SOFIA MONTENEGRO, APRIL 30, 1998

Q - What have you been working on?

[talking about her book]…the link between the media and politics, and at the same time the social movements. And how this struggle of gender went through the media and through the speeches reflected in the press. And I did it more or less from 1979 up to 1986, trying to reconstruct the whole process.

Q - That was hard, a lot of work.

Yes, a lot of research and the last part, in the year 1986 I did an opinion poll with only women, on basically what their intention to vote was, which was something on the side. And their consumption of the media, and the other thing was on how their perception of women as women had developed. What sort of value, what sort of community has emerged or has anything changed as a result of all the struggles done .

Q - Had anything changed? I know that you cannot summarize the book, but what would you pick out as important things that have changed?

Well one of the important things was the confirmation, because one way or another we knew that, the confirmation that the social movement in part was ahead of the media. The media is behind the demands and aspirations and needs and the consciousness of the recipients or the users of the media. And the other thing is that women's self perception on themselves and their value system is now sort of a hybrid. It is a hybrid sort of femininity, but it is coming through, which combines the aspirations of the traditional femininity, which is having a child, a husband, building a family, etc. with the aspiration to independence and autonomy. And at the same time acquiring for themselves values that supposedly belonged to masculinity. Values like being strong, being belligerent, being aggressive and that sort of thing.

And it is very interesting because this new femininity experiences a lot of psychological tension, there is a lot of psychological tension. I found out that the norm of self-sacrifice is very high still, and this is what provokes tension. Because they cannot reconcile - well, they do in practice - but psychologically speaking trying to reconcile the traditional mandate of a woman with the self appointed identity she wishes, creates an enormous contradiction.

Anyway another thing that is very important that I found out is that the idea of gender parity is widely circulating in society, not only with women but also with men. Which means that there has been a change of values in the big marketplace of ideas and perceptions that circulate in society.

Q - You mean in the public sphere and the private sphere, in one more than the other?

In both. To give you an example of what I am talking about I asked the women if they perceived discrimination or how they would typify discrimination in Nicaragua. And 80% of them answered first that they were conscious that there was gender discrimination. The majority of them typified it as very serious. The other thing is that I asked for example if women thought that they were less or whether the men were superior, that sort of thing. And the sort of answer that came out was that women did not consider men to be better or worse, but just equal. So this idea of parity, valuing for example the capacity of women to exert power, or their capacity to run things, gives a high sense of not perceiving themselves as weaklings or helpless or anything like that. So it has been very interesting.

Q - Sometimes when I talk to my friends, depending on who it is, I think, "Oh well, there we go again." You know the young grandmother taking all the responsibility for her grandchild. So it is good to hear it.

The investigation on the women's movement did some comparison work with Central America, because we did Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. It also as a subject, you know the social movements of Nicaragua it came out as the most developed in Central America. And also the fact that it is in the whole of Central America it is the movement who as a mission, in the different groups that we took the sampling on, they are very clear that the struggle is against subordination.

Another point is - which was unthinkable some years ago, and you know perfectly well that this is such a surprise for me, that almost 70 or 80% of the groups self identified themselves as feminists. So that means -

Q - It used to be a dirty word.

It used to be a dirty word. So it has acquired legitimacy and the building of collective identity. So this is part of the main point. And the other point is that perhaps Nicaragua is the one that has more clear goals as a movement of what to do, in the development of their strategies. It has more clear vision of what are the necessities. But in comparison, because we wanted to do this investigation to know what is the stage of development of the women's movement in each country, what do they have in common, and what is their vision.

So we have found out that yes, we have many things in common, and in general you could say that the movement is in the stage of excitation and formalization, because we just studied the years from the mid 80s to 1994-95. One of the big obstacles - you wouldn't believe it - are ideas. The obstacles go around - because it has grown and expanded, the leadership is emerging - the difficulties in building up the vertebrae, a force, have to do with the lack of a space for discussion, for political discussion on things like unity and diversity. These are philosophical discussions and political discussions as well. Equality and differences, the other thing is autonomy. So there is a small package of themes that in order to make a qualitative leap, it is to resolve this confusion, the philosophical or political confusion on these themes which are absolutely vital to strengthen what is already there. Which is the main obstacle in order, for example, to unify the different groups.

Q - Now you are talking about the region, not just Nicaragua. Can you give me an example by what you mean by one of those categories, like unity in diversity. I mean what are a couple of the key issues in what you just mentioned, the generalities?

