Olympia welcomes latest delegation from Thurston Santo Tomás

author : Mark Jaffe topic : Nicaragua | Thurston Santo Tomás Sister County Association

by Mark Jaffe

This spring the Thurston Santo Tomás Sister County Association (TSTSCA) will be welcoming our eighth delegation from our sister city in Santo Tomás, Chontales, Nicaragua. Our guests, Rosa Aura Segura, Facunda Zeledón Nuñez, and María Salvadora Gonzalez, will be in Olympia from April 19th until May 11th.

Formed as a response to the US-funded Contra wars in the eighties, TSTSCA works to create personal relationships that transcend the military and economic violence carried out by the United States. In 1979, after forty years of brutal dictatorship under the US-backed Samoza family, the Sandinista Liberation Front (FSLN) triumphed over Samoza's National Guard. Once in power, the Sandinistas implemented sweeping social reforms, the most popular of which was perhaps the Literacy Brigades that saw young students from Managua and other urban centers in Nicaragua go out to the countryside and teach campesinos to read and write. Unfortunately, the Reagan administration viewed the FSLN as the communist menace gaining a foothold on the American continent and went about trying to bring on its fall. Though deemed illegal by Congress, the CIA trained and supplied ex-National Guard soldiers to form a counter-revolutionary army, popularly known as the Contras. Throughout the eighties, the Contra forces wreaked havoc on the Nicaraguan population, and in 1990, faced with a choice of peace or continued bloodshed, the FSLN was voted out of office, signaling the first peaceful handing-over of power in Nicaraguan history.

Since 1988, TSTSCA has worked with the Center for Community Development (CDC) in Santo Tomás to foster a relationship of solidarity in the face of US intervention and oppression in Central America. Though rooted in the struggle against the Contras, TSTSCA believes that the economic oppression carried out by NAFTA, CAFTA, and such institutions as the IMF and World Bank is a form of violence as well, and solidarity continues to be necessary even though this is a kind of war that doesn't make as many headlines. Members of community and Evergreen student delegations have had the opportunity to go to Santo Tomás and see first-hand the day to day struggles that are a result of US foreign policy while at the same time be inspired by the tenacity and determination of our friends and comrades. Delegation members have the opportunity to work alongside Tomasino/as in various projects such as the Children's Free Lunch Program, which serves free meals to over one hundred kids a day; an organic farm, which grows food for the lunch program as well as to sell in the market; the Clínica Popular, or People's Clinic; and a wide range of other projects aimed at strengthening the community and promoting self-sufficiency. We are always welcomed into the homes of our hosts, and many of us consider the people we stay with to be family. These delegations from Santo Tomás are our opportunity to continue this cultural exchange and to introduce these people to our community here.

While here, our guests will be working on various projects in the community, hoping to gain some knowledge to be brought back with them to Santo Tomás as well as imparting knowledge to us and sharing some of their experiences with the community at large. Rosa Aura is a singer and guitar player as well as the director of the Children's Free Lunch Program in Santo Tomás. She will be performing several times during her stay here. Facunda is a first-grade teacher at Rubén Darío Elementary School in Santo Tomás, sister school of Lincoln Elementary, and will be spending the majority of her time at Lincoln working to strengthen the relationship between the two schools. María Salvadora is a doctor who works at the People's Clinic in Santo Tomás. She will be spending her time visiting various health care organizations in the area.

We can read all the books and articles we want, but the opportunity to meet and connect with the people whose lives are affected by the issues we read about, watch documentaries about, and protest about is a precious one. Please support TSTSCA and our guests by coming to the public events listed and help make this delegation as good, if not better, than the previous seven.