Nicaragua

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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Wed Sep 08, 2021 1:35 pm

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Ordinary Nicaraguans Should Guide Progressive Left’s Stance
September 5, 2021
By John Perry – Aug 29, 2021

As elections approach in Nicaragua, there has been a spate of left-wing criticism of Daniel Ortega’s government that, to someone living in the country, seems bizarrely out of sync with what most Nicaraguans see as their pressing priorities. A string of opinion polls confirm what my day-to-day conversations tell me: that support for government policies remains strong, that hardly anyone wants a return to the roadblocks and violence deployed by government opponents in 2018, and that economic recovery after the damage done then and by the pandemic and hurricanes in 2020 are much bigger priorities than any concerns about recent government action against its opponents.

The reasons for all this are not hard to find: everywhere the government is building hospitals, affordable homes, roads and schools and the country’s much prized safety has returned. Nicaragua’s economy was the least affected in Latin America by the pandemic and Covid-19 has been well handled by the country’s community-based health system.

It’s hardly surprising that Nicaragua’s right-wing critics would ignore these achievements, but why are they ignored by the left? Rather than acclaiming a country that is lifting itself out of poverty, it is apparently much more important to judge it against hypocritical Western standards about “democracy” and “human rights” while disregarding the government’s need to defend the country’s gains against attacks from Washington and elsewhere.

For those of us who live in Nicaragua, the confident assessments of the country’s political situation made by “progressive activists” seem totally disconnected from the lived experience of people here.

So, for example, Noam Chomsky and 500 other intellectuals signed an open letter accusing the Nicaraguan government of “crimes against humanity” and another, almost identical, letter came from European “progressive activists.” Former President José Mujica of Uruguay joined 140 other Latin American intellectuals in signing a third letter which accuses the Ortega government of bringing Nicaragua “to the edge of collapse.”

As well as these letters, Jordana Timerman, editor of Latin America Daily Briefing, used The New York Times to accuse the left of turning a blind eye to Nicaragua’s “authoritarian” government, calling for “a better defense of leftist ideals.” William Robinson, who wrote arguably the best book on US interference in Nicaragua’s 1990 elections, argues in a piece for NACLA for “a principled left position” in the face of “the neoliberalism, repression, and authoritarianism of the Ortega-Murillo regime.” Even Lula da Silva in Brazil has recommended Daniel Ortega “not to abandon democracy.”

Of course there are valid criticisms of Nicaragua’s government, but what accounts for the absurd extremes expressed in these letters and articles?

• One reason is the unrelenting consensus in the international media about Nicaragua, including “progressive” media such as the Guardian and New York Times, which they maintain despite being told about the grave errors in their reporting.

• Another is the parallel campaign on “human rights” issues led by bodies such as the Organization of American States, even though its bias and anti-democratic role have been exposed on many occasions, notably in the coup in Bolivia in 2019.

• A third reason is surely the pandemic, which as well as provoking a further round of false criticisms of Nicaragua has also prevented people from travelling here to see conditions for themselves. In the absence of direct contact, it is the views of Nicaragua’s more affluent classes, English-speaking and often supporters of the opposition, which filter through.

• Finally, as I know from my own experience, critics of the Ortega government frequently refuse to engage with anyone who questions their stance, a lamentable failure for anyone claiming to be progressive.

The charges being made are wide-ranging: let’s try to focus on a few key ones. First, these articles and letters follow recent arrests in the run-up to Nicaragua’s coming elections. The “victims” are characterized as potential election candidates, ex-Sandinista guerrilla fighters or independent journalists (or perhaps all three), while scant attention is paid to the reasons for the arrests. To take one prominent example cited in the Mujica letter, that of Cristiana Chamorro, no one has asked where her money comes from or what she is doing with it. Her “charitable” foundation existed to direct money from the US and other governments to so-called “independent” media, several owned by her own family. When she closed the foundation in February, it is alleged that the $7 million balance on its books was transferred to private accounts.

Other examples of those arrested include “legendary guerrilla commanders Dora María Téllez and Hugo Torres” (to quote Robinson), with no examination of how their politics have shifted markedly to the right, the role played by Téllez, in particular, in the violent events of 2018, and whether she or others were planning further violence, as prominent Sandinistas claim.

The second point is that, while these leftist critiques of the Ortega government decry past US intervention, they refuse to acknowledge how important it still is. Robinson – who exposed in detail how the US manipulated Nicaragua’s 1984 and 1990 elections – is clearly aware that interference continues but does not believe it to be decisive. Timerman, however, barely touches on recent US action against Nicaragua, referring only to sanctions which, so far, have had limited impact. The open letter makes token reference to US “crimes” but says that violence in 2018 “could not be” the result of US intervention. How can they be so sure?

This marginalizing of US hostility towards progressive forces in Nicaragua is extraordinary given its importance to the country’s history and the evidence that it has stepped up over the last four years. The violent attempt to overthrow the government in 2018 followed a US playbook, which at least 8,000 young Nicaraguans were trained to follow. Edward Hunt showed at the time that the National Endowment for Democracy was bragging about its efforts to create so many disciples of regime change, and Yorlis Luna has described in detail the indoctrination process. In addition to its massive funding of anti-Sandinista groups, in August 2020 the US contracted the Navanti Group to run a $2 million, 18-month, “regime transition” program called ‘RAIN’ (Responsive assistance in Nicaragua), with the aim of securing Ortega’s defeat in the coming elections.

The third point is that the Mujica letter, in particular, focuses on alleged government violence and human rights abuses without any consideration of the evidence or where it comes from. Nicaragua has a foreign-funded “human rights” industry which only investigates anti-government allegations. This is not surprising since one body (the ANPDH) was set up specifically by the Reagan administration for this purpose, the oldest body (CPDH) ignored the atrocities committed by the Contras in the 1980s and the third, the small organization CENIDH, has been blessed with around $23 million of foreign government funding. Criticisms of these bodies have often come from their own staff, including accusations that they falsely attribute violent incidents to government forces. But of course these groups supply the material for the reports by international bodies such as the OAS, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Amnesty International and others, who then conduct their own error-strewn investigations using expensive outside consultancies to confirm the allegations made by these local groups.

The fourth and most negligent feature of these criticisms is their attributing all or most of the violence in 2018 to government forces or supporters. That some protesters were killed is undeniable, but equally undeniable is that the most savage violence was orchestrated by the opposition. For those (like me) who lived through that violent period, this suggestion that their protests were conducted “peacefully” or (as the Mujica letter puts it) “in a civic manner” is extraordinary. However, it is also partly understandable, since the local “human rights” bodies and Nicaragua’s “independent” media were able to create a hugely distorted picture of the events, which was then reflected in the publications of the OAS, IACHR and others.


While these distortions served their purpose in influencing international media coverage, they have also hoodwinked those on the progressive left, who should know better than to take such reports at face value. Plentiful evidence of the ways in which opposition violence was covered up have been ignored. To give just a few examples: the report Dismissing the Truthshows in detail the faults in Amnesty International’s investigations in 2018; a range of ordinary people describe the terror of the roadblocks in Nicaragua 2018: Uncensoring the truth; Dick and Miriam Emanuelsson’s filmed investigations show the lasting trauma left by opposition violence in Morrito and elsewhere.

The final aspect of what Timerman calls the “escalating repression” is the charge that Nicaragua has hundreds of political prisoners. As well as ignoring the 2018 violence and its consequences, this also ignores the fact that in June 2019 there was a conditional amnesty which freed around 400 people, including even those who had committed murder; the condition being that they had to refrain completely from involvement in further violence. The arrangement was similar to others of its kind: for example, when agreement was reached to end the violence in Northern Ireland in 1998, the UK government released prisoners guilty of violence on the strict understanding that they had no further connection with the parties that sponsored it. Those Nicaraguans who have been imprisoned since the amnesty have either broken these conditions or have committed other criminal acts, including fresh murders and the killing of two policemen (in December 2019, in the area where I live). Several recent arrests have been for violations of new laws, again similar to those found in the United States and Europe, to protect the integrity of elections, or because of planned violence in the pre- election period.

For those of us who live in Nicaragua, the confident assessments of the country’s political situation made by “progressive activists” seem totally disconnected from the lived experience of people here. One wonders whether the expressions of solidarity by these activists are really intended to reinforce each other’s views, disregarding those of ordinary Nicaraguans. Two of the letters claim to support the “Nicaraguan people’s right to self-determination,” but all the letters and articles contradict this by appropriating the right to make their own judgment as to whether the Ortega government is sufficiently revolutionary.

The clue here is in the wording: “The Ortega-Murillo government in no way represents the values, principles and goals of the Sandinista revolution we once admired,” they say, “…it betrays the memory of tens of thousands of Nicaraguans who died for a democratic Nicaragua where its people freely and fairly choose who should lead them” (my emphasis). But suppose the Nicaraguan people, some enthusiastically pro-Sandinista and others simply motivated by a desire for safe streets, stability and a return to economic growth, vote for the return of the current Sandinista government in November’s election, as seems very likely to happen? What will they say then?

Regrettably, the response from the signatories to these letters and articles is predictable: they will deny that it’s a valid result. No matter that this is what Washington has done at every election since 1984 that the Sandinistas have won. No matter that almost all Nicaraguans have up-to-date ID cards and the vast majority recently went to their polling stations to validate their right to vote. No matter that the electoral process has been further modernized to ensure that the results tally with the actual votes. No matter that, despite what the international media say, Nicaragua’s main opposition party is taking part (the PLC, which held power for a decade until 2007) as well as the PLI, who provided Nicaragua’s vice-president from 1990-96. And no matter that reliable opinion polls, by M&R Consultores, an organization whose past results have been quoted by the US embassy and others, show that Daniel Ortega, with 60% of the intended vote, is almost certain to beat an opposition which can only muster 20% support.

Let’s suppose for a moment, however, that these progressive leftists had their way, and the opposition were somehow to unite (something it shows little sign of doing) around one of the leading opposition figures. Let’s suppose that such a figure – Felix Maradiaga or Juan Sebastian Chamorro perhaps – were eligible for election and, even more improbably, they were to win. This would certainly achieve what Lula de Silva advocates – that governing parties should alternate in power – but what sort of government would it produce? None of these ‘candidates’ have ever put forward a program for government that says anything more than that “democracy” would be restored, “political prisoners” released and that public services would be purged of Sandinista sympathizers. None have given any indication of whether or how the various programs to lift people out of poverty would continue.

However, Nicaraguans have at least three reasons to suspect the worst. First, while US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has urged governments in Central America “to work to improve the lives of people in our countries in real, concrete ways,” the lessons of what happens to ordinary people under US-friendly governments are evident from our neighbor, Honduras, which has become a “narcostate.”

Second, we can judge Maradiaga, Chamorro and their like from their friends – Mike Pompeo, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and others on the US right – and from their support for the coup against Evo Morales, for the self-proclaimed “president” Guaido in Venezuela, and so on.

Third, and most important, the country has already renounced its revolutionary achievements once – when it elected neoliberal governments from 1990-2006. It suffered 16 years of privatized services, increased poverty, daily power cuts and roads that were among the worst in the region.

The alternative to the current administration is not one that would better represent “the values, principles and goals of the Sandinista revolution.”
The alternative is a government whose aim would be to destroy them. Is this what the progressive left really wants?

Featured image: Nicaragua, Sandinista demonstration

(La Progressive)

https://orinocotribune.com/ordinary-nic ... ts-stance/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Sat Sep 11, 2021 1:41 pm

NICANOTES, NICARAGUA, WEBINAR
NicaNotes: Myths about Nicaraguan migrants
September 9, 2021
By John Perry

[John Perry is based in Nicaragua and writes on Central America for The Nation, The London Review of Books, OpenDemocracy, The Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Counterpunch and other outlets.]
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Advances in health care such as new hospitals and Covid-19 vaccinations keep great numbers from migrating. Here people are receiving their second dose of Sputnik V vaccine in Managua.
According to Reuters, when Daniel Ortega’s government “began arresting presidential contenders,” tens of thousands of people “slipped into exile” in the United States or Costa Rica. In the article, Lost hope: Ortega’s crackdown in Nicaragua stirs fast-growing exodus, Nicaraguan ‘activist’ Jesus Adolfo Tefel says he feared arrest if he stayed in the country. But have people really fled Nicaragua because of the arrests that have taken place in advance of November’s elections, or are they saying they have, for the most obvious reasons?

The Reuters article is classic propaganda, linking things which in practice don’t link up but can be made to appear to. First, of course, migrants claim persecution as their (hoped for) ticket into asylum in the country they are trying to enter. But the only recent arrests in Nicaragua have been of prominent opposition representatives accused of specific violations of laws relating (for example) to the financing of non-profits and the receipt of foreign government funding. The few who have left (like well-known “independent” journalist Carlos Chamorro) are evading these laws. There are plenty of ‘activists’ such as Jesus Adolfo Tefel living normal lives, including ones like him who were given conditional amnesty in June 2019 for crimes committed during the attempted coup in 2018, providing they stay within the law.

Second, it’s clear that migration from Nicaragua to the US has increased from a small trickle to a trickle, but that it is still far lower than migration from neighboring Honduras and Guatemala (not to mention Mexico itself). “Push factors” include the pandemic and its effects on the economy, possible fears of more US sanctions on Nicaragua and the drying up of work in Costa Rica (see below). But much more important are the “pull” factors that drove up migration to the US from many countries at the start of this year: by March, “encounters” of all nationalities at the US southwest border had grown by over 100% in just two months. Labor shortages in the US, the easing of the pandemic and the belief that President Biden will be more lenient with migrants are likely to be the main “pull” factors.

