John Hilgeman  0:01  
Good morning. This is John Hilgeman for Lambda Reports, a program by and for the lesbian and gay community in the St. Louis area. Usually on this program, we interview someone about a topic of direct interest to lesbians and gay men. Today's topic may not seem at first glance to fit that description. However, we know first hand that the sting of oppression at the hands of fellow citizens in government, and so it is natural for us to have an interest in other peoples who have likewise been oppressed. If one person's rights are at risk, the rights of all of us are at risk. Our guest today is Mary Dutcher, a human rights lawyer who has spent much of the last seven years in Nicaragua and who recently interviewed witnesses to an ambush that left two nuns dead and another nun and a bishop injured. Mary, thank you for being with us, and maybe you could just tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us a little bit about your involvement with Nicaragua, a little bit about Nicaragua, but just kind of start from there, I guess, 

Mary Dutcher  1:10  
Okay, well, I've just come back after, my last stint was two years in a parish in the center of Nicaragua, and it was actually the parish that joined the parish where the sisters were ambushed and killed on January 1. And I worked in a project of that parish. It was called Cristo Rey the parish was called Cristo Rey, or Christ the King, and the project was also called Christ the King. And I worked there with people who had been displaced by the war in our parish, campesinos who had to come fleeing in from the mountains because of the violence. And our parish had always been progressive. And so the people who were leaders in our parish, the delegates of the word, or the catechists, were also the people that were doing the literacy campaign and were doing were brigadistas or health workers when there was a vaccination drive, or were the presidents of cooperatives. So when the Contra war got very strong in 1985 and 86, these were the people that the Contra sought to kill, and they would come, you know, with lists of names, looking for people, and it was often, usually the people who are also the leaders of the Christian community. So they came fleeing in, and the church felt a moral obligation to try and help them rebuild a new life. And the project came from that and was financed by Christians in West Germany, and was to build 10 new communities. Each with 100 houses and a school and a health center. Ended up being 15 communities, most of them was less than 100 houses, but more conforming to where we could get land and where the people wanted to move. So I was working with four of those 15 new communities at the very northern end of our parish boundary, which was the southern end of the ceuna parish, where the sisters were ambushed. Before that, I had worked doing a human rights study called violations of the loss of war by both sides in Nicaragua in 1985 and 86. It was published by the Washington office on Latin America, which is a non-governmental human rights organization. And then I was speaking here in the United States and in Europe about the results of that study, and I wanted to do something just sort of direct and concrete to try and repair the damage of the Contra war. And that's why I want to work at this little parish.

John Hilgeman  3:55  
Now, people, people talk a lot about the well, like Reagan, I guess he used the term that the Contras are freedom fighters and the moral equivalent of our founding fathers. I noticed he didn't say anything about founding mothers. But what's the actual situation? Because you've been there and you've seen what, what has happened? 

Mary Dutcher  4:15  
Well, people call the Contras freedom fighters in a sarcastic fashion. It would probably amaze the average North American how much North American attitudes are known in Nicaragua. I think it has to do that whole reality of oppression that the oppressor does not have to know or understand the reality of the oppressed, but the oppressed person has to understand and know the reality of the oppressor as well as their own reality. Well, that's really too true in Nicaraguan. So when the when the Contras would do an ambush or do some particular horror, they would say, well, there go the freedom fighters again. And. You know, they just killed in my parish in October, the Contras, ambushed a group of military reserve men and killed 19 of them coming in to register to vote. And I remember someone saying, well, there they go, the freedom fighters. And freedom fighters in quotes, in the headlines, that kind of thing. The reality is that no matter what a person might think of the Sandinistas or the Sandinista government, they hate the Contras. They do not think the Contras are an option because the Sandinista government came into power, overthrowing a dictatorship that had been supported by the United States for about 50 years of the Somoza family and the core of the Contras, and certainly their officer level and their leadership level were from the former national guard of that hated and despised dictatorship, the Sandinistas led a popular uprising. The Sandinistas were not probably even the majority. They were more like the spark and the leadership of this uprising, and everyone who participated probably had their own vision about what was going to come next. So there was a lot of people that overthrow Somoza that maybe did not particularly want what the Sandinistas originally wanted. But that also has changed over the 10 years, and the Sandinistas themselves, right before their triumph of the revolution, had been divided into three factions with a different vision. And so there are nine people who are called comandantes, who make up the sort of Board of Directors of the Sandinista Party. And they know the importance of unity. And so they're very flexible. And they they say, Gosh, we've made mistakes. We need to change this. We need to change that, and they're open to different visions and views.Which I think is really healthy and helpful and not appreciated in the United States, where I think the Sandinistas are presented as totalitarian, communist, Marxist, rigid. The Sandinistas understand themselves to be moderates. We were talking with Alejandro Ben Daniel, who is, I think he's number two person at the Foreign Ministry. Right before we left, this delegation of three families from St. Louis that I was with on January 5, spoke with him. He's Harvard-educated, speaks idiomatic English. And he was saying, the tragedy of the invasion of Panama is that it leaves us moderates so little room. It has so polarized Latin American politics, and we moderates, referring to the Sandinistas, have so little room left. Those of us who believe in dialog with the United States, those of us who don't want to believe that the United States is historically condemned to an armed military intervention. So it was interesting, especially to watch the reaction of the families, because they had a cognitive dissonance in the United States, the Sandinistas are presented as extremists and to understand that the Sandinistas think of themselves as moderates.