For example, and this has to do with the brand of feminist thinking you acquire. The ones who usually talk about unity, who belong to the feminist school of equality, the illustrated feminism, or Marxist background, and then the other who have impacted through the idea of unity that came from the left, reject this idea of unity, and link themselves more with the new freedom or the new understanding that let's say post modernism has talked about.

This tension, which has not been resolved by feminists worldwide, theoretically nor practically speaking, the tension that crisscrosses the movement. So what we are trying to do, some of us, including myself, I am absolutely convinced that that is the way of doing it, is that we feminists are still in a positivist trap of thinking, which is "it is this or it is the other" . This just tends to polarize groups. So how to resolve the process of having recognized that we have something in common - gender - and something different, which is the different identities that women have.

So how do you resolve this in practice? It is very difficult if you do not have a scope of political experience and a political framework on which to work. And put it in the context of this reality.

Q - It is not true, then, that most of the women in the movement in the region are from the left originally, so that they would have - better than feminists in the States - an idea of what class unity is, or gender unity.

Well these are the tensions because there are still some, for example in Guatemala they are still more in the stage of looking for unity or alliances. That is the other big word, but it is very difficult to chew. What is an alliance? What is unity? What does it mean and why is it needed. This is also the old tension that has been experienced all these years in Nicaragua, which has not yet been resolved. We have been experimenting with how to develop the common vision. Because this is the point, how do you build a vision which is not, how should I explain it? The problem is that the development of particular identities has become an obstacle to unify and construct a political..

Q - I understand that. It must have been 4-5 years ago, so a lot has happened probably, I was talking with Hazel, with a translator, and she said that you in Nicaragua, the feminists in Nicaragua didn't have our problem with identity politics because almost everyone in the movement and gays and lesbians also, had this sense, from the revolution, of what unity meant, what class struggle meant. Now has this changed? Was Hazel either mistaken in what she said, or how identity politics developed more in the five years since I spoke to her about that?

No, I think that everybody is conscious of that, the sense that the collective identity has developed. We have something in common, that is clear, no matter how different we are. But in practice the lack of a real global vision tends to make the group work on the little area of issues. There is a tendency, like in the States, to work on issues because well, they have to take a little fragment of reality and work on that. The big narratives, the big picture is more difficult to …

Q - Even for women who were or are on the left?

Yeah, because usually the mind and political experience moves like a pendulum. We went from this global vision totally and absolutely to be wary and afraid.

Q - And it is also easier in some respects to work on single issue stuff.

In the practice what has been happening is that many have been working on single issues. But the moment has arrived that, well, it was fine for a process of development. We have always had this vocation of unity within the movement, which is an inheritance from the left. But the sort of unity you need now is a different one. And the problem is that, since you need information, since you need to back up knowledge to construct this big narrative.

Q - Let me just back up a bit. Why does it have to be so much different? Why can't it be some version some version of, I mean the global part, capitalist patriarchy? Why wouldn't that still be relevant to an analysis of Nicaraguan women?

Excuse me?

Q - I am sorry, I thought you had used that in something you had written earlier. I would have to rephrase it. OK, for the big picture, the large analysis, why wouldn't it do to keep the concepts of patriarchy and capitalism and they way they intertwine? In fact I think the first time I ever interviewed you in 1992 you referred to that?

Yeah, but how do you translate this, this is an accord? The question is how do you translate this on the local, on the national expression? How do you make a national strategy? Because the problem is not only do you now have to change little pieces, or just getting things from a State that is quickly disappearing. So you have new problems that have come. So you have to rethink the whole damn thing. You need a broad scope, macroeconomics, you have to make the movement think what is the position, for example, of the movement on the State? In the moment of globalization and in the precise moment that Nicaragua is living, and all the process of transition.

Q - It is makes me tired to think about it. And you especially like to think on that level.

Well, yes, someone has to do it.

Q - Yeah, and you are good at it. So let me ask you in that regard about, there was reference here, you told me last time I saw you about two years ago, before the elections, and then there is a reference to it here which must have been researched maybe a year ago, the coalition between women of all political stripes. Is that still important?

Yes, absolutely. Because the thing on the coalition was an experiment. That is another issue that we need to discuss is about power. Which is a big discussion that is still not clarified yet or organized. Because for example for the elections in 1996 women were basically wary of going to the elections. And the elections were coming and everyone was asking what are we going to do? Since I have been doing opinion polls here at CINCO, I found out very fast that people were apathetic regarding elections, and particularly women. But the complication of this election arises, and nobody sees an alternative, the tendency to re-polarize again, and the split of all the diversity of political forces in Nicaragua into I don't know how many, 20 parties or something. It was ridiculous. Due to that some of us were worried that the elections were coming and women had no position on it. Are we going to get into the elections, are we going to participate in the fucking elections, or are we just going to watch from outside, or are we going to get involved and try to do something?