According to Reuters, Costa Rica is “struggling” to process a surge of Nicaraguan refugee applications. Although some 60,000 Nicas have sought asylum in Costa Rica since 2018, more than 80% of these were said by the authorities in 2019 to be longer-term residents trying to regularize their status. That’s why the whole asylum story in Costa Rica is a concocted myth. Nicaragua’s opposition and its allies in Costa Rica make the most of it, not least because money has poured into Costa Rica from the UN and other agencies to help them solve the refugee “crisis” (it received $650 million of UN money in 2019 alone).

A Nicaraguan’s chance of having an asylum application approved in Costa Rica is not high – around 50% were turned down last year – and waiting times are extremely long. An important reason for this is that many of those pleading for asylum have committed crimes, including murder, before they left Nicaragua. At the moment, for example, Nicaraguan officials are seeking the extradition of a man from Masaya who is asking for asylum in Costa Rica because he is accused of the torture and murder of police officer Gabriel Vado in Masaya in July 2018. Many Nicas are deported to Nicaragua for such reasons (more than to any other country). Last year about 190 were deported from Costa Rica while over 26,000 were prevented from entering at the border in the first place.

For decades Costa Rica has had a symbiotic relationship with Nicaragua, depending on it for labor for its tourism, farming and other industries, while Nicaraguans benefit from working in an economy where income per head is five times higher. In any one year, around the same number of Nicas return to Nicaragua from Costa Rica as cross into Costa Rica: in 2018 and 2019, pre-pandemic, there were over 1,600,000 cross-border movements by Nicas going to or from Costa Rica, of which 49% were people returning to Nicaragua, despite the supposed “repression.”

The picture has changed radically since the pandemic, with the near collapse of tourism in Central America being particularly damaging for Costa Rica. The ravages of Covid-19 have hit Costa Rica’s economy and that of its neighbor Panama, worse than Nicaragua’s. Remittances from Nicas living in CR have also fallen sharply compared with those from those living in the US and Europe. That’s why Nicas are returning in greater numbers. Costa Rican statistics on border crossings since October last year show that almost 1,000 more Nicaraguans have left Costa Rica than have entered it. Can we now look forward to a new Reuters headline, “Nicaraguans flee Costa Rica in their hundreds”?

https://afgj.org/nicanotes-09-09-2021
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Mon Sep 27, 2021 2:25 pm

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Without Farming and Art, There is no Revolution (A Reflection on the 2021 Agri-Cultural Brigade to Nicaragua)
September 26, 2021
By MB Grimes – Sep 23, 2021

Editor’s note: In collaboration with the ATC (Nicaraguan Rural Workers Association), Friends of the ATC facilitates a small internship program for learners (usually university students or recent graduates) who are committed to solidarity with social movements. Each intern has a unique experience and brings a unique perspective and contribution to the ATC while they are in Nicaragua. In this post we share with you an article written by ATC intern from Fall 2021, MB Grimes.



As the 2021 Friends of ATC Agri-Cultral brigade comes to an end, participating members including myself return back to our lives with a shifted perspective, a stronger understanding of Nicaragua and its struggle, culture and people, as well as hope and inspiration.

Like-minded individuals from the United States, Mexico, Japan, Hong Kong, Borinquen, Dominican Republic, Honduras and Nicaragua gathered together in Nicaragua from September 3-13 to build solidarity, exchange knowledge and culture, and learn through experience—specifically in the campo (countryside) of Nicaragua through agroecology. Members of the delegation eagerly gathered in Managua first to learn the history of Nicaragua and the Sandinista Revolution, which included touring the capital city, discovering historical sites, and enjoying community offerings in Managua, such as the beautiful Luis Alfonso Velásquez Park and the Salvador Allende Port. We learned that 45% of the population in Nicaragua live in the campo, and over 90% of the food consumed in Nicaragua is produced within the country.

The following day, we split into two groups to begin our travels to the rural farming communities of Santa Julia with the Gloria Quintanilla R.L. Cooperative and La Montañita community at the ATC’s agroecological demonstration plot on the Cruz family farm. Both groups had profound experiences at each location, focusing largely on discussions with community members, exchanging questions, stories, culture, and food while also working and living the life of a campesinx (peasant). In La Montañita, community members shared specifically about government social programs and country-wide advancements since the end of the neoliberal period (1990-2006). During Daniel Ortega’s presidency, the country has increased country-wide access to electricity from 54% to 98.5%, increased renewable energy from 25% to 75.9%, all while rolling out literacy programs, affordable housing, school nutrition programs, and de-privatizing health care and education. As I talked with community members, I noticed a heavy emphasis on the role of women and youth in their fight, reiterating their commitment to gender equality and youth activism and engagement. Not only were there insightful facilitated conversations, but learning opportunities on how to use agroecology as a means for food sovereignty to build solidarity.

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Group in La Montañita standing proudly by the biointensive bed they collectively made to increase vegetable production in the agroecological plot. Photo: Author

After a couple of days in each community, the groups joined together at the Latin American Agroecological Institute (IALA) to continue learning alongside campesinxs in Nicaragua and participate in hands-on work in the campo. We harvested and learned the process of beans, made animal feed, prepared beds for planting, milked cows, and shared knowledge with one another, while also quickly learning the hard working reality for campesinxs and their long days in the fields. While some members conducted interviews with community members in preparation for information sharing in their home countries, others helped paint a mural at IALA to represent agroecology, food sovereignty and solidarity. A passionate, artistic comrade mentioned to me during our brigade that “no revolution happened without art” which fueled my desire to complete the mural as a means for solidarity. We collectively acknowledged the high volume of murals and art all throughout the country of Nicaragua, with strong imagery and messages to the public about the fight in Nicaragua.

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Artist Yaritza Sobalvarro finishes last touches on mural at IALA. Photo: Author

We left IALA with full brains and full hearts, new friendships and… smelly clothes. It was time to return back to Managua to close out our brigade with more learning and sharing, but also fun. We spent our last day touring the home of Sandino in Niquinohomo, a monumental experience for many as the legacy of Sandino lives on powerfully in Nicaragua and around the world. We were able to explore the city of Masaya and its volcano, buy souvenirs, and we were even treated to a live music performance from Diego Aguirre, a fellow Sandanista musician well known in Nicaragua.

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Members of 2021 Agri-Cultural Brigade gather in front of Sandino statue at his home in Niquinohomo. Photo: Author

As the delegation came to a close, I felt overwhelmed with knowledge and new insight. We collectively learned an immense amount from the people in Nicaragua but also from one another. I noticed throughout the delegation that each member held different strengths and weaknesses, and when combining these we become stronger as we fight for the rights of the peoples of Nicaragua and also globally.

From my own observations, I noticed that the reality of campesinxs in Nicaragua is starkly different from the picture painted by mainstream, neoliberal news. Nicaraguans take pride in their country, their president, and their revolution. There are numerous existing programs from the socialist government that increase access to basic needs and the people feel the government is there to support them.

From here, it’s up to us to spread our knowledge, challenge the norm presented by the mainstream, and fight for the rights of workers. Overall, I would recommend this brigade as a means to educate oneself on the true realities of the people in Nicaragua and to stand in solidarity as they continue their fight.

Here are what some of the other brigadistas from the US shared about their experience:

“It’s inspiring to be in a country that has not only had a successful socialist revolution but has been able to overcome a coup attempt and continues to build resources for its people. Nicaragua is an example of successful anti-imperialist struggle that more people should know about.”
– Troi Valles, USA

“This trip with Friends of the ATC has allowed me to observe, learn and put theory into action. Specifically, learning and experiencing the successes and hardship of Nicaragua, FSLN, and how they been able to remain sovereign despite the direct attacks and sanctions of US imperialism. Learning how to pick beans, make biointensive beds amongst so much other things. What I have witnessed proves three things: revolution is possible anywhere, socialism in action is what every country needs and deserves, and what western media says about Nicaragua is a lie.”
– Libre X. Sankara, USA

“I can already feel that this delegation will prove to have been one of the more transformative and inspiring times of my life. I am extremely grateful to have come across Friends of the ATC and the delegations they offer, and to everyone who makes them possible. After going through the Agri-Cultural Brigade delegation, I feel much more confident and capable in many ways than I was before: in my Spanish skills, in my ability to contribute physical labor, in my ability to adapt and try new things, and in my personal power and responsibility to be an active part of collective struggle and transformation (among others). I also made many friends and established many good connections, which is very important for our goal of international solidarity.”
– Jade Johannesen , USA

Globalicemos la lucha!
Globalicemos la esperanza!
[Let us globalize the fight! Let us globalize hope!]





Featured image: Members of the 2021 Agri-Cultural Brigade stand in front of historic Nicaraguan figures who defended their homeland in different moments of history. Photo: Author

(Friends of the ATC)

https://orinocotribune.com/without-farm ... nicaragua/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Thu Sep 30, 2021 1:56 pm

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Nicaragua’s Rainforest and Indigenous Peoples: a Story of Falsehood, Lies and US-based Political Campaigns
September 29, 2021
By John Perry – Sep 24, 2021

Indigenous peoples and the rainforests that many inhabit are under threat. Everyone knows it. In Latin America especially, international NGOs like Global Witness and Frontline Defenders tell a story which seems self-evidently true: outsiders are exploiting natural resources, governments are indifferent or actively complicit, Indigenous people defend the forests and in return face expulsion or death. But what happens when real life is more complicated? In Nicaragua, local and international NGOs pursuing a political agenda are twisting the evidence about environmental conflicts.

Nicaragua has the largest area of tropical rainforest north of the Amazon. Attention often focuses on the country’s biggest forest reserve, Bosawás, a remote region in the north-east, close to Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast. The two main groups who live in the reserve, the Mayangna and Miskitu, benefit from Nicaragua’s advanced system of self-rule for Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples. The groups are characterized by NGOs as environmental or human rights defenders, desperately trying to protect their forest lands against settlement by colonos (settlers) who want to exploit the timber and mineral resources or create cattle ranches. According to The Guardian, campaigning group Global Witness says that Nicaragua, with 12 environmental defenders killed in 2020, was “the deadliest country [in the world] for environmentalists on a per-capita basis and one of the fastest-deteriorating hotspots, with killings more than doubling from the previous year.” As can be seen from the list below, a range of international organizations made similar accusations about Nicaragua in 2020.

Claims by international NGOs about attacks on Indigenous peoples in Nicaragua in 2020

• Global Witness (GW) says Nicaragua was “the deadliest country” in the world for environmental defenders in 2020.
• Front Line Defenders (FLD) claims that “Violent attacks and killings against Indigenous rights and environmental rights often go unpunished, as the government continues to encourage the expansion of the agricultural frontier into Indigenous land” (although it recorded only two such deaths in 2020).
• The World Organization Against Torture (OMCT, for its initials in Spanish) published a briefing on “A year of violence against those defending the rights of the Mayangna and Miskitu Indigenous peoples,” recording 13 murders in 2020. It accuses the Nicaraguan government of acquiescing in the “ethnocide” of Indigenous people.
• The annual review of the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) claims that Nicaragua’s Indigenous people “live in fear and violence.”
• CEJIL (the Center for Justice and International Law) says of the Miskitu people that “invasion of [its] territory and the lack of State action to remedy it could entail the communities’ complete disappearance.”
• The International Institute on Race, Equality, and Human Rights (IIREHR) warns of possible ethnocide against Nicaragua’s Indigenous peoples.

One striking element of these accusations is the hyperbole—Nicaragua is characterized as “the most dangerous country” for environmental defenders and is engaged in “ethnocide,” risking the “complete disappearance” of some ethnic groups. Yet the evidence hardly bears out such claims. Take Global Witness’s annual reports. This author’s analysis of their statistics on Nicaragua in 2015 and 2016 showed that 21 of the deaths cited were related to land disputes in north-east Nicaragua. In 2017, GW reported four such deaths in their annual report and in 2018 none at all. Five deaths were reported in 2019 but these involved one family in a different part of Nicaragua. In 2020, as noted above, 12 deaths were reported, all from the region that includes Bosawás. This means that GW has recorded some 37 violent deaths in and near Bosawás in six years, or about six deaths per year. While such violence is tragic and regrettable, it hardly amounts to “ethnocide” given that there are some 180,000 Miskitu and 30,000 Mayangna people, the majority living in this part of Nicaragua.

International bodies rely on “evidence” collected by smaller NGOs

What feeds this exaggerated characterization of the fate of these Indigenous groups? The international bodies listed above rarely conduct detailed investigations themselves. Instead, they rely on the supposedly reliable evidence fed to them by smaller organizations, of which the key ones covering the Bosawás region are the Oakland Institute (an NGO based in San Francisco), Nicaraguan-based CEJUDHCAN (in English, Center for Justice and Human Rights in the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua) and CALPI (Center for Legal Assistance to Indigenous Peoples), both with offices on the Caribbean coast. CALPI reveals no financial information on its website, but it is linked to the International Human Rights Law Group (IHRLG), which is funded from multiple sources including USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy. IHRLG also funds CEJUDHCAN, and even lists its director, Lottie Cunningham, as a staff member. It should be noted that while Lottie Cunningham blames the government for these problems, most of her Miskitu relatives disagree with her and instead work to defend their community through the government. Writing in Covert Action, Rick Sterling showed that CEJUDHCAN also receives USAID money. It works closely with the Oakland Institute, whose $237,294 “Land Dispute Project – Nicaragua” is funded by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation which (as Sterling points out) is “interconnected with the [US] foreign policy establishment.” The key output from this project was a report deeply critical of the Nicaraguan government’s treatment of Indigenous peoples and pejoratively titled Nicaragua’s Failed Revolution.

