by Henrik Saxgren

- Does your mother have a job?
- Yes! She sells water at the market.
- Has she had other jobs?
- Yes! She sold lottery tickets.

The girl speaking is only 13 years old. A new question – What was the best experience in your life? – is met with resounding silence. A repetition changes nothing. The answer is still silence.
A wretched existence is given expression in that silence. Good memories are simply not part of the experience of Nicaragua’s poor, certainly not for children.

I first came to this country in 1984. Five years earlier, an armed revolution had brought a little bit of justice to the land, when the despotic dictator Somoza and his brutal national guard were run out by a poorly armed Sandinista guerrilla army with tremendous backing from the general population.
Humanists and socialists the world over flocked to Nicaragua to lend a hand and to soak up the euphoria that had seized the country. The Sandinista government had a program of which only the most hard-hearted would not approve: health and education for the poor. A program the poor in other Latin American countries could also have used, but it was Nicaragua’s sorely tested people that got the chance. I fell for the euphoric atmosphere. The country was very poor. The roads were so full of potholes they resembled a lunar landscape. Public transportation was almost non-existent. Water and electricity were strictly rationed, and there was very little food.
The only thing there was plenty of children. Clean, happy schoolchildren in their white shirts.
(How the women in these slum quarters managed to keep those shirts clean is still a mystery to me).

In 1984, the country was already at war. An army of counter-revolutionaries, trained and paid-for by the United States, made life difficult for the new government. With daily attacks from across the border in Honduras, they managed to keep the country in an almost permanent state of emergency. A great many workers who could have taken part in the rebuilding of the country were, instead, sent into the mountains as soldiers.

Of course, there was no foreign investment during this period – that speaks for itself. And as the government was forced to use more and more of the country’s already scarce resources for military defence, the people’s continued enthusiasm stood in glaring contrast to the country’s gloomy prospects. he country’s first democratic election in 1984 provided the Sandinistas with an overwhelming victory, but it would be an election two thousand kilometres to the north that would determine the country’s fate. A few days after the Sandinistas’ electoral triumph, President Ronald Reagan was re-elected to a four-year term in the White House.

From then on, things began to spiral downwards. The American trade embargo continued and support for the Contras increased. No measure went untried in President Reagan’s crusade against the Sandinista government. The absurdity reached its height, when he went on television to warn the American people that the Sandinista army could reach the southern border of the United States in less

than 48 hours. There was no limit to the crudeness; the hypocrisy was without equal and, in the end, a tragic. Nicaragua was a poor, insignificant country that could not hurt a fly, unless you feared that its social experiment might inspire other poor peoples in the region.
Of course, balance of power concerns played a role. The decade of the 1980s was an era of Cold War, and the American trade embargo threw the country into the arms of the Soviet Union. But, on the whole, the U.S. efforts to destabilise the country seemed completely out of proportion and made the U.S. primarily responsible for the country’s social collapse. For the country never got on its feet during the Sandinista regime.

When I returned to the country in 1987, the poverty was even more pronounced, and the country was in a desperate situation for the election in 1990. Hopelessly in debt and trapped in a blind alley. In 11 years, the Sandinista regime had managed to raise the general standard of health care considerably, and literacy and educational programs had provided the people with the best education in the region.

But the people could not take anymore; war and poverty seemed to go on without end.
Thousands were killed in the fighting in the mountains, and every family in the country had paid with a son or a daughter. And above all, there was no hope that continued struggle would be of any use. The last to concede defeat were the Sandinista commanders.
But it is to their credit that the democracy they had developed and educated the people to participate in was respected, when a disillusioned people voted them from power in 1990.
That the Sandinista leaders ended corruptly with the appropriation of large amounts of wealth for themselves does not acquit the United States. Nor that it later appeared that virtually all the social improvements were made on borrowed money. The Sandinistas left Nicaragua with a debt of 160 million dollars and an inflation rate of 33%. They had kept their promises about education and health, but a society that could pay for these things they had not managed to create.

I was myself disillusioned and angry, when I left for home.
What would the future now bring for these school children in their white shirts?
I never thought I would come to find out, for I could not imagine ever returning.
But I did.