Some of us decided to create this seminar, the First Seminar on Women and Politics. I designed it from my and Maria Teresa's point of view, and in the interests of the women's movement. I basically designed it or saw the possibility of doing something but from the point of view of communications. I designed the whole operation as a communication operation, an operation on communications to circulate, to take the mass media opportunity of the campaign to put forth some of the ideas that were circulating in the movement and push them to the top and to the national agenda, on issues to be discussed.

Q - Your seminar which is done from the women's movement perspective included women from different parties and women from the right and all that?

I am telling you what my intention was first, and on top of that we decided that we would design, that we should have a dialogue of women from the different parties, from the right and the left, but as open as a space of dialogue, as a meeting place of the women who were seeking power in the traditional way, and we women in the movement.

The seminar was organized on the basis of five questions. The five questions were: do we want power? Or what do we understand by power? If the answer was no, then there was nothing to do about it, everybody goes home and forgets about the fucking elections. But the answer was yes to the first question. Then the second question was what do we want power for? And if we find an answer to this by consensus, with all this group of women coming from all the differences you can imagine in a place, then how to get this power? What is the role that these elections play? And the last question would be, then if we agree on this, with whom? And who do you go with to place your bet on power?

Whether it is males or we have a contingent of women who push ahead to power. I was commissioned to write the position paper on that, and then we invited about 80 women. For the Sandinistas there was Monica Baltodano, Dora Maria Tellez and Azucena Ferrrey and the Conservatives and the Social Christians and whatever, and the Contras, and you name it, the flora and fauna. And the women's movement represented by those women in the different groups who believed that the elections were important and who wanted to discuss the problem of power. Because not all the movement was interested or saw the elections like shit.

So with those who wanted to discuss we opened the seminar. The seminar started almost at the last minute in October 95. Then we spent two or three days - it is all on film. We took that precaution. Because my point was that if we could build up a common agenda and a common strategy between the politicians in the party and certain groups in the women's movement to get into the elections, this would be the first political pact done consciously between women of different walks of life. And take the elections as the first experiment, and use ourselves as laboratory rats and see what happens.

Some volunteers were willing to make the incursion into the political arena of electoral campaign which is an experience that we don't have as women. My proposal is that if we can get together a small program of three points, that would be the best. We came out with a small agenda of 28 points. The idea we operated with was, it was very important because it proved that it could be done. That is the important thing, it can be done. You can solve the problem of diversity without losing your identity, keeping your ideologies, your political faith, your adherence to the political parties, your religious belief or whatever. The point is let's work on what we agree on, let's work on a common ethical framework for everyone and that we will all abide by. And let's see what happens.

Q - We could not do that, not in a million years.

It was very strange, but we did do it, and we ended up with so much enthusiasm and so much respect that I was terrified, because I had to conduct this fucking seminar. I said the whole damn thing is going to explode here and I am going to look like shit, because it would be my failure since my face was out front on this. I in the name of the feminist movement.

And they have all sorts of reservations, because I am the terrorist, the anarchist or whatever, and all the women came like this to the seminar. Then we decided to get into a second seminar, we did three seminars that ended on March 8, 1996, in which the political pact was signed between the politicians and us. It was an exercise on tolerance, on dialogue, on how to co-exist with the difference and with respect, and with not forcing any women to renounce anything.

Q - Let me just be clear. The politicians signed on as we say, they agreed to your agenda? Of all parties, not all parties, because there are 20, but the major parties, the Sandinistas and the Liberals?

Both of the Sandinista groups, the MRS and the FSLN. Some of the Liberals, including one of the Liberals who is now the vice mayor of Managua. The Conservatives, the Social Christians, the Contras and some alliances were there, and then the rest of the groups of the women's movement.

It was really a breakthrough because it helped us to de-Satanize each other. Because we from the women's movement and from the left found out that some of these women who were from the right or from the Contras, were just women like ourselves who have suffered a lot of shit, exiled, the killing of their sons or the jailing of their husbands, or whatever, that they were not so bad. And in turn, they found out that these horrible "enemy" that we represented, and these awful feminists, lesbian bitches, or whatever -

Q - I am surprised they came to the seminar at all, if they felt so strongly, you know?

It was really something. We ended up drinking, celebrating until 4am. You would never dream with whom, this bunch of feminists, with one of those bourgeois women,

Q - What is it that brought those right wing women to your seminar? What did they come?

