Primeras impresións

(The Cathedral in center of Granada)

It is impossible to separate history and economics, especially in Central America. The marriage of politics, economics and history is especially apparent in Granada, a city of sharply pronounced contradictions. In the short time I have been here, what has stood out most is the contrasts. Granada is the oldest colonial city in the Americas, and although the Spaniards may have officially left in 1821, the colonists are still here. They are now tourists.
We arrived three days ago and I have already lost track of time - I could have been here a week, or a month. Everything feels malleable - the time, the texture of my skin, language. Nicaraguans often drop the final S on the end of a word - Adiós becomes adió, gracias becomes gracias, and so forth. Although Gabriel Garcia Marquez is Colombian, one comes to understand how Latin America is the birthplace of magical realism. Anything seems possible in this insufferable heat and humidity and as I sit in an internet cafe typing this, salsa music plays, trucks barrel past and children shout in the streets, playing their games. I hope they are playing games.
In my short life, I have been blessed enough to travel to five continents and twelve countries. What gives me that right? I have the money and I have the resources, but this time is different. I have cried every day, sometimes several times a day, and I often find myself holding back tears as I walk through the central square.
Nicaragua is similar to Costa Rica, Jamaica, Brazil and Ghana - the other tropical countries I have been that are greatly impacted by decisions made by foreign countries. I am not comparing Nicaragua to the other countries that I named because the culture is similar - I have witnessed for myself how previous and modern foreign policy shapes and scars the landscape and the people. In Costa Rica, the land had literally been ripped apart. There were huge gouges in the hills where the topsoil formed ribbons that snaked into the ocean. I was very young when I was there, but I remember that. I remember the children who were my age, who I gave toys to... And where are they now? Have their lives changed? Has the land I traveled through started to heal? My boyfriend traveled to Costa Rica in January and his pictures looked like I remember - destruction for profit. For whose profit? For how long?
Our first day in Nicaragua we traveled to Laguna de Apoyo, the volcanic lake under the protection of the Nicaraguan government. We hiked down a steep incline to plant trees in the soil around the lake. Five years ago you could see the lake from the road, and now the trees are high enough for monkeys to climb and play and have families of their own. That makes my heart happy.


(Laguna de Apoyo)
What breaks my heart the most is the future of the children of Nicaragua. I was walking through the market and a man with a backpack walked past shouting ¨superglue! superglue!¨ Drug addiction and alcoholism is a problem for the street children of Granada, and inexpensive glue is often the drug of choice. When I walk to the convent in the morning for my classes, I saw a boy passed out on a stoop with a tube of glue shoved in his face. Was he dulling the pain? It was 7:30am and he couldn´t have been more than 10 years old. Today when I was walking through the market, I got a sharp whiff of glue that lasted for more than a second. It made me sick to my stomach for more than a moment and I felt dizzy. It wasn´t the smell of the glue that made me sick - I knew what it was, and what it was for, and I started crying. What else could I do?
The tourist brochures leave out the lost boys, the houses without windows, toilets and kitchens for a reason. Without attractions, foreigners would not come and ¨improve¨ the economy with their business and superior currencies. Is tourism bad? I don´t know. Yo soy turismo (I am a tourist) - I travel and I try to support the local economy in what I feel is an appropriate and respectful manner. I see tourists, who come in various flavors but have the shared commonality of money. They are often dressed well (and inappropriately), with expensive digital cameras to record their ¨awesome vaction¨ and huge backpacks, but when the children come to beg, they shoo them away. I don´t think it´s cool or OK to go on vacation and get drunk, rowdy and disrespectful in public, even if you paid a lot of money and it´s your free time, even if it puts money into the local economy. Because I am old enough now, the bipolarity of luxury and crushing, wrenching poverty here is painfully obvious to me. Does anyone else notice the street children and the old, dirty clothing on the vendors when they take their pictures in the central square like they are tourist attractions, similar to the cathedrals and colonial mansions?



When people tell me that I should help the children in the United States, that there is poverty at home, I tell them that I know. I do know. I don´t think that they know how bad it is here, and here could be anywhere in the so-called ¨third world¨. Sometimes I feel so lost and I don´t know what I can do to help. I know that no matter what I do, no matter how much I do, it will never, ever be enough.

-Mercedes DeMasi