and losses between December 1982 and July 1983 amounted to more than $100 million in land, homes, storage barns, and crops.

North American Christians who visited the northern Nicaraguan frontier in April and July of last year found that while they were there, the contra incursions ceased. Townspeople in Jalapa attributed the cessation to the presence of the North Americans. Soon the idea emerged that a continuous presence of North Americans might inhibit contra activity and offer some protection for the people on Nicaragua's frontier. Turning a different kind of U.S. attention to Jalapa, U.S. Christians began to organize the Witness for Peace (see For Penance and Peace," Sojourners, September 1983, and "Witness for Peace" and "A Shield of Love," Sojourners, November 1983). By early October, 1983, plans were under way for a long-term team of four members to go to Jalapa to prepare to receive rotating short-term teams of 15 members who would go to Nicaragua every two weeks to pray and offer nonviolent resistance to U.S. policy against Nicaragua.

It is a long way to Jalapa, and for those of us who were part of the first short-term team to go, our journey began long before we arrived. In late November the team, representing a wide diversity of ages, occupations, church denominations, and geographical areas, converged on Washington, D.C. We gathered for a few days to get to know one another and share our fears and expectations about the uncertainties that lay ahead of us. We worshiped together and participated in role-plays in which we worked through possible scenarios we might face: the ambush of our bus on the road to Jalapa, the disappearance or death of one of our team members.

On the evening of Wednesday, November 30, before friends and family gathered in a Washington D C church, members of the Witness for Peace steering and advisory committees, who had come from all over the country, placed white stoles over each of our shoulders at a commissioning service. The names of the long-term team members already in Nicaragua were read, and they too were "commissioned."

Songs and prayers were offered up, and Vincent Harding of Iliff Seminary in Denver placed the Witness for Peace in the stream of history of nonviolent witness, speaking from the "cloud of witnesses" text in Hebrews 12. He sent us forward on our journey with the mandate, "Walk your talk."

On Thursday morning we held a press conference and prepared for our next day's departure. But that night we received word that our flight to Managua, Nicaragua, had been cancelled. We learned later that Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua's chief of state, had to fly to Ecuador for high-level talks. Since Nicaragua has no air force, no presidential "Air Force One" to carry him to such meetings, he had to borrow one of Nicaragua's two commercial airliners. The irony didn't escape us that this is the nation the Reagan administration accuses of being a military threat to the "free world."

An extra flight was scheduled Sunday to accommodate Friday's passengers, and we arrived in Nicaragua two days late—on the day that the Nicaraguan government set a date for elections in 1985, declared a general amnesty for contras outside Nicaragua, and set free 300 Miskito Indians who had been imprisoned in Managua following the "Red Christmas" massacre of Sandinista soldiers by Miskitos in December, 1981. These were hopeful signs to us, particularly the release of the Miskito prisoners, since the Sandinistas seem to have made their most grievous mistakes in their handling of the Miskito situation.

That night we attended a party with the released Miskitos and their families to celebrate their freedom. On Monday we held a press conference in Managua and received orientation to the Nicaraguan situation from CEPAD (the Evangelical Committee for Aid and Development).

Tuesday we arose well before dawn to begin our journey to Jalapa in a bus belonging to the Baptist college in Managua. We stopped for breakfast in the town of Esteli, about 150 kilometers north of Managua. We explained our mission to the proprietor of the restaurant, who thanked us and wished us well. As we left, we passed by a sign hung on his wall bearing another wish for us: "May the water that makes ditches in the street not make the same in your intestines."

We pushed north toward Jalapa and got as far as Ocotal, a town 13 kilometers from the Honduran border and about 60 kilometers west of Jalapa. Upon arrival in Ocotal, we got word from local military officials that we could not go on to Jalapa: the contras had taken over a section of the road, and combat was taking place in an effort to reclaim it. This was the first time since June that the road had been closed.

We heard from the CEPAD representative in Ocotal and the Maryknoll Sisters from the United States that the contras were within 15 kilometers of Ocotal and that the town had been under alert the night before.

We held our first vigil that night in Ocotal. We began with a procession through three of Ocotal's barrios, and by the time we arrived at the town park, we had with us a crowd of 400 people.