Partial research, incomplete investigations

The close links between the three small NGOs and the international ones lends the former a dubious measure of credibility and means their “evidence” is readily accepted by formal intergovernmental bodies such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). For example, on March 18 2021, IACHR held an online public hearing on the colonization of Indigenous lands in Nicaragua, which was announced in advance by the Oakland Institute and had clearly been planned in conjunction with them.

Alongside the Oakland Institute, the organizations giving evidence were CEJIL, CEJUDHCAN, CALPI, IIREHR and OMCT. The session was chaired by Antonia Urrejola, newly elected president of IACHR, who is also a staff member of CEJIL. While the Nicaraguan government was invited to respond to the accusations, and in theory individual questions and reports could be submitted, in practice none that were critical of the NGO evidence (including questions from this author and others) were put to the session. Even more crucially, none of the elected representatives of the relevant Indigenous communities were invited to take part. The parent body of the IACHR is the Organization of American States (OAS), notorious for following a pro-US agenda. Effectively, such intergovernmental bodies, together with international and local NGOs, many receiving funds from US government agencies, form a cabal when it comes to criticizing the Nicaraguan government, one that is impervious to evidence that contradicts their stance.

Evidence from the sites of the attacks contradicts the NGO reports
In the case of the alleged “ethnocide” in Bosawás, the narrative set by these reports is aided by the difficulty in collecting evidence that might contradict it, because of the region’s remoteness. Fortunately a Nicaraguan-based writer and investigator, Stephen Sefton, has been able to travel there twice to interview people from the respective communities and local officials. His interviews last year, together with interviews by him and this author with Nicaraguan government officials and cattle ranchers, showed that the allegations then being made by the Oakland Institute and CEJUDHCAN that beef exports from Nicaragua to the United States were provoking “ethnocide,” because ranchers were driving out Indigenous peoples in Bosawás, were completely false. Reveal News and PBS Newshour, which had run the story about “conflict beef”, were forced to change their position. Anuradha Mittal, director of the Oakland Institute, resorted to Twitter to make ad hominem attacks on her critics.

Sefton’s latest interviews, made this month (September 2021), investigate the worst incident so far this year, on August 23 in an area deep in the forest reserve, known as Kiwakumbai. While it is too soon for this to feature in annual reports by GW and other bodies, it has already been publicized by the Oakland Institute, CALPI, CEJUDHCAN and another NGO called Fundación del Río. In turn, it was picked up by the Associated Press and by ABC News. According to the NGOs, “settlers massacred at least 11 members of the Indigenous Miskitu and Mayangna peoples living in the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve.” “The settlers continue killing our people with total impunity,” said CEJUDHCAN’s Lottie Cunningham. “The state has ignored our requests to investigate and prosecute past murders at the hands of settlers, and now the authorities are refusing to even acknowledge that this massacre took place. This impunity guarantees that more massacres like this will happen.” CALPI told AP News that Indigenous residents were attacked “with machetes and guns, and were tortured. They hung their bodies from a tree.”

The police, who did investigate the murders, reported that nine people died, and two women were raped; three suspects were quickly captured and 11 are being sought. Sefton, travelling to the site some two weeks later, took two and a half days to make the journey, through terrain only accessible on foot or by mule. His video report explains that the site of the attack was an artisanal goldmine, now abandoned, operated by a mixed group of about 40 Mayangna, Miskitu and mestizo or non-Indigenous miners (including the victims of the attack. Knowledgeable local people told him that earnings from the mine could well have been US$7,000-10,000 a month.

The mayor of Bonanza, Alexander Alvarado Lam, who accompanied Sefton, explains that the attackers were identified by the survivors as a group of mainly Mayangna people, who had been demanding money from the miners. Sefton’s crucial finding, therefore, is that the attack was a vicious and tragic intra-communal incident about control of a valuable asset, not an attack by settlers on Indigenous people. Interviewed in his office, the mayor also points out, albeit diplomatically, that outsiders take advantage of such violent incidents to criticize the government, but do not travel into the Indigenous territories to find out what is really happening. He went on to describe the efforts being made by government agencies to control settlement and illegal land sales.

The international media’s narrative is based on falsehoods

The mayor also confirmed to Sefton that one of the main attacks reported in 2020, in another Mayangna settlement called Alal, was similarly misrepresented by the Oakland Institute in its report Nicaragua’s Failed Revolution. In this case, the attack was by settlers, but it was in revenge for the fact that some Mayangna people had illegally sold land to them and had not honored the agreement they had made. As I reported for FAIR at the time, and was confirmed by mayor Alvarado, there is a persistent problem that some Indigenous people are encouraging settlers, and encouraging gold mining, thus damaging the forest reserve not protecting it. Nevertheless, the victims of this attack were categorized as “environmental defenders” in reports by Global Witness and other international groups, a story picked up by Reuters and repeated by international media such as The Guardian and BBC.

Sadly, the reports from the Oakland Institute, CEJUDHCAN and CALPI are riddled with dishonest statements: another from last year concerned an alleged attack by settlers on a young girl, that (as FAIR also reported) was in reality an accident involving family members. That this misreporting happens time after time, despite the real causes of the incidents being revealed, shows that these organizations are not looking for the truth but are engaged in a political campaign. In blaming settlers for every violent incident, portraying the Indigenous people as invariably environmental defenders and criticizing the police for failing to act, they can accuse the state of turning a blind eye to the settlers’ actions or even allege that the government is behind the violence. No doubt the Kiwakumbai incident will be catalogued in the annual reports of international NGOs like Global Witness, showing once again that Nicaragua is “the most dangerous country” for environmental defenders.

As is clear from this investigation, and was already clear from incidents last year, the real situation is far more complex and—while very unfortunate—cannot be reduced to a simple story of violence against Indigenous forest-dwellers. Of course, more could and should be done to protect Bosawás and other forest reserves and the people who live in them. But to use this issue to attack a government which has done far more than its predecessors to protect Indigenous rights is little short of scandalous.


Featured image: Nicaraguan police at the abandoned mining camp at Kiwakumbai in the Bosawas reserve. Photo: Tortilla con Sal

(COHA)

https://orinocotribune.com/nicaraguas-r ... campaigns/

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Sergio Ramirez on Nicaragua – Treason All Over Again…
September 23, 2021
By Stephen Sefton – Sep 21, 2021

As Nicaragua’s presidential and legislative elections next November 7th draw nearer, so the attacks demonizing the country’s Sandinista FSLN government led by President Daniel Ortega become progressively more intense. Lately, Western propaganda outlets have focused on the recent arrests of various figures from Nicaragua’s political opposition, claiming that they are abitrary detentions aimed at preventing any challenge to Daniel Ortega’s presidential candidacy. A recent Guardian interview with highly regarded novelist, Sergio Ramirez, a long standing, fierce critic of President Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo, his former comrades, offers a litany of the falsehoods and distortions currently being deployed to discredit their government.

Ramirez was Daniel Ortega’s Vice-President from 1985 to 1990. In 1994, after failing to oust Daniel Ortega from the FSLN leadership he and other ex-Sandinistas formed a social democrat party called the Sandinista Renewal Movement (MRS). After a desperately poor electoral showing in 1996, Ramirez ostensibly retired from politics. But he remained a very high profile, virulent political critic of President Ortega and has been extremely active and influential mobilizing international opinion in Latin America, North America and Europe against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. In effect, Ramirez leverages his international influence to compensate for the comprehensive lack of support inside Nicaragua for the political opposition he represents.

Inside Nicaragua, recent well respected opinion polls have consistently indicated well over 60% electoral support for President Ortega and a little over 20% support for Nicaragua’s opposition parties. Like so much else contradicting the continuing attacks on Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, that fact is systematically omitted from practically all current reporting on the country. In fact, the positive revolutionary changes President Ortega’s administration has brought about in Nicaragua completely contradict the image of the country depicted by Sergio Ramirez and the rest of Nicaragua’s political opposition.

Their attacks all start from the standard propaganda premise that President Ortega is a corrupt, brutal dictator. However, his administration’s wide ranging achievements on behalf of Nicaragua’s people are recognized by numerous relevant international bodies from institutions like the World Bank and the Central American Bank for Economic Integration to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization. Under President Ortega, Nicaragua has implemented the most advanced devolved government for indigenous and afrodescendant peoples in the hemisphere and is the leading country in the Americas in terms of women’s representation in public life. Nicaragua has the most extensive and best equipped public health system in Central America.

The country is practically self sufficient in food production thanks to a radical democratization of its agricultural, livestock and fisheries production. It has the best highway system in Central America. Nicaragua’s innovative education system, especially its outreach programs to rural areas and its use of audio-visual media is very highly regarded in Latin America. International financial institutions regard the country as among the most efficient users of their loans for development programs. Nicaragua’s diversification towards renewable energy is among the most advanced in the region. Likewise, the country is the safest, most secure in Central America.

Even so, these tremendous achievements rarely if ever figure in the narrative deployed by Western corporate and alternative media because they contradict the big lie that Daniel Ortega is a corrupt brutal dictator. The Guardian interview with Sergio Ramirez promotes that big lie shamelessly with complete disregard for the truth. Omitting the Sandinista government’s unquestionable achievements, the interview frames the country’s reality within a distorted misrepresentation of the crisis in 2018 during which Sergio Ramirez’s political allies combined with big business and the Catholic Church to attempt a violent overthrow of Nicaragua’s government.

They failed, but thanks to the systematic false witness of the Western human rights industry, the extreme violence of Nicaragua’s political opposition in that regime change crisis has been buried. Honest reporting challenging that false witness is available here and here and here, among many other sources never cited by propaganda outlets like the Guardian. As for the interview with Ramirez, among the bland puffery for his latest novel, he and his interviewer also purvey the current set of opposition falsehoods namely:

• President Ortega is a despot arbitrarily persecuting the political opposition to exclude their participation in November’s elections
• the 2018 regime change crisis consisted of peaceful protests brutally repressed by the authorities who killed more than 400 young people
• Vice President Murillo is a deranged religious maniac
• Nicaragua has over 140 political prisoners
• the electoral process is a farce and eight presidential candidates are imprisoned

The fundamental background explaining this set of propaganda falsehoods is that the US government has declared Nicaragua to be a serious threat to the national security of the United States. The US authorities have implemented a series of measures attacking Nicaragua’s economy. Last year, USAID produced a document called Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua which explicitly discusses ways of bringing about regime change in Nicaragua using local non profits. In response the Nicaraguan authorities have acted based on the country’s criminal code along with other national legislation, as well as its obligations under international treaties, to investigate the opposition’s criminal collusion in US aggression against the country’s people and government. Opposition propaganda to the contrary, all the people arrested are being held for offenses detailed in the country ‘s criminal code. No one in Nicaragua is imprisoned merely for their political beliefs.

The office of the Public Prosecutor in Nicaragua is an institution independent of the government which in this case has found that many figures among the country’s extra-parliamentary political opposition have not only colluded with, invited and encouraged US and European Union aggression against Nicaragua and its citizens but also accepted tens of millions of dollars from the US government. Over many years, they received that money formally via their non profit organizations but abused their non profit status, using the money corruptly so as to fund activities of the country’s political opposition aimed at facilitating US government instigated destabilization. The Public Prosecutor found that Sergio Ramirez’s non profit foundation was among the recipients of that money, so a court order was sought and obtained for his arrest.

No presidential candidates figure among the people under arrest. None of the people alluded to, for example Cristiana Chamorro, Felix Maradiaga, Medardo Mairena, Arturo Cruz, Juan Sebastian Chamorro, are even members of a political party in Nicaragua. Only Sergio Ramirez can explain why he describes people who are not even members of a political party as bona fide presidential candidates. As things stand, six opposition political parties (PLC, PLI, APRE, Camino Cristiano, ALN and Yatama) will participate in November’s elections along with the ruling FSLN party. So it is equally absurd to suggest that the electorate has no choice for whom to vote. On July 24th and 25th last, over 60% of Nicaragua’s electorate turned out to verify their voter details in their respective voting centers prior to the actual vote in November. Clearly Nicaragua’s voters disagree with Sergio Ramirez that the elections are a farce.

Ramirez and his Guardian editors continue to retail the lie that the 2018 protests were peaceful. In fact, 400 police officers suffered gunshot wounds and 22 were killed by the opposition peaceful protestors who also burnt down schools, attacked health centers and radio stations and took numerous hostages at the roadblocks they set up under the control of armed thugs. Some of that violence is documented here and here. The Guardian reports “400 young people” being killed when in fact just 10 or 12 students died, half of them Sandinista supporters killed by opposition activists. The true overall figure of people who died during the crisis is around 260, with over 60 being Sandinista supporters and the great majority passers by caught up in the opposition-provoked violence.

Among the most odious of the false claims made by Ramirez and the Guardian is the smearing of Vice President Rosario Murillo, which points to the deep rooted misogyny of both Ramirez and the Guardian’s editors. Ramirez cannot accept that a supremely talented woman wiped the floor with him and his opposition accomplices politically, consigning him and his MRS movement to electoral irrelevance. Neither he nor his colleagues of the now defunct MRS will ever forgive Rosario Murillo for that. Murillo was a key strategist in rebuilding the FSLN as a political party through the 1990s and up until the party’s successful 2006 election campaign.

From 2007 to date, Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo have put together and managed the ministerial and legislative team that designed and carried out policies which, up until the US instigated crisis of 2018, gave Nicaragua the most successful development policies in Central America and among the most successful in all of Latin America and the Caribbean. Rosario Murillo is a revolutionary anti-imperialist readily comparable in the regional context to other outstanding women political figures in the region, from Delcy Rodriguez to Cristina Fernandez or Dilma Roussef. Ramirez and the Guardian cannot deny Murillo’s tremendous achievements and talent, so they rubbish her and smear her as a deranged kind of “mad woman in the attic”, revealing their own patriarchal instincts.