Because in one way or another I think they worked themselves and the process of Nicaragua, the suffering, the collective suffering,

Q - Even women that were relatively well to do, well I don't know if they were well to do, but

Yeah, women who had lived in exile in Miami and who had cooperated with the Contras. You had Azucena Ferrey with the difference that Azucena Ferrey is a brilliant woman. And newcomers, but this has to do not more with the fact that the women from the right were trying to approach us, but a combination of factors. There was the coming to power of Violeta Chamorro, and the fact that the women's movement kept pushing and trying to draw close to the Ministry of Women. And the first bridge that the women's movement built was with the Women's Institute during Violeta Chamorro's time. This bridging with the Institute helped to get through to some women with the right who were working in Violeta Chamorro's government, which opened the door in Violeta Chamorro's government to bring a gender perspective into her government. Then it is just like dropping a small pebble into a pond of water it begins to make ripples, circles. And the sensitizing has advanced already to touch women who were on the other side. Which explained a bit the legitimacy that this feminist speech has acquired within society in one way or another. Because otherwise they would not have come.

I think it also had to do with having a woman in power who began with zero gender vision to acquire by the middle of her term, because we did another recruiting in one way or another of her daughter, Cristiana. So we were always trying to push these seminars and workshops. So you can see that these fucking seminars work. When you begin to invite people to these places. And then Cristiana was fundamental. She began to speak openly on women's issues, taking positions, and then she obviously influenced the mother.

Q - Wow, I didn't know that. We didn't hear that. We didn't know that Violeta had moved

Yes, she had changed. I mean this is a very subtle process. But slowly, slowly it happened. And this was like a base of communication with our women, who belonged to different parties, or to the right, or to the Contras. But to one extent or another Violeta Chamorro was their government.

Q - Has the Coalition continued?

Yes. So the idea was that we finally got humanized, we moved from being the enemy to being political adversaries. Which is a big jump. And we came from the position of hatred, suspicion, and stereotype, to begin to see women for what they were really worth. I mean their own personality and so forth. Well to tell you something that no one would have believed, no one could have predicted, that I would end up having as probably one of my best friends Azucena Ferrey.

Q - I don't know who she is?

She was a Contra leader, and she comes from a Social Christian background. And she was a former member of the National Assembly. It was really something. So we finally got to writing this agenda, this common vision. We called for a common celebration for March 8. For the first time the politicians came. And we announced the Coalition - we didn't have one cent, just mouths. And it is was very difficult but in the process, obviously the ones who were running as candidates, who have aspirations within their parties, who were proposing themselves for mayors, vice presidents, etc. had other expectations than we feminists had. From our point of view, from my point of view we saw the elections as the possibility of widening the circulation of the proposals of the women's movement. We didn't really have the idea of getting more seats or more women, but we had to say that we demanded "democratic parity", an equilibrium in power in terms of genders.

So what we did was, what happened was, and that is what feminists are good for, that is what their role should be, is to try to construct a discourse that these women did not have, for their political campaign, and a purpose. Say you are talking in the name of half of the population of Nicaragua. If you benefit, half of the population of Nicaragua will benefit, and the other half, the males, will benefit too. And this is an ethical position. This is your constituency and you should address the needs of women. Men are not doing it, and you can do it as candidates. And they all agreed with that.

So one idea was that they should bring that agenda that was built up outside the parties back into the parties, to their own parties, and wage the fight there. One result was that it helped the Sandinistas to bring about the demand for the quota, the application of the quota, and that the Sandinistas took a position on women's issues, publicly as a party, and no more bullshitting.

Q - Because I remember hearing from you - it couldn't have been you, it was too early - that you had prepared a big agenda with hundreds of points, but then when the campaign came it all sort of evaporated, or Arelys maybe told me that there was no women's campaign within the Frente.

Now how it went in the parties is a different, separate thing, with uneven results, and some of them disastrous results. But the fact that we were capable outside of the political organizations to make the discussion happen and build our own strategy and to build a common discourse, and get these women to make a commitment to the movement and bring this fight into the party, proved that this was the correct strategy.

In addition to that the media was obligated to talk about this, it made women's problems visual, at least for a long period during the campaign. On the other hand it committed them, practically all of the parties signed the agreement with the coalition that if their party should come to power, they will take the women's agenda as part of their political policy. The only one that did not sign was the liberal party that won. But the rest, the 20 some parties of this country, signed it. Which for me means that the original objective of making ourselves visible and getting the women's agenda into the parties, was achieved.

