For U.S. Volunteers Aiding Nicaraguans, Thanksgiving Came Early

The “Abraham Lincoln Brigade,” organized and outfitted in California, came to Nicaragua to build a new village for peasants in the mountains southeast of here. Conditions were hard and work fell behind, but the American volunteers were determined to have all the walls and roofs up by Thanksgiving.

Laboring long hours, they made it. In fact, they unknowingly made it with seven days to spare--in the mistaken belief that Thanksgiving fell on the third Thursday of November.

And that is how the Abraham Lincoln Brigade came to celebrate Thanksgiving a week early.

“It was like when the Pilgrims finished building their houses and had their first harvest,” said Steve Raeder, 36, of Pacoima. “That’s kind of the way we felt.”

The new Abraham Lincoln Brigade was founded by Abe Osheroff of Venice. Osheroff, 70, is a former Communist who belonged to the first Abraham Lincoln Brigade, an American volunteer unit that fought in the Spanish Civil War. Later, Osheroff was successively a carpenter, a labor leader, a building contractor and a lecturer. For the last five years, he has been a guest lecturer at UCLA on Spanish Civil War history.

In mid-1984, Osheroff began raising funds to finance a housing project in Nicaragua. He wanted to lend a helping hand to the leftist Sandinista government.

The Nicaraguan Housing Ministry welcomed the offer and said a peasant cooperative, at a place called Mombachito, needed new homes. Before the revolution, most of the 2,000-acre cooperative was a cattle ranch that belonged to a single owner. Now, 22 families own it and others will be added to the cooperative membership.

Six of the member-families live in a long, dirt-floored shed. Others occupy small shacks with mud walls and thatched roofs.

Osheroff gathered a group of American volunteers--most of them Californians and about half of them experienced construction workers--who paid their own fare to Nicaragua. Work on 29 wooden houses began in late September.

The war against the Sandinista regime by U.S.-supported guerrillas known as contras recently flared up in the Boaco area.

The American volunteers say the cooperative, 15 miles from Boaco, is vulnerable to attack. But Raeder said: “I don’t personally think the contras really want to see any American deaths. I think as long as we are here, that’s the best protection for the cooperative.”

Four of the original 13 volunteers had to leave in mid-November. The remaining nine redoubled their efforts, setting their Thanksgiving deadline.

The rest of the brigade plans to pull out by mid-December, after putting finishing touches on the houses and helping the first families move in.

On Wednesday, Nov. 20, they raised the last metal roof. Eight of the volunteers climbed on top for a “crowning off” ceremony, and Barrett took photographs.

Then they bathed in a nearby waterfall and headed for Boaco to celebrate “Thanksgiving.”

At the Alpino Restaurant, everyone had steak or chicken. After dinner, Barrett said, “half of us went off looking for ice cream and the other half decided to have another meal.

Not until Wednesday, six days later, did they learn from a visitor that they had celebrated Thanksgiving a week early.

“It wasn’t on the third Thursday?” said Raeder. “Well, we’ll have to go into town and celebrate again.”