Extended Familiares
I have just returned from Estelí, Nicaragua, and a visit to the family of Dora and Mayra. Three of Dora’s sons, Mayra’s brothers, currently live there, and it is the original home of the Gamez’s with whom I keep house at the moment.
Buanegre, Dora’s oldest son, works now as a lab technician in a private clinic. He studied medicine in Cuba on scholarship during the Sandinista years. Her other son Leonel, owns a jewelry shop, where he and his wife Celia work with their sons to produce jewelry and encourage others to become Jehovah’s Witnesses (something neither Dora or I understand very well, hehe). Her youngest son, Walter, works in one of the many cigar factories located in Estelí, which became home to the majority of Cuban tobacco enterprises after the Cuban Revolution.
Today I accompanied Dora to the House of Heroes and Martyr’s, which while a good experience, was phenomenally dark. This is a museum, run by mothers of young men and women killed in the revolution. The one room museum is about 30 by 60 feet, and is full of photographs and belongings of all the young people killed by Somoza’s guard or by the Contras. Walking the walls with Dora was particularly difficult, since as an Estelíana, she was able to point out her nephew, her children’s classmates, a young man who wanted to marry Mayra, a boy who she saw down the street just before he was killed. The whole experience was far more than enough to bring home the reality and tragedy and waste and vision and dedication present in the revolution, in a painful and acute way.
But what has impressed me most here, is how I have been taken right in, by Dora’s sons, their neighbors, their families. Buanegre gave Dora and myself the bed in his one room apartment, Walter gave us a tour of the factory, Leonel and his wife showed me how to make a ring and then gave it to me. They have all been more than happy to share, to talk, to ask questions, to engage.
In Spanish, the word for relatives is ‘familiares’. Familiars, and that is really how people treat you. Despite having met me ten minutes before, I am being treated as family all the time. What more could one ask for?
Buanegre, Dora’s oldest son, works now as a lab technician in a private clinic. He studied medicine in Cuba on scholarship during the Sandinista years. Her other son Leonel, owns a jewelry shop, where he and his wife Celia work with their sons to produce jewelry and encourage others to become Jehovah’s Witnesses (something neither Dora or I understand very well, hehe). Her youngest son, Walter, works in one of the many cigar factories located in Estelí, which became home to the majority of Cuban tobacco enterprises after the Cuban Revolution.
Today I accompanied Dora to the House of Heroes and Martyr’s, which while a good experience, was phenomenally dark. This is a museum, run by mothers of young men and women killed in the revolution. The one room museum is about 30 by 60 feet, and is full of photographs and belongings of all the young people killed by Somoza’s guard or by the Contras. Walking the walls with Dora was particularly difficult, since as an Estelíana, she was able to point out her nephew, her children’s classmates, a young man who wanted to marry Mayra, a boy who she saw down the street just before he was killed. The whole experience was far more than enough to bring home the reality and tragedy and waste and vision and dedication present in the revolution, in a painful and acute way.
But what has impressed me most here, is how I have been taken right in, by Dora’s sons, their neighbors, their families. Buanegre gave Dora and myself the bed in his one room apartment, Walter gave us a tour of the factory, Leonel and his wife showed me how to make a ring and then gave it to me. They have all been more than happy to share, to talk, to ask questions, to engage.
In Spanish, the word for relatives is ‘familiares’. Familiars, and that is really how people treat you. Despite having met me ten minutes before, I am being treated as family all the time. What more could one ask for?
posted by Hilary King at
6:58 PM
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