The Nicaragua Project

What is the Nicaragua Project? →

This site was sparked in 2010 when, bored at work, I idly Googled a classmate from third grade. My family’s Nicaraguan; we’d left for the United States after that year, as the government of Anastasio Somoza Debayle was falling to the revolutionary Sandinistas in summer 1979. This boy’s name was one of the few I remembered from Managua’s American Nicaraguan School, because he’d been cute and American and I’d had a little crush on him. Decades later, I couldn’t find him online—but I did find his father. PDF’s of an old, typewritten report claimed Sr. had been in Managua working for the CIA, supplying arms to Somoza’s government. I haven’t been able to find that document again, and can’t judge its veracity, but that bombshell got me wondering what my classmates’ stories might be, and what, put together, they might tell me about my history, and Nicaragua’s.

How will this work? →

The Nicaragua Project is memoir, presented in real time. Using my third-grade yearbook, I’m setting out to find and interview the 29 classmates I haven’t seen since 1979, plus our teacher. Their photos and names are below, and excerpts from our conversations will live there, too. (Edited for length and clarity.) I’ll be updating as I go. I hope that together, over time, they’ll create a mosaic of a place and time—Managua, 1979, right on the cusp of the country’s revolution—and what came after for all of us.

Contact Sandy →

Why Are You Doing This? →

I left Nicaragua without saying good-bye: I was sent “on vacation” to the United States, and when Somoza’s government fell in July, simply didn’t go back. Leaving my home country has been the defining drama of my life and yet, I’ve realized, I know precious little about what exactly I left behind, and I’ve barely grappled with the years that came after. Meanwhile, these days, the war in Nicaragua is rarely mentioned. But I see echoes of it everywhere: In the decimation of Syria’s middle class, in the child migrants crossing America’s borders, in refugees who are denied asylum. Forty years on, it feels like our experiences in the past might have something to say about our present.

Who are you? →

I’m an award-winning writer and editor who’s written for Time, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Fox News, among other media. My professional site is here. I’m also a first-generation American—born while my father was studying in the States—and a Nicaraguan immigrant, since I spent the first half of my childhood in Central America. Last, I’m a mom, which has been surprisingly relevant: It was when my son turned nine—the age I was when I emigrated—that I realized how very young I’d been, and considered that memories I’d held to be crystal and crisp might be anything but.