In the park we had an ecumenical service of song and prayer. David Gracie, an Episcopal chaplain at Temple University in Philadelphia, unfurled an American flag that was given to us by a supportive U.S. Congresswoman. He talked about his shame at what the U.S. government is doing against Nicaragua and explained that we were there to remember and uphold the best of the American tradition, which claims a commitment to justice and freedom.

Scripture was read, and, as is common in Latin America, the congregation was invited to offer its reflections on the readings. One woman, like many of the people we met in Nicaragua, apologized for her lack of education and then spoke eloquently about her faith. She is the mother of one of the martyrs in the revolutionary struggle to overthrow Somoza. She closed with gratitude for the current situation in her country: "Under Somoza we had no voice; but now we can speak."

We spent that night at the Baptist Church, which we shared with refugees who had fled their scattered mountain homes during attacks by the contras. Their presence, as well as the trenches dug in front of homes in Ocotal, reminded us that we were in a war zone. We heard gunshots that night and slept close to our "crash packs," small bags packed with our most essential items—passports, flashlights, water purification tablets, and anti-malarial medication—that were easy to grab in case we needed to flee on sudden notice.

We felt very vulnerable that night, and I was conscious that we were making our way into this war zone armed with only gifts and prayers. I had with me letters from Sojourners community and my family, including a rainbow painted by my young nephews and labeled "for God's promise of safekeeping."

I felt assurance in knowing that people in many places were focused on us. The Community of Celebration in Woodland Park, Colorado, had given us a candle to light every night, knowing that an identical candle was burning for us at their community and that a similar one was the center of a continuous prayer vigil at Sojourners. A member of our worshiping congregation at Sojourners gave me a beautiful necklace made of myrrh to carry until Jalapa as a reminder of her prayers and then give away. And the children back home in our community had hung a map of Nicaragua in one of our household's kitchens and were tracing our route as we traveled. I had warm thoughts of many people that night in a place very far from home.

By morning, the water that had been turned off throughout the town the night before because of a severe water shortage was not yet back on. We awoke early with Jalapa on our minds and washed our faces in a rain barrel outside the church. The refugee women already had firewood in their dome-shaped clay stove and were slapping out tortillas. They had fled with little more than the clothes on their backs, but they offered us coffee and tortillas, one of many examples we found in Nicaragua of profound graciousness and generosity in spite of meager resources.

By nine o'clock the road was open, and we were on the last leg of our journey to Jalapa. We had heard that vehicles on this road are often ambushed, and it was easy to see why. The road is narrow, rutted, and steep, and the first half of the journey was through dense underbrush.

We stopped at occasional military checkpoints to get news of the road ahead. We were told that a contra attack was expected on the road at noon. It was 10:30. We pushed on through the clouds of dust, some members of the team covering their faces with bandanas to keep from breathing the dust.

An open truck carrying some soldiers and a family caught up behind us. I could see a mother holding an infant with a bottle, and I thought how difficult it must be for them riding through this dust and how vulnerable they were.

About halfway to Jalapa the road opens out onto expansive fields of coffee, beans, and rice. Ambush is less likely on this part of the journey, but the Honduran mountains are visible and the road is within mortar range.

Women pounded laundry against rocks in the streams that flowed over the road and that made passage sometimes difficult for our bus. Cows wandered over the road, and scattered on both sides of us were small homes with orange clay-tile roofs. We saw an occasional homemade cross along the route, marking the site where someone had been killed.

A large cemetery marks the edge of Jalapa, row upon row of homemade crosses. A sign at the entrance to the town lists the names of Jalapa's martyrs fallen in combat or by contra attack. As our bus wound its way toward the center of town, the long-term team came out to greet us. We prayed together in thanks for our safe arrival and in expectation of the days ahead.

That evening in the park we held our first vigil in Jalapa. We stood with our Witness for Peace banner while a light rain fell. People from the town joined us, and one woman gave us each a gift of warm ayote, a piece of squash cooked with a sweet topping, which she served to us on broad leaves.

