Violence and Safety: Nicaragua Perspective

This week I was talking to a friend about living in a safe place.  As humans, it’s one of our most basic needs, to feel safe in the place we are living.  I have lived in Nicaragua now for almost a complete year.

The conversation I was having this week started hitting on some familiar themes.  “Do you feel safe living there?” she asked? “I could never live there, how do people feel safe walking on the streets? she continued “People there must be either scared all the time or really brave.”  She finished with my favorite sentiment “It seems like the culture is so violent!”

Nicaragua often invokes images of war and destruction.  The civil wars and ensuring contra-revolutionary wars were well publicized by the Untied States news media has left many North Americans imagining Nicaragua as a place where rebel soldiers are hiding in the forests, ready to attack at any moment.  To be fair, it’s an image that is scary and would lead one to believe that this is a dangerous place to live. 

Images and perception are powerful in our imaginations.  Often these perceptions become “truth” for large parts of society.  This is how I live peacefully in Nicaragua while many people can’t believe that I’m not armed with a rifle defending myself.

My friend and I this week were not talking about Nicaragua, however.  As a Nicaraguan, she was reacting to the news of the tragic shooting in Orlando, and the nearly constant news reports flowing form the United States about gun violence.  The perception that she has is that we have mass murderers roaming the streets shooting people at will in the United States.  It must be terrifying to leave the house because you never know when you are going to be shot down.

My newsfeed has been full of news about filibusters, second amendment rights and (Radical Islamic) Terrorism.  If we set all that aside and think about it from an outsider’s perspective, the United States sounds like a pretty scary place.  And if we set aside our internal discussions for a moment and think about the perception of an outsider, yeah, she is right.

This woman has lived through years of war in her own country.  She was literally living in a country where rebels were hiding in the forests trying to kill civilians.  And her perception is that the United States’ gun culture is terrifying.  Perception is powerful.  My perception is that she could be right. 

We cannot let this go on any longer.  We cannot be a society that accepts our citizens using military-grade weapons on each other.  We cannot be a country that literally will not stop terrorists from buying weapons.  We need to DO SOMETHING!  Our brothers and sisters are being killed every day in nightclubs, in churches, on the streets of Chicago and by toddlers in their own bedrooms.

Inaction is complicity in perception becoming reality.  I love my country, feel safe there and will happily return soon.  Because our inaction to act, however, the perception that exists outside our country could soon become our reality within.