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By Root 1078 0

in power during the 1980s, the Sandinistas began a countrywide literacy campaign, expanded education, and implemented universal health care programs. In spite of its formidable obstacles, the country still displays benefits from those wise social policies—particularly in the area of HIV education and prevention. For example, prostituted women here have the lowest HIV rates and highest condom compliance in the region. And during our visit we were able to see a remarkable program that educates local and national police about reproductive health. Salma and I witnessed a typical peer education session in which police cadets played their own version of La Lotería. There were quite a few women cadets, just as there had been several women involved in our meeting with the president.

It was heartening to see uniformed service members take their first, baby steps toward gender equality. Men in uniform constitute a cohort that is well known for reinforcing unhelpful notions of what it means to be a man. I believe that it is as equally abusive to men as it is to girls and women to constrain and confine them to behavior and roles dictated by social constructions of gender. I was reminded of the old feminist saw, “For every girl who wants to play football there’s a boy who wants an Easy-Bake oven.” In Nicaragua, women could join the police and win presidential elections, but I wondered if men and boys would ever be able to break out of their traditional roles of hypermasculinity in the new Nicaragua.

After years of strife, the country still has a long way to go to realize the open, equal society that seemed so deliciously possible in the early days of the revolution. Human rights abuses have occurred across the political spectrum, there have been reports of corruption, not all of the government’s policies have been beneficial to the people it serves, and patriarchal values still dominate norms. Teen pregnancy is shockingly common, and motherhood, even for girls as young as twelve, is considered the feminine ideal. An equally disappointing development in Nicaragua was a draconian law passed by the national assembly just months after my visit that criminalizes all abortions, even to save the life of the mother. Because of this cruel law, there have been widespread reports of doctors refusing to treat pregnant women with life-threatening complications for fear of being prosecuted if the fetus dies. According to Human Rights Watch, politicians pushed through the law to gain political support from the Catholic Church, which maintains a rock-hard line against all abortion and contraception.

But I was able attend a Catholic mass in Managua that showed another side of the Church, one that embraces the social justice gospel of Jesus known as “liberation theology.” The congregation met in a broad, airy, simple room, filled with a few dozen kids from PSI/Nicaragua’s youth groups, many of whom were HIV-positive. The service reminded me of the Pentecostal churches I so loved at home: charismatic, with joyous singing and clapping and participation from the congregation. Hymns lifted up the little person, the disenfranchised person, who maybe is sleeping on a park bench, or is selling used shoes from a wheelbarrow, or is being beaten by her husband. The songs said that Jesus was coming for that person. I was rapt. When the priest brought me up to speak—a feature of these modern masses—I shared from the pulpit that even though they might regard their church as modest and humble, for me it was awesome (in the true sense of the word). Jesus has always been my favorite radical, and my life is infused with the values they celebrated; in fact, my Christian faith demands I work for social justice and human rights. I still consider that mass one of the highlights of all my work abroad.

Way too early one morning, Salma and I visited the set of Sexto Sentido (Sixth Sense), a hugely popular television social soap opera that creates thirty episodes a year. The studio was a poured-concrete building, very tidy, the interior walls lined with small painted sets