John Hilgeman  8:29  
Now, why are the Sandinistas called, why are they called communist and Marxists? 

Mary Dutcher  8:36  
They take Marxism as an element of their political analysis, but from my experience, much more are inspired by nationalism or anti-imperialism. That's what Sandinista comes from. Sandino, who was a nationalist fighter who waged a guerrilla war against the Marine occupation in the 1920s and 30s, to the point that the Marines did withdraw, and the United States created in their place the National Guard, and put at its head this man named Somoza, who quickly cashed in on the military power to also have the political power in Nicaraguan began the 50 year dictatorship, but Sandino was always it's sort of like a George Washington figure for us, Sandino is for the Nicaraguan people, and is the most basic energy in motivating the Sandinista party and in motivating the Nicaraguan people whofollow the Sandinista party. And then I think another much, much stronger element than Marxism in the Sandinista analysis is Christianity. And what makes the Sandinista experiment unique in world history so far is this combination of a Marxist analysis with a Christian value system and a Christian interpretation of reality. And it is interesting and very powerful, as you can imagine in Latin America, which is got a tremendously strong Catholic history and tradition.

John Hilgeman  10:25  
Well, what, what precisely does, does the Marxism mean? I mean the Marxist analysis, because I mean it can mean all kinds of different things. And obviously it doesn't mean the godless atheism that you know, people painted the Soviet Union as being and you know, so what precisely does …

Mary Dutcher  10:45  
I think it means in Nicaragua most concretely anti-imperialism, and it means something about a society more just for the workers and the peasants. The Sandinistas present themselves as the party of the workers and the peasants. Other Latin American people that I've talked that I've talked to, people from Peru, for example, and Europeans that I've talked to visiting Nicaragua say that the Sandinistas are more like Social Democrats than they are like any other political party. And so when given Marxism in that context, I think it means that it recognizes a class analysis and says that there are a few very rich people at the top and there are masses and masses of poor class, the poor people who form the lower classes, and we need to put together society that responds to the needs of the workers and the peasants. That's what I think it means for Nicaraguans Marxism, recognizing that there are economic interests at stake in the political and social arrangement of a society, and that it should be arranged to favor the poor.

John Hilgeman  12:09  
Now there's been a redistribution of land already, right? I mean, it's like what's happened in Nicaragua, it seems, is that the redistribution has gone in favor of the people who have been have nots, or at least, you know, there's been a redistribution towards that direction. Whereas what's happened in this country in the last nine years has been the biggest redistribution of wealth into the hands of the rich in the history of the nation. So it's kind of like, 

Mary Dutcher  12:38  
I remember reading someplace that here that the private property in the hands of the most wealthy 5% more than doubled from around 15% to around 35% as I recall. 

John Hilgeman  12:53  
It's been enormous with the tax structure alone. You know, the checks changes alone in the last few years have meant massive reduction in taxes for the rich and an increase for some other people too. So Mary, we have just a couple minutes left. Would you like to just add something at this point? 

Mary Dutcher  13:13  
Well, probably it's important to talk about the present moment, because it's a critical moment. It's a historical moment in Nicaraguan history, and in hopefully Nicaraguan United States relations, after 10 years of the Contra war, Nicaragua is going to have elections. They actually had elections in 1984 they're going to have elections again on February 25 that the United States government says that if these elections are free and fair, the United States will work to normalize relations with Nicaragua. In fact, Secretary of State Baker just said that last week in the press. So there is beneath this, though, an agenda on the part of the United States, I fear, to put forth Violeta Chamorro as the presidential candidate. And the question is, what will the United States do if she does not win? Will they say the elections were fraudulent? Will they try to invade? So it's important for those of us who care about oppressed people to keep an eye on this situation to on February 25 make sure that the United Nations observers that are headed by Elliot Richardson are the ones that are listened to, or the Organization of American States, or Jimmy Carter, all of those people are fair and impartial, but the strictly United States government sources are not impartial and should not be listened to. So we should make sure that the results are determined as to fairness by these international and impartial organizations, and then press for a normalization of relations with Nicaragua no matter who wins, because the Sandinistas are going to win, they have the support of the people, as much as it's difficult for us who have been subjected to the the US media perception here in the United States to believe that that's what's going to happen. I'm you know, I bet my last nickel. 

John Hilgeman  15:32  
Okay, I want to continue this topic next week, and right now, I just want to thank you, Mary Dutcher, for sharing with us on Lambda Reports a little bit about what's going on in Nicaragua. This is John Hilgeman for Lambda Reports, a program by and for the lesbian and gay community in the St. Louis area. Thank you for joining us this morning.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai