Seasonal Songs of Solidarity

When my mother left for the United States, her sister Nordia let her take their songbook with her so she could remember their time together at the local church choir.  It was a collection of church hymns, folk songs, liberation music and Christmas carols.  They were involved with various ministries and really enjoyed singing these songs.  There was a lot of substance within the lyrics.  To this day my mother has saved the little songbook.  It is a little treasured relic.  In light of the holiday season, I wanted to share this Nicaraguan Christmas carol that is so much more profound than any Santa Claus jingle we offer in the United States.  Below are the original Spanish lyrics followed by the translation.

My mother and aunt's original songbook

Navidad en Libertad

Carlos Mejía Godoy

Cuando desempaques tus regalos

niño de lujosa vecindad

piensa en tantos niños que no saben

para qué es la navidad

piensa en el chavalo limpiabotas

que su nochebuena pasará

en una banqueta dura y fría

del atrio de Catedral

Feliz Navidad

feliz Navidad

en Justicia y Libertad

feliz Navidad

un mundo mejor

sin miseria ni opresion

Esa metralleta de juguete

que te trajo este año Santa Claus

es el aguinaldo cariñoso

que te manda el Tío Sam

Hoy necesitamos más escuelas

mas cultura y más educación

son más importantes cien maestros

que un blindado batallón

Feliz Navidad...

Tiene que venir pronto ese día

cuando no sea la Navidad

sólo el privilegio de los ricos

sino de la Humanidad

Que venga Venancio, Pedro y Mincho

la Maruca, Lencho y Pantaleón

vamos a cantar el Villancico

de nuestra Liberación.

Feliz Navidad....

Hablado: Feliz Libertad te deseo, Pueblo mío.  Feliz Libertad niño de Acahualinca y Miralagos.  Feliz Libertad niño mutilado del Vietnam.  Feliz libertad niño huérfano de Nagasaki.  Feliz Libertad, negrito murruco del Congo.  A todos los niños del Tercer Mundo…Feliz Libertad.

Translation:

Christmas in Liberty

When unpacking your gifts

luxurious neighborhood boy

think of the many children who do not know

what is Christmas for.

Think of the shoeshine boy

That will spend Christmas Eve

On the cold hard sidewalk of the

Cathedral atrium

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas

in Justice and Freedom

Merry Christmas

a better world

without misery nor oppression

That machine gun toy

that Santa Claus brought you this year 

is the affectionate bonus

sent from Uncle Sam

Today we need more schools

more culture and more education

One hundred teachers are more important

that an armored battalion

Merry Christmas ...

Soon the day must come

When Christmas is not

only the privilege of the rich

but of Humanity

Come Venancio, Peter and Mincho,

Maruca, Lencho and Pantaleon,

We will sing the carol

of our Liberation.

Merry Christmas ....

Spoken: I wish you, Happy Freedom, my people. Happy Freedom, child of Acahualinca and Miralagos. Happy Freedom, maimed child of Vietnam. Happy freedom, orphan of Nagasaki. Happy Freedom, dark curly-haired child of the Congo. To all the children in the Third World ...Happy Freedom.

The Weight of a Date

November 16 holds a lot of weight for me in many different ways.  So many different events have fallen on this day that it's sometimes overwhelming to remember them all.

My first memory of a significant November 16 was in 2001 when I was a college freshmen.  This was the birthday of my roommate, Valerie Jacobs, so the whole west wing of the Sullivan dorm at LMU was going out to celebrate.  She was a Potterhead and the very first movie was about to be released.  I didn't have any classes on Fridays so I spent the day reading Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone to get ready for our evening at the theater.  I fell in love with the book and movie and anyone who knows me knows what a hard-core fan I became.  I trace the obsession back to this date.

Aside from launching my fandom of The-Boy-Who-Lived, this day is marked for me on a much more serious and somber level. It's actually much more about those who died.  On November 16, 1989 six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter were massacred at the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) in El Salvador.  Being a public school kid, I had never heard about this until attending LMU.  Jesuit schools and universities always host memorials in honor of these victims.  I was particularly interested because it involved Salvadorans.  For one thing, Central America always feels like the forgotten area of Latin America and as someone of Nicaraguan decent, I always appreciated any attention to this region.  Secondly, our long time family friends and neighbors were Salvadoran so there was an instant connection and interest.  It turned out that the Annicchiarico family actually knew personally these Jesuit priests before they were killed.  Several of them also happened to be Spaniards, so I could even relate from my father's side of the family as well.  All in all, I was invested in learning more and understanding things better.

