Part 1. Bread and Roses…and Coffee too!

Part 1 of the diary of Maylin Heard a member of a coffee brigade to Nicaragua 1986 organised by the UK Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign (NSC).

In the 1980s, as the US military, economic and political war on Nicaragua intensified, more and more men were being drafted into the military resulting in a shortage of agricultural labourers especially coffee pickers.

International brigades from around the world travelled to Nicaragua to help to fill this gap. But even more important was the role of brigadistas when they returned home having acted as witnesses to the realities of the Sandinista Revolution and the suffering and destruction caused by the multifaceted US war.

Maylin Heard, a peace activist from Bath, England, was a member of one of the ten coffee brigades organised by the UK Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign (NSC) that spent four weeks picking coffee on a state-owned farm.

The brigade was called ‘Bread and Roses’, a name originating from a 1912 strike of women textile workers in Massachusetts, calling not only for fair wages but also dignified conditions.

The following are diary excerpts Maylin sent to friends and family during the first few weeks of her stay.

17 November 1986: London to Managua via Moscow, Shannon (Ireland), and Havana on Aeroflot

After two hours and attempting 101 positions in which to sleep in an airline seat I have decided to give up and try writing instead. It is 4am GMT, and I am en route from Shannon in Ireland to Cuba, where we expect to arrive at 12.30.

This journey started at 7.45am when we left Bath for Heathrow Airport, an hour’s journey. At Heathrow, we were seen off by a representative from the Nicaraguan Embassy and had our photos taken for press releases to be sent to local newspapers in the places we come from. Look out for something in the Bath Chronicle!

The flight from London to Moscow was diabolical but the worst part was the take-off and landing. I had a splitting headache most of the time but was only sick when we landed. The vegetarian lunch that we ordered through the travel agent never materialised and we spent our time scraping rice and peas from the side of beef something or other.

Well, our 3.5 hours stay in Cuba wasn’t so exciting. There wasn’t much that seemed revolutionary in Havana Airport – unlike Sandino Airport in Managua, where the first thing we saw was a large FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberacion National) on the side of a mountain. There were military tents and gun emplacements all around the airport. All along the route into town there were revolutionary slogans.

18 November 1986: Settling into our new home in the mountains

“We have been warned not to have our photos taken holding the guns of the militia; this is to avoid giving credence to accusations that we are being trained as guerrillas to start a revolution back in the UK!” [Margaret Thatcher, a staunch ally of US president Ronald Reagan, was the UK Prime Minister at the time].

We are staying in a cramped hostel, five bunk beds in a dormitory. We have had a briefing with CNASP (the government institution responsible for liaising with international solidarity organisations). We leave for the mountains tomorrow where we will be working on an UPE (state farm) called San Jose, 6km from Matagalpa.

Well it’s 8pm and we are settled into our new home after our 80km trip into the mountains. The bus was amazing but the road not so much! The windows were open, and it was wonderfully breezy. Fantastic scenery. Nearer the UPE, we changed to a lorry as the road was rougher. It was exciting, fantastic, standing in the back of the lorry dodging exotic trees, rocking backwards and forwards along the deep ruts, seeing this indescribable country opening up to us. The air is fresh and clean, and I have already caught the sun.

We are not sleeping on shelves in a barn like the two previous UK coffee brigades but housed in a broken-down villa of a general in the armed forces of brutal Somoza dictatorship that ruled Nicaragua for 43 years. He now presumably presides in Miami. It is crumbly and basic but wonderful. I am sitting on the porch under a weak electric lamp, (one of only two) while the local kids are playing some energetic games that resemble American football, except there is no ball.

We have established a women’s space with (practically) no bad feeling. We have a reasonable amount of space each and have strung up lines for hanging clothes. There is one shower and one loo and a wash basin. All complete luxury compared to what we were expecting.

