Being there

One of the most challenging things about exile is being there. There being the place of refuge one seeks after being forced to leave one’s country.

Moving the body is not so hard. Moving the mind is another thing.

When I was in exile in Costa Rica, from 1975 to 1979, I had a job from 9 to 5 at an advertising agency. By day I would think about ad campaigns for hair shampoo, for Mc Donalds, for cars. I was good at it. I had studied advertising and journalism in Philadelphia and had experience in the field. I enjoyed the playfulness of the work atmosphere at the Garnier agency in San Jose. I was thankful they hired me knowing full well I was a fugitive of the Somoza regime. They were wonderful. Despite being aware of the contradiction of trying to bring about revolution while selling my talent to the consumer society, I needed the job. I was divorced and had two little daughters to support. Yet, after five pm I became a political operative. My evenings and many hours of my free time were spent working with other compañeros in establishing a rearguard in Costa Rica for the Nicaraguan insurgency that would topple the Somoza dictatorship. These involved endless meetings, networking, setting up safehouses, ferrying compañeros who crossed the border illegally to bring instructions to us from the leadership in Nicaragua, preparing shipments of things needed inside that country, finding political and financial collaborators, publishing a monthly insert with news about our struggle inside a Costa Rican lefty newspaper and other more dangerous tasks.

I remember nights spent preparing what we called “embutidos” they were the staples of our own mail system in a time when there were neither cell phones, nor email. Letters we sent were written with tiny handwriting on flimsy paper, rolled tightly, wrapped in plastic, and stuffed into all kinds of objects, from toothpaste tubes to children’s toys, to avoid the Nicaraguan authorities. One time someone had the brilliant idea of sending walkie talkies, needed for a guerilla operation, inside cans of paint. The courier was a  nun who fulfilled her mission successfully, but of course the paint melted the plastic tape of the wrappings and ruined the walkie talkies. The guys who received the shipment in Nicaragua were furious, but because the code name of the talkies was “parrots” the irate conversations because the parrots had drowned were memorably funny.

So, I was in Costa Rica. I was there, but my mind and my purpose belonged to Nicaragua.

After the Sandinista Revolution I went back to my country thinking I would never leave again. But while I was the spokesperson for the Sandinista electoral campaign in 1984, I met Charlie, the NPR correspondent. He interviewed me several times. He took me to dinner to speak on background, not on the record. We fell in love. It was complicated. The U.S. was the enemy of the revolution. It was financing and involved in the Contra War. Our romance faced numerous obstacles. We were both sleeping with the enemy, but we persevered and got married in 1987. In 1990, the Sandinistas lost the elections to Violeta Chamorro. When the revolution effectively ended, my now husband asked me to follow him to the U.S. I was depressed. Only one month apart I had suffered the loss of my mother and the revolution. Reluctantly I accepted. We lived first in Washington, D.C, and then in Los Angeles. I couldn’t make myself feel I belonged in any of those places. I longed to be back in Nicaragua and pined for it. I set up a studio there and went back as often as possible. Sometimes I stayed for three or six months. I followed it closely, continued to be involved in the Nicaraguan political activities, authored op-ed articles in the newspapers, and kept abreast of the Sandinista developments which culminated in the split of the FSLN in 1993, the take over of the party by Daniel Ortega, and his return to the presidency in 2007.

Looking back over those years, I realize I was neither in Nicaragua, nor in the U.S. True that I was able to write three novels, three books of poems and a memoir, my children attended good schools, I made wonderful friends, but I was forever unattached to the country itself. I was an observer, a reluctant immigrant, surfing through the days wishing to return to my roots. In a sense not being fully there meant lost opportunities, it meant I spent years deprived of depth and of a commitment to the present tense. My time in the U.S. helped me understand its history better, made me comprehend the number of errors of judgement we make in Latin America when we analyze that country not comprehending its complexity and diversity and even the way it works politically. Preconceived ideas of the “evil empire” I had held until then were modified by a new understanding. It was a learning experience, but to this day I regret not having been more open and willing to be wholly there.

After having made it back to live in Nicaragua for a sizable number of years I had assumed that the circle of my life had returned to its starting point and would reach its end there, surrounded by the landscape I love so much. Instead, I was forced out of my land again by those who were once my compañeros. I am in Madrid now and I am determined to be here. My portable country will always be in my heart, but a new generation must carry the torch to its freedom. I no longer want to float above the surface of my new reality. I am ready to plunge into this culture, these streets. To be here might be a goodbye present life is offering me. I will take it.