Cover Story: Building a Free Nicaragua

Despite her dangly, whimsical earrings and soulful, sun-ripened smile, Donna Leist is a diehard fighter.

Toting an “I Love Nicaragua” key chain and a Nicaraguan flag on her car, this Cincinnatian has dedicated her life to the cause of impoverished and underrepresented Nicaraguans.

As a member of the Nicaragua Network and coordinator of the Cincinnati Central American Task Force, Leist, 57, has been involved in giving voice to Nicaraguan environmental and indigenous concerns since 1985, when she first visited the country. Since then she’s returned more than half a dozen times and witnessed the souring of this vibrant country often overlooked by most Americans.

Leist says she was initially drawn to Nicaragua — sandwiched between Honduras and Costa Rica in the tropics of Central America — because, as a child of the ’60s, she wanted to savor the experience of a country that had won its revolution. With visions of peace and love in her eyes, Leist embraced the Nicaraguan Socialist movement led by the Sandinistas, which brought free medical care and education to the predominately rural populace.

“During this time, there was so much hope because the revolution had succeeded, and everyone seemed to understand that each person was worthy of respect,” Leist says. “I have never been to any city, Latin America or any place else, where I’ve felt so safe. Unfortunately, it’s not like that anymore.”

Much to her chagrin, the nation is no longer run by the revolutionaries but by a coalition of parties supported by the United States for the sole purpose of disposing the Sandinistas, who remain the nation’s largest single political party.

Through its renewed relationship with the United States, Nicaragua’s history of tumult lives on as the globalization of corporate interests bears down on the country, according to Leist.

After Haiti, Nicaragua is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Leist commits most of her attention to the eastern half of the nation, where unemployment ranges up to 90 percent and hunger is ballooning.

The biggest issues in Nicaragua today are proposed plans to build a canal and oil pipeline through the part of the country containing the largest intact tract of rain forest north of the Amazon, Leist says. These inter-oceanic plans would ravage the lush ancestral lands guaranteed to the natives by the Nicaraguan constitution, she says.

The projects would also fall short of mending the floundering economy, because only a few thousand jobs would be created in a land where more than a million are unemployed. It’s also predicted that the projects would unleash torrents of sweatshops into the area.

“In my opinion, the U.S. is interested in making money for corporate interests and not interested in helping the people of any country, not just Nicaragua,” Leist says. “I wouldn’t say the U.S. is responsible for all the bad things that have happened in Nicaragua, but they are responsible for a lot, so I feel that it’s our duty to stop them — to right the wrongs.”

The Nicaragua Network has undertaken a variety of projects to do just that. Besides regular means of humanitarian aid, they’re helping the natives explore commercial alternatives, such as locally run fisheries, that would better preserve their land and agricultural heritage than the canal and oil industries. They’ve also succeeded in introducing solar energy to light schools and provide solar ovens throughout Nicaragua’s countryside. One of the Network’s major accomplishments was outfitting the coast’s far-flung communities with solar-powered radios to foster security and communications.

The challenge of organizing in Nicaragua is it has a variety of cultures without a history of working together, and they don’t always agree on issues, specifically on the question of the canal, according to Leist.

“When I think of the people I’ve met whose lands and lives would be forever compromised, my heart aches,” she says. “But I don’t live their reality, and I can’t make their decisions.”

This is a distinguishing mark of the Nicaragua Network, whose volunteers take a back seat and let local people decide what is needed.

“We try to ensure that they have the means to better control their own destinies,” Leist says. “We stand in solidarity with something that’s already happening in the country, because we feel that if we go in and tell them what to do, it’s just another form of colonialism.”

Through her efforts to aid the Nicaraguan people, Leist has come to identify more and more with their perspective on life.

“Every time I go down there, it’s like a renewal for me, because I’m with people who don’t have all the artificial things that we deal with every day and make us sometimes forget what’s really important,” she says.

Leist’s cheerful, turquoise sundress from Nicaragua makes her nostalgic.

“As corny as it sounds, these dresses really remind me of the Nicaraguan people because they’re bright and in all different colors and full of life,” she says. “The thing that impresses me so much about Nicaragua is no matter how bad things get, they can always find a smile and a helping hand for someone who’s worse off than they are.”

Sister Alice Gerdeman of the Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center has worked with Leist on a variety of Latin America projects.

“Donna is a phenomenal lady with a profound sense of what a just world would look like, especially in Nicaragua,” Gerdeman says. “She puts her whole heart and all her talents into this cause.”

With plans to return to Nicaragua in November, Leist isn’t letting anything keep her from embracing her vision in the countryside “where I left my heart.”

This article appears in Jun 25 – Jul 1, 2003.