In the fall of 1994, I was invited to Nicaragua along with a Danish delegation, which was to participated in the ceremonies marking the opening of a cultural pavilion in Managua, paid for by the Norwegian and Danish governments. As we were sitting in a bar on the first night, we were met by filthy children crawling between our legs and begging for food. It was quite a shock!
I had seen street urchins other places in the world, and, of course, they had made an impression, but this went straight to my heart. These children I had seen in their white shirts with school books under their arms. I had seen them happy and proud. And now this . . .
Work on this book began that night.

“Olivier!” – “Olivier!” The children came out of the darkness and threw their arms around the waist of the Belgian social worker, Olivier Sebrecht. “Papito” – “Papito” . . . It was night at the Mercado Oriental in Managua, and the shouts resounded every time a homeless boy or girl caught sight of the tall, thin, fair European.
Olivier was 35 years old and one of the many who had toured Latin America in search of experience and adventure. The trip had led him to Nicaragua, as the Sandinista government was singing its final refrains. However many other supporters of the revolution went home after the defeat, Olivier stayed and, together with an Italian woman, Zelinda Roca, he had taken on the job of alleviating the sufferings of homeless children.
One of the first things the new government did after taking power in 1990 was to close most of the institutions and orphanages, and many of these orphans had sought refuge at the Mercado Oriental.
It was February 1995, and Olivier was to provide me with one of the best and most intense experiences of my life. Night after night, we wandered the labyrinthine streets and alleys of the great marketplace in the heart of Managua. By day, populated by 20,000 – 30,000 people in a chaotic, dusty hell; by night, home to hookers, criminals, night watchmen, and homeless children. Every night, we were visited by Come-Gato, a big homeless boy, who had had his stomach slit in a knife fight the month before. His wound would not close, and Olivier was now his only chance for help.
With a patience I will never grasp, Olivier cleaned and bandaged his dreadful, infected wound, while other children came out of hiding and almost patiently stood in a line.
These children were hungry, afraid, cut-up, which they tried to deaden through the virtually constant inhalation of the solvents in epoxy glue.
It was apparent that open wounds had the highest priority, and when a little scamp, hardly 10 years old, realised that, I saw him very discreetly pick off the scab of an old wound to make the blood flow, convinced that this would move him up in line. For a caring touch was just as important for these children, as it is for children everywhere else in the world. And Olivier was the only person they knew, who cared for them unconditionally.

Night at the market was brutish and ominous, but Olivier walked on hallowed ground. He enjoyed an immunity, which protected me as well, and at no time did we encounter any physical violence.

And then, there were the girls.

10-13-17 year old girls, some with an infant in one arm and a glue pot in the other, lived a wretched life in the darkness at the market. A Dante’s hell with glue as the only means to dull the fear, the hunger and the pain. How was this possible?
I had a daughter myself, 15 years old in Denmark, and time and again, I was struck by the thought that she would not have survived a night in this place.
Olivier and Zelinda had divided the work between them. Zelinda took care of the boys and had opened an orphanage outside the city for them. Olivier concerned himself primarily with the girls and kept a home for girls near the market.

I quickly discovered that we did not wander about at random. Olivier was always on the lookout for something in particular, even though it never seemed that way. His patience was unique. But almost every night, we found what he was looking for: young girls who had run away from home and whom he wanted to persuade to return. I especially remember Maria Coco, perhaps because she was the first. A pretty girl the same age as my daughter, who would later repeat the same disappearing act many times. We found her late one night in a shack at the market, in a filthy bed with an older man.
What surprised me most was the matter-of-factness with which Don Cano, as the man was called, let us in and the way Olivier treated him and Maria Coco. There were no recriminations or indignation, and there was no haste. Gently and quietly, he persuaded Maria Coco to come with us, and Don Cano accepted it. Don Cano was the father of her child, but that would make no difference. Fathers in Nicaragua are disinclined to assume their responsibilities.

Take the twins, Maria and Carolina, as an example. At 13, they both became pregnant by the same man. At 14, they were mothers. I met them for the first time, at night at the market, when they were 15 with their toddlers in one arm and glue bags in the other and their little brother in tow. I hardly think they had any idea that you could expect something from a man.

