Centro de Idiomas: a bridge between Nicaragua and the U.S. 
by Vanessa Ulmer

Nicaragua: un país pobre, llena de cultura y tradición. A poor country, full of culture and tradition; so my teenage host brother instructs me, as he demonstrates a traditional dance step or recites a verse by national poet-hero Ruben Dario. After a month living and learning in northern Nicaragua, I’m struck by the accuracy of the phrase. According to World Bank statistics, a shocking 80 percent of Nicaraguans live on less than a dollar a day while almost 95 percent live on under two dollars a day (1998 estimate). Yet the Nicaraguan people are warm, vital, and proud, their culture and political history rich in ways inadequately captured by economic statistics. It is this Nicaragua which today stands poised at a crossroads, a vulnerable nation facing the intensifying juggernaut of economic globalization and the persistent regional dominance of my own U.S. government.

I’ve come to Nicaragua to study and work with Centro de Idiomas, a unique language and cultural exchange program based in the city of Ocotal, Nueva Segovia. Founded as a partnership between Nicaraguan and U.S. constituencies, the not-for-profit center is designed to be a sustainable and participatory conduit of ideas between two distinct cultures. It encompasses a primary and secondary school in which the curriculum includes native-speaker English instruction beginning in pre-school, evening community English classes, and an exchange program that partners foreign student-interns with organizations in Ocotal. Visiting internacionalistas also enjoy participating in intensive Spanish language classes and homestays, allowing U.S. and Nicaraguan participants to live together, learn and teach together, and work together toward mutual respect and critical cross-cultural reflection. And so reflect I do . . .

It is a powerful opportunity, both exhilarating and exhausting. At times my American expectations, and especially my language limitations, are visceral. I want a planned meeting to start and end on time (or at least to take place); to receive a direct answer to a direct question, to express a complex topic using appropriately complex words. I long to walk down the street anonymous, without inviting attention and catcalls. Women in Nicaragua are strong and capable, but also strong is an accepted machismo, which seems especially roused by backpack-toting gringas.

In other instances I swell with admiration for the people who welcome me into their lives. I am generously piled with food, rich café, and patient conversation. I’ve developed quite an affection for cold showers, and I iron even my T-shirts to satisfy the cultural emphasis on looking neat and elegante. Above all, I am awed by the spirit of the Nicaraguan people who—through wars, want, natural disasters, lofty dreams, and bitter disappointments—continue, with open hearts, to keep on keeping on.

According to the dominant neoliberal narrative, Nicaragua has been pursuing “impressive economic reforms . . . to shed the legacy of a decade of civil war and economic mismanagement” under the leftist Sandinista government of the 1980’s. It is of course an intentionally incomplete history, which distorts the authentic struggles of most Nicaraguans.

Nicaragua’s centuries of exploitation by imperialist powers and local elites is an all too familiar story. More unique in the national consciousness are certain powerful flash points of successful resistance. For example, the legendary General Augusto César Sandino, who led a long guerilla struggle (1927-1933) to expel the U.S. marines from Nicaragua, in addition to supporting agricultural cooperatives and workers in the northern Segovias. Sandino remains a national hero and cultural icon, embodying anti-imperialist and leftist ideals.

When in 1979 a new generation of leftist Sandinista revolutionaries successfully toppled the repressive dictatorship of the (U.S. - backed) Somoza dynasty, popular hopes in Nicaragua soared. My compañeros in Ocotal speak emotionally of this time when they surged forth into rural communities to support the national literacy campaign, when public health care and education were freely accessible to all, and when a wide variety of social programs were established and well-funded by the new government of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN).

But as the 1980’s unfolded in the Sandinista-controlled Nicaragua, so too did an ongoing war against the U.S.-financed Contras, a hated mandatory military draft, high defense expenditures, ballooning international debt, chronic shortages, and a crumbling national economy. In 1990 the FSLN lost the presidential election and peacefully transferred power to a broad coalition of opposition groups united behind Doña Violeta de Chamorro, who would work toward national reconciliation and to reestablish world diplomatic and economic ties.

During the revolutionary decade (which still shapes the U.S. perception of Nicaragua), the Sandinista leadership doubtlessly made mistakes, faced internal criticism and resistance, and in cases used its power for personal gain. But it also confronted the reactionary, unrelenting hostility of the United States under President Ronald Reagan. Because of its ideological opposition to the socialist FSLN government, the Reagan administration cut off all foreign aid to Nicaragua, instituted an economic embargo, and supported the devastating Contra war, even secretly and illegally funneling funds for the Contra rebels by selling arms to Iran. Facing such military and economic pressure from the world’s superpower, what formative government could have successfully carried out the Sandinista attempt at radical social, economic, and political reform? Without the U.S.hegemonic imposition, what alternative outcomes could have been realized?

Despite its failure to meet expectations, the continuing impact of the Sandinista revolution cannot be underestimated. The FSLN party remains an important player in national and municipal politics; in Ocotal, the mayor has been Sandinista since 1979. Substantial numbers of Nicaraguans also still hold fast to deeper Sandinista ideals, which prioritize social equity and challenge the prevailing orthodoxy of a global capitalist system. Furthermore, Nicaraguans now enjoy and vigorously exercise considerable civil liberties, rights recently gained within the lifetime of the adult population.

