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Story Notes
In the 1980s a significant number of Irish people, students, workers and unemployed, went to Nicaragua to assist the Sandinista revolutionary effort in that small central American country.
Sinead MacCarthy talks to four people whose combined brigade duty spans the eleven years of the Sandinista government.
- Writer Joseph O’Connor, who spent five months there and later wrote about the country and people in his novel Desperados
- Benny McCabe who spent over three years in nicaragua;
- Val Roche who arrived in 1980 to work with the sandinista government;
- and Molly O’Duffy who left Nicaragua most recently in 1996.
Each remembers personal experience as one of hundreds of Irish volunteers in the fertile but poor and war torn country.
Danger was a constant for many of the volunteers and their friends, while daily life for everyone in Nicaragua was affected by the us trade embargo.
The contributions talk about what drew them to support the people of Nicaragua, how they experienced life in such a different country at a crucual time in his history, and how they were changed by their Sandinismo.
Compiled and presented by Sinead MacCarthy
Produced by Lorelei Harris
An Irish radio documentary from RTÉ Radio 1, Ireland - Documentary on One - the home of Irish radio documentaries
Story Credits