Life encounters

My trip partner in the Central America is Marcia Ribeiro, a friend I met in 1999 during a course in the Archipelago of the Azores, in Portugal. Marcia is a Portuguese born journalist who has been living in Montréal, in Canada, for 16 years. She visited me twice in Florianópolis, after had worked in the World Social Forum, in Porto Alegre, for the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC). This is the third time we meet after our first encounter in the Azores.
After Nicaragua, we head to El Salvador.
Hope that there will be more trips together!

Under the Nicaraguayan sky

Nicaragua embraced us with a warm breeze and a starry sky. There is no better way to start a visit to a new country. We arrived yesterday in the largest country in Central America, after a ten-hour bus trip from San José, the capital of Costa Rica. Managua, the Nicaraguayan capital, was busy on Christmas day. Nearly 60,000 Nicaraguans left Costa Rica to spend the holiday season with their beloved ones, back home.
The country has been part of my imaginary since my childhood. More specifically, since 1979, when a revolution overthrew the Somoza family´s dictatorship and installed a socialist government, led by the people who followed the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN)´s ideas and ideals.
As usual, the United States´ and Great Britain´s interference didn´t allow the country to go beyond most of its projects. Nicaragua, as most of the Central American nations, is seen as economically and politically strategic for the big potences.