Nicaragua
Closer to the US... and to God?
Envío team
More than once, the name of the “Blessed Virgin” has been invoked in the service of God” was founded in the mid-1970’s, and has its origins in the charismatic tradition active in the Catholic Church since Vatican II—a conservative trend opposed to the popular church touched off by that same encyclical and, in fact, conceived of as a way to block the growing power of the popular church in Latin America in the late 1960s.
The City of God embraces a spiritualism that considers itself separate from and uninvolved in the reality of daily life. A study of the City of God by Noel Irías, published in the first edition of Crítica, a new monthly magazine published in Managua, says that City of God members believe they are God's chosen people, a divine army. Life for City of God adherents centers around a search for direct, individual communication with God—a search that may lead to visions and mystical “revelations.” Their political philosophy was essentially passive and uninvolved during the Somoza regime, and injustice was explained away as divinely dictated. City of God members are greatly concerned about satanic influence in this world and, according to Irías, are “convinced that the Sandinistas are possessed by the devil.”
City in a Larger WorldCity of God figures in Nicaragua have close ties to a similar group in Costa Rica, the “Sword of God.” They are also close to a group based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, known as the “Word of God.” One of the Michigan devotees, Thomas Monaghan, owner of both Domino's Pizza chain and the Detroit Tigers baseball team and prime financial backer of the antiabortion “Operation Rescue” campaign, visited Nicaragua shortly after the April 25 inauguration of Violeta Chamorro and promised several million dollars to Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo for the construction of a new cathedral for Managua. He also plans to open a pizza restaurant in Managua. Monaghan has a number of business interests in Honduras related to his pizza chain and has been a financial backer of the contras for a number of years. Construction on the cathedral is scheduled to start soon.
Nicaragua's Religious RightThe UNO electoral victory has catapulted a number of City of God members (estimated at about 300 total in Nicaragua) to high-level influential positions in the new government—particularly positions that are ideological in nature. The minister and deputy minister of education, Sofonías Cisneros and Humberto Belli, both belong to the City of God and education is certainly one area where the group will be able to make its biggest impact. Belli has already spoken of introducing an “education with Christian values.” Even though the Sandinista minister of education was a Jesuit priest, many of the values taught in public schools during the last ten years were denounced as “anti-Christian” by Belli and others.
Other people close to the City of God with influence or positions in the UNO government include Carlos Mántica, City of God founder and currently a close personal adviser to Violeta Chamorro; Ernesto Salmerón, Minister of Health; Gladys Ramírez, Deputy Minister of Culture; and Jaime Chamorro of La Prensa. Some Nicaraguan political observers also include Violeta Chamorro herself and Central Bank President Francisco Mayorga.
The City of God has some cult-like characteristics, described by a former member: “You become separated from society and the world, from your friends. When you enter the church, you only go to parties in the community, you go out only with other members... I made good friends in the community and after I left I'd see them on the streets and they acted like they'd never known me.”
Noted Nicaraguan sociologist Oscar René Vargas argues that “the ideologues of the Chamorro government want to create a political-mystical-religious movement that serves as ideology in the new counterrevolutionary phase they want to begin as soon as possible.” What to expect from this “new” ideology? For one thing, an idealization of women's traditional role as mothers and in the household—the figure holding the family together. Violeta Chamorro is held up as a traditional woman thrust by circumstance into a nontraditional role and lauded as someone who has not only kept her own family together, but will be able to heal the Nicaraguan family as a whole. The fact that many Nicaraguan women are the sole or primary economic support of their households does not mesh well with this nostalgic vision of the ideal family. “UNO and the Catholic Church want to see women at home all day, waiting for their husbands to come home,” commented a young woman at the March 8th Women's Center in Managua's poor northeastern sector. “But a lot of us don't have husbands at home, and working is a matter of survival.”
Another expression of the new government’s ideology is already increasing emphasis on the Catholic hierarchy as setting the moral standard in the “new Nicaragua.” The government has provided free space for broadcasting Cardinal Obando's Sunday Masses on the state television station, and before Violeta Chamorro moved into her offices, she had the executive building blessed in a ceremony that all employees of the central government offices were required to attend.
Individualism is also being touted over the collectivism promoted by the Sandinistas. A peasant woman who belongs to a cooperative just north of Masaya told envío that she has had trouble with her parish priest since the February elections. “He tells us organizing in a cooperative is a sin,” she says, “and many women here are confused and frightened by such talk.”
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