The interview with Ramirez has the headline “”A feeling of dejá vu” which could hardly be more appropriate. Yet again, a member of Nicaragua’s right wing elite has allied with the country’s historcial aggressor, the United States, colluding in US aggression to attack not just his own country’s legitimate government but also ordinary Nicaraguan citizens. In this case, the treason of Sergio Ramirez comes dressed up as brave and principled defiance by a minor high culture icon. However people in the US might well compare such treason with that of Ezra Pound, a much more influential cultural figure than Ramirez, who broadcast from Italy against the Allies during World War Two. The US authorities threw him in a cage and he only escaped a death sentence by pleading insanity.

Despite effectively collaborating with US government aggression against his country, Ramirez attracts sympathy among susceptible US liberals and European social democrats by feigning to be progressive while in practice supporting Nicaragua’s traditional oligarchy, big business and the local Catholic Church hierarchy. In Nicaragua, people draw the contrast between Ramirez’s base treachery and the illustrious example of Rubén Darío, also an incomparably more influential figure culturally than Ramirez. Darío served his country faithfully as a diplomat and was resolutely clear eyed about the menace of US imperialism in his day. As well as betraying his country, Ramirez has betrayed the cultural, spiritual and political legacy of Nicaragua’s national heroes Rubén Darío and Augusto C. Sandino. In any case, for most people in Nicaragua, the opinion of politically marginal figures like Ramirez is a matter of complete indifference.


Featured image: Sergio Ramirez

(Tortilla con Sal)

https://orinocotribune.com/sergio-ramir ... ver-again/
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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Sat Oct 02, 2021 1:06 pm

NicaNotes: What Does Health Care For All Look Like?
September 30, 2021
By Becca Mohally Renk

[Becca Mohally Renk has lived in Ciudad Sandino, Nicaragua, for 20 years, working with the Jubilee House Community and its project, the Center for Development in Central America. The JHC-CDCA has been in Nicaragua since 1994 working in sustainable community development and runs a full time health clinic in Nueva Vida. Becca and her husband Paul have two daughters in 9th and 10th grades in public school in Nicaragua.]

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Since the Sandinistas returned to power in Jan. 2007, child malnutrition has dropped by 45% for children under five and by 66% for children ages 6-12.

I’d like you to imagine for a moment that you are the parent of a child with asthma, living in Ciudad Sandino, just outside the capital of Nicaragua, in a barrio called Nueva Vida, which was recently founded after your family – along with 1,200 other families – was flooded out of your home along the lakeshore in Managua during Hurricane Mitch. The year is 2001, and although your family now has a concrete house and the bus runs regularly down your street in the daytime, nights are filled with rival gangs throwing rocks and bottles, and regular work has been nearly impossible to find. These days, you travel into the market in Managua before dawn to wash potatoes for a vegetable seller; with what you earn, you can usually bring home a little food for your family’s lunch. Although you have five children, it’s your middle child, the seven year-old, who worries you the most. She suffers from asthma, and you haven’t been able to save up to buy the expensive inhalers she needs to stop her persistent wheezing. Tonight, while your family is trying to sleep, smoke from burning trash in the nearby dump is heavy in your home, and your daughter can’t breathe. In the half-light you can see her eyes wide, struggling with an asthma attack. All you can think is that you have to help her. You don’t have a motorcycle, let alone a car, and the buses don’t run at this hour. You load your daughter onto the crossbar of your bicycle and ride through darkened streets – going around the long way to avoid the gangs – until you arrive at the Hospitalito. Although it’s called the little hospital, it’s really just a clinic. The doctor on duty is distressed when you arrive, he listens to your daughter’s lungs and sadly tells you that he has no medicine, no inhaler, no nebulizer, no tools to help you. Your daughter must go to a larger hospital in Managua, but there is no ambulance to take her. So you set her, weak and wheezing, on the curb, and begin to beg passersby for bus fare as light dawns over the useless hospital.

Life under the neoliberal governments in Nicaragua – 1990-2006 – was exceptionally hard. In those years, the poor got poorer and the rich got richer and Nicaragua became one of the most unequal countries in the world. Lack of access to basic health care was one of the ways in which everyday people suffered.

Under the Somoza dictatorship in 1978, there were a total of 209 health units in the country – that is hospitals, health centers and health posts combined. After the Triumph of the Revolution in 1979, the new Sandinista government made health care free, and even in the midst of an economic embargo and fighting the Contra War during the 1980s, they managed to increase health units five-fold; by 1990 there were 1,056 units. But during 16 years, the neoliberal governments only managed to build 35 more health units, the majority of which were in rural areas and sat empty due to lack of personnel and materials.

One of these units was our “Hospitalito,” in Ciudad Sandino. At that time, the public budget for medicines and materials was minimal: when the doctors who were working at our clinic during the day took the night shift at the Hospitalito, they had to turn sick people away because they didn’t even have gloves to examine patients or basic medicines. Even when patients managed to be seen by a doctor, they were given prescriptions for medicines they couldn’t afford. Imports of drugs were in the hands of foreign companies and production of generic drugs was restricted. Patients unfortunate enough to need surgery had to bring their own alcohol, gauze, sutures and sheets – oh, and also family members who could donate the blood they would need. Laboratory tests, specialized treatments, and surgeries were so expensive that poor families effectively could not access the service. During these years, patients literally died on the street outside hospitals for lack of basic medical care.

Since the return of the Sandinista government in 2007, the difference in medical care is stark. Today, the Hospitalito is a fully equipped hospital with emergency care and admitted patient beds. There is outpatient care – general medicine, pediatrics, gynecology, psychology, natural medicine, a rehabilitation center, and a maternal wait home.

Ciudad Sandino is just one city – public health care has been revolutionized all over the country, the entire structure and indeed culture of the health system has changed. Today, it is a more holistic system focused on families becoming active participants in their own health, and relying heavily a small army of community workers doing everything from mosquito elimination to door-to-door vaccination to health promotion and education.

Since 2007, the largest public health infrastructure in Central America has been built, now with a total of 1,565 health units. In 14 years, Nicaragua has built 21 new hospitals and remodeled 46 more. It has built or remodeled 1,259 medical posts, 192 health centers and 178 maternity homes. In an effort to see patients who don’t normally go to health centers, MINSA also has 66 fully-equipped mobile health clinics. These are made from semi trucks that have been confiscated in drug busts, and converted into clinics; in 2020 these mobile clinics provided nearly 1.9 million consults. In the midst of the pandemic, MINSA rolled out the My Hospital in My Community program which sees patients at neighborhood health fairs with orthopedists, cardiologists, gynecologists and urologists and includes screening for prostate, breast and cervical cancers. Patients are then referred to a specialist at a hospital for follow up.

Access to specialized care has drastically changed – services such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy that were once only offered in the capital are now offered at regional hospitals. Prior to 2007, many surgeries were only performed by international brigades; last year 120 child heart surgeries and 4 kidney transplants were performed, all by local doctors. This year, Nicaraguan doctors became the first team in Central America to perform in-utero surgery, on a fetus with spina bifida.

The list of improved health services is comprehensive by any standards: 260,000 cataract surgeries, care of 358,000 older adults and people with disabilities, three prosthetics and orthotics workshops, 91 centers for people with special needs, 265 free daycare centers, and 188 natural medicine clinics, 72 pain clinics, 34 mental health clinics integrated into existing public health centers.

Nicaragua has made a long term financial investment in public health: in 2020, 40 cents of every dollar the government spent was for health care and education. Nicaragua now spends 476% more on health than previous governments, investing 5.2% of its GDP in the sector annually.

In 14 years, total number of health care workers employed in the public sector is up by 66%, doctors up by 123%, free medical consultations are up by 329%, All this, combined with the school lunch program which guarantees a hot meal of beans and rice to 1 ½ million primary school children daily, has resulted in a 46% reduction in chronic malnutrition in children under five and a 66% reduction in chronic malnutrition in children six to 12 years old.

Investment leads to results: a 385% increase in pap tests plus equipping clinics with colposcopy and cryotherapy machines has led to a 25% decrease in cervical cancer mortality, previously one of the biggest killers of Nicaraguan women of child-bearing age.

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Both infant and maternal mortality have markedly dropped in the 14 years since the Sandinistas returned to power.

A 212% increase in maternal wait homes has led to an 87% decrease in home births, followed by a 70% decrease in maternal mortality over the more than 1.5 million births attended since 2007, and a 61% reduction in infant mortality.

Moving forward, Nicaragua plans to continue expansion – finishing five more new hospitals before the end of the year, building 12 more new by 2026 and continuing hospital remodeling as well.

It is in this context of more than a decade of these revolutionary changes to the health care system that Nicaragua faced the coronavirus. When COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, Nicaragua was already prepared by having a healthier population with access to the best public healthcare in the region.

To date, it has seen fewer cases and fewer deaths than any country in the region; in fact, it compares favorably to the most developed countries in the world. Nicaragua has achieved this by refusing to carbon copy the approach of the developed world like the rest of the region as done – with lockdowns, strictly enforced curfews, and school closures – but rather choosing to fight the pandemic on its own terms, with a strategy devised for Nicaraguan reality. The government recognized that in a country where most people depend on daily earnings to survive, lockdown would result in hunger; that with children depending on their free school lunch for vital nutrition, school closures would result in hunger; and that with the economy already suffering from the failed coup attempt in 2018 (damages are estimated to be equivalent to that of 52 hurricanes like Eta and Iota which hit Nicaragua in 2020), forced economic shut down would cripple the nation. Instead, the government strategy to fight the pandemic played to Nicaragua’s strengths: its well-organized community health system and resilient population.

From late March 2020 when the first coronavirus case in the country was confirmed, through mid-May when the first wave began to peak, lay health promoters carried out 5 million home visits to the country’s 1.3 million homes to share information on the virus, go through symptom checklists and identify possible cases. The public was encouraged early on to learn to live with the virus by going about their business safely, something the international scientific community is now also promoting as the world begins to recognize it is moving from pandemic to endemic COVID-19.

Nicaragua’s adaptation has been agile and widespread: schools, markets, shops, taxis and bus cooperatives came up with creative hand-washing ideas right away. [Editor’s note: This was when doctors still thought the virus could be passed through touching surfaces.] The population adapted to wearing masks in crowded areas early on, and we did not see a politicized mask debate. Unlike in countries where the government has made decisions for people what is safe and what is not, Nicaraguans have learned to judge for themselves what is safe, and life has continued.

Nicaragua’s softer approach has resulted in fewer COVID cases than any country in the region, and its economy is in better shape. Nicaragua was forecast to have a 14% loss of its GDP in 2020, but managed only a 2% loss and was the only country in Central America to increase its exports in 2020. Even when adjusting for “excess” deaths – those above the expected death rate – Nicaragua has not only fared better in the pandemic than any other country in the region, but also larger countries like the U.S. and U.K.

Unlike the developing world, the Nicaraguan response has never relied on testing – due to cost and lack of reagents, testing has been necessarily limited; but we also know that testing is also slow and unreliable. Although COVID tests are available – mostly for those who require it for traveling outside the country, at a cost of $150 per test – the current public health protocol calls for only testing at-risk patients: pregnant women, the elderly and healthcare workers. Rather than waiting for a test-confirmed diagnosis, any patient presenting even one symptom is treated as a suspected case. Recently, a member of our community got COVID, so we saw up close what happens when a patient is sick. When she first got a fever and aches, she called the free hotline to ask what to do. The doctors told her to go to the Hospitalito. She was examined and, like all patients with suspected COVID, was given two specific medications, plus others as needed in accordance with her own medical history. She was told to isolate at home for 14 days and come back if she presented more symptoms. Patients are also asked who they have been in contact with, and those contacts are then visited by health care workers, given a round of prophylactic medicines and told to come to see a doctor if they present more symptoms.

In the area of prevention, Nicaragua is vaccinating against COVID-19, but the rollout has been slower than hoped for due to a lack of vaccines. This is especially frustrating because Nicaragua knows how to vaccinate: this country created the internationally used model for how to vaccinate in war zones when it eradicated polio and other childhood diseases with its vaccination campaign during the Contra war in the 1980s. Since 2007, Nicaragua has maintained a nearly universal vaccination rate, and public health workers participate in annual vaccination campaigns door to door throughout the country. Even in the first months of the pandemic, 2 million people were vaccinated against influenza and pneumonia with vaccines made at a lab in Nicaragua.

But, as we have seen around the world, the COVID vaccine rollout is not equal and has been politicized with what is being called “vaccine diplomacy.” The United States – where to date 15 million unused vaccines have been thrown out, enough to vaccinate every Nicaraguan twice – has donated vaccines to every other Central American county except Nicaragua.

Since March, Nicaragua has been vaccinating for free, starting with oldest population – those over 45 are currently eligible. So far, 524,000 people have been vaccinated, with the goal of having over a million people vaccinated by October 9th. Although there was initially some vaccine hesitancy in the older population, as COVID cases have risen in recent weeks, demand for the vaccine has also risen. Fortunately, the health care system’s organization is up to the task of dealing with long lines: my husband Paul was vaccinated recently on his 45th birthday, and although the line outside the hospital stretched for four blocks, he was jabbed and done within two hours.