When we explained that we were the first of many teams that would continue to come to Jalapa as long as the war goes on, one of the townspeople said, "This is the kind of U.S. invasion we like!" We were touched that people who have suffered and sacrificed so much, who live daily with terror and fears, offered prayers of deep gratitude for us: "We are simple and humble people, but we know the sacrifice you are making. If everyone in the U.S. government were like you, we would not be suffering these aggressions."

Gratitude marked all their prayers. One mother prayed, "Thank you for the rice, the beans, the coffee. Protect the harvest. Protect the children." And one of our team members added, "May there be a harvest of peace."

After a long and dusty day, we felt settled and peaceful—there in the park, warmly welcomed by the people we had traveled so far to meet, cleansed by the cool rain and the power of the worship. The peace was marred only by occasional reports of gunfire from the mountains.

The day begins in Jalapa when the sun appears. A bright green parrot hanging upside down from a branch of a dead tree argued in Spanish with a radio for dominance of the dawn.

We began our first day in Jalapa by asking the proprietor where we should go for shelter in case of an attack on the town. She nodded toward boards covering a large hole in her porch floor. Three of her children were swinging over the boards in a hammock, laughing and playing with masks.

Our first trip out from Jalapa was to La Estancia, a community a few kilometers away being created from displaced families who had lived scattered throughout the mountains. More than 600 families have been made refugees in the Jalapa area by the raids of the contras. Some have had to resettle temporarily in old tobacco barns, while others are building permanent shelter in areas like La Estancia.

While there, we met Martita, a 15-day-old baby, and her mother, who had fled on foot from their home in the mountains just days before delivering her beautiful daughter. Her husband was fighting with the militia and had not yet seen his baby.

Another mother told how armed contras came to her home and took away her two sons and three sons-in-law. She heard gunshots and, when she went outside, found them all dead: "When my husband returned, we fled. But he is old, and there are no more males in our family. The contras have cut off our future."

It has been said that to understand Nicaragua, you must talk to the mothers. Through their tears of grief we found the most profound understanding. Some of the mothers in Jalapa have established the Gallery of the Heroes and Martyrs, a house across from the church that displays pictures and stories of their slain sons. They understand the struggle and the political situation as well as anyone. One mother asked us, "Why should the United States attack us now? Before we didn't even have schools; we had to live like animals. The first thing the new government gave us was not arms but hospitals and a chance to read." Another added, "The rich can still stay here, and the government is giving amnesty to those who fight against it—what other government would do this?" And still another: "We want peace; we don't want blood. But we must defend ourselves."

But mostly they speak about their children: "It is incomparable suffering for a mother to lose her child; we feel the loss of a child in our own flesh." The bond of mother and child was particularly poignant while we were in Jalapa, because we were there during the purisima, the celebration of Mary. This festival, accompanied with processions and singing, is as important in Nicaragua as Christmas. It is a celebration of Mary, a remembrance of her bearing of Jesus and her giving him up to death. It is a passion with which the mothers of Nicaragua readily identify.

Perhaps the most agonizing of the stories we were told came from a mother who had lived in Teotecacinte, located right on the Honduran border about 15 kilometers northeast of Jalapa. The mother was preparing a meal when she was alerted of a contra attack. She sent her 13-year-old daughter to their underground shelter and was going to follow. But the girl remembered her puppy and ran off in search of it. When the mother got outside, her daughter was dead. She carried her body to the shelter, and it wasn't until she got inside that she realized the contras had decapitated her daughter. This woman, like many of the others, broke into weeping as she finished her story.

The refugees, a reverent people who have a profound respect for life, spoke of the atrocities of the contras as "ingratitudes," the actions of men who feel no relationship with their sisters and brothers. One woman said they "act like tigers" and described atrocities she had witnessed: tongues cut out, eyes removed, spikes through limbs, facial skin cut and rolled back over the heads of victims, and gang rapes of women both young and old. Burying the remains of the dead is particularly important for these people who draw so much strength from the sacrifices of those who have given up their lives, but the contras often dismember bodies and scatter the pieces to prevent burial.

It is difficult to write down such stories; it was even more difficult to listen to them. But this is the reality of Nicaragua, and it must be known that the Reagan administration, which denounces terrorism in so many places, is sponsoring such terrorism against the civilians of Nicaragua.

