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While Nicaraguan government agents and police search desperately for her throughout the country, a 70-year-old nurse from the United States is spending her days "just being quiet and praying."

Dorothy Granada went into hiding in the early hours of December 8, shortly before 15 soldiers armed with machine guns surrounded her house in Mulukuku, a remote jungle village about 100 miles north-east of Nicaragua's capital, Managua. Since then she has remained in hiding, provoking the anger of the government while receiving support from church groups and human rights organizations around the world.

Granada arrived in war-torn Mulukuku in 1990 and opened a clinic to serve the area's 30, 000 residents. An Episcopalian, she and her clinic are supported by a network of Protestant churches in the United States.

On November 14, Nicaragua's President Arnoldo Aleman announced that the government would investigate the clinic, which is part of a women's co-operative. Aleman sent ministry of health investigators to Mulukuku, where they seized patients' records and ordered the partial closure of the clinic. He claimed that Granada performed abortions, which are illegal in this country, and provided political support to the opposition Sandinista National Liberation Front, which, after a revolution in 1979, held power in Nicaragua until 1990.

Four days after troops failed to arrest her on December 8 (Granada had been warned of the troops' arrival in the village), interior minister Jose Marenco ordered her deportation. The clinic was closed down, and several government agencies began charging Granada with crimes ranging from providing assistance to armed rebels to using illegally-cut wood in the co-operative's carpentry workshop.

Granada is receiving vocal support here and abroad. A Managua judge ruled that the government had denied her an opportunity to defend herself against the charges. The Nicaraguan National Assembly's human rights commission has begun hearings on her treatment by the government.

A legal defense fund has been set up by St. Boniface Episcopal Church in Sarasota, Florida, in the U.S.

Several U.S. Congress members have drafted a letter to Aleman demanding he respect Granada and her work.

The U.S. Embassy here has offered its support and Amnesty International has issued an international alert about Granada.

In an interview with ENI, Granada said that she was "embarrassed" by the attention that she had received in the past month. "One day I'm just doing my work, taking care of my patients, scrubbing the clinic, counting pills, and the next day I'm in hiding. It's terrible," said Granada, who requested that her whereabouts not be revealed.

The elderly fugitive admitted she had been depressed and ill for days after eluding her captors, but said she now felt "better" and was "very clear about what the issues are and what I have to do."

Granada vehemently denied the accusations against her.

"They accuse me of political proselytism, but what I do is educate the women about their rights, their human and civic rights, their rights as women. I talk to patients about their right to health under the Nicaraguan constitution. I urge them to use this right and support people that are concerned for the health of the poor. I never tell them to support a particular party," Granada told ENI. "We're trying to provide integral health care, so you can't just hand out pills. Rights are an essential part of health."

Granada also rejected Aleman's accusation that she had treated only Sandinista patients.

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January (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45