Nicaragua

Murilo Oliveira

Brazil, August 11, 2024.

It is quite curious how the specific abilities of boys and girls manifest themselves early on. One of my earliest memories of paying close attention to international news dates back to my early childhood, when I was with a very dear cousin, and she asked me about her tiny underwear, obviously according to the age of both of us. And I, who had been aware since I was 5 or 6 years old of the news that the Brazilian press of the time reported about the Sandinista Guerrilla in Nicaragua, answered her with great irony even at that age: “That must be the Nicaragua of Managua that Grandma uses!” An inverted allusion between this country and its capital, and the tiny underwear of my cousin of the same age, and the enormous petticoat worn by Grandma.

What I mean by this is that the specific skills among some boys and girls are already clearly evident from a very young age. I could certainly spend my whole life trying to understand the role of this country in international politics, as I still consider it relevant today.

I would even say that, it is not enough for me to have followed international news about Nicaragua since I was 5 or 6 years old. Despite being a Roman Catholic, this has never influenced my judgment of these people in question, always being divided between my dear cousin and Grandma.

Quite the contrary, wherever I have been, this judgment has always been very difficult, such as at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, where I studied Political Science, and I have always heard that one of the culminating moments of the Community’s relationship with the Catholic Church was the arrival of some priests from Nicaragua to give lectures at that Catholic University Theater in the 1970s, dressed as guerrillas. It would not be limited to that, during the time I spent as an employee of the Cinemateca Brasileira, of all the collection of images on paper that exists there, I was always reminded as a curious archivist that perhaps some of the great treasures that existed there were precisely records of the Sandinista Guerrilla.

I recently learned of the diplomatic crisis between Brazil and Nicaragua, at a complex moment in the diplomacy of the Holy See, which has been asking for the mediation of President Lula, as I was very happy when he received President Miguel of Cuba at the Vatican. He was awarded an olive leaf by Pope Francis, which I consider one of the most beautiful Vatican honors, which I recorded in an important letter on one occasion to the International Dominican Sisters of Rome, when I expressed solidarity and sent my financial contribution through them, to Christian families of Bethlehem, in the Holy Land, and I conclude by quoting a passage in Genesis that recalls the hope brought to Noah by the olive leaf.

More than that, as a smoker to this day, it is inevitable to talk about this, I have never shied away from preferring both Cuban and Nicaraguan products, which also to this day does not fully elucidate this type of issue, but as I have already mentioned here in an article in “The Cigar Life”, it was at some point the mark of some men dedicated to understanding world politics. Where I have even explained to my pulmonologist on one occasion that the increase in the consumption of electronic cigarettes these days should not be well accepted, since, as I explained to her, the concomitant consumption of a lot of humidity together with the smoking habit puts even inveterate and habitual smokers like me in a permanent medical emergency. But this is just a detail, of the permanent state of attention that some vocations require of us, where, for example, I have not cultivated even the smallest consumption of alcohol among my habits for over 15 years.

@CoexistenceLaw