[As the Sandinista Revolution is finally able to make its platform a reality, Nicaragua has made significant achievements in healthcare, education, housing, renewable energy and food sovereignty, to name a few. One achievement that is starting to get more attention is the gain in equality for women. The Global Gender Gap Report for 2022 ranked Nicaragua 7th in the world for gender parity.

Margaret Flowers of Popular Resistance recently interviewed Jill Clark-Gollub, who recently returned from a delegation to Nicaragua that focused on conditions for women. She describes the country as “run by women” who connect their feminism to the struggles against capitalism, colonialism and patriarchy. Clark-Gollub also dispels misinformation about Nicaragua being promoted in the US corporate media and explains how the US is working to undermine the gains of the Sandinistas through hybrid warfare.

Below is transcript of the interview which took place on January 30, 2023.]

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Margaret Flowers: My guest is Jill Clark-Gollub. Jill is a long-time translator, an activist with Friends of Latin America, Assistant editor at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a supporter of the friends of the ATC (the rural workers organization in Nicaragua), and she’s also part of the Women’s Internationalist Front for Justice and Peace, a new organization. Thank you so much for taking time to join me today, Jill.

Jill Clark-Gollub: Thank you so much for having me, Margaret. It’s a pleasure to be here.

MF: Great. So, I’m excited to talk with you because you just returned recently from a delegation to Nicaragua. And this was 22 people from the United States and Canada hosted by the Jubilee House Community-Casa Benjamin Linder and the Alliance for Global Justice. And you were there to explore the conditions for women in Nicaragua. Can you talk a little bit about that delegation and what you did while you were there?

JCG: Sure. So the delegates were from all over the United States, and from college age up to 80 years old. Also, two school-age children accompanied their mother on the trip and had some of their own programming. But in addition to the four college undergrads, our group included a pediatric surgeon, a university professor, a Climate Change and Health Equity program manager, a licensed clinical social worker, Green Party and Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom members, activists from the Black Alliance for Peace and other social movements, and a handful of retired professionals. So, this was a very well-informed and overall, a really solid group of women and a few men.

MF: Great. And while you were in Nicaragua, what types of places did you visit? Who did you speak with?

JCG: The delegation was designed to see how Nicaragua came to be rated so highly by various international agencies in terms of gender equality. The World Economic Forum, which is not any pro-socialist outfit, ranks Nicaragua first in the Americas and 7th worldwide in gender parity. We met with health professionals and toured a hospital and clinic. We met with people working on ending violence against women, including from the women’s police stations. We met with women in Parliament; with women and men trade union members, and with women peasants, and learned about their own brand of peasant feminism.

So, what we found reinforced the impression that I have been forming on study delegations to Nicaragua over the last four years: that this is a country run by women. The country has what they call a 50-50 law. This means that every party that runs candidates for an elected office has to have half of them be women. So in an election for the mayor and vice mayor, one of those top two positions must be a woman; and with candidates for city council a given party has to run as many women as men. And the same for the national legislature. Forty percent of police officers are women. And a large majority of health workers are women, which is probably also true in the United States. But from doctors and nurses down to cleaning and support staff, all these health workers are in in a union and they benefit–not because of the union—but by being Nicaraguan citizens, they benefit from free education from primary school through graduate school. The health workers in the union told us that they take advantage of opportunities to keep getting further certifications and further degrees because that helps them rise in the ranks for their careers.