And why should they? From the time they were very small, they had learned that they meant nothing, that they were put into this world to satisfy the whims of men. Even those who had not been abandoned by their mothers as illegitimate and had to live, as a result, with grandmothers, aunts or neighbours, absorbed as a part of their second nature what their role in society was: They were to make themselves available. From the time they were quite small, they were to help with the cooking, with watching the children and attending to the men in the family.
By contrast, boys are raised by their mothers, in the name of the Virgin Mary, in a manner heavily influenced by religion: They worship them! In such a highly religious family culture, it is almost impossible for boys not to get a warped view of the opposite sex. From childhood, they are worshipped by their mothers and waited upon by their sisters. It is not strange that they quickly come to take as a given that women will attend to life’s practical details. From there, they are only a pubic hair from taking sexual servicing as just another given. In a way, the women themselves lay the foundation for the macho society that is and remains the scourge of their existence.

Among the group of about 100 girls I followed from 1995 until 1999, virtually all of them have the same story: at an early age, they were sexually abused by their fathers, step-fathers, uncles, neighbours or older brothers.
If you ask them for the best memory of their childhood, the answer is silence. And even though they try, their memory is blank.
In the same way, they break the connection between their bodies and their emotions. They give up feeling. It hurts too much. Every so often, when they are very sad, they need to feel the pain, to evoke it, and they do violence to themselves. Most often, they cut themselves with glass and tattoo over the ugly scars on their skin. And it is not only the girls. Often, the boys’ arms are like a lava field with deep scars whose welts make dreadful patterns in their skin.

On succeeding trips, I had refined and developed a method to secure a certain respect for myself at the marketplace. I walked around defiantly with camera equipment worth +10,000, and even though I was almost always together with either Olivier or people from his street team, no one could have prevented it, if anyone had decided (!) to steal my equipment. I was in close and direct contact with the young people, but when it came to touching my camera equipment or my pockets, I was without compromise: That is the line, no further! One day in the Callecon de la Muerte, I suddenly felt a hand in my pocket. Instinctively, I turned around and struck out at the boy, whom I also knew. I hit him fairly solidly on the back of the head with my palm. His reaction was violent. This boy, who had received hundreds of blows and kicks in his tattered life, went into shock. In a trance-like state, he began maniacally and recklessly cutting his arm with a piece of glass, which he had found on the ground. And I could not make him stop. I could not reach him. Fortunately, the piece of glass was rather dull and with the help of some of the others, we finally brought him out of his trance, but the experience moved me deeply. From then on, I was just another adult from whom he had expected love and who had let him down.

The Callecon de la Muerte, the Alleyway of Death, is the red-light district for the poor at the market. On a cardboard sign at one end, you are welcomed with the words: With God, the impossible is made possible. Outside their small shacks, prostitutes sit in a row. Single mothers in desperate economic straits. In Nicaragua, there is no social welfare at all. So, prostitution is often the only way out in a country with an official unemployment rate of 65%. DoÒa Chilo, a large, buxom woman weighing over 200 pounds, is the Mama of the street, and nobody works on her street without her blessing. She very likely has things on her conscience which will not be counted on the plus side of St. Peter’s ledger, but neither is it is easiest job in the world she has undertaken.

Still, there is order on the street and great tolerance displayed. As opposed to many other places at the market, street children are tolerated here; and in a somewhat unfortunate way, the two groups have become a help and inspiration to each other. The homeless girls are able to observe the adult prostitutes’ relative well-being and begin to dream of being taken under Mama Chilo’s wing and getting their own shack, while the prostitutes watch how the children endure the fear and the pain by anaesthetising themselves with glue. So, today, it is not unusual to see an adult prostitute sniffing glue and many young girls sitting in front of their shacks . . .

It is night at Caratera de la Norte. The girls are standing along the walls surrounding the Vitoria brewery in their short skirts. Not all of them have had equal success with their make-up, but who can see that in the dark . . . ? The cars circle by, occasionally one stops, but it is rare that my girls have a chance in this game. They are not the only ones offering sexual services. Girls from other social milieus are also walking the street, and their make-up was put on in front of a real mirror with electric lights. Their tight dresses are clean and fashionable, and they don’t smell of epoxy glue.
Hundreds of girls walk along the great avenues of Managua; and the client base is apparently well established, for they stand there every evening, and in the gleam of automobile headlights, they seem attractive, beautiful. However, the most exotic walk the street between the Hotel Inter Continental and the military hospital. Night after night, they blow kisses to the passing cars but receive only mocking jeers and humiliation in return. That is the lot of the transvestite in macho-land.
At Caretera de la Norte, the number of girls begins to thin out. The most attractive have driven off with customers in expensive cars, and the most wretched have sought shelter at the market behind the brewery. There, they may find a taxi driver or night watchman who will pay five cordobas for poke. And five cordobas is what a pot of glue costs. Thus, five cordobas becomes the precise dividing line between a good night and a bad night. With five cordobas in your hand, you can buy glue and the night is not nearly so intimidating with a pot of glue.

