Grandmothers on their own are caring for their grandchildren
By Geovanny Shiffman in DIVERGENTES
February 4, 2023
The massive exodus of Nicaraguans leaves behind thousands of minors and grandmothers who take up again the maternal role to fulfill the position of absent mothers and fathers. It is a daily challenge for elderly women, but not all are able to cope with the task, which has forced some migrants to return to Nicaragua.
Doña Esperanza says that her heart is divided between three countries: Costa Rica, Guatemala and the United States, where her four children saw themselves forced to migrate, because their country is no longer safe nor stable for them. After sharing almost all their lives in the family, in 2022 that nucleus broke up. This 69 year old grandmother had to spend the holidays of Christmas and New Years alone. Her only refuge and strength, she says, has been her faith in Christ. “I spent a sad Christmas, without their company and embrace,” she says nostalgically.
In reality, Esperanza does not live alone. Five grandchildren live in her home, two of them of legal age, who, even though they show her affection, do not fill the void that her four children left, three boys and one girl. She cannot hold it in, and shortly after communicating about it, she breaks down crying. Her head is full of memories and for the moment she refuses to accept that none of her children are now with her.
María, the eldest of her four children, 39 years of age, always was a “hard-working” woman, Esperanza says confidently. She was not ashamed of anything. Nevertheless, she did not have a stable job. She was a street vendor of women´s sandals.
Being the single mother of two children, in 2012 María made the decision to migrate to Guatemala to improve the economic conditions for herself and her children, who now had reached adulthood and keep their grandmother company in a neighborhood of Managua.
“That was my first blow, see my daughter leave for another country,” says Esperanza, who in the two years that followed also suffered the loss of her husband, with whom she had lived for more than 30 years. “That was also hard for me, because he always kept me company and looked out for me,” she recalled.
But this past year of 2022, she states, has been the darkest and most painful for her. In her mind she can still hear that call that she received in the middle of that year from her youngest son Juan, where he told he that he had to flee to Costa Rica because of the governmental persecution. What most hurt Esperanza, she says, was not having received a kiss from her son, a hug or a simple goodbye.
The nightmare of this Nicaraguan mother continued in November of that same year, when her two only sons who were still in the country, Pedro and David, made the decision to migrate to the United States. “I did not want my sons to leave, it hurts to have them so far away,” states Esperanza.
For many years, Pedro and David, 33 and 38 years old respectively, worked in the country as waiters in a restaurant, but in 2022 they were left without an opening. This need for a job pushed them to look for progress in another country. In the case of the older one, he left with his spouse and two children, while the other one left his three children in Nicaragua under the care of their grandmother Esperanza.
“My youngest son cannot even enter Nicaragua, I believe that, even if I should die, he would not be able to come back to say goodbye,” once again Esperanza breaks down crying.
The difficult task of grandmothers
In another scenario, Ruth says good-bye to her daughter Veronica in February 2022 and took on the task of taking care of her three grandchildren of 10, 5 and 3 years of age. The plans were that Veronica, along with her husband who migrated in December 2021, would work in the United States to cover the needs of their children, their home and she would be able to help her Mom.
The day to day of Ruth was very busy, because her morning began with getting two of her grandchildren ready to go to school, to later stay and care for the smallest one and at the same time do the chores of the house.
The work was very hectic for the 56-year-old citizen, who tried to complete all her household chores and provide the needed care to her grandchildren. Nevertheless, the little ones resented the absence of their parents and could not put up with the separation, a situation which the elderly woman could no longer deal with.
“The principal reason for returning to Nicaragua was for our three children, because they have experienced a number of situations which unfortunately had left them emotionally scarred, because of not adapting to another person who was not their mother nor father,” commented Veronica, who returned to the country 10 months after having left for the United States in an irregular manner.
The woman commented that before leaving the United States, her husband was working as a taxi driver, while she was responsible for taking care of three minors. Nevertheless, the needs of the household and the longing for progress had motivated them to make the decision to migrate.
Even though Veronica and her husband had many plans left undone, she recognizes that they could not continue affecting their children with the separation. “Now that we are in Nicaragua the plan is to struggle. What is essential is to stick more to Christ and come out ahead as all Nicaraguans.”
Like these families, thousands of Nicaraguans ended 2022 with the members of the home missing, in a year marked by massive migration, principally to the north. According to data from the Customs and Border Patrol Office (CBP), in all of 2022 the authorities detained a total of 217,091 Nicaraguan migrants.
Costa Rica is another one of the destinations of Nicaraguan migrants. The High Commissioner of the United National for Human Rights, Volker Türk, reported this past December 15th that up to October of last year the Costa Rican authorities received more than 70,000 new requests for refuge from Nicaraguans, which confirms the impact of the governmental repression on families.
Parents, youth, professionals, even children, left the country without the certainty of knowing when they will return.