We learned that (over) 50 percent of the national budget is spent on social policies like health, education, poverty reduction, and infrastructure, like roads. We toured one of the 24 new hospitals that have been built since the Sandinistas came back into office in 2007. And this was a beautiful state-of-the-art hospital and was very impressive. And it’s run by a 39-year-old woman who is the director of the hospital. This young doctor said that people often ask her, “You’re the director of the hospital?” But yeah, she is and she’s quite competent! And that beautiful hospital is part of a network of modern hospitals that now exists in Nicaragua and are available free of charge to everyone in Nicaragua, even foreigners, who might have a medical issue arise while they’re visiting. We learned that maternal mortality has fallen by two-thirds since the Sandinistas came back into office in 2007, and child mortality and malnutrition have fallen at similar rates. And part of this is not only the robust health system but creative approaches such as the maternity wait homes program. We visited one of these maternity wait homes. This is where women in urban areas who are experiencing a high-risk pregnancy, and women in remote areas that don’t have easy access to a hospital, can come after I think, 36, or 37 weeks of gestation. And they stay there for two or three weeks until their baby is born, where they get rest and good nutrition and good follow-up care. And they’re right there by a hospital where they can give birth. We saw a beautiful facility that was in the community of Ciudad Sandino.

So there are many interesting things that we got to see and learn about. We learned more about the community-based health model, where health workers are in charge of 3,500 to 5,000 people in a neighborhood. And they know who’s pregnant, who’s elderly, who has diabetes and other non-communicable diseases, who has a disability and might need a wheelchair and extra support. And that’s why they did such a great job of handling COVID-19. And we also met with people in another unique program that they have: what they call women’s police stations. These include police officers trained to deal with victims of trauma, violence against women and children, and sexual abuse, in a way that doesn’t re-traumatize or re-victimize people. And we also talked to police officers and someone said, “We notice that when we see police officers, they don’t seem to be carrying guns.” And we were told yes, they do not generally carry guns unless they’re guarding a physical facility or on an operation. There are, you know, there are raids against drug traffickers because of Nicaragua’s location, but for regular policing on the street—traffic cops, and what you might see around your neighborhood—these police officers do not (carry guns), there is not even one gun for every police officer. That really contrasts with what we see in the United States where we have our police departments getting more and more militarized with the abundance of weapons that there are in this country. And so, even while they have some of the lowest spending on policing and defense per capita in the region, they have the lowest crime rate in Central America. So, this community-based policing and community-based health care has been really effective.

And I’d just like to mention that also when we talk about victims of crime and violence, there’s very much an atmosphere of healing and addressing the whole person, the whole family. There is not so much an emphasis on punishment. And that’s why there’s been very much an effort—and this is part of the Sandinista tradition in Nicaragua—of reconciliation among all parties. And in fact, the national government that has been in office since 2007 calls itself the Government of National Reconciliation and Unity.

So, we also found out there is a union of self-employed workers, which is very interesting, and we met with them. These are primarily street vendors who organized themselves in a union and fought for the right to not be kicked out of certain public spaces and in front of buildings and so forth. They came to meet with us and were very eager to talk about how when there’s going to be construction on a street corner where one of them works, they get help to move to another street corner so that they can still earn a living during that time. And then, of course, these people benefit from health and education benefits and their children getting better jobs. And we saw a lot of that. I don’t know if you have any questions now.

MF: Yeah, I mean, it’s amazing. And there was a recent Gallup poll that found that out of 122 countries, Nicaragua was the number one country where the most people reported feeling at peace. 73 percent of the population said they always feel at peace in Nicaragua. It’s interesting that nine out of the top 14 countries in the world were Latin American countries and compared to Nicaragua, only 28 percent of people in the United States said that they feel at peace. But it wasn’t always that way. In Nicaragua there’s been in the last few decades a lot of turmoil: the dictatorship of the Somozas, the Revolution, and then the U.S. Contra war against the Sandinistas, and then the neoliberal period. And then finally, in 2006, Daniel Ortega is elected. And so, it’s really been, since then, as you said that, these programs have been put in place. Can you talk a little bit about the difference between the approach in Nicaragua and that in the United States? I mean fundamentally in Nicaragua it’s more based on human rights and talk a little bit about that, right?