On the other hand it mobilized some sort of energies and ideas, and provided a compass for many women at the base. So since there were so many elections, many women who were indecisive about presenting themselves as candidates at all levels… So the point is that at the end of the time to register as candidates, 7,000 women had registered as candidates.

Q - That is a lot.

Yes, that is a lot. We have no reference from the other elections, but at least it gave us a point of reference in the 90-96 elections.

Q - Sofia, there is one more thing I want to ask you. But before I get there, I want to ask you, not just from a gender perspective, but from a general political perspective, because everything is so depressing, the economy sucks, and the Ortega thing that we won’t go into now, but what do you see as the medium term outlook for this country. Everything I read about this country is, as you like to say, so fucking horrible. So I am really fishing for something optimistic, but if you don't have any, that is OK too.

Well I will tell you what I thought with what I told the Swedish ambassador. I think that the tendency in Nicaragua, or the will in Nicaragua, is to establish bi-caudillismo, bipartisan system. I think that the Liberals have a great possibility for staying in power for quite awhile. But there is also one other thing. Very quickly in the last year this government is also deteriorating in terms of its image, very quickly. And the economic situation absolutely has not gotten better. It might now that we are going to have 2 billion dollars.

But there is also the awareness that the appearance of all these little parties and groups that represent the political bio-diversity of Nicaragua had a role to play which was one of balance, and that bipartisanship is no good for the country. I do think that in Central America there are two possibilities - in Central America in general Nicaragua is the country that could have objectively speaking the possibility of building a third force.

Q - Sorry, I don't know what that means, a third force.

A third force, an alternative.

Q - An alternative to? The neo-liberal? You mean a party?

A movement, a party whatever. A third force. If you learn from the last two elections - I am one who has the commitment to work on that.

Q - And you see the MRS as important?

Obviously the Sandinista free-lance or MRS or whatever, must play a role in this because you have to promote this third force, that has disappeared from the electoral running. They still have a presence, probably not one by one could they do it. But if you build something with this and incorporate the social movements into it, and construct a common, national project from below, coming really with a linkage, an articulation with the so-called civil society, which are not parties, and try to make a coalition like we women tried to do, it could bring forth for the next elections a force that, one, could become an alternative, and two, could represent the balance in the National Assembly. Because now there is no balance. That third force has shrunk to this [holds two fingers so close together they are almost touching].

I think that this is the only possibility that I see.

Q - I also want to ask you about the social movements, because, not because I spent so much time preparing for them, but because of what Dora Maria said, and Mark is helping me not to use people's names in interviews, because often it is not helpful to say "Dora Maria said." But in this case I want to, because it might be helpful in your commenting on her perspective, because you probably know as we say in English "where she is coming from", what her perspective is. I talked to her not about the Ortega thing at all, we just talked about the social movements. She gave a very critical view of them, except for UNAG and the women's movement, which she thought were doing fine. She thought that the unions were doing terribly, she said that the ATC has basically disappeared, CST is weakened, which we knew. But I thought that her most interesting comment, she reserves her strongest criticism for the Communal Movement, which I think she was saying, and has been saying for some time in my opinion, is that it has been de-politicized , and that they are moving into becoming a foundation, an NGO or something.

So I just wondered what your perspective is on the social movements.

I think if I explain it, it will be better. My thesis is the following, In Central America and in the case of Nicaragua there are three points to the crisis: the economic crisis, the incapacity of the political elites and the crisis of the political parties, and the third factor is the weakness of the so-called civil society. In this we are talking about the old civil society in the traditional way, the church, the political parties, and private enterprise. The so-called new economic agents, and the so-called social movements and civil organizations like NGOs and some other actors.

So what happened? If you see it as a strategy, and this has been my fight and my point, there is nothing we as citizens can do about the economic crisis, because it has to do with the neo-liberal model, globalization, and etc. We cannot kill these factors or make them disappear [pointing to the political elites], not even try to change them, because it is impossible. At any rate they will change if you resolve point number three, which, yes, this is field that we can all do something about. So I forget about these two [pointing to the economic crisis and crisis in political elite], and I center my strategy, which means working really to fortify the social movements, in the first place, because we know they are weak. In that I disagree with Dora [Maria Tellez]. Because one thing is to expect the social movement to do something, but they need the help of some of us in order to get stronger. So I can criticize the women's movement if I am inside doing something to strengthen it. Because this is my only alternative.

So what is one of the main weaknesses. To put it n broad terms, we lack a public opinion system, strong and transparent. We have to build one.

Q - What do you mean by a public opinion system?

