This article appeared on the website of “Nicaragua investiga” on October 17, 2018. The anonymous author is a victim of sex abuse. While it is similar to the reflection of Daniel Ortega´s stepdaughter, Zoilamerica Narvaez, in drawing a parallel between the dynamics of abusers with their victims and the relationship of Ortega with the country, this reflection goes a step further. She points out the type of change that needs to happen in relationships throughout society, and the need to break the silence of abuse at all levels, for real and lasting change to happen. This is a relevant reflection for any society, as evidenced recently in the US in the Kavanaugh hearing and priest abuse scandals.
“Nothing will be more revolutionary for our new Nicaragua than that the road to the liberation from the dictatorship be accompanied by the liberation of our consciousness”
This is a reflection that will end up being uncomfortable for many, but it is necessary and urgent for those of us who profoundly believe that it is possible to build a different country, because I am not going to settle for getting rid of a political dictator and continuing with the multiple dictatorships that have crushed us girls and women of my country, Nicaragua, for centuries.
To start, I will say that I am one of many girls who have learned too early the horror of the violence in our bodies at the hands of a relative, and who see in the situation of Nicaragua today too many similarities with the multiple violences that we women experience daily in this country.
I was born into a poor, Catholic and Sandinista family, where you could not speak ill about neither the priests nor the Comandantes. In this way I learned that silence could kill, and that a cry is a powerful weapon that all of us carry within us, and that has saved many of us. I am one more of the Zoilamericas who have said no more along with thousands and thousands of us who have rebelled against the Great Abuser.
Daniel Ortega is a sex abuser and also an abuser of the people. He and Rosario Murillo have operated with their victims in the same way that they have done with an entire country. In a sad but clear similarity, what has happened to Nicaragua is the same as the girl that falls into the claws of a predator disguised as a lamb who comes up to offer a piece of candy, sticks his dirty hands inside her clothing, snatches away her freedom and imposes silence on her, believing that she is never going to be capable of rebelling.
To the surprise of the abuser, the girl breaks the infernal pact of silence, begins to speak about it, first in a low voice, and little by little finds support, until one day shouts it in a loud and clear voice, and now no one can shut her up. The abuser has two options, shoulder the blame, or on the contrary, deny his responsibility, say to the entire world that the girl is to blame, and threaten her or, if it is possible, hurt her.
The story is the same in respect to Nicaragua. To the surprise of the dictator, the people broke their silence, we began with small protests, followed by others a little bigger, and others bigger and bigger until the shout of “No more” was deafening. The dictator had two options, and chose the same path that almost all sex abusers choose: deny the facts, blame the victim, threaten and even kill.
What is in play in both cases is not just the ongoing abuse of this girl or Nicaragua, but the possibility to continue hidden behind the mask of the lamb that allows him to continue the hunt without being discovered, continue making use of power, controlling and abusing a country, in the same way as he controls and abuses a body. The analogy is as perverse as it is appalling.
But more perverse is thinking that Nicaragua is one of the countries with the most sex abuse incidents in Latin America (5,000 denouncements per year), in other words that we are in a country full of men of the same calibre as the dictator Ortega. Men who have abused the girls who are around them for believing themselves owners of their bodies, and who have taken advantage of the trust which these victims have in them in order to violate their integrity.
Many of these abusers have been shielded by relatives, neighbors, the community, the authorities, the churches,…we live with these men on a daily basis, and it is even possible that we may be marching in the streets with many of them demanding freedom and justice. It is not by chance that as a society we have tolerated the fact that a man accused of sexual abuse would take power and that we would allow him to submit the country to the same dynamic as his victims. It is not by chance, because in the end sexual violence, and any type of violence practiced by men, does not seem acceptable to us.
Well that tolerance of macho violence ends up being equally despicable as the dictatorship to me. Not only because of all the damage to the lives of girls, boys and women; but because I am convinced that what we are experiencing today is the result of that macho culture that teaches men to control and subdue whatever and whoever it might be: girls, boys, women, nature, their workers, the people that surround them, and in the end an entire people. And then I ask myself, what is the difference between what we are fighting today in the streets, and the social networks from the daily dictatorship that is established and intact in our homes and that is deeply rooted in our social co-existence?
There is no difference between them, they are the same thing, they come from the same roots. The Ortega dictatorship is machista, violent, abusive, disparages life and abuses power, just as the man does who does abuse in the family, who disrupts the intimacy of girls and boys, who harrasses at work, who takes advantage of their investiture and authority as priest, teacher or president of a country.
Surely these reflections will be portrayed as inappropriate divisionism, but I am writing today precisely for that reason, because I am extremely concerned that, as happens to girls who experience abuse, in the name of family unity and to not create divisions, we let any form of macho violence continue occurring and continue saying, “there will be time for that later”. No. The time is now.
It is now when we can give ourselves the right to question everything that has not helped us to be happy as a society and as a people. It is now- not tomorrow, nor at another moment – when we can make way for a profound and serious debate on the society that we want, and it is now when we have to decide whether we are really committed to change in the system, or if we are playing at “changing it all in order to not change anything,” as goes an old premise in politics.
It seem to me that we urgently need to make a personal and collective appeal in our community spaces, and in the social and political organizations that we are strengthening in the face of the dictatorship, on this topic, without fear that conflicting positions might emerge, without fear of questioning ourselves, for example:
How can we rebuild a country in democracy if we are full of real or potential sexual abusers in families, neighborhoods, churches, schools and communities who we do not dare to question in the name of anti-Ortega unity?
How are we going to be different, the generation of rebellious youth of 2018, from those from the 80s who relegated the role of women to lesser positions, and tried to send them back to the kitchen after having fought shoulder to shoulder with them in the mountains?
How can we ensure that the history not be repeated of consecutive and ongoing abuse in all the spheres of our lives as a society, from the smallest, like the family to the most public sphere, like the government, if we do not disrupt the bases of that form of the exercise of power?
I imagine also that these reflections will awaken the typical misogynist comments that I have heard in forums and social networks. Unfortunately the great majority of these comments will come from fellow men and women who are also fighting against the dictatorship with expressions like “a feminazi is the one writing this” or “it is not the moment to talk about these issues because they distract from the principal objective of the struggle” or “to talk about feminism is excluding because not all of us who are in the struggle are feminists”.
I already have a response for you: yes, I am talking about feminism, everything that I write here is from my consciousness as a feminist woman. And even more, I can assure you that a feminist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, ecological…revolution is the only one that will really be inclusive, and is what we many girls aspire to who have put our lives at risk in these six months, and from long before that.
Even more, I will tell you that it is impossible to think about the word REVOLUTION without feminism, because revolutionize is changing from the roots the bases for an unequal society for another one that is open, inclusive, with social justice and human rights for everyone. And it is a secret to no one that our bases as a society are rotten, and in its rot seethes sexism.
Nothing will be more revolutionary for our new Nicaragua than the road toward the liberation from the dictatorship come accompanied by the liberation of our consciousness. And this implies destabilizing all the powers and backward ideas that we have inherited, exchanging them for ideas of equality between men and women, for social justice, respect for diversity, the right to decide without conditions for women, the right to say no more to any abuse not matter where it comes from, respect for nature…in other words, exchanging them for profoundly feminist ideas and practices. This is the society that I dream about, this is the revolution that I want for my country, and for the girls and boys who are going to inherit this country, so that never more will their voices be quieted in the face of the irrational desires of any predator, sexual nor political.
Juanónima