JCG: Exactly. There is the UN declaration—the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is incorporated into Nicaraguan law. And so, the first thing that President Ortega did when he came back into office in 2007 was to declare that education was free and for all, because during the neoliberal years, they had something going on which we kind of see creeping into our educational system in the US as it gets more and more privatized. They said that, oh, to give you more educational freedom, you’re going to get to pay for your teacher and, you know, you can bring your own desk to school, and we don’t need to have those school lunch programs. And you can pay all these school fees and you have to pay a fee to take the end of the year exams. And so there were a lot of kids that dropped out of school, and this was a really low time for Nicaragua. You talked about all those other periods of violence, but this was a time of tremendous institutionalized violence—people dying of hunger, and people dying on the doorsteps of hospitals because they couldn’t pay to have services, or they couldn’t pay for a taxi to go to the hospital that performed the service that they needed.

And so, starting in 2007, Nicaragua had 11 years of tremendous growth. And this is when all of these programs really took a foothold. Many of them got stymied in the 1980s because of the Contra war and also because Somoza had left the coffers completely empty. The three neoliberal presidents from 1990 to the beginning of 2007 also did their fair share of looting of the government coffers. But Nicaragua, the Sandinista government, had a very effective strategy which they called tripartite government—working with the business owners, with the trade unions, and the government. And they negotiated minimum wage raises every year and all kinds of improvements for workers, while at the same time building up health and education services, and infrastructure, and things like roads. Then, I know you probably mentioned this before in Popular Resistance at least, but there was a violent coup attempt in 2018 in Nicaragua. That was a very ugly situation like the guarimbas in Venezuela, and it lasted for three months. To put it in the U.S. context, it was like what happened on January 6th, but with people getting targeted in their neighborhoods and over the course of three months. But fortunately, that is now past and the Nicaraguans are very enthusiastic about their government. They have been making progress despite increasing U.S. sanctions since then, and despite a pandemic and two category 4 and 5 hurricanes two years ago. But the country is making progress and people are just getting more education, more healthcare, seeing more development for their country. And the road network is now the best in in all of Central America. And I think maybe the second or third best in Latin America. And whereas previously, Nicaragua had the worst roads in the region, this is really important for helping people in different communities to have access to school, to higher education, to hospitals, to just get to a health clinic when somebody has an accident, and to let farmers– 40% of Nicaragua’s population still is rural and many are engaged in small scale agriculture, so roads allow farmers to get their products to market as well. And another wonderful benefit of the roads has been connecting Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast, which had a different development history from Nicaragua’s Pacific Coast. This is where a majority of Nicaragua’s Indigenous and Afro-descendant population lives, and so they are now more connected with the rest of the country. I’ve said a lot.

MF: So much that we could talk about! You know, the Caribbean coast is a really interesting place, because—I traveled there in 2021 when I was on a delegation—because there’s been so much work done to make partnerships with Indigenous communities and the university system trying to bring in Indigenous knowledge to make that more widely available to people, as well as work on land reform. I was in—it’s called Bilwi now, but it was Puerto Cabezas I think before—and that land has been returned to the Indigenous people who owned it and they actually receive taxes from this capital city. I think of the possibilities here in the United States, with our similar history against the Indigenous population and the possibilities of what we could be doing.

JCG: Yes, Nicaragua has many things in common with a lot of socialist, or socialist, leaning revolutions and around the world. But it has some very unique features, and one of them is that it’s one of the countries that has redistributed the most land. And I think now 600,000 land titles have been officially issued to people. This is both homes in urban areas and small farming plots in rural areas. One-third or over one-third of the national territory has been legally deeded to Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities in the Caribbean coast autonomous regions. So they own the land and farm it or manage forests communally. That’s a very unique and beautiful experience. Just a little more information for your listeners… The delegation that we just completed looking at women was preceded by an online course to learn about women in Nicaragua. It was done in English and Spanish with simultaneous interpretation. In it you can hear from a lot of women talking about the process. The last episode is about the Caribbean coast, but we have an episode on overall rights of women. We have one on small businesses, or the community and popular economy, and women who have benefited from programs to specifically target women heads of household to improve the family’s economy and diet. They get a few farm animals, and farming implements and seeds, and technical services to help them with their small farms. And this has not only improved their family economy and the diet for their children and reduced malnutrition, it’s also part of why Nicaragua is almost completely food sovereign. There’s a national policy to support native seeds and agroecology. And you mentioned the Nicaraguan rural workers association. That’s been an important part of the worldwide movement for peasant rights called La Via Campesina.

