In Short Term 1998, Rosemary Radford Ruether and I co-led a travel seminar for Berea College faculty entitled, Gender, Religion, Revolution and Reaction: Nicaragua and Cuba. The seminar included 9 Berea faculty members, 3 Berea students, 2 community members, and 4 graduate students from Garrett Theological Seminary where Rosemary te aches.

We spent our first week on campus (January 5-9) in intensive lectures on the social history of Nicaragua and Cuba from 1959 to the present. The focus was on views of gender in the revolutionary process and the activities of women in fields such as religion, health, environmental studies, and economic development (including food production and distribution, global trade, and servicing the external debt). The seminar also included the denouement of the revolution in Cuba and its implications on women and views of gender.

We then left for Nicaragua for five days (January 10-14), staying primarily in Managua and Leon, where we interviewed women and men involved in community organizing and culture over the past 18 years. Of special importance was the night we spent with families in the rural community of Chacaraseca (mostly destroyed in the subsequent Hurricane Mitch). We happened on an enormous religious celebration that brought hundreds of people to this tiny place. Members of the seminar interacted and danced with the community, making this event one of the highlights of our study. Perhaps most touching was the morning we spent with the Mothers of Heroes and Martyrs in downtown Leon.

Walking through the carefully maintained Gallery of Heroes and Martyrs we saw hundreds of 8x10 school pictures, framed and hung in museum style. We listened to Madre Cone, one of the original founders of the Gallery, tell the stories of various young men and women, mostly under 21 years of age, whose lives were taken in the Nicaraguan insurrection and subsequent Contra War. At points along the walk, we culd see articles of clothing, notebooks, and even eyeglasses worn by these young people during the period of their civic activity. Most of us were saddened to tears as Madre Cone calmly recollectewd the stories of young Nicaraguans whose lives were shorteened largely because of U.S. policy in the region. Particularly wrenching was the story of five brothers, four of whom were shot by the National guard while literally clinging to their mothers' skirt. Many of these young people were gunned down for participating in cladnestine meetings or peaceful demonstrations to protest the econhomic misery of the country. Madre Cone told us about Maria Mercedes, killed on the 7th of July, 1979, the day a major Sandinista froont was liberated. When she told us the young woman was her daughter, we wept from our depth, and wondered how Madre Cone could return to that place of suffering every time she led a delegation like ours through the gallery.

In the discussion which followed, we learned that Madre Cone, as well as other mothers throughout the country, are still struggling for justice. The purpose of the gallery isto keep alive the naitonal history at a time when the Sandinista Revolution is being erased from Nicaragua's textbooks. The gallery and the mothers themselves subsist without help from the government. Within the past four years, the Mothers of Heroes and Martyrs opened a store with high quality artisan productions from around the country, the proceeds of which help to pay the rent and provide meager salaries for the mothers running the gallery. North Americans like ourselves gravitate to shopping opportunities, and we were no exception that day.

During our time in Nicaragua, we waited for permission to enter Cuba. Our trip was timed with Pope John Paul II’s historic visit to Havana, and the visas never came. Instead of returning home, we decided to change direction and travel into Costa Rica by bus. Both Rosemary and I had lived in San Jose previously, so we were able to organize both a study of women’s roles in the church and pressing environmental issues in Costa Rica. We stayed at the Seminario Biblico in downtown San Jose, and attended lectures by Mexican theologian Elsa Tomas and land specialist Roy May. We then traveled to the rainforest of San Gerardo de Dota where Rosemary Ruether lectured on ecofeminism. A highlight of the improvised Costa Rica portion of the travel seminar was our midnight viewing of loggerhead turtles on Playa Grande in the Nicoyan peninsula.

In spite of our missed Cuba experience, we packed a lot of adventure into our ten day program. It was an honor to have Rosemary Radford Ruether on board.