Don’t worry, next week will include current news and commentary. I’m just laying down some background.

A couple of months ago I sitting on the Witness for Peace porch in Managua Nicaragua learning about US involvement in the country for the last 150 years or so. The first event we covered was when a US citizen, William Walker (pictured above), led a group of mercenaries into Nicaragua and took over the country. Remember from two weeks ago, the State Department said,

Initially invited by the Liberals in 1855 to join their struggle against the Conservatives, an American named William Walker and his “filibusters” seized the presidency in 1856. The Liberals and Conservatives united to drive him out of office in 1857.

Just a side note, the US government at the time recognized his presidency as legitamate. This is something I’ve been noticing lately, when the US recognizes governments.

Aside from wanting to be supreme ruler, we were told that this guy was in a race against the Vanderbuilts to establish a canal through Central America. At this time, lots of people were trying to establish a water route from the East Coast of the US to the West Coast. Here’s a map of the US at this time, the pink indicates “settled territory”:

Notice the big gap in the middle.

So after William Walker, the history of the US and Nicaragua grow together because of the US marines and US businesses. The US businesses set up what become known as “Bannana Republics”, and the US marines are continually sent in to keep Nicaraguans from running their own country (more or less). Of course, “uprisings” and “US interests” were continually brought up as reasons to invade, er, I mean, keep the peace.

As I grew more angy with every piece of US meddlement in Nicaragua, I kept thinking, “we should get the fuck out and stay out and let them have their country back.” And then I realized exactly how similar US history and Nicaragua history is, and how foggy my role as a US citizen is.

The reason that the area in the middle of the map of the US above isn’t settled is the same reason why US citizens were invading Central American Countries to create a water passage from coast to coast. The people who lived in that “unsettled” place in the US didn’t want the white man invading their territories and displacing them. In fact, the Indigenous people who lived there fought off the white man so well, many of them decided to look for a way “around” them. Hence, the search for the central american canal.

So as the US was invading Nicaragua and setting up their own governments abroad, they were doing the exact same thing on their “own” soil. Invading the people who lived in what is now the US, and setting up more favorable governments, with total disregard for the people who actually lived there.

And as US presence in Nicaragua today infuriates me, shouldn’t US presence on US land itself, Turtle Island, also infuriate me? Cause it kinda is starting to. Anyone Else?

Here’s some homework for next week. Read the Department of State fact page on Nicaragua, paying closer attention on the History section.

here’s the link

Here’s a few sentences to ponder over the next week:

Initially invited by the Liberals in 1855 to join their struggle against the Conservatives, an American named William Walker and his “filibusters” seized the presidency in 1856. The Liberals and Conservatives united to drive him out of office in 1857.

From 1927 until 1933, U.S. Marines stationed in Nicaragua engaged in a running battle with rebel forces led by renegade Liberal Gen. Augusto Sandino, who rejected a 1927 negotiated agreement brokered by the United States to end the latest round of fighting between Liberals and Conservatives.

After the departure of U.S. troops, National Guard Cmdr. Anastasio Somoza Garcia outmaneuvered his political opponents–including Sandino, who was assassinated by National Guard officers–and took over the presidency in 1936. Somoza and two sons who succeeded him, maintained close ties with the United States.

The Reagan administration provided assistance to the Nicaraguan resistance and in 1985 imposed an embargo on U.S.-Nicaraguan trade.

Have you ever wondered if it was possible for one plot of land to be self-sufficient? One organization in Nicaragua called CIPRES did, and they figured out that indeed it is possible. Not only that, but fairly easy. Here’s the plans:

And here’s the link:

http://www.cipres.org/ (it’s in Spanish)

So, what does that mean? Or at least, what does this mean for Lucy? This means that a family of humans can potentially live on two acres of land without ever having to import food or energy.

So, if everyone in the World (roughly 6,700,000,000 people) moved to the state of Texas, every single person would have about 1,090 SF of land to live on. Not much for a farm, I know.

But, if everyone in the US (roughly 295,700,000 people) moved to the state of Texas, every single person would have about 333,500 SF of land to live on…That’s more than 7.5 acres per person. Am I wrong, or does it seem as if there is plenty of land for everyone? And with this land that’s so plentiful, with the model shown above, comes lots of food to go around. It’s all just a matter of “doing” it.

Good luck with this Slingshot, I’ve actually been meaning to show this to you for a while. I’m thinking you’ll be into this.

Love,
Lucy

The young men in the photo above are (left to right) Luis and Hector. My wife and I stayed with them and their family for a few days last week, out in the countryside of Nicaragua. We asked our host brothers to show us somewhere cool and they brought us to this cliff (during the rainy season it’s a waterfall). As we walked to the site, Luis and Hector used a slingshot to shoot down fruit from trees. We snacked the whole way there.

When we arrived, we lay down on the rocks, looking out over a lagoon, rested and talked a little politics. I told Luis about an incident that ocurred earlier that day when our group of US citizens visited a cooperative farm (which our host father helped set up after the revolution). One of my fellow North Americans said to a founding member of the Co-op with sarcastic sentimentality,

So, my government was right when they told us you guys were communists. Because everything you’ve been saying so far, today, sounds like communism.

Luis laughed at that, and began talking about other countries that were communist. He mentioned Venezuela and I ventured that I thought Venezuela might be a democracy, and Luis said:

Communism is the same thing as Democracy.

I told Luis that in my country, many people equate capitalism with democracy, and he kind of shook his head and said something like, “that’s not true” or something.

But to explain what he meant by “communism”, I want to talk about the response to the statement made at the co-op. The leader of the Cooperative responded to the allegation of being a communist with the following paraphrase:

Yes, I am a communist. But I am not a communist so much in the political sense. I am a communist because God is a communist. Does God want us to live in constant fighting? Does God want us all to be against each other? No. God wants us all to live together in communion. And that is what we do. That is why I am called a communist.

Remember, these are the guys that Reagan warned us about. And it turns out that, unsurprisingly, people everywhere are really just the same. They want to live their lives on their own terms, in their own way, without anyone telling them otherwise. For many in the United States, this means a capitalist system. But for the family we stayed in, and for many of the other companeros and companeras in the countryside, that freedom to live the way they choose is synonymous with the cooperation and community lifestyle that we happen to define as “communism”.