MF: Which actually came out of Nicaragua and the mid-1990s right? Yes, yeah. I remember meeting— I stayed with a family kind of in the mountains, pretty far away from any kind of major city. You know, it took us hours of driving on these dirt roads to get up to this village. And one of the daughters of the family that we stayed with was a single mother. She had received business training and she operated a store right there that provided goods to the people in that community. But this also gave her economic autonomy and security. And for her son, the school was right there. He could walk to school. It was just a great setup for her to be able to raise her son and have some Independence and self-sufficiency.

JCG: I’ve also heard about other people meeting with families, rural families staying like you did, and learning that the son’s becoming a doctor, the daughter’s becoming a lawyer, another child or nephew is becoming some other kind of professional, and they’re worried about who’s going to stay on the farm. And that’s actually something that Nicaragua has been pretty successful at. Forty percent of the population still lives in rural areas, which is higher than most of Latin America. Also, part of the mission of La Via Campesina is to make life more dignified in the countryside so that its pleasant for people to stay there and it encourages people to stay there, which is how the country can grow its own food.

So I mentioned that online course that talks about women. There’s a session on Women Experiencing Hybrid Warfare, which I highly recommend, which is some young women telling about what they’ve experienced and what they have to be aware of so that another coup attempt can’t take any foothold against the people of Nicaragua. And there’s a session on peasant and popular feminism. And so this group wants to continue to offer these online courses. And some of the topics that we’ve talked about are the Caribbean coast autonomy, which is very unique and something that I think would be interesting to people who look at Indigenous and Afro-descendant rights. And also food sovereignty is another very interesting topic.

But I want to get back to something that we learned from the Nicaraguan women on this trip and also through the online course in describing their version of feminism. It really helped me have greater clarity. This particularly came out when we visited with a women’s Cooperative of the ATC, near El Crucero, not too far from Managua. And it was beautiful to see those women again and how they continue to make progress. And we met with women who are in several communities, small communities in the northern mountainous region of Nicaragua, going north from the city of Estelí. This is called the Among Women Foundation—la Fundación Entre Mujeres—or the FEM as its known. And they have come from a place where they were poor peasant women who didn’t know how to read and write, who were suffering terribly in the 1990s under a woman president whom the US had helped usher into power, and they couldn’t feed their kids and they were suffering violence in their own homes. And so they organized and formed this organization. And over the years, they’ve advocated strongly for women’s education and to raise awareness about femicide and for sexual and reproductive rights. And they were allied with some of the feminist groups in Managua, who tend to be the kind of people that get a lot of press in the United States and tell us things like there are no rights for women in Nicaragua, because abortion is not legal. And they (the FEM) were distancing from them because they didn’t see them as really supporting what peasant women need. And they (the FEM) have a big campaign to save their seeds, which is so important for food, sovereignty. And with the 2018 coup attempt, they totally broke with those women because they saw that they were allied with the Catholic church and that they were helping bring violence to their country. And now they were telling us that they have clarified their understanding of their role in their communities. They still feel that they’re very local, but they say they are fighting a troika of oppression, which is: capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy. And when you think about it, that really covers a lot and we can see how capitalism hurts women when, for example, it privatizes health and people can’t afford to get health services and women are dying in childbirth and from other things that they shouldn’t be dying from, from cancers that go untreated and so forth. And we can see the colonialism. Nicaragua was a colony of Spain for 300 years and for the last 200 years, since the Monroe Doctrine, whose anniversary is this year, the United States is trying to have Nicaragua be its neo-colony. And over the last forty-three or so years, Nicaragua has been resisting that, and more and more effectively every day. And the Nicaraguan women are aware that the coup attempt of 2018 was an attempt to bring that neo-colonial status back, to bring Nicaragua back under U.S. control; and that the sanctions and the attacks on Nicaragua are all aimed at discrediting and trying to isolate Nicaragua, so that it can be more vulnerable to control by capitalist interests and by the United States government. And then of course, patriarchy puts women in a disadvantaged position and it’s all facilitated by capitalism and colonialism. So I really think that we have a lot to learn from the women of Nicaragua, and really the Nicaraguan people. And the women also told us, that they had, for example, a mobile clinic program to help women in rural areas receive medical services more easily. And they said, “we’ve just discontinued that because the government is doing that now. And we realized that also part of our fight is to support this government, because this government is doing what we peasant women in Nicaragua need it to do, right?”