We are currently experiencing a second wave – which is remarkable since other countries are already on their fourth wave. With this second wave, we are also fighting what Nicaraguan Vice President Rosario Murillo calls “health terrorism,” meaning disinformation about the pandemic situation, which has been widespread during both waves. Around the world, the pandemic has been politicized, and that is especially true in Nicaragua. The USAID “regime change” plan for Nicaragua, Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua, or RAIN, which was leaked in July 2020, specifically mentions exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic into a “humanitarian emergency” through what it calls Nicaragua’s “weak healthcare system.” Even before there were reported cases in Nicaragua, we saw this playing out through manipulation of international media, scare tactics via WhatsApp messages and Facebook, and even the creation of a parallel “authority,” the Citizens Observatory for COVID-19 in Nicaragua, an organization of anonymous “interdisciplinary volunteers” with a slick website. Throughout the pandemic they have reported exaggerated “parallel” numbers; and despite the fact that they admit one of their sources is “rumors,” international media have quoted Observatory counts as if they were official numbers.

I personally have been told that hospitals have “collapsed,” there are bodies stacked in corridors, and patients being turned away, only to speak with someone who had been in that hospital or go myself and find out that simply wasn’t true. Unfortunately, this health terrorism has deadly consequences. The constant disinformation scares people, and understandably so – especially older people who remember the neoliberal years when patients did die for lack of care outside of hospitals. So instead of seeking medical care, patients are self-medicating at home, and too often go to the hospital too late and wind up much sicker or even die. To combat it, this week health care workers have again been deployed to go door-to-door checking on people, giving information, and convincing those who are sick to seek medical care.

What does the future hold? Nicaragua will keep caring for its people, plugging away to reduce inequities in health and to eradicate poverty. As President Ortega said this week, “The most terrible virus that exists on the planet is the one that causes poverty, because it is in the genes of those who dominate the world economy under capitalism. It is based on the principle of survival of the fittest, no matter how many dead it leaves in its wake.… That is savage capitalism, the most terrible disease on the planet.”

SOURCES: Gobierno de Reconciliación y Unidad Nacional: Plan Nacional de la Lucha Contra La Pobreza Para el Desarrollo Humano 2022-2026 http://www.tortillaconsal.com/tortilla/node/12471

Interview with Ivan Acosta, Nicaraguan Minister for Housing and Public Credit https://popularresistance.org/nicaragua ... velopment/

Ministry of Citizen Power for Health Nicaragua: Advances in Health From 2007 to 2020 http://www.tortillaconsal.com/tortilla/node/1133

https://afgj.org/nicanotes-09-30-2021

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Nicaragua Will Receive 1.7 Million COVID-19 Vaccines in October

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President Daniel Ortega announced during a public act at the beginning of September that by October 9 the country would reach 32 percent coverage of vaccination against COVID-19. | Photo: Twitter/@sputnikvaccine

Published 1 October 2021 (15 hours 34 minutes ago)

1.7 million doses of vaccines against COVID-19 will arrive in Managua in the course of this month, assured the Secretary General of the Ministry of Health (Minsa), Carlos Sáenz.


In declarations to a Channel Cuatro television program, the official mentioned the batches of 138 thousand units of Sinopharm vaccine (produced in China), 233 thousand of Pfizer (U.S.) and 800 thousand of Sputnik Light (Russia).

Saenz explained that this Central American country has financing to obtain the immunogens, but at times the deliveries have been delayed due to capacity problems of the producing industries.


"Nicaragua is working hard to achieve by the end of 2021 the immunization of 70 percent of the population against Covid-19, said the Secretary General of the Ministry of Health, Carlos Saenz."

He highlighted the donations of injectables received from Norway, Spain and India, the latter country contributing 200,000 doses at the beginning (March) of the vaccination campaign.

He recalled the announcement made by President Daniel Ortega during a public act at the beginning of September that by October 9 the country would reach 32 percent coverage of vaccination against COVID-19.

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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Wed Oct 06, 2021 1:23 pm

U.S. Congress Outlines New Phase of Economic Attacks and Hybrid War on Nicaragua’s Sandinista Government
Ben Norton 29 Sep 2021

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U.S. Congress Outlines New Phase of Economic Attacks and Hybrid War on Nicaragua’s Sandinista Government

The US Congress invited neoconservative regime-change strategists to discuss the next stage of hybrid warfare on Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.

A House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on September 21 set out plans for the next phase of the United States’ hybrid warfare on Nicaragua, which aims to destabilize and ultimately overthrow the Central American nation’s leftist Sandinista government.

The event featured hardline neoconservative members of Congress, a senior State Department official, a prominent Nicaraguan regime-change activist, and the former president of Costa Rica.

The carefully staged spectacle made it clear that Washington will be expanding its brutal economic war on Nicaragua as the country’s general elections approach in November. This will take the form of more aggressive financial sanctions, through legislation called the RENACER Act . These sanctions could potentially expand into a de facto blockade modeled after the US embargo of Venezuela .

US officials stated explicitly that Washington will refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the November elections. The panelists also suggested that the Joe Biden administration may even refuse to recognize the legitimacy of President Daniel Ortega and the Nicaraguan government itself, and will pressure other countries in Latin America to cut diplomatic ties as well.

The hearing indicates that the Biden administration plans to repurpose many of the same tactics that the Donald Trump administration employed in the coup attempt it initiated against Venezuela in 2019, such as refusing to recognize the constitutional government of President Nicolás Maduro, appointing unelected US asset Juan Guaidó as supposed “interim president,” and broadening the sanctions initiated by the Barack Obama administration into a full-on economic blockade.

While the Biden administration is continuing the hard-line anti-Nicaragua posture taken by Trump, the State Department officials crafting these policies appear to know very little about the country.

As she spewed inflammatory rhetoric demonizing the Sandinista government as “authoritarian,” US Deputy Assistant Secretary Emily Mendrala comically referred to Nicaragua as an “island,” leading a member of Congress to correct her for apparently confusing the Central American nation with Haiti.

Other participants made similarly absurd comments, demonstrating their ignorance of the reality on the ground in Latin America. Congressman Juan Vargas, for instance, farcically insisted that Fidel Castro, who died in 2016, is still alive and in power in Cuba, and “he’s been there a long time.”

While the event represented a laughable display of colonial arrogance, the consequences of Washington’s emerging agenda are likely to have serious consequences for Nicaragua and its people. Indeed, the State Department has emphasized that the Biden administration is working closely with the European Union, Canada, Costa Rica, and the Organization of American States (OAS) to destabilize the Sandinista government.

Together, they plan to expel Nicaragua from the OAS and isolate it diplomatically. They also hope to cut off the country’s trade with the United States and starve it economically.

The overblown rhetoric spouted by the panelists was complemented with fear-mongering about Russia’s alliance with Nicaragua, which they referred to with classic colonial framing as “the US doorstep.”

The hearing also highlighted a growing and increasingly influential right-wing Nicaraguan-American lobby, and its direct coordination with extremist Cuban-American elements in Florida.

US Congress pledges more aggressive sanctions on Nicaragua

This 2021, the Nicaraguan government arrested a series of right-wing opposition activists who orchestrated a violent coup attempt that devastated the country’s economy and society in 2018.

During the failed putsch, extremists waged a campaign of terror in Nicaragua, hunting down Sandinista activists, injuring, torturing, and killing hundreds. For months, criminal elements erected dozens of barricades known as tranques, in various parts of the country, while waging a low-intensity civil war against the Sandinista government.

President Daniel Ortega recognized that the US-backed coup-mongers were intentionally stoking violence, and wanted to invite a government crackdown that they could use to justify international intervention – a strategy that Hong Kong separatists openly advocated in a similarly failed US-backed destabilization operation.

So Ortega ordered police not to leave their stations, which led the foreign-funded coup-mongers to besiege Nicaraguan police stations and try to kill as many security forces as possible.

The powerful political and economic figures behind this bloody coup attempt finally faced legal consequences in 2021, and were arrested by the Nicaraguan government.

Yet the US government was furious at these detentions, because Washington had cultivated, trained, and funded these coup leaders, over years and with millions of dollars.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on September 21, titled “An International Response to Ortega’s Destruction of Democracy in Nicaragua,” was occasion for the US government to announce its plans to punish the Sandinista government for arresting its Nicaraguan assets.

The meeting was hosted by Representative Albio Sires, a right-wing Cuban-American Democrat who had joined Florida’s neoconservative former Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in writing the NICA Act, legislation that called for a de facto financial blockade of the Sandinista government.

The NICA Act was passed in December 2018, without any opposition in Congress . The bill represented the first round of crushing US sanctions on Nicaragua.

Sires and his neoconservative colleagues in the Congress are however not content with the economic warfare that Washington is already waging against Nicaragua. They want more.

In the September 21 hearing, he called for the US government and European Union to impose even more aggressive sanctions on Nicaragua and “begin preparing a number of severe diplomatic consequences,” including suspending the country from the Inter-American Democratic Charter and Organization of American States.

Sires is the co-sponsor of a follow-up to the NICA Act, known as the RENACER Act , which will expand the unilateral coercive measures targeting Nicaragua’s economy, while also ratcheting up US spy operations in the country.

In the Senate, the legislation has been spearheaded by Bob Menendez, another right-wing Cuban American Democrat who played a significant role in the US-backed coup in Bolivia in 2019 , as well as Senator Marco Rubio, the Republican representative of far-right Cuban-Americans in Miami.

Menendez and Rubio have lobbied hard to expand US sanctions and increase aggressive tactics against Nicaragua, using the OAS to punish the country.

This June, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the RENACER act, although it has yet to be officially voted on.

The September 21 hearing made it clear that, despite protests by peace activists in Washington, the RENACER will soon be rammed through Congress with little opposition, thus escalating the US economic war on Nicaragua.

Joined Sires in the meeting was committee ranking member Mark Green, a Republican representing Tennessee who is co-sponsoring the RENACER Act.

While Green was unable to pronounce the names of the US-backed Nicaraguan coup leaders he described as “political prisoners,” he revealed that members of the Foreign Affairs Committee “regularly meet” with figures from the right-wing anti-Sandinista opposition to coordinate tactics.

Florida Republican Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar, a Cuban-American representative of the most fanatical far-right forces in Miami, also held forth during the hearing.

Salazar insisted that Washington must intervene much more aggressively in Latin America, claiming, “The United States is not present in this hemisphere! Period.”

Salazar held up photos of Felix Maradiaga, Arturo Cruz, and Juan Sebastián Chamorro, US government-backed Nicaraguan regime-change activists who played a crucial role leading the violent 2018 coup attempt.

Representatives Joaquin Castro, a Democrat from Texas, and Juan Vargas, a Democrat from California, joined the chorus of condemnation as well.

Vargas lamented that US regime-change operations targeting Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua have repeatedly failed, complaining, “We do a whole lot of things to try to get rid of them, and we’re not very successful… We did a whole lot of damn things against all these guys, and they still seem to survive.”

In a comment that showed how little he actually knows about Latin America, Vargas then suggested that Fidel Castro, who died five years ago, is still alive and has “been there a long time. I mean we wanted to get rid of him for a long time. We’ve done lots of things to try to get rid of him, but we can’t get rid of him.”

US State Department vows escalation against Nicaragua

The deputy assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, Emily Mendrala, spoke proudly in the September 21 hearing about Washington’s political attacks on Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.

“We continue to work with governments throughout the region, through the OAS and otherwise, to continue” putting pressure on Nicaragua, she said. “We are also working closely with the EU, Canada, and the UK to coordinate additional targeted measures.”

Mendrala “welcomed the bipartisanship” in the campaign against Nicaragua, and boasted that the US government has maintained support for right-wing opposition activists and media outlets, stating, “Through USAID, we continue to support Nicaraguan civil society, independent media, and human rights defenders.”

She also revealed that the US State Department “launched a social media campaign in August” against the Sandinista government.

Mendrala went on to take credit for a June statement in the OAS condemning Nicaragua. “Through US leadership, we were we were able to secure a very important coalition of 26 member states” to support the anti-Nicaragua OAS resolution, she said.

Quoting Secretary of State Antony Blinken , Mendrala claimed that Nicaragua’s “electoral process, including its eventual results, has lost all credibility,” making it clear that Washington will not recognize them.

Reading closely from written statements accusing Nicaragua of using “Russian-inspired laws to carry out repression,” Mendrala’s comments reflected the neoconservative tenor of the Biden State Department.

Rep. Mark Green interjected to chastise Mendrala for insufficiently zealous rhetoric. “I would encourage you to say ‘the Ortega regime,’ because I’m not sure that it’s really legitimate,” the Republican said. “In fact, I think it’s not, I’m convinced it’s not a legitimate government.”

At one point, Mendrala even mistakenly referred to Nicaragua as an “island,” raising questions about her knowledge of the region’s most basic geographical contours.

“You called Nicaragua an island a minute ago,” Rep. Andy Levin corrected Mendrala. “I think you’re referring to the poorest country in the atmosphere, Haiti.”

Costa Rica’s former president calls for escalating hybrid warfare on Nicaragua

The inclusion of Costa Rica’s neoliberal former President Laura Chinchilla in the Congressional hearing reflected the Biden administration’s close coordination with Nicaragua’s US-backed neighbor to destabilize the Sandinista government.

Chinchilla echoed the extreme commentary of her US counterparts, citing “Ortega’s military strategy of increasing cooperation with Russia” to dub Nicaragua “a threat to regional security.”

The Costa Rican leader said Nicaragua must be expelled from the OAS, and called for a de facto economic blockade, “in order to stop immediately the external supply of financial oxygen to the Ortega regime.”

She also called for targeting the military, noting that “the Nicaraguan army [is] a key player in the endurance of the regime.” This was a not-so-subtle hint that Washington should curry favor with Nicaraguan generals to try to overthrow President Ortega.

