This post is also available in: Spanish
Andrew Claassen in the Connecting Peoples Coordinator for MCC Nicaragua.
On July 19, 1979, Nicaraguans awoke to triumph. Having fled the country two days earlier, Anastasio Somoza, the last of a US backed dynasty of dictators, had ceded power to the Sandinista National Liberation Front. Thousands of Nicaraguans took to the streets of Managua to celebrate.
After more than four decades of oppression, hope for a new future flourished.
But fears that Nicaragua, under the leftist Sandinistas, would become a Soviet foothold in the Americas, led the US to begin funding counterrevolutionaries a few years after the triumph. As funding increased, fighting intensified. In 1983, the Sandinista government instated a military draft.
Members of the three Nicaraguan Anabaptist conferences, not immune to the social upheaval in their county, lived through the revolution. Many began to ask about the role of Christians in society. With the onset of the war and the subsequent draft, Anabaptists began to outline their nonviolent stance and propose alternative military service.
In 2013, MCC produced a video, The Way is Peace, to share their stories. Heard through the voices of individuals who lived through this tumultuous time, the video is a powerful testimony which revisits the response of Anabaptist churches to the violence and war in Nicaragua.
Lily Coronado, a young woman from the Brethren in Christ church of Nicaragua, upon seeing The Way is Peace, reflected that this response by the Anabaptist churches “…was a feat which allowed various youth to avoid going to the war.” Her grandmother told her that the churches during this time were filled with young people and this alternative service allowed more of them to survive.
Today, there is peace in Nicaragua. But the absence of war does not mean an absence of violence. Violence in the home, in the street, in school– all affect society as a whole. The Anabaptist churches today face this new challenge before them. As Lily Coronado says, “As a church, our task is to instil in people a brotherly love and peace to live in a better society where violence is not the response to any problem.”
We invite you to watch for yourself the powerful response and witness of Nicaraguan churches to violence in their society.