The press is controlled. Barricada has disappeared. There has been an involution on the press. So you have to look for alternative means. This is one, problem with the press, so you have to look for alternatives to that. You don't have a transparent, strong, public opinion system. This is something you need in order to make civil society strong, to fortify it.

So the second problem that we have in the weakness of the civil society is that the movements are dispersed. I mean there are collections of groups and groups and groups and groups. There is nothing, it has to be built. There are some initiatives, but you have to work in order for them to crystallize. So there is the initiative of the National Forum, this one that appeared in the press today, Citizen Participation or some shit. It appeared in the press today.

Q - You mean forums for getting together, or ?

Yeah. So, how do you construct a strong civil society? That is one good question. And one good answer is, and this has been my whole debate with the women's movement, and with other actors, is that a civil society is constructed when a particular community, let's say the women's community, which is composed of different groups. But the problem of building a strong civil society is that these different groups have to be articulated.

Q - What does that word "articulated" mean?

It must have a common discourse, because public opinion is nothing else but the argumentation that human groups have, a common argumentation and strategy and vision. A common vision and strategy. And this is in the process of being built. The same thing happened with other communities.

So once this community is articulated and has argumentative capacity, which means also constructing the leadership that is capable of being the speaker of this position. It will have to ally itself with some other community, let's say the Communal Movement, the Youth, the Environmentalist, or whoever. But the problem there is that they are all suffering from the same dispersion. So the process of extracting this civil society is that you have to build this community of women. Then you have to connect this community of women with some other civil communities, which are in the same process of building and constructing their own vision of the world and their own proposal.

And only then when the alliance is established and dreamt a common proposal do you have a strong civil society that can come into a dialogue with the State and establish a plan. What the State or government in this case is doing, is they tend to divide the communities by talking to some of the groups bilaterally, because it is the divide and conquer shit.

So it would be strong if all these different communities, civil communities, would have a common position to deal with the State or whatever government comes. That is when they are strong, and they construct such a discourse that they have an impact on the entire society, that then you can pressure the press, and you can built yourself ways of letting your new vision circulate. But you don't only have to fight with the State, you have to fight against the political interests of the parties and the party elites, because they are not helping anymore. They have become dysfunctional, the parties. They do not have the capacity to collect all the sentiments and demands of these different communities and portray them themselves. And that is the reason people don't see any function for the parties.

At the same time the historical function of the parties was to create a synthesis. So since the parties cannot do it - and this has been my whole allegation - towards the one who looked that the social movements are loose, and everybody goes their own way, and etc. I say no, we have to supply some things that are not being supplied by the parties. We have to rethink the whole thing ourselves. And without becoming parties, exert some of the functions that were historically the functions of the parties.

Q - Can I just go back a second, because you probably have a different take on it than I do, but when I was doing the research in 92, which is a long time now, on the FSLN and the social movements, there was a lot of analysis and talk about the need for and the autonomy of the social movements. Is this one reason why the party can no longer represent the social movements, or is something else at work, some weakness.? I am thinking of the Sandinista Front, obviously.

The incapacity of the Front to know what is the correct relation to the social movements. That is an incapacity. They can only think of the social movement if they get engaged in the vanguardist vision, the vanguardist tradition, that the social movements are like a wagon behind.

Q - I thought that they had given up that idea a long time ago?

No, no it's not true. Because in order for the Sandinistas to change the party, they need an epistemological breakthrough in the way that they think and they haven't done that. And that is the reason they cannot rethink a strategy, they cannot rethink a new repositioning in the panorama. Because they are trying to analyze the reality of today with the eyes of the 1960s. You cannot, because the world has changed, the reality has changed, and the subjects, the actors, new actors have matured.

Q - Well they certainly recognize the fact that the social movements have become autonomous, or some of them, more of them.

Yes but we are talking about different autonomies. There is the formal autonomy from the party, which is what happened with UNAG or with AMNLAE. And another thing is the psychological, political and epistemological autonomy. To think with your own head, with new instruments. And the one that is beginning to do it, for reasons that you know what gender is a brain opener, and feminism, is the women's movement. That is the reason it has grown. Because it is an epistemological breakthrough. And the moment more and more of these women are declaring themselves or understanding what this whole damn thing is about, and they take this tool for thinking. They have the capacity to grow or develop faster in relation, for example, to the Communal Movement, or even to the Environmental Movement. But in the Front, nothing of this epistemological breaking is happening, so they have fallen below the capacity of thinking and of experience that is being accumulated, for example, in the women's movement.