Half of the population of Nicaragua is under 15 years of age, so this war is a war against children. It seemed that we met most of the children of Jalapa—the exuberant and the serious ones, the many who saw us as a curiosity and gathered around us with endless questions or tugged at our banner and begged to help carry it, the sad ones who have been made orphans by the war.

And there were the sophisticated ones, like 14-year-old Isaac who, upon hearing of the Witness for Peace, decided to help form a "peace corps" of Nicaraguan teenagers to go to the United States to pray for peace. He spoke to our team and extended an invitation to the children of the United States to come to visit Nicaragua: "So that we can express solidarity with one another, let us have an exchange of children for peace." When we asked Isaac what he wants for his children when he has them, he replied, "I want my children not to be marginal."

At the close of our time at La Estancia we held a mass. George Dyer, a member of the long-term team and a Dominican priest from Brownsville, Texas, began the mass with, "I would like to invite the future of the community to come and gather around the table." The children came forward to the table that held the bread and wine and a brilliant red and yellow orchid.

But one of the children hung back. He was a 13-year-old who had captured our attention throughout our visit at La Estancia, perhaps because he looked so young and was carrying an automatic rifle almost as tall as he. We learned that members of the popular militia range in age from 11 to 80.

We had asked Agenor earlier how he felt about carrying a gun, and he had answered proudly, "I'm glad that I can protect my family." But now, when the children were summoned forward, he was like 13-year-olds everywhere. He hesitated, not sure whether he was a child or an adult. Finally he came to stand at the edge of the circle of children. I thought what a terrible weight that gun was for him, a weight put on his back by a belligerent U.S. policy that is robbing parents of their children and children of their childhood.

December is a peak harvest month in Nicaragua. It is also a time of heightened contra activity because it is difficult for the Nicaraguan people to divide resources between defense and production, and abductions and assassinations are much easier when workers are scattered throughout the fields. Since one of the goals of the Witness for Peace is to become involved in reconstructive work, repairing damage done by the contras or aiding in work that has been disrupted, we volunteered to help with the coffee harvest.

We arose before dawn on Friday in order to be picked up in the park by a truck carrying workers to the coffee fields. The location of each day's work is kept secret to try to prevent the contras from discovering where the work brigades will be. But soon we got word that the truck would not be coming. By now we were used to changed plans and waited patiently for a new one. A popular Nicaraguan slogan had also become quite popular with us: "Vamos a ver"—"We shall see."

Soon we were piling in our bus and heading toward Teotecacinte, the border town that had been the site of the worst suffering in the last major attack in the Jalapa area and also an area of bean harvesting. When we had told our proprietor and others at our pension that we were going to Teotecacinte, they said, out of concern for our safety, that it was "peligrosa"—"dangerous." We explained that that's why we were going, to try to document contra activity and provide a continuous flow of information back to the United States about the tragedies in Nicaragua. We arrived at the edge of Teotecacinte and were told that we would not be able to help with the bean harvest. A group of 15-year-olds had become separated from their work brigade near the town—"contra country," the local people explained. The safety of the 26 youths was the primary concern in the little town that morning, and it seemed best not to send us out into the fields. We learned later that the youths were found and returned safely.

We could hear and see a plane flying over the Honduran mountains just ahead of us. Commercial planes arrive in Nicaragua only three times a week, so the sound of a plane in the air usually means that it is a reconnaissance or bomber plane from Honduras and causes a great stir among the people. We held a short vigil as close as we could get to the border and then, in commemoration of the birthplace of the Witness for Peace, drove to the cornfield behind the school in Jalapa where the vigil by 150 North Americans was held in July.

We had come to Jalapa to proclaim the value of all lives—Nicaraguan and North American—to repent and offer nonviolent resistance to U.S. policy, and to say that if our government continues to attack Nicaragua it will have to also attack its own citizens. We came with a promise to keep on coming until the U.S. war stops.

For Nicaraguans the struggle for peace and against U.S. dominance has gone on for decades. Sergio Lobo, a young man who works with the local government of reconstruction in Jalapa, shared with us our last night in Jalapa: "It will be a long struggle. Our children and their children will engage in the struggle. We encounter the question every day that this may be the day of our death. In the long road our people have traversed toward the luminous reality of liberation, many people have been left dead on the road. And many more will be left in the future. But in confronting the power of death every day we also confront the reality of definitive liberation with joy and hope. Our people are full of sadness for the death of their brothers and sisters, but we all hope because it is the future we are building."