It is morning at Solomon’s house. La Cachorra is still sleeping. The night had almost become morning, before she found her way to her shack by the lake. Solomon is sitting in the doorway, mending his nets. He is about 60 years old and occasionally puts food on the table by fishing. Five or six girls from the market live in the house, which leaves its mark. The acrid smell of glue hangs in the air, and the girls are beginning to wake up in their hammocks and on their pieces of cardboard. Carmen tries to press a little milk from her starved breasts, so she can feed her 14 week old baby, who has just woken up in his cardboard box.
La Loba is angry, which quickly alters the mood, and before Carmen can get the baby fed, she finds herself in a raucous fight with La Loba. As usual, Solomon intervenes. He is a little man, slightly over five feet tall, and since 1995, he has kept about 10 different girls in his shack, which is standing illegally on an plot of ground close to Lake Managua. Too close to the lake, it would appear.

In 1998, Nicaragua was hit by torrents of rain from hurricane Mitch, and for several days, the lake rose far above its normal banks, so that Solomon’s house was caught up in the mass of water. The girls were paralysed and could only watch, as Solomon tried to save what could be saved. Entirely on his own, the little man dragged the pitiful remains of his shack 100 meters further up the road, where he reconstructed this wretchedness. And if I ever believed that the relationship between Solomon and his girls could be explained purely as a matter of cynical sexual exploitation, I now had to revise those views. The girls, who had been sitting all day beneath the shelter of some sheets of roofing, passively following Solomon’s efforts, became suddenly uneasy. Solomon had sat down on a box to rest, but instead of getting up again, he fell to the ground with a thud.

When the girls discovered that Solomon was dying before their eyes, it suddenly became crystal clear that, to these girls, Solomon had been more than an brutal, old idiot, who abused them sexually. Solomon had also been their father. No one who saw the look of panic and desperation on these girls, when a heart attack threatened to provide Solomon, at last, with some peace, could ever be in doubt about it. As for me, it would be my last experience with the girls. That day, by Lake Managua, the final piece fell into place. Others may have reached this conclusion more quickly, but it would take me more than four years to come to understand that the girls’ desperation was due to their need for a father. The unfortunate thing is that for girls in Nicaragua, sexual services may be the price one pays for fatherly concern.

Nicaragua is, to be brutally frank, a land without fathers, and one possible explanation may be found in the history of the country. Not only was Indian culture destroyed with the Spanish conquest of the continent, the seeds of a new culture were also sown. For the Spaniards not only murdered and plundered, they raped the country’s women and left behind a whole generation of bastards. And bastards are seldom acknowledged.

This crime lies deep within the Nicaraguan culture as an affliction. If you want to understand the abuse and injustices visited upon these children, this is a probably a good place to start looking for an explanation. For just as research studies in the West have indicated that mothers who have experienced incest themselves will more often than other mothers discover that their daughters have become the victims of incest, it can be said that a similar vicious circle had been the scourge of Nicaragua: Bastards beget bastards. For it is not only among the poorest of the poor at the marketplace that fathers flee from their responsibility. Of all the countries in the world, Nicaragua has the highest number of divided families. 50% of the country’s women live alone with their children. And it is no better with the families of the well-to-do and well-educated. Their children grow up with a nanny as their closest nurturer and their parents as absent patrons.

Even the country’s former president, the Sandinista revolutionary hero Daniel Ortega, has a lot to explain. His step-daughter, who for many years was persuaded to remain silent, has now publicly accused him of sexually abusing her. The Danish researcher, Jesper Juul, talks about the necessity of role models: children are from birth equipped with the possibility of acquiring any conceivable character trait, but only those traits they find mirrored in their environment actually appear in their character. Against this background, it is not difficult to see that growing up in the Mercado Oriental will cultivate all those traits one normally would not wish to see fixed in a person’s character.

Therefore, it is a crime that the fathers of these children, when they finally faced up their responsibilities and tried to create a better society, should have been humiliated and disillusioned by an omnipotent enemy.

Henrik Saxgren