Sermon: Blessed are the Peacemakers

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Blessed are the Peacemakers

By Dorothy Granada

November 11, 2001

We were blessed on Nov. 11 to have as our guest speaker Dorothy Granada, winner of the 1997 international Pfeffer Peace Prize, who spoke about her work in Nicaragua. Dorothy rose to national prominence within Nicaragua when President Aleman attempted to have the 70 year-old nurse deported back to the United States. Amnesty International and members of the US Congress came to her defense, enabling her to continue running the Women's Clinic. The Women's Clinic in Mulukukú is part of a cooperative organized by women in 1998. It has played a leading role in educating women about their rights and protecting them from abuse. You can visit Dorothy's own website at http://www.peacehost.net/Dorothy, or the Mulukukú website at http://www.peacehost.net/Dorothy/Mulukuku.

's a joy to be here today. I want to thank Tom and Bre for arranging the invitation. I love your Church and the gorgeous music.

I bring you greetings from your brothers and sisters in Nicaragua in a very poor community. For eleven years I've been privileged to work with a group of women – poor campesinas, peasant women – who had lost everything during a brutal war in which 40,000 Nicaraguans lost their lives over 10 years. These women had all been displaced by the war and had come together for protection in a very poor community. They had lost everything. They were all single mothers, most of them widows, abandoned, only one of the forty women had a partner that was living with her.

These women lost everything again when hurricane Joan came through their community in 1988. They had nothing. They had only their will to survive. They decided they had to come together to survive or they wouldn't make it, and they all had children to feed, to clothe, to house. As they built their lives, with international help -- with help from people such as yourselves -- they built their houses, and they made a carpentry shop because they wanted to learn a non-traditional skill, so they could begin the process of survival and earn a little bit of income to give their children the necessary food every day. They decided they needed a health clinic for themselves and other women, and they invited me to help them do this, so I have been accompanying the women for eleven years.

This area of Nicaragua, the northeast area, was a zone of very, very heavy fighting during the Contra war, and continued to be afterwards because as Contras were demobilized and settled in the area they were promised many things by the governments, but all of them were betrayed. They were used as the surrogate army of the United States and then they were discarded as so much rubbish. These men took up arms again and continued the war in our area. So we had groups of people, well, creating havoc. The women with whom I work in the Cooperative decided not only did they want to survive, but they wanted no more war. Each of them had suffered so much, not only losing the few little bits of land that they had, but they all lost members of their families, some to one side of the conflict, and others to the other side of the conflict. They all lost children. If a woman in the countryside has 10 children, 5 of them have died. As a mother, I can imagine nothing worse than losing a child – never mind 5 or 6 children.

These women, having suffering all this, decided that they wanted to create a community of peace. No more war, no more widows, no more orphans. So they and I put some energy into how we were going to turn this very polarized war zone into a zone of peace. I think the best way to describe the process is to share a couple of stories with you, if I may.

This is such a story. We had decided that we would learn non-violent conflict resolution and non-violent actions. So we did role-playing and we often practiced. And we had lots of opportunities to realize our practice. One day I was driving on the road – we have a pick-up truck, '88 Toyota Land Cruiser, it's our everything, it's our transportation, our ambulance, everything – I was driving the 50-60 kilometers from Rio Blanco to our village, Mulukukú. Two men stopped me on the road. They had AK-47 automatic rifles (30 bullets per second), and they were masked. I stopped (of course). One guy puts his weapon in the window. I looked at him and said “Buenos tardes”. He didn't answer me. And I said, “What would you like?” He said, “Money”. “Oh, money,” I said, “alright.” I pulled my wallet out. I said, “Yes, I have money, but as you know, I'm the nurse in Mulukukú, and this money is not my money. It belongs to women of the Cooperative. If you take it they will not be able to buy food for their children. I'll tell you what, I'll split it, give you half, and take the other half to them. He said “OK”. When I got back to the clinic, the women said, “He must be new to the job. He should have taken all of it!”

On another occasion, we heard that we were on a death list that was circulating in the village, and that gunmen might soon be coming to us in the night to kill us. We discussed among ourselves “how are we going to change the agenda?” My co-worker Gretel said, “Well, I'm going to make tamales, and when they come in the night, I'm going to hand each of them a tamale.” I said, “Well, I don't know how to make tamales, but I'll make a thermos of coffee.” So every night for about ten days, the last thing I did before I put my wood fire out was to make a thermos of fresh coffee, and have a sugar bowl – because Nicaraguans love sugar in their coffee.

So I did this, and one night, in the middle of the night, I was called, “¡Doña Dorotea!” (“Doña” is a form of respect: People come to kill me and they call me Doña!) And so… “¡Doña Dorotea! ¡Doña Dorotea!” I said, “¿Quién es?” thinking it was an emergency in the clinic. “¡Tres Ochenta!” Well, Three Eighty was the name – the number – that Bermudas, a Contra leader, was given at the School of the Americas. So I thought, holy moley, I'm done for.

I put on a robe and slippers and went downstairs. Here are these two guys, masked and armed to the teeth. They wanted money. They went through my house and only found one cordoba. They were furious. “Why do you have only one cordoba?” I said “Well, I have one cordoba because I had to give all the money to patients for transfers, because the Church of the Brethren, Manchester College, was there for a two-week delegation and they had finished one week and we had all these patients to send to hospital to see specialists. And I have only one cordoba left for the week.”

