November 8, 2004: Headlines: COS - Chile: COS - Nicaragua: Intervention: Nica Net: Phil Mitchell had been in the Peace Corp in Chile and was well aware how the United States managed regime change. We put an ad in the New York Times Week in Review section asking former Peace Corps volunteers to join us in sending a peace plane to Nicaragua
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November 8, 2004: Headlines: COS - Chile: COS - Nicaragua: Intervention: Nica Net: Phil Mitchell had been in the Peace Corp in Chile and was well aware how the United States managed regime change. We put an ad in the New York Times Week in Review section asking former Peace Corps volunteers to join us in sending a peace plane to Nicaragua
Phil Mitchell had been in the Peace Corp in Chile and was well aware how the United States managed regime change. We put an ad in the New York Times Week in Review section asking former Peace Corps volunteers to join us in sending a peace plane to Nicaragua
Phil Mitchell had been in the Peace Corp in Chile and was well aware how the United States managed regime change. We put an ad in the New York Times Week in Review section asking former Peace Corps volunteers to join us in sending a peace plane to Nicaragua
That First Trip!
By Nan McCurdy
[Nan McCurdy has lived in Nicaragua for 19 years. Nan and Phil’s children, Daniel and Nora, were born in 1988 and 1990. Phil died in 1991. Nan remarried Nicaraguan Miguel Mairena in 1995. Together they work with women’s organizations while Nan also does features for Free Speech Radio News.]
My husband, Philip Mitchell and I were outraged, crazed and depressed by the Grenada invasion in 1983. We’d been reading between the lines of the newspaper articles about Nicaragua for a few years and knew that Grenada was simply an off-Broadway production testing the waters of the American public’s reaction in preparation for an invasion of Nicaragua. We decided we had to act. Phil had been in the Peace Corp in Chile and was well aware how the United States managed regime change. We put an ad in the New York Times Week in Review section asking former Peace Corps volunteers to join us in sending a peace plane to Nicaragua. More than a hundred people responded and our “Volunteers for Peaceful Change” group arrived in Nicaragua for the Fiftieth anniversary of Sandino’s assassination at the hands of U.S. puppet Anastasio Somoza Garcia.
It was February of 1984. Our group spread out all over the land of Sandino. Since I spoke only a few words of Spanish I went to Bluefields. A progressive Moravian pastor I had tracked down on a speaking tour in the States, Norman Bent (currently Ombudsman for Indigenous rights), was able to get the special papers I needed to travel to the Atlantic Coast.
I left at 2:00am for a seven hour bus ride to Rama, stopping every 20 minutes to unpack and repack our bus spilling over with people. On the four hour boat trip down the Rio Escondido I made the friendship of Grace Kelly, a beautiful young Afro-Caribbean woman. I ended up staying with Grace and her family for a few days in their home across from the mechanic shop her dad ran.
On my last day I wanted to visit the island across the bay known as “el Bluff” and rented a little motor boat. Grace and her two sisters who accompanied me, all three between the ages of 20 and 23, had never in their lives been to Bluff – their mother wouldn’t let them go. Back in Bluefields, at about 10 pm that evening we heard explosives. The family looked worried but conjectured that some folks must be celebrating the Bluefields Boys’ win over Leon at baseball.
The next morning I was back on the Bluefields express before sunrise. I finally dragged into our Managua hotel about 7pm. Phil raced towards me ecstatic at my arrival and full of laughter and tears. He was clutching the Barricada newspaper. When he showed me the headlines I understood his reaction: “ U.S. Mines Nicaraguan Harbors.” The explosions we heard were the first mines detonating in Bluefields Bay and I’d been out there with the precious Kelly girls: Grace, Bernadette and Janet. All three, and a fourth sister I met on another visit, got their college degrees during the 80’s and they all continue to live and work serving the people of the Atlantic Coast.
When this story was posted in November 2004, this was on the front page of PCOL:
| Charges possible in 1976 PCV slaying Congressman Norm Dicks has asked the U.S. attorney in Seattle to consider pursuing charges against Dennis Priven, the man accused of killing Peace Corps Volunteer Deborah Gardner on the South Pacific island of Tonga 28 years ago. Background on this story here and here. |
| Volunteer Death in Morocco Returned Peace Corps Volunteers mourn the loss of Peace Corps Volunteer Melissa Mosvick who died as a result of a public bus accident on Saturday, November 6, 2004, in Ouarzazate, Morocco. |
| Director Gaddi Vasquez: The PCOL Interview PCOL sits down for an extended interview with Peace Corps Director Gaddi Vasquez. Read the entire interview from start to finish and we promise you will learn something about the Peace Corps you didn't know before.
Plus the debate continues over Safety and Security. |
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Story Source: Nica Net
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Chile; COS - Nicaragua; Intervention
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