MF: Yeah. And that attack, that hybrid warfare by the United States. I mean, it continues, as you said, and the media, the corporate media in the United States is part of that. Just prior to our interview, I thought, well, I’m going to look up and see, you know, what’s in the news recently about Nicaragua. And in the corporate media, it’s all about the dictatorship and it’s not safe to travel there. And religious—they’re claiming religious persecution. And it’s just amazing to me because that flies completely in the face of the facts.

JCG: Yeah, I was surprised that we had a meeting that actually clarified this issue with the church. So just to tell your listeners really briefly, another unique thing about the Nicaraguan Revolution is that when it came about in the 1970s, liberation theology was really flourishing in Latin America. And there were many believers of Liberation Theology—both priests and nuns and lay people—who were very much driven by that place of faith that we need to help people have a better life here on Earth and help liberate people. They were involved in the revolution and there were priests in government, and there were many activist religious people. But the Catholic Church hierarchy has always been against that. And the Catholic Church hierarchy has remained constant. The Catholic Church hierarchy supported the (2018) coup efforts, and there were even videos and recordings of priests that were present for scenes of torture. And even directing torture, and telling people how to hide this. On a previous visit I met some people who talked about this. They were practicing Catholics who were very disturbed to see their Parish priest directing people to loot and burn a government services building. And so this has led some Catholics to not formally practice their faith. Although they very much believe in their Christian beliefs and that they need to work to help bring about a more just society.

So from back in the 1960s—starting in the 1960s—there was something called Christian Base Communities in Nicaragua and other countries, and a few of these Christian Base Communities still survive. We went to Sunday services with one of these communities in a poor neighborhood of Managua, and it was really a beautiful experience. People who are not necessarily very religious were very moved because it’s such a horizontal experience. There is no priest. This is led by the members of the community. And it was three women up front, before they even knew that this was a group looking at women’s issues. After their service, we had this dialogue. They had suffered some threats of violence during 2018 because people knew that they were Sandinistas. They also helped collect signatures on a petition to recall one of the bishops who was really one of the ringleaders of the violence. They petitioned Pope Francis, and they got over half a million adult Catholics in Nicaragua to sign—a small country where less than half the people are Catholic. That’s a really large percentage of the population. And Pope Francis did recall him to Rome and now he left Rome and is in Miami and he claims that he had to flee for his life from the “dictator” Daniel Ortega, okay? But the real story is different.

But also, the people in this community were telling us about their issues with the hierarchy and how the hierarchy represents the old order. They’re allied with money and they’re allied with the patriarchal system. So once again, if you want to fight capitalism, neocolonialism, and patriarchy for women’s emancipation, the Catholic Church hierarchy is not on your side. And they are actively part– they are being manipulated, I believe, by the US government to give bad press to Nicaragua. Last August one of these bishops who was inciting violence and who was using his radio stations to collect money to pay people for violence, was placed under house arrest and now his trial is starting. So you’re going to be hearing more about that.