The victims were murdered by soldiers who were trained by the United States.  They were trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, at what was then called the "School of the Americas" or SOA.  Every year in November there is a protest and procession to remember the lives of everyone murdered by the students from that training program.  I signed up with Campus Ministry to attend during my junior year of college.  They take the time to prepare us intellectually and spiritually for this journey.  It was during the course of this preparation that I realized the SOA was associated with the National Guard in Nicaragua.  This started my initial questioning of the story of my aunt.  Learning about the deaths of these Jesuits brought light to the life of my aunt.  I had never really questioned who killed her or why she died.  I just took it as a casualty of war.  Suddenly, this whole trip became more meaningful personally to me than it already was.  As part of the procession participants carry white crosses to represent the victims killed by the SOA.  Some have names, some don't.  We leave the crosses at the gates.  I brought with me a picture of my aunt.  I knew the students there contributed to her death and I wanted her name and face included in their list of crimes.

Learning about the deaths at UCA led me to somewhat better understand the death of my aunt and I will always associate them together and appreciate that.  It helped me begin this journey.

Lastly, on November 16, 2006, while I was full blown in the middle of the chaos of production on The Simpsons Movie, my Nicaraguan grandmother, Dora Hildalgo de Gonzalez, passed away from her battle with cancer.  I hadn't seen her in years.  My mother left for Esteli to be with her for her final months.  My grandfather had passed when I was too young to remember so she was my first real experience losing a close family member.  It was really hard for me to acknowledge that I would never get to say good-bye and couldn't attend her funeral.  It's one of the many challenges facing first-generation Americans with such distant family.  I barely visited her tomb for the first time this past summer in August of 2012, 6 years later.

So today, November 16, I take time to remember the life of my grandmother,  the victims of the massacre at UCA and all the lives lost at the hands of SOA graduates and in turn my Tía Nordia.  It is fitting that November starts with All Saints Day and All Souls Day.  This month is saturated by the memory of those gone before us.  I must do my best to take the time to honor their lives.

Dales Señor, el eterno descanso y que brille para ellos la luz perpetua.

Descansen en paz.

Así sea.

A Single Frame

I decided to take some vacation to visit my relatives in Nicaragua.  I hadn't visited the country for 13 years.  We came as a whole family in 1999.  Since then my mother has mostly returned on her own.  In 2008 my sister, Jessica, did a research trip based on a theology class she took at LMU.  We have both been inspired by my aunt's story due to our participation in the annual protest of the School of the Americas at Fort Benning to commemorate the assassination of the Jesuit priests at UCA in November by students trained in their program.  That's how I learned the US trained Nicaragua's National Guard that killed my aunt.  In Jessica's theology class they briefly mentioned Fr. Ernesto Cardenal and the Gospel of Solentiname from Nicaragua so she desired to come to do some interviews and study further.  My mother accompanied her as a guide and translator and she also learned a lot more details about her sister's involvement in the Sandinista uprising.  Now that I was going on my own a few years later I wondered if I should use this as an opportunity to really investigate my aunt's story.

Unfortunately, I didn't really come prepared for any such project.  I was too busy with work and life to get myself ready by studying things beforehand and figuring out what kind of information I wanted to pursue.  I decided to let it all go and not bring any specific objectives to my trip.  I just wanted to be with my family.  I wanted to see my aunt and uncles and spend time with my cousins.  It was just about being with one another.  Basically my week was filled with food, drink, music and dancing, all enjoying the company.  It was wonderful.

I did make the point to visit the memorial on the hill where my aunt fell to the National Guard.  I thought that would be the extent of my experience of her.  Standing on the ground where she stood, capturing the land and air.  I had seen photos from when my sister visited and images of the memorial is all over the tribute blog I found.  I was still surprised to see it.  Knowing the art on the murals didn't take away from being there.  It wasn't what I expected but I'm not sure what I thought I'd get from being there.  I gained no new info, but soaked in the imagery.

It was another image, however, that I was not expecting to find that captured my intrigue and fascination.  On my very last day in Nicaragua, while waiting at my cousin's house in Managua, we went through old photo albums.  I looked through tons of pictures of my family's youth.  There I truly discovered a gem.  It wasn't within the album pages but a loose picture.  In it was my Tía Nordia, my Tía Alba, who passed away from cancer a few years ago, my mother and my Abuelita.  It wasn't a posed portrait but a candid shot that captured the charm of the moment.  They were listening to my mother say something and she happens to be the only person in the picture who is still alive.  All the women looked beautiful.  It was perfect.

I knew instantly this picture was important.  I wanted to keep it so bad.  However, I knew I couldn't take it away from my cousin because it was such a beautiful picture of her mother.  I snapped my own picture of it.  I wanted to know more about this moment.  I suddenly knew that if my journey searching for my aunt's story would come to fruition in a book/screenplay or movie this scene had to be in it.  I want to see this frame reincarnate on screen.  This single frame held so much within it.  I want to convey that emotion and allure.  Interestingly enough, the photo that both my sister and I carried of our aunt during the SOA protest is from this same day.  She's wearing the same dress.  I've also seen other pictures of my mother in this blouse.  I never knew it was from the same day.  Suddenly I had a behind-the-scenes glimpse of these women and their interactions beyond their familiar posed portraits.