Sergio, like many of the Nicaraguans we spoke to, made very clear that Nicaragua will not be another Grenada. If the United States invades Nicaragua, the fight will not be with just an army but with an entire population, and the casualties and suffering will be great. In the words of Sergio, "The people are capable of giving to the last drop of blood." This will to preserve their freedom, which has brought upon them such tragedy, is also the hope of Nicaragua.

On the day that we were to leave Jalapa, the road was again closed, but we heard that it might be open in two hours. That gave time for one last walk through Jalapa. I headed toward the entrance of the town. I had wanted since the day we arrived in this little out-of-the-way place to walk through its cemetery, perhaps because in Nicaragua death is so prevalent and the sacrifice of those who have given up their lives for freedom is so well remembered and drawn upon for strength.

The sun was just up, and the mist hung low on the simple crosses stuck in the thick grass. The mist brought to mind the image of the "cloud of witnesses," and I felt quite literally surrounded by them in this quiet place. There was an enveloping stillness, and then a giggle. A young girl carrying a water jar appeared, and then another and another behind her.

They were sisters, they explained, with 11 children in their family. "I'll go get the rest," the oldest one said, and she skipped off. They came like a parade, each with a jar, the youngest, a 3-year-old, with a small tin can.

There's a well in the center of the cemetery, I learned. And the children begin every day carrying the water they will need for that day. A well of life in the center of so much death. And before me, the future of the community, who draw life from both the well and the cemetery crosses; who understand the struggle.

My musings were interrupted by the sight of our bus turning the bend by the sign of the martyrs. The road was open, and we were on our way home. I had left the myrrh necklace with Maria, one of the mothers who runs the gallery of the martyrs and the giver of ayote our first night in Jalapa. I was carrying home with me a handmade Christmas card from her with a fervent plea for peace in the world.

Because transportation is infrequent on the road, a young mother asked if she could get a ride with us as far as Esteli, where she was going to visit her 12-year-old son in the hospital. As the bus started up, she looked lovingly at the 7-month-old son on her lap and asked Phyllis Taylor, a nurse from Philadelphia, and Grace Gyori, a former Presbyterian missionary from Chicago, if they would take Ricardo with them back to the United States.

"But wouldn't it be hard for you to be separated from him?" Grace asked.

"Yes, but I will follow," she replied. "I will come as soon as I can."

"But there are problems in the United States, too."

She began to weep softly. "But at least there is no war. Please take him to safety. I don't want him to grow up in a war."

We stopped then at a military checkpoint and were told that there was mortar fire on the road ahead of us. It was too late to turn back, and we were instructed to drive as fast as we possibly could to Ocotal. We couldn't imagine how Gonzalo, our driver, could drive any faster on the narrow, winding road, but we took off again leaving a large cloud of dust. One of the team grabbed our Witness for Peace flag and thrust it out a window, and we all listened for mortar fire.

My attention went to Ricardo's mother, who had become quite carsick. Kathy Breen, a religious sister from Manhasset, New York, kept an arm around her and offered comfort. Twenty-three-year-old Anita Bender from Philadelphia took Ricardo and cradled him in her arms while the bus bumped on.

I thought again of the words that traveled most through my thoughts in our time in Jalapa: fragility and vulnerability. We saw it in the revolution. We saw it in the children.

As we pulled safely into Ocotal and whispered prayers of gratitude, the faces flashed again through my mind: Martita, Isaac, the orphans, the young ones with guns, the children in the cemetery. The ones who ask not to be marginal, who ask simply to have a future.

I remembered the plea of one mother: "Please ask your government to stop. If they had any degree of mercy, they would stop this war. If they could hear the mothers, then maybe they would stop."

Hear then the mothers—and the children, and the others. There is tenderness in this war zone, and laughter and love. And unless we do all that we can to stop the U.S. war against Nicaragua, the laughter will die.

Joyce Hollyday was an associate editor of Sojourners magazine when this article appeared.