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Nicaragua: The Solution Is Inward

The way out was outward when it was necessary to save our lives. The solution is inward if we ever want to change the country.

By Claudia Vargas (Confidencial)

HAVANA TIMES — Eight years have passed since the April 2018 uprising in Nicaragua, and resistance has taken many forms: protesting, documenting, going into exile, preserving memory, and refusing silence. None of those efforts have been in vain; they have been ways of defending life and keeping open the possibility of justice. But after all this time, an uncomfortable question remains: what happens when a society directs all its energy outward and postpones looking inward?

For a long time, we understood resistance to mean concentrating our efforts outward: denunciations, visibility, international pressure, and sanctions. Today it is clear that profound transformations—in a person, a movement, or a country—do not occur only when the environment changes, but when there is also the courage to examine what we ourselves are.

This critical self-examination is not isolation, nostalgia, or spiritual retreat. It is an uncomfortable political practice and an exercise without anesthesia. It means recognizing which forms of violence, silences, power dynamics, and wounds we continue to reproduce collectively........

© Havana Times