MF: Alright. And this is the context that people the United States don’t hear at all because the US has a long history of hybrid warfare against Nicaragua. It continues to this day and under, you know, I think it was President Trump, under his administration the NICA Act was passed. And then under was it under Biden that the RENACER Act passed?

JCG: Yes. Biden signed the RENACER Act just a few days before Nicaraguans went to the polls for the presidential election in November of 2021.

MF: Yep. And that was all based on a lie of claiming that, you know, there was corruption and dictatorship in Nicaragua. And then I guess recently more sanctions were imposed by the Biden Administration.

JCG: Yes. They keep adding sanctions and they say that they’re targeted sanctions, but they target people like the Minister of Health. That sanction affects everyone in the country who uses health services because when the Minister of Health is sanctioned, she couldn’t be involved in any international procurement of any supplies needed for the healthcare system. So they, in fact had to replace her and they keep doing this with different people. And they also recently sanctioned Nicaragua’s gold exports, which was the largest earner of export funds for Nicaragua. So that all of this helps… You know, when 57% of the budget goes to social programs, you’re cutting funds for things like that. This is going to affect social programs, but the Nicaraguans so far have been very resilient and producing over 90% of the food that your population eats is a big help. But, you know, we see where this is going. We see what’s happened to countries like Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba and we don’t want that to happen to Nicaragua. So I definitely hope that your listeners, if they are not yet plugged into solidarity groups, that they will be. I don’t know that writing Congress is the most effective thing, but you can help spread the word and awareness. And I know that you, Margaret, are very involved in the Sanctions Kill campaign, and I would encourage all of your listeners to be involved as well. Because sanctions do kill. They are not harmless. They are form of warfare.

MF: And actually, the International People’s Tribunal on U.S. Imperialism is launching on January 28th and their main focus is going to be on sanctions. The US has illegal sanctions and economic blockades against so many countries. So there’s a lot that we can be doing here. And there’s so many different delegations going to Nicaragua, I think people should not listen to these travel advisories. I mean it’s very safe to be in Nicaragua would you agree?

JCG: Absolutely. I mean you can walk around the streets in the evening and you can go jogging before the sun comes up, and I haven’t heard of anybody having any problem.

MF: Yeah, and I did both of those, but when I was down there! And yeah, the people are just wonderful. It’s a beautiful country, the volcanoes and the lakes. And I mean, there’s just so much natural beauty there as well. And then we didn’t mention the energy, you know, Nicaragua, go ahead.

JCG: Yeah, Nicaragua’s like 77% renewable energy that’s the making up its grid these days. They’re just barely beginning to tap into wind and solar. They also have geothermal, hydro, and biomass. Geothermal is very interesting, and I know I was just telling you that there’s a delegation that’s going to be looking at that coming up in June. That’s a family-based delegation I would say.

MF: Yes. And that’s so the kids can look at volcanoes and all kinds of cool stuff like that. And then just, if you would quickly, do you mind just saying, a few words about the Women’s Internationalist Front for Justice and Peace. This is so interesting.

JCG: Sure. This is a group of Latina women, mostly in the US that formed in April, to raise the profile of Francia Márquez, who was the candidate for vice president and now is vice president of Colombia. Because there have been so many killings of social movement leaders in Colombia and killing of leftist candidates over Colombia’s history, we wanted to raise her profile to make it harder to assassinate her. And from there, we’ve supported the campaign of Lula in Brazil, and supporting very much what we call the Troika of Resistance: Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua—the countries that are really on the front lines doing what so many of our countries would like to be doing and facing the wrath of the United States for doing it. But also, the new democracies like Honduras, which is now facing similar attacks. And the US ambassador to Nicaragua during the coup attempt of 2018 is now the U.S. ambassador to Honduras. She’s doing the same kind of things, and she speaks about Honduran politics openly and she criticizes Honduras for cracking down on NGOs, which Nicaraguan and many countries have had to do, to stop money laundering and to stop a channel of hybrid warfare money coming in. And they’ve even gone so far as to accuse Honduras, Xiomara Castro, of not being pro women because she hasn’t legalized abortion yet. You know, this is when she had been in office for less than a year.

