A Lesson from Nicaragua's Quiet Revolution

Asahi Evening News - OPINION - Sunday, December 24, 2000

A Lesson from
Nicaragua's Quiet Revolution

by Mieko Takenobu
Special to Asahi Evening News

Wooden shanties huddle in the shadows of towering high-rises in the Nicaraguan capital of Managua. Youngsters roam the streets peddling newspapers and chewing gum.

Nicaraguans elected a pro-U.S. regime 10 years ago to effectively put an end to a civil war between the leftist revolutionary government of the Sandinista National liberation Front that had ousted President Anastasio Somoza Debayle, and the insurgent "contra" forces backed by the U.S. government. But the restoration of peace has yet to bring prosperity to the land, or at least that is the undeniable impression one gets from observing the local situation.

Attached to an unostentatious wooden structure that houses Managua's police department is a wing marked "Women and Childhood Commisariat" Inside, Norma Pilarte, a 31-year-old mother of three, was talking to a uniformed policewoman.

"My husbands beats me and verbally abuses me almost every day," Pilarte complained. "I came here because a neighbor told me victims of domestic violence such as myself can get help here."

In an adjoining room, another police. i woman was hunched over an old typewriter, typing out a request to a court to subpoena Pilarte's husband. Abusive husbands are questioned by police, and indicted when circumstances warrant it.

Police for women and children

The Women and Childhood Commisariat is popularly known as the police for women and children." Established in 1993 to help victims of domestic violence and child abuse, it currently has 18 offices around the nation. Chief Francisco Diaz, 39, sports a black moustache I that accentuates his macho appearance. But he is anything but a male chauvinist "We take women's rights very seriously," he said. It is the responsibility of law enforcement officers to protect the d human rights of citizens, and that obviously includes women's rights".

Diaz was a rebel with the revolutionary forces that led to the installation of 9 the Sandinista regime. During the civil c war, he went to Cuba for miitary a training. "We drove out Somoza to il protect human rights. It is only n:tural that we are sensitive to women's rights today." Diaz conceded, however, that the Sandinistas were not always right "We made some mistakes," he said.

The Nicaraguan police academy offers its instructors a six-month course on sexual equality. Meant mainly for the edification of men, the program focuses on faCts and figures to illustrate the structure of poverty that results from discrimination against women and popular ignorance about family planning. The program was started in 1997 through the collaborative efforts of an NGO's women's rights groups and Chief Inspector

Eva Sacasa, 47, the nation's No.2 police administrator.

"When we started this program, policewomen were still being treated like secretaries by some of their male colleagues," she recalled in mock horror. A former civil servant, Sacasa fought in the revolution that overthrew the Somoza dictatorship, and became one of the founding members of a new national police force under the Sandinista regime.

The civil war wrought havoc on the Nicaraguan economy but matters were further aggravated by natural disasters that also happened. Seventy-five percent of the people of Nicaragua today live below the internationally defined poverty line. Nicaragua's overseas debts have snowballed, and in September 1999, the International Monetary Fund designated I Nicaragua as a heavily indebted; impoverished nation. Amid these economic hardships, government officials and experts such as Sacasa have worked closely with NGOs to improve the public's lot through grass-roots human rights activities that echo their ideals from the revolution years.

A typical example of such ail government-NGO collaboration is a family planning project funded partially bye the United Nations Population Fund.

Nicaragua's birthrate is 4.4 children per woman, which is considerably higher than the global average of 2.7. limited to rural districts, the average birthrate shoots up to 7 children per woman- hardly a "reasonable" number to raise in g dire poverty. But in this predominantly n Catholic nation, abortion is not a legitimate option, not to mention the fact that n Latin males have been conditioned to gauge their virility by the number of o children they "give" their wives. In such a society, population control is impossible without changing men's thinking.

The mountain village of Matasano lies 130 kilometers northeast of Managuahad three flat tires while baveling rough mountain roads. When I finally got there, nearly 100 men and women were gathered at the village community center for a semi-annual meeting, organized by an NGO for the promotion of contraception and the prevention of sexually communicated diseases.

Most family planning projects tend to revolve around women, but in the case of this NGO, men make up about 40 percent of the membership.

Gerson Antonio, a 28-year-old fanner, is manied to a midwife. He joined the NGO after attending lectures on family planning and domestic violence at his wife's urging.

Only man in the audience

"At first, I felt out of place because I was about the only man in the audience," Antonio recalled. "But gradually, I began to appreciate the importance of honoring women's rights and preventing unwanted pregnancies. I want to learn more about all these issues so I can become a good regional leader."

The NGO's strategy is to involve as many men as possible in its activities by word of mouth, and if necessary, even by invoking the authority of the government. One prominent village official was "instructed" by the Health Ministry to attend a series of lectures, which resulted in the NGO's successful recruitment of this official.

In male-dominated societies around the world, teenage girls often end up having sex with their boyfriends out of fear of being dumped if they refuse. Many end up pregnant and are forced to drop out of school, joining the ranks of impoverished teenage mothers.

To prevent this, NGO-sponsored sex education classes for minors are held at t public facilities such as hospitals and libraries. Girls as well as boys attend these classes after school to learn about safe sex and the equality of the sexes.

In the free bade zone clustered with Taiwanese and South Korean factories, a group of doctors and union members negotiated with the management for six p months to let female workers take a few minutes during their lunch break to learn about contraception and how to cope with domestic violence. Because unwanted pregnancy translates into the loss of their jobs-their source of income-most of these women are more than eager to come to these lunchtime meetings.

Alba Alvarado, 45, became a doctor several years before the revolution. She has since become a leader of nationwide family planning NGOs by working close collaboration with members of regional communities.

"If doctors get out of their ivory tower-universities and hospitals-to work with people in the real world, they will see at once that men's awareness of women's rights is indispensable to family planning," A!varado noted. Coming into contact with ordinary people during the revolution has changed the thinking of many medical experts."

She pointed out that even Catholic priests have come to accept family planning, if only tacitly, after becoming aware of the plight of women stuck with unwanted pregnancies.

A 1987 Health Ministry survey found only 26 percent of sexually active women are practising birth control. But an NGO survey on family health in 1993 revealed that 97 percent of women aged 15 to 49 are aware of birth control, and 49 percent practised it

The Sandinistas currently hold just over 30 percent of Parliament seats. Nicaragua's revolutionary political reform may have failed, but a "quiet" sexual and social "revolution" seems to be happening.

In Japan, which unquestionably is more affluent than Nicaragua, the abortion rate hit 22 percent in 1998-roughly one abortion for every five pregnancies. A 1995 Health and Welfare Ministry survey on birth control found that only 27 percent of respondents "freely discussed birth control with their sex partners, while 68 percent "rarely" or "never" discussed it

There are magazines galore in Japan that adolescents can easily obtain to satisfy their sexual curiosity, but whatever sex education they receive is mostly of an abstract nature, which does not really help. It was only in March this year that an organization called U-COM was founded by young people themselves to help adolescents acquire a proper knowledge of sex.

Nicaragua is a poor nation, but rich Japan has much to learn from the Nicaraguan attempt to compensate for the lack of economic resources with social solidarity and provide sex education that truly benefits the public.