by Jane Furchgott

In 1979, Nicaraguans overthrew their president, Anastasio Somoza, the last of a dictatorial dynasty. The new socialist Sandinista government that followed was perceived as a cold war threat by President Reagan, who reacted by mining Nicaraguan harbors, setting up a trade embargo, and illegally funding the Contras, a guerrilla force working against the Sandinista government.

The destruction and atrocities of the Contras were frequently reported in the news. The Richland Citizens for Peace and Justice decided to take positive and friendly action in support of the Nicaraguan people.

1989 – Jane Furchgott presents a book of photos and letters from Richland Center people to Santa Teresa mayor Luis Palacios.

With the help of the Wisconsin Coordinating Council on Nicaragua the group wrote to the Nicaraguan Embassy requesting a sister city for Richland Center. Wisconsin and Nicaragua had been sister states ever since Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress in the 1960s.
In January 1987, the Embassy sent a letter twinning Richland Center with Santa Teresa. The cities were similar in size, about five thousand people, each the seat of a larger municipal agricultural area.

The new Sister City Project (SCP) focused on friendship, information, and aid. There was much interest in sending material aid to Santa Teresa. Drives were held to collect medicines, school supplies, and clothing, which were shipped to embargoed Nicaragua through a Christian ecumenical organization. In the late 80s, the project raised money for desks in Santa Teresa’s primary school, for additional high school classrooms, and for the roof of the new pre-school.

Informing and educating people in Richland Center about Nicaragua and Central America was a big part of the SCP’s early efforts. We sponsored Nicaraguan speakers, U.S. speakers who had visited Nicaragua’s war zone with Witness for Peace, and speakers on the war in El Salvador. We encouraged people to write letters to Congress to end aid for the Contras and the death squad regime in El Salvador. One Salvadoran refugee who spoke is now the SCP’s vice president.

Efforts at friendship began with letters and pictures received from Santa Teresa children and solidified with our visits to Santa Teresa. Kathie Swanson from Rockbridge was our first traveler to Santa Teresa in 1988. I took my first trip there in 1989, armed with the present tense of Spanish, which I had learned in the weekly Spanish night class at the Richland campus set up at the SCP’s request.

Some knowledgeable people think that the active sister city friendship movement of the 1980’s helped prevent a possible U.S. invasion of Nicaragua.

Santa Teresa mayor Luis Palacios asked us to send an observer to the 1990 national elections, which were under world scrutiny as to fairness. Our first of many benefit dinners and dances raised money to send librarian Tom Bachman to observe Santa Teresa’s elections. In a surprise upset, conservative Violeta Chamorro defeated Sandinista incumbent Daniel Ortega.

In late 1990 ex-president Ortega was scheduled to visit Richland Center as part of a U.S. tour. A week before the planned visit, the Gulf War broke out and Ortega canceled his tour. Public interest in Nicaragua evaporated with the shock of the new war. 1991 was the low point of public involvement in the Sister City Project.
But we didn’t give up. In 1992 we raised money to bring Jader Castro, a rural health educator at the Santa Teresa Health Center, to Richland Center for three weeks. He talked to local health care people and stayed with families. Jader emphasized the need for clean water as the top health priority in rural Santa Teresa.

In the 1990s, the SCP concentrated on raising money for rural health, working with Jader and the Health Center. We raised money for wells, latrines, health volunteer training, and health care books for the rural clinics.

In 1995, SCP member Neil Bard took Richland Center mayor Tom McCarthy with him to Santa Teresa. On their return, the Richland Center City Council gave Santa Teresa official sister city status. Dr. Bard began the tradition of carrying a suitcase of basic medicines to Santa Teresa as part of our luggage.

In 1997, Neil Bard received a passionate letter from Santa Teresa mayor José Martinez requesting our help protecting the sea turtles and aiding the poor villages of the Chacocente Wildlife Refuge, at the south end of the Santa Teresa municipality. We had never even heard of this refuge before. How could we help??

To be continued in the next issue.....

Elba Álvarez from La Palma, Chacocente