And there is something that I did want to mention about Nicaragua. Did I say that abortion is not legal in Nicaragua? And some people on the left take that as the one yardstick by which to measure whether or not a country is pro women or has respect for women’s rights. That law was passed before the Sandinistas came back into power and before they had a majority in the legislature, and it was enjoying over 80% support amongst the population. The Nicaraguan population is very Christian and is generally not in favor of abortion. However, there is family planning free of charge and available at all clinics. At this one clinic in Ciudad Sandino we heard about the program to give implants to young women. And also, there are still about 30 percent of women having children at a young age, but the average age to have the first child is now almost 27 years old, that’s great progress. And also, the average number of children is less than 3, and I have talked to peasant women on previous visits in Nicaragua and heard that women in their communities—whereas before their mothers and grandmothers had 10 or 14 kids—women now are having two or maybe three kids, and then getting sterilized before they leave the hospital. And we’ve heard this repeatedly from other groups of women, and from health professionals that women, once they’ve had the number of babies that they want to have, they get to have a free tubal ligation before they leave the hospital. This is encouraged and this is free of charge. And you know, birth control is also widely available.

MF: So you know, yeah, this is part of when we try to establish our norms upon other countries and judge them in that way.

JCG: But there’s something else, Margaret. One other thing that reminded me of the Cubans’ approach with the Cuban Family Code, which has been celebrated for how progressive it is, and it really was a wonderful process of consultations all throughout the country. Initially people were not in favor of same-sex marriage. So when we were on the delegation, someone asked at the Ministry of Women if same-sex marriage was recognized, and the minister said, “We have no problem with that. The FSLN as a party has no problem with that. But we know that we can’t just pass a law. We need our society to get there, right?” And I think that this could also be applied to abortion. So these are things that society is working on. And also with the police, somebody asked about trans women and they said, you know, the police protect the rights of trans women; the police have no problem protecting trans women. And I actually was pleased to see for the first time on this last visit to Nicaragua, I noticed trans women openly in the street. So I think you know, there is more acceptance of that and also I know amongst the women of the FEM that they definitely work on gender diversity rights and changing the culture, and it’s really beautiful to see what they’ve been accomplishing. And I think this is true of the ATC as well.

MF: Right. And I think it’s kind of like a natural evolution of once you’re able to create a political system in which people’s rights are supported, their basic needs are being met, then you have that structure in place and that opportunity to start having some of these broader discussions about rights and respecting people’s rights and autonomy. So you know, it’s U.S. interference through economic warfare through the, as you said, you know, influence through the NGOs and trying to impact elections that inhibits the ability of the society to make this progress. So we need to be aware that it’s you know, for judging Nicaragua, we need to be focused on what the United States has been doing to the country which is actually inhibiting the ability of people, right, to some extent, to organize on issues. But they are doing it anyways.

JCG: Yeah, and they are making progress and I see this. My mother’s Nicaraguan, so I’ve known about Nicaragua for a long time and I was active in the ‘80s, and then became active and really looking at Nicaragua more for the last four to five years. And I see progress every time that I go on these same social issues.

MF: Well, there’s so much for us for us to learn in the United States from Nicaragua and so many different facets. So I really appreciate the work that you do both going on these delegations and reporting about them. But also you’ve done a lot of support for different types of educational programs and webinars here in the United States. And it’s so critical for us to have these opportunities to learn about Nicaragua. Thank you for taking time to speak.

(Margaret Flowers is the director of Popular Resistance, which organises campaigns on a broad range of issues in the US. Courtesy: Kawsachun News, a news site based in Bolivia and provides news reporting and analysis on Latin America.)