Till Politics Do You Part : Nicaraguan Election Puts Marriage to the Test

Nicaragua is full of North Americans--Internationalists they call themselves--who have come to help the revolutionary cause. Politics is their life, and Nicaragua is a place where politics and romance have gone hand-in-hand.

But what happens to the love affair when the politics goes wrong?

The unexpected defeat of the Sandinistas has left one couple, Mark Coplan and Ana Castillo, shocked and confused. “We never imagined this could happen,” Mark says. “It just wasn’t in the cards.”

At first glance, Mark and Ana look like any new parents, struggling to adjust to life with their 9-day-old son, David. But it’s not just diapers and feeding schedules that are causing strain. When they talk about their reactions to the elections, North American ideals and hard Nicaraguan pragmatism collide.

Mark, 34, is typical of many North Americans in Nicaragua. Intense, idealistic and passionate about politics, he opposes U.S. foreign policy in Central America and wants to be part of the struggle for social change. Before the elections, when he talked about his new home, his eyes brightened with conviction that the Sandinistas might create a new, higher form of society.

But now, after the Sandinistas’ defeat, Mark is fired up. He is convinced that the Sandinistas represent the people and that the surprise UNO victory was a direct result of U.S. interference. “The country’s been tortured,” he says. “The people gave in.”

Although Ana doesn’t disagree, she seems weary of the discussion. Hardened by years of war and struggle, she is concerned with practical realities and setting up a decent life for her new family. At 28, she has run the gamut of war and peace and, like many others of her generation, she seems infinitely older than her years. The passage of the Sandinistas from power hits her on a different level.

“All this time I’ve worked for the revolution and it’s failed!” she says, wiping away tears. “It’s like a world collapsed. I can’t explain it.”

Faced with a new baby, a new government and an uncertain future, Mark and Ana are forced to re-examine their work and reasons for being together. Not that it was ever easy. After they first met, Ana wrote Mark a 23-page letter outlining all the reasons their relationship would be difficult. From their taste in clothes to their economic backgrounds, they were different. But it is politics and different notions of “the Revolution” that are now threatening their relationship.

Mark’s story is one of idealism. He was a political activist in the United States. He remembers his political awakening a few years back when he listened to Brian Willson, a prominent U.S. peace activist, talk to a group in his house. “Brian changed me,” Mark recalls. “He made me realize how responsible we are for the military activities of our government--I wanted to do something about it.”

Mark quit a well-paying professional job, gave up his apartment and joined Nuremberg Actions, the protest group Brian Willson founded that maintains a 24-hour vigil to block munitions traffic to Central America from the Naval Weapons Station in Concord, Calif. Mark lived alongside Concord’s railroad tracks.

Nicaragua was just a political concept then. But it soon became something else.

Mark was planning to go to Nicaragua to make a film documentary when he met Ana Castillo on July 4, 1988. Ana, who originally visited the United States for a music seminar, ended up touring America at the request of several solidarity groups to talk about the revolution. Mark fell in love with her. A few months later, he was living with Ana in Managua.

Like Mark, Ana has a middle-class background. But she has been deeply involved with the revolution since she was a teen-ager. Ana is a music professor who works with the Institute of Culture and sings in the Nicaraguan National Chorus. She says that after her trip to the United States, she changed; she started identifying more as an artist and a woman, no longer solely as a Sandinista.

“The revolution is new to Mark,” Ana explains. “We’re at different stages of political development. I’ve had 10 years of it. It definitely causes some problems.”

The biggest problem it causes, they agree, is a fundamental difference in lifestyle. Mark wants to put his body where his politics are. He threw caution to the wind by moving to Nicaragua. Now he wants to live on the edge, like he did back on the railroad tracks in Concord. He wants to shed North American materialism and live with the Nicaraguan people.

Ana’s ideals are tempered with a pragmatism that is perhaps shared by growing numbers of her contemporaries. Their differences came to a head over the housing issue and almost blew their relationship apart.

Outraged by the rent they were being charged because Mark is a foreigner, Ana wanted to buy a house. Mark definitely did not. Ana explains: “I’ve always worked to have a better economic situation. I want a clean house, some art on the walls and a bed to sleep on. I don’t want to live with shacks across the street. Mark wants to live some proletarian lifestyle.”

Mark in turn says he didn’t come to Nicaragua to be a landowner. “I gave that all up back in the States!” he exclaims.

They split up over the issue a few months ago. Ana bought a house in a Managua neighborhood, renting some of the rooms to other Internationalists. Mark eventually moved in. “We’ve stopped trying to live each other’s futures,” he says.

As the weeks wear on and the political tension in Nicaragua increases, just how they will include each other becomes less clear. First, there’s the adjustment all Sandinista supporters face, of having to work from below. Neither Mark nor Ana wants to work with the new government--both remain committed to social reform. But they have different ways of approaching the task.

Ana is preparing music lessons to start teaching again, and plans to help form a new Sandinista artists union.

Mark takes a more militant stance. Already hard at work on a commercial video about the transition period a Sandinista to a Chamorro government, Mark is stashing videos at different locations and making duplicates because he fears that the new government will eventually probe into his work.

To add to their problems, no one is sure that the political situation won’t explode.

UNO officials have suggested that pro-Sandinista Internationalists may no longer be welcome, and many Internationalists are filing for permanent residency before they must deal with a potentially hostile government. With heavily armed Sandinista groups and a possibility of civil conflict, they are also preparing for the worst. Mark, Ana and their friends are completing the necessary paper work and exit visas for a fast departure if it should come to that.

Ana is prepared to take the baby and go to the United States in the event of trouble. But Mark has decided to stay in Nicaragua. “It’s important that someone stay to monitor the new government and watch for human rights violations. Because of Ana and David, I have more at stake here than the typical Internationalist--I try not to be romantic, but I’m deeply devoted to this fight,” he says.

The baby cries from the other room. Ana worries about him now. There are far, far too many war orphans in Nicaragua, she says. And Ana remembers when her job was to cook food and bring it to the soldiers in the street during the 1979 insurrection. She says quietly, “I don’t want to do it again.”