INTERVIEW: New film documents role of women in Nicaragua’s civil war
Photo: ¡Las Sandinistas!, directed by Jenny Murray, details the role women played in the civil war that disrupted the nation of Nicaragua. Photo courtesy of Film Sales Co. / Provided by Film Forum press site with permission.
¡Las Sandinistas!, a new film from director Jenny Murray, details the role women played during the revolutionary Sandinista movement in Nicaragua. Detailing the events from the 1970s up to the present day, the documentary offers audience members the chance to hear from women who fought for social reform and took up arms in their violent struggle against the dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle and later the Contras. The revealing interviews, coupled with gripping archival footage, offer an intimate portrait of what the front lines look like on the fight for human rights — a fight that often turned bloody.
“We started about four years ago, so it’s been quite a journey,” Murray said in a recent phone interview. “It was kind of a series of coincidences in my own life. I was going to visit a friend working on the border of Nicaragua and Costa Rica, and I came across an interview with [journalist] Sofía Montenegro, who is in the film. … I had studied Latin America in college — Latin American culture and history — and was always interested in the revolution, so when I had this chance to go, I started just looking into it and saw that the revolutionaries were in power, but that abortion had been federally banned. So I was interested in that and found this quote by Sofía, [which] led me to this interview where she talked about all the women who fought, and I was blown away.”
Murray had never heard the first-hand accounts of the many women who were in combat working for social reform. She did not realize so many corporate lawyers, teachers and farmers left everything and tried to make their country a place of justice, even by violent means.
Women constituted approximately 30 percent of the rebel combatants who took on the government. After Somoza’s fall, the Sandinistas were in power from 1979 to 1990, but continued to fight a guerrilla war against the Contras, who were backed by the United States. They left power in the early 1990s and in recent years reemerged as a political force in the country. Throughout the years, women have faced human rights violations and unfathomable levels of violence; the stories in ¡Las Sandinistas! are difficult to hear and mindboggling to comprehend.
The photos from the historical record greatly influenced Murray. She was struck by the hope on people’s faces, even despite the challenging circumstances, and also the violence and startling images of teenagers with AK-47’s.
“I began researching and read Margaret Randall’s books on the revolution, Sandino’s Daughters and Sandino’s Daughters Revisited,” she said. “One thing led to another, and I thought it really could make a film and that the stories were deeply important, and then I realized that many of them were disappearing.”
The release of the movie, which is currently playing New York City’s Film Forum, comes at a time when Nicaragua has been the subject of many news headlines. The fight for equality continues: President Daniel Ortega, a leader in the early Sandinista movement, now faces criticism for his policies and actions — some criticism coming from his former allies.
“At the time in 2014 and late 2013, there wasn’t a ton at that moment in the headlines about Nicaragua at all, but I did see that Ortega was in power,” Murray said. “Obviously there were a few policies that were controversial. Some former Sandinistas, like Dora María [Téllez], had, of course, left the party, and many of the women had left that I had researched about. Many were still with the party, of course.”
The connections between the events of the 1970s/1980s and today started to come into clear focus. Whether it was the #MeToo movement, the global struggle for women’s rights or the ascendancy of Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is featured in the film, the story of Nicaragua and the struggle of its people is still pertinent in 2018.
“When I found footage of [Sanders] in Nicaragua, it just seemed like I just couldn’t believe it, and then it seemed again that in the last six months, in the last year, that things had really broken up in a major way and very complicated ways,” the filmmaker said. “At the time, I never really envisioned that things would be exactly where they are today, for better or for worse in a lot of ways. There were protests in 2014 against the canal, and certain issues were already fomenting. I did feel that there was something brewing when we started our main shoot in 2014.”
The thesis of the 90-minute film is centered on the role women played in the revolution. One of the realities that Murray focuses on is their lack of rights, especially for women in the middle and lower classes.
“Many of the women had very little education; many were illiterate,” she said. “I think women have fought in different struggles throughout time, but [not] this number and this many women. I think there was this extraordinary moment where it was the 1970s, and women were starting to get involved in the workplace in very specific ways. There was this cultural feminism in the United States; some of the middle and upper-class women that fought obviously knew about feminism in the United States. Some had lived in the United States and Europe, and I think really women wanted to change their country. And it was this extraordinary moment where they happened to be allowed to do that.”
Murray reports in the film that there were no barriers for women to enter the struggle. Many of them started as students or farmers in movements for labor rights and social reform, and then they transitioned into combatants in a years-long struggle.
“I think there was such an emergence of a need for change,” Murray said. “You had liberation theology. You had priests and nuns that were involved in the struggle, so I think women found it very natural for whatever reason. All these circumstances collided, and women weren’t afraid to do it. … They were allowed and encouraged to join in these very major and substantial ways. I think they also hoped their own rights, their own equality would be a priority, too. I think many of them believed and dreamed that their participation would open a new set of possibilities for women.”
There are still many question marks attached to these beliefs and dreams.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
¡Las Sandinistas! is currently playing New York City’s Film Forum. Click here for more information and tickets.
