In Nicaragua, he was the 'marathon man,' famous for jogging through city streets to protest the government. Now he's trying to re-create a bit of his homeland in L.A.
Using a paintbrush and a spatula, Alex Vanegas smeared cleaning solution over a brass bust of the Nicaraguan poet and national idol Rubén Darío.
Shortly after arriving in the U.S., Vanegas made contact with German Peña, who founded the Nicaraguan American Opportunity Foundation, a 26-year-old L.A.-based organization that provides services and acts as a cultural space for Nicaraguan immigrants. sub-groups. In the greater Los Angeles area, the Nicaraguan population of about 40,000 is second only to south Florida’s, according to census data.
He left in 1983 as violence escalated between the Soviet-supported Sandinista National Liberation Front, which in 1979 had ousted the U.S.-backed right-wing dictator, Anastasio Somoza, and allied rebel groups collectively known as the Contras. During his first weeks in Los Angeles, Peña walked into a Mexican restaurant and ordered what a nearby patron had on his plate: birria tacos with rice and beans. He took comfort in the latter — staples of Nicaraguan cuisine — but wasn’t prepared for the birria, meat stewed with a heavy concentration of chile. He fell ill for several days.“They’re tiny differences that can often make someone suffer,” he said.
She had fled Nicaragua to prevent her son, Armando, then 17, from being pressed into military service by the Sandinista-dominated government. The foundation eventually formulated the idea of erecting a monument to Darío. Although the majority of Central American residents live in the downtown L.A. area, Peña set his sights on Maywood, the third-smallest incorporated city in Los Angeles County. The monument was unveiled the day the park opened to the public: May 27, 2008.
But over the course of four decades, his opponents — as well as many foreign governments and human rights advocates — say that Ortega has turned into the sort of dictator he once fought to oust,According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, at least 325 people have been killed and more than 2,000 wounded over the course of the unrest, and more than 50,000 refugees have fled Nicaragua.
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