There are a few Nicaraguan families in the same villa as us and about 180 people on the UPE altogether. They are very friendly, especially the children. The food is ten minute walk uphill – rice, beans, tortilla. Breakfast is at 6am, lunch at 12 noon and dinner at 5pm. When we come back from dinner, it is dark and fireflies are twinkling in the grass. There are bananas, grapefruit, clementines and lemons growing everywhere. It feels much later than it is because it has been dark for so long.

Jane and I continued working on the banner with a very large audience. We now have a logo and our brigade name in Spanish: Pan y Rosas (Bread and Roses) and all our names around the edge.

Hal, our interpreter, went off to agonise over the translation and handed the draft over to Gonzalez who works on the UPE but is also a poet (along with half the population). We had some spare material and tried to persuade the children to make banners too but only one would; it was beautiful, and we hung it up.

19 November 1986: Rows of coffee become a coffee jungle; we learn about revolutionary hero Carlos Fonseca, one of the founding members of the FSLN.

We are sitting on the porch listening to a Nicaraguan group who have come to play and sing for us: three guitars and a bow (as in bow and arrow). What a day it’s been and we are almost dropping. There are things to discuss about bedtime and getting up times, which widely differ.…but a 6am start it is.

We had been given our instructions and shown which rows to pick. Sounds straightforward doesn’t it? Well it was so steep that we had to climb on our hands and knees with day packs on our backs, baskets around our waists, sacks in our hands, and hats on our heads.

Within about three bushes, most of us had converged having ‘lost’ our rows! They seemed to be at such odd angles. Plus, [the term] rows was a bit of a euphemism, the vegetation was so dense it was a coffee jungle that we had to tunnel our way through. The coffee is planted under other trees, such as banana, grapefruit, and orange, so it was a real jungle. Add to this the season had not properly begun, and we seemed to average about two beans per bush.

We kept having to shout for Rene, our supervisor, to tell us where we were supposed to be picking. Our conversations went like this ‘This is my row’, ‘Shouldn’t there be two other people between you and me,’ ‘My row has disappeared’. At one point, we were picking on a 60-degree slope in good parts, slippery with wet banana leaves, and we were supposed to get down with all our gear to pick coffee. In fact, we managed about 12 beans between us because that’s all there was!

Some of us went down to the bottom of the slope, where there was a stream with the most amazing turquoise fireflies. Anyway, worse than coming down the slope we were told we had to climb back up it. I’m going to have limbs of steel after all this!

Generally, the lingering impression is of the incredible scenery on the slopes, the clear air of the mountains, the amazing trees dripping with fruit, and butterflies bigger than your hand. And when the wind blows, which it does sporadically in quite powerful bursts, it was just like a Rousseau painting, the sense of movement is just awe inspiring.

Our guide Rene had a belt with what looked like a large CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) symbol, Lucia, [a Spanish speaking member of the brigade], explained what it meant to us and he let us take photos of him showing it off when we stopped at a disused swimming pool (miles from anywhere in the middle of the coffee), lost and eating fruit.

We had picked 5 ½ latas between us, the average for one Nicaraguan when the coffee is riper. After lunch and clothes washing, boot cleaning and showers, some of us went to a meeting at the school.

It was set for 3pm but actually happened at 4.30pm. It was a mixture of boredom when there were long readings and quotes in Spanish and excitement when they were making revolutionary speeches and singing songs. During the meeting, we were told that although Sunday is a day off, any volunteers can pick, and the proceeds will go to our companero/as in El Salvador. They also said that a Carlos Fonseca (one of the founders of the FSLN, killed in combat 1976) brigade was being formed, made up of those who on average pick eight latas a day.

PS: A journalist from the daily newspaper Nuevo Diario drove up to interview us today.

The school is one room with long benches painted red and black inside and out. Carlos Fonseca, (pictured below) one of the founders of the FSLN, came from Matagalpa, so is a local hero. There are posters everywhere commemorating the 10^th anniversary of his death and urging everyone to remember and stand with him by picking coffee. They shout his name, and everyone shouts back ‘Presente’.