Signs and wonders

By Dan Rosenheck

“He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.” So Franklin Roosevelt is said to have described Anastasio Somoza, the American-backed dictator of Nicaragua. Somoza’s countrymen had little for which to thank the kleptocratic dynasty he founded. But Hope Portocarrero, the American-born wife of his son, Anastasio Jr, sought refuge in good works from the misery of her marriage to a philandering brute. Among these was a school she set up in 1977 in the capital, Managua, for students with disabilities. It was later named the Melania Morales School, in honour of a teacher killed in an accident.

Political unrest soon put the school’s growth on hold. In 1979 a leftist guerrilla group called the Sandinistas toppled the Somozas’ regime at great human cost: their revolution left around one in 70 Nicaraguans dead and one in five homeless. The Sandinistas proved to be repressive in their own way, but they did launch a campaign to remedy the appalling state of literacy in the country. Thanks to an education policy which Anastasio Jr once reportedly summarised by saying, “I don’t want educated people, I want oxen,” only one in five rural Nicaraguans could read by the end of the Somozas’ rule. The Sandinistas aimed to deliver at least a fourth-grade education to all Nicaraguans, and expanded special education. By 1984, Melania Morales had swelled to around 400 students, the youngest six years old. In addition, the government established a vocational-training institute, where deaf adults could learn trades like carpentry and hairstyling.