Drawing on a US strategy used against Venezuela , Chinchilla then suggested that Washington should charge top Nicaraguan government officials with “money laundering and drug trafficking,” a patently absurd accusation.

She also suggested Washington should “deny legitimacy to the government” of Nicaragua, again echoing the US tactic of refusing to recognize the legitimacy of Venezuela’s constitutional government.

Today, Chinchilla is co-chair of the influential DC-based lobby group the Inter-American Dialogue. This February, she participated in a panel of neoliberal Central American officials at the corporate-backed think tank. It was joined by Biden’s special envoy to the region, Ricardo Zúñiga, and convened to cement the administration’s Central America policy.

The February event had hinted at tactics Washington and its regional clients would use to destabilize Nicaragua, including potentially recognizing US government-funded multimillionaire oligarch Cristiana Chamorro as a Juan Guaidó-style “interim president.” (The Sandinista government foiled those plans by arresting Chamorro on charges on money laundering .)

Elite right-wing Nicaraguan regime-change activist lobbies for more aggressive actions
Also starring in the Congressional hearing was right-wing Nicaraguan activist Berta Valle, the wife of coup leader Felix Maradiaga, a US-trained political operative who played a major role in the failed 2018 coup attempt.

Maradiaga, who grew up and was educated in the United States, has long been cultivated by the US government with the goal of destabilizing the Sandinista government.

Although his support base in his homeland is tiny, and he is despised by Sandinista supporters who hold him responsible for destabilizing the country over three years ago, Maradiaga has remained a top US government asset.

Incubated in the bowels of elite corporate-funded neoliberal institutions like the World Economic Forum , Maradiaga has led a series of NGOs and think tanks, such as the Institute for Strategic Studies and Public Policy (IEEPP), which use plentiful funding from CIA cutouts to wage hybrid warfare against the Nicaraguan government.

Like her husband, Valle was trained by the World Economic Forum, a notorious symbol of the global financial oligarchy. Valle is a proud part of the WEF’s Global Shapers Community , an international initiative to create neoliberal leaders who then push right-wing policies around the world that benefit the large corporations and billionaire plutocrats who fund the WEF.

A privileged member of Nicaragua’s miniscule class of wealthy elites, Valle made her name as a media personality at the country’s major right-wing outlets, such as Vos TV.

In her testimony in the Congressional hearing, Valle acknowledged that the Nicaraguan “government is alleging that Felix [Maradiaga] and others were part of a global conspiracy to use foreign resources, including from the US Agency for International Development, the International Republican Institute, and the National Endowment for Democracy, to harm the interests of the nation.”

That they did this is undeniable; it is an objective fact. Public records show that the organizations led by Maradiaga, such as IEEPP, have received huge sums of money from these CIA cutouts.

It is quite ironic that Valle mentioned these charges as if they were ludicrous, because the Nicaraguan justice system’s accusations against Maradiaga and other US-backed coup leaders were in fact confirmed by what the State Department official, Mendrala, said in the very same hearing.

Moreover, the State Department itself boasted in a public statement on September 14 that “the U.S. Government continues to support civil society organizations, human rights defenders, and independent media” in Nicaragua. Valle’s husband Maradiaga has been one of the top recipients of this foreign material support.

In her remarks, Valle also revealed that she has been coordinating with top members of the US government, and insisted on more US meddling in Nicaragua.

In July, Valle and other right-wing Nicaraguans traveled to Washington to meet with members of Congress, including Marco Rubio.

Today, Valle lives in the United States, and, with the active support of the US government, has been working to construct an anti-Sandinista Nicaraguan-American lobby to complement the power of the anti-revolution Cuban political machine in Miami. Already, her efforts and those of her patrons in Washington are bearing fruit, with an escalated economic war on her country of birth.

This article originally appeared in The Grayzone .

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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Thu Oct 07, 2021 1:35 pm

NICANOTES, NICARAGUA
NicaNotes: The Right to Defend Our Existence
October 7, 2021
By Aparicio Cienfuegos and William Camacaro

“Every time President Daniel Ortega speaks, he emphasizes that the Nicaraguan government has a preferential option for the poor. It is a way of doing politics. Why do politics if we do not seek the welfare of our populations, of the majority of historically marginalized people who have lacked services such as education, health, recreation, sports, electricity, or water? What is wrong with a government that defines its internal policies so that those who historically have had nothing now have access to the most basic services? Our government seeks to define and make policies to restore the fundamental human rights of our people.”

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Foreign Minister Denis Moncada (center) in conversation before speaking at Holyrood Church in NYC.

This is how Nicaragua’s Foreign Minister Denis Moncada opened his speech on Sunday, September 26, before hundreds of people who packed the Holyrood Church in Manhattan to show their solidarity with Nicaragua. Pastor Luis Barrios welcomed Minister Moncada to speak about the importance of peace, security, and sovereignty for Nicaragua. For more than two hours, the conversation revolved around the November 7 elections and the 150 years of Nicaraguan resistance against colonialism and U.S. economic, political, and military interference, now present in the form of Illegal unilateral sanctions.

A wave of threats and insults followed the announcement of the Community and Popular Mass in Solidarity with Nicaragua, many of them originating from fake social media profiles. However, the opposition did not foresee that these attacks, far from intimidating the audience would become an additional motivation for the Sandinista supporters resisting far-right censorship in the U.S. The Popular Mass at the Holyrood Church event – the most significant action in solidarity with Nicaragua since 2007 in New York City – was an opportunity to show their solidarity with the Nicaraguan people and their struggle for sovereignty.

“Historically, Nicaragua has had a lot of solidarity from the American people, from labor organizations, from peasants and the working class in general, from academics and students, and hundreds of thousands of others who are clear that Nicaragua is defending a just cause.”

The opposition also did not know that the Holyrood Church – Iglesia Santa Cruz is not just any church. Under the coordination of Pastor Luis Barrios (priest, academic, and activist), the sanctuary located in Washington Heights has a congregation primarily of migrants and refugees from the Caribbean islands and who know from personal experience the consequences of U.S. colonialism.

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Pastor Luis Barrios talks with Foreign Minister Moncada. (Photo: Lauren Smith)

With Liberation Theology as its compass, the Holyrood Church – Iglesia Santa Cruz – has been a home for the people: just as it has opened its doors to personalities such as Hugo Chavez and now Foreign Minister Moncada, the church is also part of the Sanctuary Movement that provides shelter to all those refugees that U.S. foreign policy forced to flee their countries of origin only to find racism, xenophobia, and deportation in “the land of the free and home of the brave.” The opposition did not know that the Nicaraguan people, the Holyrood Church base and those who attended guided by internationalist solidarity have much more in common than those who tried to censor this event.

The extraordinary mobilization announced by the opposition translated into a paltry showing of 9 people across the street. At the end of the mass, the handful of opposition forces entered and were given the floor, but they failed to raise even a coherent question or statement. The opposition’s failure to stop Sunday’s event is an example of the weakness and lack of organization of those who oppose President Ortega and Vice President Murillo’s preferential option for the poor and those who find in U.S. imperialism the last chance to defend their elite privileges.

“When we talk about an empire, we are talking about an elite of very reduced economic, military and political power. (…) From intellectuals, workers, and students, to black and indigenous people, the American people also suffer the effects of that unjust or aggressive empire.”

The calm and friendly attitude of the minister contrasted with the insults of the handful of opponents present. His confidence showed that he did not fear hostile questions or absurd charges, but above all, it shows the coherence between Sandinista discourse and praxis. The insults from the Nicaraguan right were not enough to overshadow the forcefulness of Minister Moncada’s arguments.

For example, according to the World Economic Forum, Nicaragua has the best public infrastructure in Central America. The Sandinista government implemented a socialized healthcare system, with free and universal care for the people, regardless of their political ideology or party affiliation. Initiatives to reduce gender gaps in leadership positions, implemented by the administration of President Ortega and Vice President Murillo, have led Nicaragua to rank fifth in the world in gender equity. The cascade of arguments continued to flow as the opposition drowned in the false propaganda pushed by the U.S. and its allies.

The outcome of the elections on November 7 will likely reflect the popularity of the FSLN-led government. According to a poll conducted by the firm M&R Consultores in September of this year, 66.9% of Nicaraguans indicated that they will vote for the FSLN, and the trend continues to increase. The same survey shows that 65.2% think Nicaragua will be better off with a Sandinista government and 63.8% approve of President Ortega’s administration. These statistics make more than evident the will of the Nicaraguan people, show that the struggle for sovereignty and dignity is possible, and are an example of the obstacle Nicaragua represents for expanding U.S. influence in the continent.

“(…) After many years of struggle, we continue to maintain the spirit of defense of our sovereignty, our national dignity, of our existence as a free, independent, and self-determined country. We are also very critical of the unjust policies of the U.S. towards Nicaragua and other countries such as Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and against countries in Africa and Asia. While the U.S. government says the Nicaraguan government is wrong, we disagree with them and their way of imposing ‘democracy, freedom,’ and their attempts to destabilize and overthrow a legitimate and democratically elected government. This is an example of the struggle of people who want to live free, with dignity, exercising their rights and defending their policies; and how the power of the US sees these governments as a threat and tries to overthrow them violently.”

Today, U.S. fear of Nicaragua manifests itself in the form of sanctions. A recent report published by the Sanctions Kill Coalition shows how sanctions are used as a tool of political destabilization and are complemented by other forms of violence and direct intervention. While the U.S. tries to justify unilateral sanctions the facts show the opposite. The victims of the sanctions are the people; sanctions affect fundamental areas like health and basic food. An example of this is that “Nicaragua is one of the few Latin American countries to receive no U.S. vaccine donations so far.” (https://sanctionskill.org/wp-content/up ... ressed.pdf)

The Reinforcing Nicaragua Adherence to Conditions for Electoral Reform Act (RENACER) is the name of the latest sanctions package pushed by the U.S. and Nicaraguan elites. If approved, the RENACER ACT “will intensify sanctions on Nicaragua and expand the targets of personal sanctions to ordinary Sandinista party members, more than 2.1 million people.” (https://sanctionskill.org/wp-content/up ... ressed.pdf)

Another poll published by M&R Consultores shows that 87.3% of Nicaraguans think that the sanctions imposed unilaterally by the U.S. are another U.S. attempt to intervene in Nicaragua’s course.

“We have the right to live as a State, in freedom and seeking the best for our population! We have the right to defend ourselves institutionally and constitutionally from aggressive actions by the U.S. and other European countries! We want to live in dignity, but other powers wish us the opposite. We are convinced that we have the right to justice and to defend our country in these forums and events, and share and debate. We have the right to protect our existence.”

Editor’s Note: There is still one way to stop RENACER. Please call and write the chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Maxine Waters. Phone calls are best: her office number is 202-225-2201 (California office: 323-757-8900); please leave a comment on the comment line. You do not have to be a constituent to contact her as the Chair of the Financial Services Committee regarding legislation before her committee. Then call the Financial Services Committee directly with the same message: 202-225-4247. Thank you!]

https://afgj.org/nicanotes-10-07-2021
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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Thu Oct 14, 2021 1:48 pm

Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry Denounces US Ambassador’s Meddling

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The president of Nicaragua at the tribute for the 126th anniversary of the Nicaraguan heroe, Augusto C. Sandino, demanded respect from the US ambassador to Nicaragua, who has been meddling in the Nicaragua's internal affairs. | Photo: Twitter @M_cruzS

Published 12 October 2021

The Foreign Ministry called on the U.S. diplomatic representative to observe "a respectful and responsible behavior, in the context of the Vienna Convention."

A protest note from the Foreign Ministry denouncing the interference of the U.S. ambassador, Kevin Sullivan, in its internal affairs, marks today the political panorama of Nicaragua, 26 days before the general elections.

'The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Reconciliation and National Unity of Nicaragua, hereby denounces the continued interference in the affairs of our country, on the part of the ambassador of the United States, Mr. Kevin Sullivan, reads the press release in its introduction.

The Foreign Ministry called on the U.S. diplomatic representative to observe 'a respectful and responsible behavior, in the context of the Vienna Convention'.

He also denounces that the Washington ambassador intends to disregard the legitimacy of Nicaragua as a State.


The Foreign Ministry demanded that Sullivan 'cease his covert attacks, his hypocritical greetings, disguised as a diplomatic courtesy that he abandoned long ago, and that rather has been, and is, an example of the continuous, perverse, detestable invasive interference of the United States in our Nicaragua'.

In its last paragraph, the communiqué demands the U.S. diplomat: 'Refrain, Mr. Sullivan, from continuing to violate our national harmony, and renounce trying to impose your vulgar, insolent, ignoble, abominable and decadent U.S. policy, which we declare, once again, unwelcome to Nicaraguans.'

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Nic ... -0019.html

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NicaNotes: Vaccine Solidarity vs. Vaccine Diplomacy
October 14, 2021
By Becca Mohally Renk

[Becca Mohally Renk has lived in Ciudad Sandino, Nicaragua, for 20 years, working with the Jubilee House Community and its project, the Center for Development in Central America.]

This week the Nicaraguan government announced that starting on October 20th it will be vaccinating children aged two to 17 with COVID-19 vaccines developed in Cuba. As soon as the announcement was made, my phone started buzzing as everyone I know sent each other the news. The excitement is palpable – two to 17 year olds represent nearly a third of Nicaragua’s population, and with this announcement it feels like we are really on the home stretch of the pandemic.

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People line up at the Lenin Fonseca Hospital for their COVID vaccinations.