So therefore another problem with autonomy is money. So what are some of the autonomies you can analyze? And we did analyze where autonomy is, in the case of the women's movement as an example, but it is basically the same thing. Some of them have formal autonomy, and some of them crisscross, which are the few, which have the three types of autonomy. Money, psychologically, politically, epistemologically, and on top of that they have the formal autonomy. Those are the people who are free.

Q - Who are they?

Malinche would be a good example of autonomy. A small group that is influential, that acts as a political group and has autonomy. But not only my group, many of our groups.

Q - Any group outside of the women's movement that has all three?

I don't know. There are initiatives, but to tell you the truth the ones who have given much more thought to this epistemological rupture are the women.

Q - I haven't talked to Enrique Picado in a couple of years, but I think there was some epistemological change there in terms of the relation to the party and what the grassroots should do, what should be done. Not as much as the women's movement. But not to rethink a whole strategy or say for example, being convinced for example, that in this situation, in this characteristic and in this context, that the only way out is resolving this weakness [pointing to board that refers to the third crisis, weakness of civil society]. Because this is in your hands. It depends on what you do, and you study and you think and you make chief people reconstruct the actors in the field.

That is what the women's movement has done, constructing the subject. De-constructing it and reconstructing it.

Q - And the Communal Movement looks to me like a service organization.

It is sort of still in the process, it still has not arrived at all these citizens, members of the Communal Movement, could be, or the Movement could design a strategy, a training, or a workshop or some shit to take all the aggregates of the people that it works with, and more beyond a vision of victims or beneficiaries, to the idea of taking each one of them and making a political subject of them, to take them to the possibility of changing their reality.

So I would not say that what I am talking about here is totally conscious or agreed upon. What I mean to say is that maybe all these movements don't even think of this. And that is the reason I think that Dora Maria Tellez is mistaken in her approach. Because she is saying it from outside. She is seeing the social movements from the outside. And because the politics are changing.

My point of view is that this is the only civil society that you have. It took 20 years to emerge. It is the only opening point to try to change things without going to war. Therefore the main concern of idea of anyone who is involved in trying to change things, is to fortify the subject. Not telling them what to do, but to prepare them as human beings for adulthood, political adulthood, and that means giving them back the tools to rethink their reality.

Q - Let me see if I have got it right. You think that Dora Maria's stance is more of an observer than a participant, and that that colors her analysis.

Yes, and her long life experience, party life, and public representative. I am a social engineer of the bridges and the base. I am more interested in the social engineering, for example of the movement, than in the problem that represents the vision from a little bit of what would be needed to be able to qualify this social movement as good or bad. I just see the stage as development, the difficulty of these same people having the same commitment and stamina to do things. But without the necessary tools for thinking.

Q - You need to give them a seminar.

I wish I could. I would spend my whole life just schooling everybody in the new thinking. Because they are trying to think about this reality with the old paradigms, and that is the reason it doesn't work. So you have to make the breakthrough. At least that is what I propose to do with CINCO. That is what CINCO should offer. And that is what Malinche has to do with the rest of the groups. So you need your fucking intellectuals back.

Q - Yes, I remember you saying that. Where have they gone. Aren't they in the MRS?

They are all depressed. They are in a state of depression. It is funny but it is true. So some of us who are a little bit beyond the depression, beyond the nihilism, beyond the drama, have the moral obligation to try to devise also, because this is what is needed politically, the adjustment of consciousness, which is what the party should have done and didn’t do. You are not dealing with masses, you are dealing with human beings. Masses are just a collection of individuals, and each one individually has gone through a process of mourning and loss, and loss of identity, loss of job, loss of dream, loss of project, everything. And there is not one damn single leader who is capable of seeing that, and devising the possibility of adjusting consciousness, and adjusting the pain. Bring the people, make the bridge for people to bring..It is like a therapeutic process, it is a therapeutic, political process to get to the other side of the shore. People are in the mood, the emotional mood of distrust, of treason. And you must resolve that in order to mobilize society again. To do that you need psychology, anthropology, you need new tools, the sort of training.

Q - Where do you get so much intellectual, physical, and psychological energy to be so ambitious? I don't mean personally ambitious.

Do you think that it sounds too ambitious?

Q - No, it doesn't sound too ambitious. It is just that most people would say, "Oh". I mean I can understand the reaction of the intellectuals, but you are just in there fighting on so many levels, the mind, the theory, the political part.

Otherwise life has not sense, what we have done makes no sense. If we accept staying in the fucking mud.

Q - But what is the difference between - and you are an intellectual - "the intellectuals". Are they outside the movement so that it is more easy to get depressed.

