Faith in Action:
Reflections on Constructive Resilience from Nicaragua

by Bradley Wilson

About: On 29 July 2003, thousands of unemployed farmworkers and their families who had been evicted from coffee estates in the province of Matagalpa, Nicaragua, joined a peaceful march. “The March of the Hungry,” as they named their public demonstration, was not hyperbole. In 2001, global coffee prices had plummeted to record lows, leaving millions of rural people without sufficient income or resources to survive. In Nicaragua, this crisis impacted some 100,000 people, most intensely, landless farmworkers. Unable to remain on plantations fore-closed upon by banks and unwilling to illegally squat, evicted farmworkers in Matagalpa built makeshift economic refugee camps which housed an estimated seven thousand people by 2003. These encampments, coordinated by homeless families themselves, lined the roads heading north. For three years these encampments were a constant reminder of the economic devastation and mass unemployment precipitated by the coffee crisis and the inability or unwillingness of the government to respond to their most basic needs.