After a slow COVID-19 vaccine roll out in due to unequal distribution of the vaccines around the world, as of early September Nicaragua had only vaccinated 524,000, or about eight percent of the population, and only those over age 45. Finally in mid-September, larger donations of vaccines began to arrive through the COVAX system, the government lowered the eligible age to 30, and set the goal of vaccinating another half million people before October 9th. How’s that coming along? We’re now just a few days away from that goal and Nicaragua is set to surpass it, thanks to excellent organization and thousands of dedicated health care workers.

I got to see this system first hand last week when I got my own COVID vaccine. When the massive vaccinations began, I watched as the lines at five major hospitals in Managua trailed out of the gates, far down the block, and remained long throughout the week. On the fourth day, I decided to try my luck. When I arrived at the Antonio Lenin Fonseca hospital on the Western edge of Managua, the line began at the gate and snaked around all through the hospital grounds. But as soon as I joined in, I could see that the line wasn’t standing still, but rather was in near-constant motion.

Most of the people in line were in their 30s, most dressed professionally or in uniforms, obviously having been given permission to leave work to get the vaccine. There was a buzz in the crowd, and like me, most everyone was on their phones, taking pictures and video, sending texts, calling friends and family to report on the line’s progress. For two hours we snaked through the shade, the sun, a light rain, and then under tents. I could feel the excitement that we were nearing the end of a very hard time, and there was a powerful unity, a feeling that we were all in this together. When we finally got to the front of the queue we were grinning under our masks as we were given our vaccination cards and then shown to the vaccine room where we were quickly jabbed and then whisked back out onto the street to allow for the vaccinations to continue.

We estimated around 10,000 people getting their vaccine – at just one of five hospitals in Managua vaccinating that day, and there are daily vaccines being given out in the rural areas of the country as well.

And soon the kids will be vaccinated, too! Cuba, despite being a tiny country besieged by crippling economic embargoes and attempted coups from the U.S. for more than 60 years, has developed not one but five viable vaccines against COVID-19. In July the U.S. responded to this laudable effort by leveraging the pandemic to attempt yet again to overthrow the Cuban government; and by ramping up the U.S.’s illegal sanctions, including restricting and denying medical aid to the island.

As it always has done, Cuba managed to thwart U.S. attempts at destabilization, and Cuba’s history of steadfast solidarity with other nations once again served it well when its allies came to its aid. Nicaragua – which grows 90% of its own food – responded to Cuba’s difficulties by sending not one but two ships of food to its neighbor, totaling 50 containers of basic grains and 10 containers of vegetable oil. Cuban solidarity activists in the U.S. donated millions of syringes to help with vaccination efforts, and now Cuba has persevered and is on track to have 90 percent of its population vaccinated against COVID-19 by mid-November.

Anticipating this milestone – which puts it far ahead of the lagging efforts of the richest country in the world – what is Cuba doing? Their first move is to reciprocate the solidarity: as soon as they get their folks vaccinated, they are helping their most vulnerable neighbors in Nicaragua.

I can’t help comparing Cuba’s actions in the time of pandemic with those of the U.S., my own home country. By early September, the United States had thrown out more than 15 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, more than enough to have vaccinated every Nicaraguan twice. The United States had donated vaccines to every country in Central America except Nicaragua, exercising “vaccine diplomacy” because the U.S. wants to overthrow Nicaragua’s democratically elected government.

In the U.S., not only can the system not give the vaccine away, but they can’t pay people to get vaccinated – despite raffling off new vehicles and cash prizes (in North Carolina they raffled off one million dollars to convince people to get vaccinated). The U.S. vaccination rate is currently only 56%. Meanwhile, in Rivas in southern Nicaragua, the police had to intervene when entrepreneurs began holding spots in the overnight vaccination lines, selling them for C$1,000 (US $29). And yet, despite lack of demand in the U.S., with overabundant availability, the U.S. has begun offering a third vaccine, even while in so many other countries people are clamoring for their first vaccine.

The U.S.’s actions in response to this pandemic are sinful.

Hoarding vaccines during a pandemic is a sin.

Wasting hoarded vaccines is a sin.

Failure to put aside political agendas for the common good during a pandemic is a sin.

Violating the sovereignty of another nation and attempting to destabilize their democratically elected governments is a sin. Doing so while its people are suffering a pandemic, is shameful.

While talking about the U.S. response to the pandemic the other day, my 15 year old daughter said to me, “The problem in the U.S. is that people believe that they are the only ones that matter – gringos think they each live in a bubble, and they don’t understand that we are all in this together.”

Maybe that’s the essence of the difference. The U.S. claims to have all the answers, but its emphasis on the individual and on personal freedoms has meant that during a pandemic the country is fraught with divisiveness that has led to 700,000 deaths as of this week. Meanwhile, Nicaragua and Cuba, the Davids to the Goliath in the north, have understood that even small, poor, besieged countries can do anything if they stand together in solidarity.

https://afgj.org/nicanotes-10-14-2021
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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Thu Oct 21, 2021 1:37 pm

NICANOTES, NICARAGUA
NicaNotes: Facebook Provoked Violence in Nicaragua, Too!
October 21, 2021
By John Perry

[John Perry is based in Nicaragua and writes on Central America for The Nation, The London Review of Books, OpenDemocracy, The Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Counterpunch and other outlets.]

Frances Haugen’s cutting accusations against her former employers, Facebook, on October 5 included references to how social media are used to provoke and coordinate violence. This happened in Nicaragua too.


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“Citizens circulated as ‘dead’ denounce media manipulation” announces a headline on the webpage of La Voz del Sandinismo.

It’s June 2018 on a backstreet somewhere in Nicaragua. Filmed by an adult, a boy holds a toy gun to the head of his friend, who has just been “kidnapped”. The adult asks, “What are you going to do?” “We’ll kill him and burn him alive. We’ll leave him naked,” says the boy. The adults laugh. The boy is re-enacting a real scene of opposition violence that he’s watched on a smartphone.

On April 18 that year, the Nicaraguan government announced modest changes to pension rules that prompted a handful of protests. The same day, a Facebook post falsely claimed a student taking part in one of them had been killed; it was quickly shared. Other posts grossly exaggerated the effects on pensions, claiming they were a ‘death sentence’ to the nation’s widows. On April 19, protests spread: young people with homemade mortar guns battled with police and three people died, none of them protesters: a passer-by caught in crossfire, a policeman and a young Sandinista supporter defending a government office from attack by rioters.

Nevertheless, Facebook posts immediately called a vigil for April 20, in honour of ‘protesters’ who had been ‘killed and injured in the struggle’. As a result, violent demonstrations broke out in several cities, with more deaths on both sides. It took only two more days for the government to withdraw the pension proposals but the protests continued, now demanding President Ortega’s resignation.

Frances Haugen testified to the US Senate that Facebook causes ‘violence that harms and even kills people,’ citing events in Myanmar and Ethiopia. She didn’t mention Nicaragua, but it could have given her many more examples. Facebook’s role was obliquely recognised by the New York Times in 2018 when it reported that young people “armed with cell phones and social media skills” were challenging the government after “dozens” of students had been killed. But many journalists who came here, such as Jon Lee Anderson, dismissed the role played by ‘fake news’, not believing that it had fuelled the protests. Of course, government supporters also used social media, but their posts were usually more obvious and less sophisticated, because they weren’t coordinated. A police officer told me recently that some of the protest organisers were running more than 100 Facebook accounts each, often using paid-for posts.

Public anger was stirred by a succession of reports on Facebook and WhatsApp of killings of young people, supposedly at the hands of the police. William González Zúñiga was one such ‘victim’, but he had died at home, possibly from a cardiac arrest after playing football. Photos of Mario Alberto Medina’s body were posted: he had died nine months before the protests began. Karla Sotelo, listed as dead on Facebook, was the subject of a makeshift memorial: she is still alive. Marlon Josué Martínez, whose photo as a victim was paraded in the streets, had been living in Spain for more than a year.

Large numbers of events were falsified for Facebook. A friend watched from his window as youths donned fake ‘Young Sandinista’ t-shirts before being videoed ransacking a supermarket. In a similar attack, a man trying to stop the looters died and his death was also blamed on ‘Young Sandinistas’.

Personal hatreds could easily be turned into public ones. Facebook posts began to give instructions on how to track down and kill government sympathisers or officials (labelled sapos or toads), leading to the victimising of government workers and supporters like Bismarck Martinez, who was kidnapped, tortured and murdered in June 2018. Many instances of public humiliation and torture were videoed and posted on social media to instil fear in communities (Here is a collection of gruesome examples).

In 2018, Facebook was at the height of its popularity in Nicaragua, accounting for eight out of ten social media posts. Using it for mass manipulation had only become possible a year or two earlier as smartphones became cheap enough for young people to buy and as the government made free Wi-Fi access available in public parks. Facebook, in particular, quickly became the main source of news as it already had in other countries. The government, hit by what was quickly labelled a ‘tsunami’ of social media posts, was totally unprepared, relying still on its own TV channels which young people increasingly ignored.

Haugen told CBS that Facebook promotes ‘angry, hateful, polarizing, divisive content’. In response, the company claimed it had 40,000 people working on safety and security and had spent $13 billion on such measures over the last six years. Until the end of 2020, it had a specialist ‘civic-integrity team’. But as Haugen also pointed out, 87% of misinformation spending at Facebook is on English content when only 9% of users are English speakers. “Facebook invests more in users that make them more money, even though danger may not be evenly distributed based on profitability,” she said. Under pressure for its effects on users in the U.S. and Europe, it seems unlikely that the company will devote more effort to eliminating hateful content appearing in places such as Myanmar, Ethiopia… or Nicaragua. Most of the worst material posted in 2018 has now been taken down, but it stayed on Facebook long enough to have its intended effect.

Briefs
By Nan McCurdy

World Bank: Nicaragua Number Three in World in Renewable Energy
The World Bank reported on October 11 that with 70% production, Nicaragua ranks third in the world in electricity generated from renewable sources, surpassed only by Kenya (72%) and Denmark (86.4%). The report states that “since 2007 Nicaragua has implemented a national electrification program that tripled energy production from diverse renewable sources and also expanded electricity coverage going from 54% in 2007 to 98% in 2021.” It went on to say that “The country’s renewable energy production is generated from geothermal, solar, hydroelectric, wind and biomass sources, abandoning in a few years dependence on fossil fuels and establishing a national energy grid that has more users, is affordable and significantly reduces environmental impact.” (Nicaragua News, 12 October 2021)

Nicaragua Ranks First in Infrastructure Investment in Central America
On October 11 the Strategic Alliance for Measurement of Public Investment in Infrastructure in the Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean (Infralatam) published a report entitled “Public Investment in Economic Infrastructure of the Countries of Central America”. The report says that with 3.7% of the GDP allocated to economic infrastructure, Nicaragua ranks first in Central America in infrastructure investment, followed by Panama (2.9%); Costa Rica (2.4%); Honduras (1.4%); El Salvador (1.2%); Guatemala (0.6%). (Nicaragua News, 15 October 2021)

Many People Involved in Elections
Supreme Electoral Council (SEC) Vice President Carlos Amador explained that some 245,000 people will be involved in the elections, including party poll watchers, polling station board members, electoral police, voting center coordinators, SEC and political party officials, and officials from the Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office. Political parties have until October 14 to register their poll watchers. Electoral police have already been trained. (Informe Pastran, 13 October 2021)

Ballot Reviewed by Parties and Alliances
The Supreme Electoral Council (SEC) together with the legal representatives of the political parties and alliances of political parties, reviewed and unanimously approved the ballot to be used in the elections. The ballot review included the names and photographs of the candidates, colors of the logo that represents them, order and number of boxes, design, quality of the material and ink, plus the security elements contained therein. Party representatives will also be present at the printing. SEC President Brenda Rocha, highlighted that all the information corresponding to the political parties and alliances was corroborated by their legal representatives. See photos: https://radiolaprimerisima.com/noticias ... lecciones/ (Radio La Primerisima, 14 October 2021)

Electoral Council Presents Ballot
The Supreme Electoral Council (SEC) presented the official sample of the ballot for the November 7th elections to the legal representatives of the Political Parties and Alliances. The representatives received samples to use to train their members prior to the elections. See photo: https://radiolaprimerisima.com/noticias ... electoral/ (Radio La Primerisima, 18 October 2021)

Army to Accompany Elections
The Army will have 15,000 troops, transportation, and air and naval vehicles for the transfer of electoral material to the most distant places of the country in order for elections to begin on time and also to guarantee the security of the population. General Julio Cesar Aviles said, “In these elections the people of Nicaragua will exercise their right and it is the people who will determine who will be the authorities elected.” (Radio La Primerisima, 18 October 2021)

High Intention of Vote for FSLN in the Segovias
According to a poll conducted by M&R Consultores in the northern part of Nicaragua the people there indicate a voting intention of 76.1 % for the FSLN. The survey indicates that 91.2% of the population consider that the next president will come from the FSLN.
The FSLN has a political sympathy of 76.1% in the department of Estelí, 83.9 in the department of Madriz and 76.1 in the department of Nueva Segovia. See details: https://radiolaprimerisima.com/noticias ... -segovias/ (Radio La Primerisima, 19 October, 2021)

ALBA-TCP Rejects Interference in Nicaragua
In a statement from Caracas on October 18, 2021, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-People’s Trade Agreement (ALBA-TCP) categorically rejected the recent statements by officials of the government of the United States who, the statement said, in flagrant violation of the principles and purposes of the Charter of the United Nations, continue with attacks and destabilizing attempts against the legitimate government of Nicaragua. Likewise, the statement condemned the interference of the OAS in matters that exclusively concern the Nicaraguan people and institutions.

