Nicaragua's bare feet

Movie
Original title	Nicaragua's bare feet
Country of production	Federal Republic of Germany
original language	German
Publishing year	1983
length	100 minutes
Rod
Director	Manfred Vosz / Rolf Neddermann
script	Günter Wallraff / Manfred Vosz
production	Neue Prometheus, Düsseldorf / Team-Film, Düsseldorf
music	Inti-Illimani , Grupo Gamma (now Dimension Costeña ), William Agudelo, Grupo FM 20
camera	Valentin Schwab , Rolf Neddermann, Rainer Komers, Christian Fuchs
cut	Manfred Vosz
occupation
	Heidrun Lotz : spokeswoman;

The Bare Feet of Nicaragua is a West German documentary film from 1983 about the former Weser ferry Gröpeln , which was presented to the Nicaraguan poet and Minister of Culture Ernesto Cardenal in 1982 by the Bremen Senate . The shooting ended in disaster when the film team was shot at on May 24, 1983 on the Río San Juan by members of the Contra group ARDE under the leadership of Edén Pastora Gómez and some seriously injured.

Further technical data

Sound: Ulrike Hilgers, Manfred Vosz, Franz Lehmkuhl
Graphics and trick technology: Jürgen Kuhfuss
Film photography, organization: Heidrun Lotz
Format: 16 mm film , color
First showing: November 12, 1983, Duisburger Filmwoche

Plot, first part 1982

The former Weserfähre Gröpeln is the captain of the of Hapag-Lloyd chartered Egon Oldendorff - general cargo ship Globe Trader apparently in October 1982 on the roads of Bluefields passed to the Nicaraguan authorities. The Gröpeln had previously been used in ferry traffic between Lankenau and Gröpelingen . Now it is supposed to establish a permanent connection between the Solentiname Islands on Lake Nicaragua and the port of San Carlos . To do this, it must be brought into Lake Nicaragua via the Río San Juan . Since the water level of the river is still too low in the dry season , the Gröpeln is first used in maritime traffic on the Miskito coast .

The film team visits the capital Managua and travels from Granada by boat to the Solentiname Islands, where the Gröpeln will later be used. It interviews the mother of Elvis Chavarría, who was sentenced to death by a court in October 1977 during the Nicaraguan Revolution in San Carlos and executed by the National Guard . There is also an interview with Ernesto Cardenal, in which, however, the Gröpeln are not discussed.

Due to the beginning of the rainy season , the right time seems to have come to enter the San Juan with the Gröpeln . Under the leadership of Captain Damasco Lopez and the crab fisherman Harry Simmons as pilot , the boat will be transferred from Bluefields along the Caribbean coast to the bay of San Juan del Norte . With the help of a local pilot succeeds, the Barre between Atlantic and overcome the river. No boat the size of the Gröpeln has entered the San Juan since 1908 . The film team visits San Juan del Norte and finds artifacts from when the city was a boom town before the First World War . It interviews the 86-year-old Miguel Torres, who reports from this era. Using contemporary images and photos, the audience is told that the United States prevented the construction of a Nicaragua Canal at the time in order to eliminate competition for its own Panama Canal project . The Gröpeln is visited by the students of San Juan del Nortes, who have never seen a ship of this size.

Continuing the journey on the river is constantly hindered by the strong currents and shallows . Along the river, the film team interviewed residents and asked them about their living conditions, according to members of an agricultural cooperative and a women activist who campaigned for the revolution at an early age. The cooperative also wants to get into chocolate production because it has been given a few dairy cows from Switzerland . But there is neither a cooling system for the milk nor packaging material for chocolate. You will also visit a rice plantation that was formerly owned by the Somoza clan .

The journey with the Gröpeln is only making slow progress. Sometimes the fairway is so narrow that the branches of the bank forest hit the hull and superstructure of the boat. Soldiers of the Sandinista People's Army are now on board to protect the boat from attacks by Edén Pastora Gómez's contra organization ARDE . The soldiers cook for themselves, the crew and the film crew a fish soup à la Bluefields with grated coconut , yucca and green bananas .

Despite a tug specially brought in from San Carlos , the Gröpeln got stuck above the old fortress El Castillo , which had already been conquered at short notice by the young Horatio Nelson . Before the beginning of the next rainy season, all efforts to drag the boat over the sandbanks are futile. Therefore, the camera team stopped filming four days before Christmas 1982. The boat remains under military guard on site.

Action, part two 1983

Before the new rainy season began, the contra war intensified. In this context, the Gröpeln was shot at by ARDE guerrillas in May 1983 and severely damaged. Cameraman Valentin Schwab, Heidrun Lotz and medico international member Walter Schütz try to inspect the wreck in mid-May. Despite warnings from the local military, they go to the war zone by boat. On May 24th they were shot at by ARDE members for four hours and some were seriously injured. After their West German identity has been clarified, the guerrillas transport them to Costa Rica , where Heidrun Lotz, who lost an eye in the attack , is treated in a hospital in the capital San José . She is apparently later interviewed about the attack in a Düsseldorf hospital. Since the ARDE members confiscated the film material, there are only film recordings of the arrival that were recorded without sound. A short, unmarked daily news excerpt is installed in which the process is reported.

Laureano Mairena, a young captain of the border troops from San Carlos, died fighting the Contras on the border with Honduras . He was a member of the community on Solentiname. The writer and politician Sergio Ramírez , who criticizes the terrorism of the Contras and blames US imperialism for the boy's death , also takes part in the memorial service in his hometown . The Sandinista hymn is sung at the end of the funeral service . The film fades out with the black and red flag of the Frente Sandinista.

Use of music

In addition to titles by the Chilean group Inti-Illimani, two compositions by the band Dimension Costeña (formerly Grupo Gamma ) from Bluefields, who are still popular in Nicaragua today, are used repeatedly ; Bluefields Express and Mayaya Lasinki .

Production history

In 1994 the Bremen journalist Gerhard Widmer made a television documentary about the fate of the ferry for Radio Bremen under the title The Gröpeln Files - Searching for Traces of the Solidarity Movement in Nicaragua . Details of the film production also became known. It turned out that Cardenal had not been informed about the gift and that Cardenal's alleged request for a ship for Lake Nicaragua had been written by a GTZ technical advisor with a blank sheet from the Nicaraguan Ministry of Culture. It also became clear that the Gröpeln was in no way suitable for use on Lake Nicaragua due to its design. Henning Scherf , who had significantly promoted the project, described the ferry as an “old scrap barge” in an interview excerpt, which otherwise would probably have been scrapped immediately because no one interested in the boat had been found.

The final fate of the Gröpeln

After the Gröpeln had been restored with West German help at the end of the 1980s, it lay unused in Granada for a good 20 years until it was apparently scrapped at the El Diamante shipyard around 2010 . According to a report in the daily La Prensa, the steel scrap was used to make saucepans.

Lore

The film has not yet been edited on video or DVD (as of 2015) .