Yes. Because this is another problem when I tell you that it is a therapeutic, political process, which is adjust the old awareness in order to create another. What I mean is, and the case of Zoilamerica is a case in point. Unfortunately you have to leave, but it could be the most therapeutic process.

Q - How so? Since everyone seems to be closing ranks, that seems to be a favorite term, you have to close ranks, how so?

Because she will destroy the symbol that has kept the Sandinista Front trapped, in a political trap and an emotional trap.

Q - How can she do that? Alejandro says that in the legal case that it is almost impossible to make any headway.

She has her testimony. And I read it.

Q - And she can take it to court, even if he doesn't give up immunity?

It doesn't matter. It doesn’t matter. That testimony is just like Emil Zola [Midge, I am not sure I caught that name right. If you don't recognize that I would recommend editing it out] , it is just like Fidel Castro's speech. Do you remember the judge or legal proceedings for Fidel Castro? He will remember the speech of Fidel Castro, "history will absolve me". Zoilamerica's testimony is of that rank. And that is why everybody in this country is fucking terrified, and I am terrified too, but I know it must be done and it is just.

Q - What do you think would be a good outcome of this?

A new ethic, and the emotional earthquake that is needed to face all your demons and probably to make a breakthrough.

Q - Not just on gender, but on what political leadership is and the whole thing?

The whole thing, hierarchy, patriarchal power, political power, the problem with the left, public and private ethics, all the contradictions, because it is all there. So still you will see power at work again. You will see the corruption, the rottenness, the shit.

It is a problem for the Sandinistas, you know what the Sandinistas need, the orthodox, and many other people is to cut the umbilical cord with the Front. Because they have made a fetish of the Front. An organization is an organization. If the organization as such, it doesn't matter how dear it may be to my heart, how much emotion and how much love I have put into building this organization, the fact is that this organization does not work anymore for the thing it was created.

Q - Your own love for the organization can blind you to the fact that it is not working anymore.

And that is the reason for the fetish. The Front had become a fetish and the biggest fetish of them all was Daniel Ortega. So I think this will flatten things and put everything into perspective again, and it will provide the possibility - God and the Virgin willing - to start a critical process of thinking - transparent, open - without these sickening loyalties that protect and stagnate the left in Nicaragua.

Q - What I would like to do, if you would be willing, is if I could call you up, or whatever means of communication we would decide to use, do you have email?

Yes, I do have email. I don't use email, but I can beg and bribe my husband to do it for me. Whether, before I come down again next year, after Easter, whether we could just talk about some fruitful approach for me. Because right now I have two: one is to think in my own head about what I want to talk about and find out about, and the other is just to go with the flow as they say. It doesn't have to be a well articulated theme, because you know things intervene. But we hear very little, we get a tiny bit of news from the news service. Then we get ENVIO which I have recently found less and less helpful I don't even read it anymore. So I would just like to get your perspective before I come so I have a little more than a blank slate with some Nicaraguan Network news service written on it. Would that be OK. Could I do that, like in February, January?

Yes. I wanted to give you a paper where I had all this shit [written down]. This April we are building, trying to construct what we did here, but now on a Central American level, it is the Network of Women and Politics. So we are putting women from the FMLN and ARENA, and everyplace, the same thing but bigger in Central America. And this is the first network in Central America on that. And I also wrote the position paper for that meeting, and the pact. At least there was a political will that came out from all these women, from the movement and from the women who are in parties in all of Central America.

But I refer to this point [pointing to the third crisis on the board, weakness of civil society] , which is like the entry point into the crisis. So if you ask me is there a possibility, I would say that it is not through here [first crisis] or here [second crisis] but here, it has a lot of difficulties but it can be done. If you have a compass about what is needed, then you can start devising initially some things that will help everyone to resolve the problem of the moment. At that point you can even pose the other two variables of the crisis, and influence these actors particularly [political elites]. Because if you are strong here, they will listen.

And this is what the women's movement's experience has proven.

Q - Alejandro's view, because we emailed each other this winter on social movements, was that neither two nor three can make an impact themselves, they have to work together. Social movements can be strong enough to do a lot on their own.

It is a matter of timing. In order to have the force and the capacity for the women of the parties to come to the meeting, the women's movement first has to build itself. Otherwise it will never be recognized as an equal with whom you have a dialogue, you know, the interlocution.

Q - I remember this is what you were saying in 1992.

It is true. But it never comes from them [the political elites], it has to come from us. So in a sense Alejandro is right. But how you get there is the difference.