The Bolivarian Alliance welcomed the preparation of the electoral process in the Republic of Nicaragua and also ratified its support for the Sandinista government, for President Daniel Ortega, for Vice President Rosario Murillo and sent support to the people of Nicaragua in their decision to continue defending the sovereignty, peace and remarkable social, economic, security and national unity advances achieved. The member countries of the Alliance called on the international community to reject this type of intimidation and to defend the sovereignty, self-determination and political independence of States. (Radio La Primerisima, 18 October 2021)

Billion Dollars Invested in Drinking Water & Sewerage since 2007
Between 2007 and 2021 the Sandinista government has invested more than a billion dollars in bringing drinking water and sewerage to the country as a human right and not as a business, reported Ervin Barreda, executive president of the Nicaraguan Aqueduct and Sewerage Company (ENACAL). He recalled that in 2006 there was an attempt to privatize ENACAL. The Sandinista government not only rescued the company but established a government policy of taking water to all homes to restore the human right to water for all. Barreda recalled that the neoliberal governments subjected the population to long hours of electric power rationing which affected water supply. “In 2007, at the initiative of President Ortega, a bill was sent to the Assembly, Law 620, The General Law of National Waters, which says that water cannot be privatized; water is a human right.” In 2006 only 65% of the urban population had potable drinking water; today it is 91.5%. By December 31, 28 drinking water and sanitation projects will be completed in 18 cities. “With the Bluefields project the population will go from having zero hours of water in their homes to having 24 hours of water, with high quality.” The Government’s National Plan to Fight Poverty includes investment in water and sanitation of US$526 million for the period 2022-2026, for 31 projects. (Informe Pastran, 15 October 2021)

Control of Chemical Substances Reduces Illnesses
Health Minister Dr. Martha Reyes said that the control of the use of toxic substances has reduced the incidence of kidney disease, cancer and poisoning in the population. Reyes said that the continuous exposure and manipulation of chemicals produces skin diseases, kidney diseases and cancer in the long term. Auxiliadora Diaz, president of the Commission for Registration and Control of Toxic Substances, said that sectors such as agriculture and industry are reluctant to reduce the use of chemicals. She added that with the awareness-raising work they have done, some companies have registered with the entity, which allows them to control imports of these substances. She added that since 2014 when the entity was formed, 36 substances harmful to health and the environment have been banned and they are analyzing the suspension of the use of more than 87 chemicals. (Radio La Primerisima, 13 October 2021)

First Lab for Chikungunya, Zika, Dengue & Leptospriosis
The Government opened the first laboratory for diagnoses and research related to leptospirosis, dengue, zika and chikungunya. The center will also perform PCR tests to check whether a patient is Covid-19 positive. (Radio La Primerisima, 19 October 2021)

Turkey Opposes Sanctions against Nicaragua
The Turkish government opposed the application of sanctions against Nicaragua and expressed its willingness to increase collaboration during a visit to Ankara by Foreign Minister Denis Moncada. “We are against sanctions, whether they are against Iran, Venezuela, Cuba or Nicaragua. Problems cannot be solved with sanctions or exclusion,” said Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu at a joint press conference with Moncada. The two ministers signed an agreement to develop relations and cooperation. Cavusoglu and Moncada also underlined their readiness to open respective embassies and increase trade. (Informe Pastran, 13 October 2021)

Pier to Be Inaugurated in Bilwi
The National Port Company has completed the reconstruction of the pier in Bilwi, capital of the North Caribbean Autonomous Region, destroyed by hurricanes ETA and IOTA in November 2020. The pier will be inaugurated on October 17. See photos: https://radiolaprimerisima.com/noticias ... onstruido/ (Radio La Primerisima, 13 October 2021)

Educational Infrastructure on Caribbean Coast
New educational infrastructure with an investment of US$1.4 million was finished in the community of Alto Wangki, Siksayari in the Special Zone of Alto Wangki. The Special Zone of Alto Wangki is one of the country’s seven regions of Indigenous peoples. The secondary schools on the Caribbean Coast were also equipped with more educational technology. Two schools were remodeled in the communities of El Wasno Yahoya and San Martin Susun III, in the municipality of Prinzapolka. (Informe Pastran, 14 October 2021)

Nicaragua and CABEI Will Co-Finance Health Projects
The National Assembly approved a loan with the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI) which will co-finance the Project for the Strengthening of the Attention Capacity in the Hospital Service Network in Prioritized Health Units. The loan for US$114.58 million will strengthen medical attention against COVID-19. CABEI will contribute US$85 million, and the United Kingdom’s Credit Agency US$29.55 million, as a direct loan. These resources are in addition to the US$400 million that CABEI has contributed for three anti-COVID-19 programs. It includes the construction of six modular hospitals, one of which will be for oncological care. (Informe Pastran, 14 October 2021)

Vaccination of Pregnant Women Begins
Voluntary vaccination for pregnant women from the 4th to the 9th month, postpartum and nursing mothers began October 13, according to the Minister of Health, Martha Reyes. She explained on the magazine show En Vivo of Channel 4 that pregnant women should be in the second trimester of gestation, since the vaccine is not recommended during the first trimester. See photos: https://radiolaprimerisima.com/noticias ... -covid-19/ (Informe Pastran, 13 October 2021)

230,000 More Vaccines against Covid-19 Arrived
Some 192,000 doses of Sputnik Light vaccine and 38,000 Astrazeneca vaccines arrived on Oct. 15. The single-dose vaccine, Sputnik Lite, was donated by the Russian Federation. (Radio La Primerisima, 15 October, 2021)

Nicaragua Provides Free Scoliosis Surgeries
Nicaragua has set a new milestone in specialized and quality care in its public health system, by becoming the first Central American country to perform free scoliosis surgeries, which in other countries cost at least US$50,000, not including pre- and post-surgical expenses. The Nicaraguan doctors were trained and accompanied by the renowned surgeon in pediatric orthopedics, Alaa Azmi, who came to the country to exchange his knowledge in this type of spinal surgery, as a result of the cooperation of the Palestinian Embassy in Nicaragua. (Informe Pastran, 13 October 2021)

Exports Continue to Increase
The Nicaragua Export Processing Center (CETREX) reported that exports totaled US$2.7 billion from January to September of 2021, a 19.9% increase compared to the same period in 2020. The products with greatest demand on the international market during the period were gold US$652.5 million, beef US$513 million; premium coffee US$447 million; sugar US$117.7 million; peanuts US$85.3 million; beans US$67.5 million and shrimp US$56.2 million. (Nicaragua News, 14 October 2021)

Law Approved to Protect Flora and Fauna on Islands
National Assembly Deputies approved the “Law that declares and defines Great Corn Island, Little Corn Island and Blowing Rock as a Protected Landscape and Protected Seascape Area.” This will contribute to the protection of the natural heritage of the nation. (Informe Pastran, 13 October 2021)

https://afgj.org/nicanotes-10-21-2021

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Nicaragua Calls on US Ambassador to Cease Covert Attacks

October 20, 2021
The United States Ambassador to Nicaragua is being told to cease covert attacks and continued interference in Nicaragua with just weeks remaining before the country’s general election.

A press release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Nicaragua, dated Monday, October 11, denounces “continuing interference in the affairs of our country, on the part of the Ambassador of the United States of North America, Mr. Kevin Sullivan.”

Sullivan has been accused of expressing himself “directly and indirectly, to the detriment of our institutional decisions and our independent national policies, of an independent country” and is thus being called on to observe and comply with respectful and responsible conduct as outlined in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

“We demand that Mr. Sullivan cease his covert attacks, his hypocritical salutations, disguised as a diplomatic courtesy that he abandoned long ago, and that rather has been, and is, an example of the continuous, perverse, detestable invasive interference of the United States in our Nicaragua, so many abusive and criminal interventions that we have denounced and will continue to denounce.”

“Refrain, Mr. Sullivan, from continuing to violate our National Concord, and renounce wanting to impose your vulgar, creeping, aberrant, insolent, ignoble, abominable and decadent Yankee Policy, which we declare, once again, not pleasant for Nicaraguans” concludes the communique.

Nicaragua’s Supreme Electoral Council released the official sample of the electoral ballot for the November 7th general election in which citizens will vote for President, Vice President, national and departmental representatives and Nicaragua’s representatives for the Central American Parliament.

The United States government and the Organization of American States (OAS) has sought to undermine the election by laundering money to opposition figures and by waging a worldwide campaign to delegitimize the process, utilizing corporate foreign media to misrepresent Nicaragua’s reality.

https://orinocotribune.com/nicaragua-ca ... t-attacks/

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Nicaragua receives 1.2 million Cuban anticovid vaccines

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The batch of the Abdalá and Soberana 02 vaccines is the first shipment of the three planned before the end of the year. | Photo: @lavozsandinista

Published 21 October 2021

The batch of the Abdalá and Soberana 02 vaccines will be used for immunization against the coronavirus in children between two and 17 years old.

Nicaragua received on Wednesday a donation of 1.2 million doses of the coronavirus vaccines developed by Cuba and whose emergency use was approved by the authorities of the Central American country.

The batch of the Abdalá and Soberana 02 vaccines is the first shipment of the three planned before the end of the year, reaching a total of seven million doses agreed between the two countries, indicated the Cuban ambassador in Nicaragua. Juan Carlos Hernandez.


For her part, the Nicaraguan Minister of Health, Martha Reyes, pointed out that the supply of vaccines will be used for immunization against the coronavirus in children between two and 17 years old.

In this sense, Vice President Rosario Murillo recalled that vaccination "is voluntary" for all parents who want to take their children to the health centers where the drug will be applied from Monday, October 25.

Murillo described the arrival of the Abdala and Soberana 02 vaccines on Nicaraguan soil as a hymn to the friendship between the two peoples.

Nicaragua has been carrying out vaccination against the coronavirus since March in people over 30 years of age, chronically ill and pregnant women with the AstraZeneca, Covishield, Sputnik V and Pfizer vaccines

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/nicaragu ... -0031.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Wed Oct 27, 2021 3:24 pm

Why Defending Nicaragua is Important
Stephen Sefton 26 Oct 2021

Why Defending Nicaragua is Important

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The U.S. effort to destabilize Nicaragua is an ongoing crime against that nation's people. Anti-imperialists must defend the Nicaraguan government.

This article first appeared in Resumen Latinoamericano .

Since at least the start of the 21st century, if not earlier, two global trends have emerged very clearly. Firstly, increased North American and European aggression overseas has been accompanied by increased economic and political domestic repression in the US itself and its allied countries. This domestic repression has reached unprecedented levels over the last two years,

Secondly, despite the apparent demise of Western led economic globalization, North American and European corporate influence under various guises has co-opted international policy making and governance, as writers from Cory Morningstar to Iain Davis have reported in detail for many years.

In the context of these and other trends, Nicaragua’s resolute defence of its national sovereignty and its very successful economic, social and environmental policies have made this tiny country of around 7 million people the target of US and allied country aggression. As it nears its general elections next November 7th, Nicaragua is the country in Latin America and the Caribbean most under attack by Western governments, their countries’ corporate and alternative media and their international NGOs for the following reasons:

*its health system has been among the most successful in the world addressing COVID-19 with no economic restrictions and without closing schools
*it is among the most gender equal countries in the world
*its model of regional autonomy for the country’s indigenous and afro-descendant peoples is the most progressive and advanced in the hemisphere
*it plays a leading role criticizing rich countries in international discussions about global environmental policies
*it’s education system is among the most innovative and progressive in Latin America and the Caribbean
*it’s public health sysem is the most extensive and modern in Central America with 21 new hospitals, 46 hospitals remodeled and modernized
along with 1,259 health posts, 192 health centers and 178 hostals for expectant mothers
*its highway infrastructure is among the best in Latin America and the Caribbean
*it is among the safest countries in all the Americas
*it is the most successful country in the region combating drugs trafficking and organized crime
*it’s economy is among the most successful in the region because it is also the most democratically socially structured and practically self-sufficient in food production
*it enjoys excellent diplomatic relations with the broadest range of majority world nations of any other country in the region

These achievements of Nicaragua’s government and people are all based on the historic 1969 revolutionary program of the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN). They contrast sharply and strongly with the relative respective policy failures of countries in the region allied to the US and Europe. These include not just all Nicaragua’s Central American neighbors but even much bigger and supposedly more developed countries like Chile and Colombia. This straightforward fact is systematically suppressed because it is embarrassingly inconvenient for the fascist configuration of corporate and State power now dominating North America and Europe.

Thus, Nicaragua is the target of false reporting by Western media and NGOs, smearing its government as anti-democratic, corrupt and incompetent when the truth is precisely the reverse. This kind of reporting is very similar in the cases of Cuba, Bolivia and Venezuela. Western governments and their allies have successfully attacked the peoples of those three countries, setting back their social and economic development by various means, including military aggression and sabotage, all kinds of economic aggression as well as outright political intervention. With very few exceptions, Western corporate and alternative media and NGOs support this perverse criminality.

They report uncritically that their governments seek to promote freedom and democracy for the peoples whose lives they in fact destroy. In Nicaragua’s case, following the failed regime change attempt in 2018, the corporate owned US government and its allies have intensified economic aggression, as well as diplomatic, media and NGO driven psychological warfare against Nicaragua’s people. They want to destroy the country’s prospects of continuing successful social and economic development, just as they have tried to do to the peoples of Bolivia, Cuba and Venezuela.

Even so, all the signs are that Nicaragua’s people will vote massively on November 7th in support of their country’s Sandinista government. They will do so because their lives have changed radically for the better in every area of national life over the last 14 years since President Ortega took office in January 2007. People everywhere should defend Nicaragua’s Nicaragua’s challenge to the increasingly repressive tyranny of Western elites because in doing so they will be defending their own right to sovereign autonomy and independence.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/why-d ... -important
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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