Interview
with Fernando
Cardenal, SJ

EN ESPAÑOL

Nicaraguan Perspective:
An Interview with Fernando Cardenal, SJ
By Maria de Jesus

Fernando Cardenal, Nicaraguan Jesuit and first Minister of Education in the Sandinista government, led the literacy campaign in Nicaragua in 1980. He was at Boston College in October speaking about his life and work during that important historical moment and about challenges facing Nicaragua and the world today. I spoke with him about many of his views. Below I include some of the highlights of that interview, with a particular focus on the concerns of the Martín-Baró Fund for Mental Health and Human Rights. My thanks to John E. Arias for his transcription of the original Spanish.

Many people around the world wonder why U.S. citizens do not protest and speak out about the policies of the current U.S. administration. What do you think about this? How can people find their voice under conditions of repression, fear, and intimidation?

Before being able to speak out, one needs to develop consciousness. My impression of what is happening in the United States is that there is no critical awareness, there is no real knowledge of how North American foreign policy affects our poor countries. I think this is the root cause. I think the media always gives one version of things. Mass media, particularly major newspapers and television news channels portray an incomplete portrait. One cannot have a voice to defend something about which one is uninformed.
To give a concrete example: the current war in Iraq. It is enough for us that President Bush manipulated the information, that he spoke of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction as if it were a sure thing, and that Iraq could attack the U.S. in forty-five minutes and destroy entire cities. This was false. The United Nations Team never actually found mass weapons. Soon thereafter, the war began and U.S. soldiers are all over the country. Meanwhile, months and months go by and they do not encounter weapons of mass destruction.
The regime of Saddam Hussein was an absolutely criminal and dictatorial regime. This is all true. The war was presented to the U.S. public as something that would protect their security and that if this war had not happened, the U.S. public would be in great danger because the Iraqis were connected to the terrorists of Al Queda of Afghanistan. The President was forced to state that there was no connection between the Al Queda terrorists and the Iraqi regime. The two reasons Bush gave for the war were not accurate. The U.S. public massively supported this war. People are starting to realize that it was not as he stated, that they had been deceived.

Can you talk some about U.S. and Nicaraguan relations, please?

We were four million inhabitants in the time of Ronald Reagan. We did not have an Air Force, a Navy, bombs, or missiles. And he made declarations to justify his politics and the aggression that we were supposedly committing against the U.S. He stated that we were a danger to National Security. This is what the President said and this is what the public believed. This is a huge problem, declaring something that is completely false. How could we threaten such a powerful country? Later he stated that we were persecuting the Catholic Church. The U.S. government was lying.
Also there is another aspect related to the global economy, capitalism, and another way of managing the economy. Some years ago the Director of a North American magazine told me: One can criticize anything one wants about the U.S. President but one cannot speak out against the capitalist system.

One of our grantees is "Harvesting Hope," a project of Wangki Luhpia on the North Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua which seeks to assist two indigenous Miskito communities. Can you talk about the indigenous peoples of Nicaragua?

The majority of people on the North Atlantic Coast are indigenous; on the Pacific there are no longer any indigenous. The only indigenous peoples left in Nicaragua are there on the Caribbean coast. Because of their geographical location, they are beyond possible assistance. They are very abandoned economically. The Nicaraguan government is too poor to be able to uplift economically people who are so far away. Our government is economically weak.
The indigenous of the Atlantic Coast have the best autonomy law in Latin American and it was passed by the Sandinistas. But that autonomy needs to be accompanied by economic assistance so that they can improve their lives. They have the laws that allow them to live autonomously, but they don't the economic circumstances that would permit them to survive with dignity.

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English to Spanish translations
courtesy of Melisa Flores

© 2007, Ignacio Martín-Baró Fund for Mental Health & Human Rights