Dramatically different from the Sandinista period, however, is the ideological orientation of the current national government under the right-wing Partido Liberal Constitutionalista (PLC). Elected in 1996, hard-core capitalist and PLC President Arnaldo Alemán promoted international investment and exports at the expense of the social safety net. His vice president and successor President Enrique Bolaños now promises a “New Era,” though I assume this is meant not to suggest any major policy shifts, but rather to distance himself from the endemic corruption of the former administration. Alemán is in jail (according to more skeptical friends, only temporarily) for robbing almost US$100 million from his impoverished fellow citizens. 

It is this precarious historical moment—as I now understand it, with my apologies for any inadvertent inaccuracies—that I am able to share in through Centro de Idiomas. Walking through the park on my way to class, I pass two adjacent benches, each stenciled with a symbol: the profile of Che Guevera and an Adidas logo. They seem a fitting metaphor for the tensions that I am struggling to understand. A second vignette: at the annual Festival de Maíz in Jalapa, several elaborate floats challenge aspects of economic globalization, including the highly unequal trade between the brand-name imports that Nicaragua buys from the United States and the agricultural products it exports at rock-bottom prices. For sale at the festival is every corn treat imaginable, and a wide variety of trinkets made in China. The day’s major sponsor, in addition to the ubiquitous soft drink and liquor ads, is a corporation peddling GMO corn seeds.

Nor are such contradictions lost on Nicaraguans. Indeed, in contrast to the U.S. public they have a far more immediate stake in globalization’s alphabet soup of acronyms and repercussions. Burdened with a crushing international debt, Nicaragua awaits a World Bank/IMF (International Monetary Fund) review of its structural adjustment program and progress, including to determine potential debt relief under the HIPC (Highly Indebted Poor Country). In Ocotal it is a topic for both headline news and dinner table talk, as the results will influence economic indicators and government spending in areas like education and social services.

Nicaragua and four of its Central American neighbors are also in the midst of free trade negotiations with the United States, to hammer out the CAFTA (U.S. - Central American Free Trade Agreement) as a stepping stone towards the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas). Central American policy makers hope to lock in neoliberal reforms and to woo U.S. investors. But the United States is pressuring them to accept a deal that will expose Nicaragua’s small-scale and subsistence farmers to subsidized U.S. competition, while doing nothing to ensure expanded markets in the United States or crucial protections for the region’s people, natural environment, and security. I share the fears of area farmers, who take to the streets with a clear message. TLC: muerte a la agricultura. The Free Trade Agreement kills agriculture.

Meanwhile, many Nicaraguans I meet hold a simpler dream in relation to the United States. They want to go work there, illegally if necessary, for the U.S. streets are considered paved with jobs. Nicaragua’s unemployment rate is debilitating (at roughly 25 percent according to the CIA World Factbook), and still more workers are glaringly underemployed. Other Nicaraguans pin their 
hopes on receiving remittances or international assistance, which make up a significant portion of Nicaragua’s national income. Dependencies can be created with the best of intentions.

Nicaragua’s problems are daunting and structural. And though Nicaraguans continue to struggle for positive change, the nation’s options today in fact seem far narrower than just two decades before. In his national proposal for 2004, President Bolaños lists as his second priority educational and social spending. But these fall beneath the all important task of paying interest on Nicaragua’s foreign debt, to stay in the good graces of creditors and the IMF. Meanwhile, Nicaragua’s unionized public school teachers (who earn about US$70 per month) continue to hold rolling strikes due to the government’s refusal to pay their contract-mandated bonuses. In Spanish conversation class we discuss their efforts, and our instructor observes, “In Nicaragua we have political freedoms and are always protesting, but the government doesn’t really listen. Nothing changes.”

I am a privileged visitor in Nicaragua who, unlike my warm hosts, can come and go as I please from life in this remarkable, vulnerable country. I therefore especially value the opportunity to share my time and energy while here with Centro de Idiomas, a sustainable partnership working to facilitate progressive education and social change. My students cheer when it’s time for English class. Their caring instructors and wonderfully involved parents are also eager for me to help teach, both my language and the deeper lesson of cooperation and mutual respect across cultures. Smiling, one of our closest Nicaraguan partners confides that though she wouldn’t have agreed to work with Americans fifteen years before, she’s since learned that the American people are not the same as the U.S. government. Now this profesora reminds her students: “Alone, our dream for Centro de Idiomas would have remained a dream. Together, we make it a reality.”

Vanessa Ulmer is currently a student with Centro de Idiomas, a nonprofit language and culture exchange program based in northern Nicaragua. CRESP, The Center for Religion, Ethics, and Social Policy at Cornell University, serves as an umbrella organization for the program, offering support and fiscal oversight.

A message from Centro de Idiomas founder Dhyana Kuhl:
 In order to see our plans through we will need the participation and partnership of other highly motivated organizations and skilled, enthusiastic people with entrepeneurial spirit. Centro de Idiomas calls on individuals to be learners and teachers alike, remembering always to look critically at themselves, their history, their own cultural perceptions, and the nature of their society. By fostering a collaborative community within our school we broaden the impact of our initiatives by actively entering society as heralds of change.

Dhyana and Vanessa can be reached by e-mail at:

centro_nuevasegovia@yahoo.com.