So they got very angry. They accused me of various things, like bringing in arms. I said “I don't touch arms – I'm terrified of guns.” So they said, “We will kill you if you don't give us 10,000 cordobas.” I said “well, I don't have 10,000 cordobas, but you will do what you have to do, and I will do what I have to do.” So I figured, well, this is it -- but I'm going to go out saying the 23rd Psalm. Do you think I could think of one word! I was so scared. Well, all right then, the Magnificat -- the song of Mary. One word? Nothing. I said, Well, God, you know them anyway. Then I just said, please take care of my son and mother. And I was prepared, as best I could at that moment.

Well, needless to say, they didn't kill me. They kept wrapping a noose around my neck, and I was pulling the noose off screaming bloody murder… they'd stick the butt of the gun in my side (I was bruised the next day)… I was screaming bloody murder, but of course no one heard me because I had to have this little teeny house on the hill where I could be with the monkeys and birds! In any event, for some reason or other, they didn't kill me, they didn't make any more threats, and they walked away. As they were going down the hill behind my little house, I remembered the coffee! I said “Hey, come back!” And the chief said “What! Why?” I said, “Would you like a cup of coffee?” Anyway, no, he declined it.

About three years ago the last death list was circulated in the village. About a dozen names were on it – leaders in the community. One of our patients got wind of this list…

I have to tell you about him. He was a man who, about five or six years ago, was demobilized from the Contra. He had been a chief. He came into the clinic with a great deal of pain in his face and some paralysis, because he had a bullet in his head. I said to him, “we'll make and appointment with a neurologist at the regional hospital in Matagalpa, and you come back in about a week and we'll have the appointment, and then you'll go Matagalpa. He said “I can't go to Matagalpa”. I said, “Well, why not?” He said, “Well, I've just taken amnesty, and if I leave the village, someone will kill me, or they'll arrest me.” (Sometimes amnesty doesn't work in Nicaragua.) So I ended up taking him to his first appointment, and various co-workers of mine took him and accompanied him. So we ended up being non-violent bodyguards for this ex-Contra who had done many, many terrible things. He began to trust us. He brought his wife. Then she brought their children. Then his brothers and sister. When he brought his mother to us, I knew we had gained his trust completely. So we were serving the family throughout these years.

As I say, about three years ago, the last death list (that I know of) was circulated. So this patient, this ex-Contra leader, got wind of it. He then went to the mountains to the camp of these ex-Contras, and he said to them, “You can't kill those people. They're the only ones taking care of our families.” Well, needless to say, the ex-Contra group disbanded, or went some place else to create havoc, and the ex-Contra chief had saved our lives.

My co-worker Gretel, one of the founders of the Cooperative, and her husband have a farm. It's about two kilometers outside of town. In 1989 Gretel and the head worker on the farm were walking in a field talking about something about the field, and this was the time that the Contras were demobilized. This one guy came out of the bush, wild-eyed, with a machete. He attacked Zefarino, the worker, chopped his head off, and the head landed in Gretel's arms. Subsequently, the man who did this act went to prison and was there for many years. Gretel dreamed about Zefarino's head in her arms for years, every night. While the man was in prison, he sent several threats saying that he was going to kill Gretel, her husband, and their children. The man came out of prison. He continued his threats. Gretel and her husband told their children that they couldn't come to the village because it was dangerous. The children couldn't even come to the village for holidays. They had to stay in the cities. One day about a year and a half ago, Gretel was walking from the Women's Center on the one road through town to her finca – to her farm (I speak Spanglish!) – and coming toward her was this man, recently released from prison. She stopped in front of him and she said, “Will you come to lunch at my house?” At that instant, Gretel lost her fear, she never had the nightmare again, and the man stopped making threats and became a peaceful member of the community. And subsequently we began serving him and his family.

The night before I left Nicaragua (as Tom mentioned, I had to leave the country because I ran afoul of the President of the country of Nicaragua – it has become a sin to serve the poor, it has become illegal to serve the poor!), the night I left my village to go to Managua we were going to have a little prayer service at Thanksgiving. We invited the Mennonite pastor, who was very friendly to us, and the Roman Catholic priest, a wonderful fellow from Rome who recently came to the village. We were going to have this little prayer service. I thought it was just going to be the Cooperative, about 50 women, and some neighbors. About 2,000 people showed up! I don't know where they came from. Word got out… they were there. They started making testimonies at 4:00 p.m. about how our clinic had helped them – this life saved, that life saved – and how the women of the Cooperative had created peace in the zone. I was wearing my standard uniform (it's not like this nice cool weather in NJ – I love it, this lovely eastern Fall weather), my uniform being shorts, sneakers, and a scrub top, and my scrub top was drenched with tears from people saying “Oh Doña Dorotea, you have to leave… we love you so much…” I made a little meditation (taking quite a few liberties with Matthew 5) that I read to the women that night, and I'd like to share it with you:

Blessed are the mothers who struggle daily for a few tortillas and a little fresh cheese for their children.

Blessed are the children who must go to sleep with hunger.

Blessed are the men who by war know only violence, and unfulfilled promises, who offer their hands in friendship to former enemies.

Blessed are the violent men, because they have God trapped within.

Blessed are the health promoters of the mountains – curranderos, parterres, raiseros – who struggle with so little to ease the pain of the campesinos, the campesinas, and their children.

Blessed are the women who raise their heads and declare, “No more to abuse, to illiteracy, to early death! I am the daughter of God, made by Her hands, and in Her image.”

Blessed are the poor and their friends, who together are building the beloved community where there will be no hunger, no violence, where the earth and all God's creatures will live in peace and joy!

Amen.