This is the way my mother remembers my Tía Nordia.  This is how she was when she left her.  Before she cut her hair, before the weight of the war was really etched in her face.  As my mother was heading to the US to study, her sister gave her photo of herself to remember her.  It was the photo taken from this same day of the group picture.  I knew already I was interested in exploring that good-bye. I want to show that painful handing off of the photo, the same photo that would find its way to the gates of Fort Benning.  Now I know I must also recreate the moment of taking that picture in the first place.

I feel truly blessed to uncover such a special picture and really hope to take advantage of this discovery and put some meaning behind it.  I know I traveled to Nicaragua to visit my family, but I feel finding this photo was part of my purpose from coming.  It has given me a renewed interest in this journey, to finding the personal side of this terrible part of history.  I aim to understand the story better and I will strive to do it justice.  It is impressive what the power of a single frame can do.

Comprehension

So I've come to the realization that I need:

1) a more comprehensive plan to approach this project, and 
2) better overall Spanish-language comprehension.

I have several books and movies to explore but I haven't really figured out my plan of attack to get through them.  I may have started with the hardest resource first, which slowed me down.  After embarking on a frustrated google search after some teasing from a co-worker, I indadvertedly discovered a blog in memory of all those who died during the Nicaraguan Revolution at Hill 110.  This includes my aunt.  I suddenly had before me more specifics surrounding her death than I ever had before and became increasingly interested in learning more.  This led to several follow-up questions to my mother and other relatives.  The blog is not updated that often but I would peruse its pages searching for any mention of my aunt.  The name Nordia only appears among lists of the dead.  One day I noticed the blog referred to a book that was published that chronicles the final days of those involved in the battle on this hill.  It became my mission to find a copy for myself.

It turns out the book is not available for online ordering and isn't for sale anywhere within the United States.  There is no digital copy I can access.  Using the World Catalog I was able to locate libraries that held a copy, which were mostly universities.  The closest thing to me was Stanford or Berkeley. I applied for a library card at the Burbank Public Library and requested an inter-library loan to get this book.  Stanford said they couldn't find it but Berkeley was going to send it.  Weeks passed.  I waited for over a month or two.  Finally Burbank gave up and went to the Library of Congress.  Eventually the book came my way and I made sure to photocopy each of its 104 pages to keep it with me always.

Since this book deals precisely with the victims of Hill 110 and not just the overall revolution, I put it at the top of my priorities.  However, the challenge is that it is written entirely in Spanish and I haven't really exercised serious reading-comprehension skills since my junior year at South Hills High School in 2000.  I figured with my basic Spanish and a little help from Google Translate, I should get by somewhat okay.

I was dismantled by the first sentence.

La Dirección de Patrimonio Histórico de la Alcaldía de Managua, se complace en presentar la primera edición del libro "Colina 110 Insurrección Los Laureles y Masacre GN", del autor Arnulfo Agüero Aguilar.

The word that stumped me was "alcaldía" so I looked it up.  Google Translate defined it as "mayoralty." I didn't expect to be confused by the English word as well.  I had to look up the English meaning. How could I not understand the English?!  Apparently they both just mean office of the mayor.  Why did it have to be that complicated? I pretty much surrendered after that first sentence and lost my momentum.  This was not a good way to start.

I've decided I really need to work on my Spanish skills more seriously than before as well as develop a program to keep myself in line to push through all the material I have.  I thought starting a blog would keep me publicly accountable, but apparently I'm not much of a blogger after all.

In Continuation

Today, June 13, 2012 marks the 33rd anniversary of the murder of my aunt, Nordia Esther González Hidalgo, by the US-trained National Guard of Nicaragua during the Sandinista Revolution. 35 teenagers were shot to death from helicopters and then buried dead or alive in the trenches with bulldozers. They died for liberty as the stood up against injustice and oppression.

Since I was little, I always knew that I had an aunt who died at war but I never fully understood her story.  I still don't.  I've made progress over the years but only to realize that I do not fully grasp the greater elements of the politics, faith, sacrifice and motivation.  I want to know the historical and the human side of things.  The curiosity developed while I was a student at Loyola Marymount University attending the annual SOA protest at Fort Benning, Georgia.  Since then my sister, Jessica, has done her own research and travels that inspired me to pursue more.  I have done some investigation but now wish to launch a concrete project to learn the most that I can on this subject.

I want to learn my Tía Nordia's story, so I can better tell it.  I want to honor her memory.  I'm not sure if this will culminate in a screenplay, novel or just an amazing personal journey.  Right now I'm going to enjoy the ride and see where it takes me.  I'm not sure how often I'll post updates but I figured the 33rd anniversary of her death would an appropriate day to launch this blog.  I've decided to do this publicly to put pressure and accountability on myself to stick with it as well as to build greater awareness to the issues at play.  I've already begun this journey, but I now I invite you to continue along with me.