Articles

Lauren Trout, a Jesuit Volunteer who was featured in the spring 2011 issue of JVC Magazine, offers this added reflection on life in Nicaragua.

Lauren Trout - Cuidad Sandino, Nicaragua ‘09

One of my favorite aspects of living in Nicaragua is the country’s revolutionary spirit. The revolution of ‘79 (which ended a 40-year family dictatorship) did not bring about true liberation, as Nicaragua currently sits as the second poorest country in the hemisphere. However, I have the privilege of co-existing with a people who not only dared to dream, but fought for values of community and solidarity and achieved a different reality. Nicaragua’s revolution continues, shape-shifting out of politics and into la gente, and transforms us daily.

I’ve been thinking about radicality in Nicaragua; what it looks like, where to find it, how to be it. A year ago, I would have thought that the “radicals” of Nicaragua would be those on the soapboxes, organizing the people, and that my own revolutionary soul would live vicariously through the organizers, demonstrators, and activists. I envisioned a group of wild-looking youth that speak the language of the lucha. I dreamt up these beautiful, dark-skinned peoples talking about liberation theology, solidarity, and revolution in ways that I do, and that my soul would instantly become one with theirs.

I have seen those unruly-haired idealists and the way they yell in the streets, and my heart swells, imagining a time when the streets of this country filled with people celebrating life and revolution. But after a year here, the Nicaraguan “radicals” that I admire most, that I learn from, that my heart syncs with, are those I least expected. It all looks different than I thought it would, even myself in it.

The youth that come to Cantera (my work site) are radical. They live with their parents and watch TV and dislike reading, yes. But they come to Cantera and pick up a guitar, dance their country’s folklore, act, practice karate. In a society where no one expects them to be or do anything in life, that is radical. These spaces of self-expression are catalysts for voices to be discovered, raised, and empowered. With so many structures weighing these youth down and so many odds against them, they demand to be more than what is expected of them, being protagonists in their own lives.

These youth do not throw their fists in the air, but use their hands to create art. They do not yell in the streets, but rather, listen to each other, dialogue about their reality and ways to change it. They may not know what they’re against, but they know what they’re for. For the youth at Cantera, radicality is self-expression in a reality where no one seems to think they have anything to offer. For them, revolution is not a negative destruction of the bad, but a positive growth of the good.

I have learned that community organizing is hardly ever the way I think it’s going to look or feel, but it is still radical. Thirty young women coming together to talk about self-esteem and believing in themselves enough to change their personal and communal reality is radical--even if they’ve got their cell phones out the whole time.

The Christian Base Communities, a space where revolution blossoms, consist of old people who cannot keep rhythm while clapping to the off-key guitar, mild-mannered men, and women in high heels. But do not be deceived by these seemingly ordinary faces, for they carry the patience and strength to keep moving in the slow and difficult steps towards liberation.

And me? I am a different sort of radical here, discovering it in the way I sit with people, the way I share myself. I am learning how to sit and graciously share in another’s suffering, and that I have never been so humble as to gift something so deep as my own pain to another. I am learning how to sit and do “nothing,” but how active and intentional that truly is. I am learning how to talk about poverty honestly and with the people it affects most.

All of these spaces of accompaniment, I one day realized, are the very spaces we fight for systemic change to have. They are not only goals of revolution, but means of achieving revolution. May we all continue to bring about revolution through art, creation, accompaniment, and enough hope in a just world to make change.

Viva la revolución.