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- Where are we here?
- We're in my house.
preparing to meet the Committee of settler cows.
We today have a very important activity
for the people of Nicaragua:
the activity of Santa Domingo begins
here in Managua. Here, this the house of conspiracies
where we are regularly meeting
to talk and do things
such as press work, we have
a monitoring room,
daily newspaper
network, television, radio
from where we get all our information,
on national and international questions,
communication.
From here we are following up
the coup in Honduras,
and a countless number of media activities,
Here you entered into a quite
entrenched house:
here is a flag.
This is the day before August begins,
and here is celebrated Santa Domingo Juman,
This neighborhood does the settler cow.
Those are those
little cows dancing around the saint.
19 years ago we established
the settler cow committee,
In 1990,
by the ... when we lost
the elections, we felt that culturally
that we would be naked. Then we
began the the project of settler cows.
This was for our culture not to fall, in wake of the foreign influence
which would come in the 90s,
as part of all that recolonizalization,
we've had.
In the 90s there was a political change,
this political change implied some things,
so they erased the murals that
existed. It was an order of
the minister… or the mayor who was Alemán.
Then the settler cows was born as a cultural
reaction. As a reaction
people did keep the roots
kept what is ours.
For Nicaragua it is something original: the cow.
We then modified it to bring more people, to make it more
attractive. And why do we say settler? Because
most Nicaraguans are settlers.
The settler cow is a different creation because the cows
usually go in circles
but we did ours according to this model ... a little
we did it like this
to give it some symbolism
which means several things,
the horns signify strength, force.
The shape of it: power,
potency...
The settler cows are a bit like
... we coordinate with coastal brethren who have
this type of dance
And it is an amalgam:
the settler cows are an amalgam of various things,
of various meanings, but of only
one culture. Because
we are a multi-ethnic country.
And so we wanted to pick one thing which
has many different meanings.
After the Sandinista regained municipalities
the settler cows celebrations were stepped up.
in support of the culture of that part of the
tradition under the different
Sandinista mayors. First Micho
and now the comrade Daisy Torres.
These settler cows are bandits. They
have made themselves part of the festival, and they are well organized,
They really have shown some strength.
Well, it's not only this activity. They're all cultural activities,
representative of our culture, our country.
Unfortunately during the 16 years of neoliberalism
it was not promoted to celebrate our roots, our culture.
And we imported many things, such as Halloween and other things.
And that meant no cultural growth,
for the inner life of Nicaragua.
This is really about recovering all Nicaraguan culture and
especially that of children, youth,
And really to make it big.
They represent the recovery of our tradition,
our culture. The real rescue of these
festivities such as Santa Domingo
that modernism had lost...
this dedication, this love, that
hope that the people put in their traditional festivals.
that is what effectively the committee of settler cows is rescuing...
this beautiful tradition, which is the feast of St. Domingo.
which represents the unity of faith and hope,
and the Christians love the people.
This really is a participatory space
in which the government is involving the Sandinista Youth,
as it is the culture, as is sport, recreation.
As Sandinista Youth, we are present in
culture and the level of Managua and Nicaragua.
We are doing this as the avant-garde, pioneers,
of culture. The Sandinista Youth is always
at the forefront. - Why do
the Sandinistas participate in religious activities in Nicaragua?
- Because the Nicaraguan people is the most devout of all
in the Roman Catholic religion, and all taking the rich parts of
the Roman Catholic religion. All Nicaraguans
we are all of the people,
we respect the traditions and
so we're here today, right? The Santa Domingo is ours
because he is a saint who has done so many miracles to
all Nicaraguans. And the Nicaraguans have much
faith.
Everything here comes from the base.
That is the essence of citizen power,
the people that come here organized
the way they organize their neighborhood activities for more
events with more of a political character,
social character, or health
factor. The
people they come, by themselves, in twos,
they come in groups, if they promised that.
We have people here from district 6, 5, 4
and 3. And do not think that these people
charter a taxi to get here.
If one has a van, he take everyone with him
to come here. People from the citizen power committees are very organized,
and now we're going to bring people to go and see baseball
and the football league.
All the stadiums that are empty will be filled with these people who are part of citizen power,
to support the sport.