War gave machismo beating

Press, 3 September 1982, Page 6

War gave machismo beating

By

BERND DEBUSMANN,

of NZPA-Reuter Managua Rifle in hand, they commanded units from platoons to full battalions. They ran safe houses, performed intelligence missions, planned assassinations, manned barricades, monitored enemy communications. And many died, just like their men. In the final stages of the civil war Nicaraguan women accounted for a full 30 per cent of the combat strength of the Sandinist National Liberation Front, which fought the Right-wing dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza. No other revolution in recent history had so many women playing such active roles. Three years ago, after the dictatorship was finally crushed, the most distinctive aspect of the capital was the many women fighters strolling through the streets of Managua, the capital. Now they have vanished and there have been suggestions that the women of Nicaragua have failed to consolidate in peace what they won in the war. “No, this is not correct,” said Lea Guido, Nicaragua’s 29-year-old Health Minister. “After every revolution, there is a period of normalisation and you return to your home, your work, your vocation. After all, you can’t be a

guerrilla forever.” Judged by numbers alone, the participation of women in the structure of today’s Nicaraguan State does not fully reflect their huge involvement in the war. Only two women are in the 21-member Cabinet, eight are in the 51-member Council of State (Parliament), and none on the nine-man National Directorate which runs Nicaragua. The percentage of women in the Sandinists’ regular army, estimated at around 18,000, has shrunk from the days of the war. While the Sandinists reduced the number of women in the regular forces, there are entire female reserve battalions, and women account for a high proportion in units of the Popular Militia, planned to reach a strength of 300,000. The Sandinists say that the participation of women in civilian areas is just as important,.if not more so, than their share in military life. They take pride in citing figures to make the point: women account for 46 per cent of all workers in the public sector and hold 25 per cent of its senior posts. "Women’s achievements here cannot be assessed in purely numerical terms,” said Doris Tijerino, head of the Nicaraguan Women’s Association. “There has been

a fundamental change of attitude, a change which is reflected in the ideas men and women have of each other.” Nicaraguan women, and not only those who hold posts in the Sandinist administration, say that the years of common fight resulted in ’ men treating their female compatriots with a respect rarely shown in the old Nicaragua. Under Somoza the country was a bastion of machismo even by the standards of Latin America, a region where male dominance has long been an unquestioned article of faith. “We had no trouble with machismo in the ranks of the fighters, even when women were in command of men,” Mrs Tijerino said. She should know. One of the four women (and 30 men) to hold the rank of “guerrilla commander” in Nicaragua, she and two fellow guerrillas held off some 400 troops backed by tanks and rocketlaunchers for more than two hours in a battle for a Sandinist hide-out in Managua in 1969. But not even the leading ladies of the revolution think that machismo — the cult of aggressive masculinity which is deeply-rooted in Latin culture — is likely to disappear soon.

Nicaraguan women say that the phenomenon is more

prevalent among the older generation. Not nearly as active as the young in the fight against the dictatorship, middle-aged Nicaraguans seem to have more problems in breaking old habits than their children. But they are a minority. According to official statistics published in August, 64 per cent of Nicaragua’s 2.7 million population are aged under 24. “Machismo will not vanish overnight,” said the Deputy Foreign Minister, Nora Astorga. “Major changes in society take centuries, not just three years.” Mrs Astorga, a mother of five, used sex as a weapon in an operation which made international headlines in 1978 — the assassination of Perez Vega, a general in Somoza’s National Guard with a reputation for particular brutality. Pursued amorously by the general, she agreed to invite him to her house, where waiting Sandinist commandos were to kill him. “Things went exactly as planned,” she said in a published account of the' assassination. “I disarmed him, then got him undressed. At just the right moment, I gave the signal and the armed comrades burst in.” Now 33 and looking younger, Mrs Astorga is one of two Deputy Cabinet Ministers in Nicaragua.