Perez family story (adapted from recorded testimony taken November 2002):

In the 1980s, Florentina and her husband, Jose Angel, were leaders in the formation of the cooperative - Lagartillo.  It was on land that had belonged to a Guardia lieutenant. This coop was made available to many landless people in the area.  For two years, Jose Angel traveled the 3 kilometers every day to work the land since there were no houses there yet. But in November 1984 the contra passed by LAS LAJAS where Jose, Florentina, and the children lived, kidnapped several people, and left a death threat for the Perezs.  Soon after that the Perezs and several other families moved into the school building at the cooperative, hoping they would be safer. They dug trenches and divided up 24 hour guard duty. At about 8 a.m. on December 31st, the contra attacked Lagartillo.  The coop had about 5 minutes warning. Jose Angel and Zunilda, their 20-year-old daughter - crippled with polio and just one week home from school for the holidays - took up guard duty.  Florentina helped lead the other children into the hills - hills they still did not know - and ran terrified for three hours to Achuapa.  In Achuapa, Florentina took her 4 children down by the river and quietly waited for news.  She soon learned that Jose Angel, Zunilda, and her 14-year -old nephew, Javier Perez, had been killed. At age one Florentina had suffered a horrible burning accident to her feet and hands and was in misery for months.  As an adult she survived grinding poverty...thinking that was just the way life was.  Then she almost lost Zunilda to polio and then did lose a son, Osmar, at age 6 to an overdose of anesthesia when the doctor was setting his broken arm.  This loss of Osmar had nearly destroyed Florentina.  She dreamed of him night after night after night and could think of nothing else.  She eventually, with the urging of Jose, prayed for help. Prayed for a way to welcome life again....and did find that help. Florentina truly wasn’t sure she could survive this new loss. She said she was dead inside for at least a year, but credits a Witness for Peace stateside speaking tour with the beginning of her recovery.  She traveled with Chantal Blanche, a Swiss woman whose husband, Mauricio Demiere, had been killed by the contra in 1985. Florentina found that telling her story over and over to concerned, caring people triggered a new energy.  She felt she was doing something about the atrocity and she returned to Nicaragua with a new sense of purpose. Florentina and her four remaining children did return to Lagartillo.  Lagartillo continues to be a very pro-Sandinista community and they report that this small community has no contra sympathizers.  They have a new, small elementary school in the heart of the community, a community that has fewer children per family than most Nicaraguan families since they took family planning seriously.  Each house has running water...right into the sink in the kitchen!  This is partially thanks to a donation from Florida Quakers that helped dig a well and piping system to the houses.  They’ve had water in the houses for about a year now; until then Florentina spent a major part of each day hauling water. The well system is on the outskirts of the community and people have to go there and pump the water each day. They seem to have a functioning system of who pumps when and for how long...based on the number of people in the household. We accompanied one woman who was beginning her hour and a half session! While they have no electricity they do have several solar panels on the cultural center, a small rectangular one room wooden structure with a small stage and several light bulbs. It’s clearly a community that continues to be well organized and has put international support to good use.  (Many failed international projects - empty clinics and schools - dot the country.  One man in Jalapa maintains that poorly thought out international donations actually hurt the country by slowing down the internal organizing process.) Florentina reports that she continues to fight depression and after all she’s been through, she wonders if she will ever die.  However, there is a spark in this community, a chance for a better life.  As a child Florentina was the only child in her family with shoes, her burned feet meant she needed what her parents couldn’t afford to give the other children. During the literacy campaign in the early 80s Florentina was excited to learn to read and write; there hadn’t been schools in her poor community. The people of Lagartillo (overwhelmingly of the Perez family) somehow have managed to keep the vision of the Sandinista revolution - to work for the well-being of everyone, not just their own personal well-being.  For this reason, Lagartillo remains a nugget of hope in Nicaragua.