Nicaragua

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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Fri Feb 12, 2021 1:55 pm

NicaNotes: Nicaragua, COP26, Climate Justice, and Reparations
February 11, 2021
By Helen Yuill

[This article was first published by the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign of the UK on February 2, 2021.]

In the lead up to COP26 [the 26th meeting in Nov. 2021 of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change], the Nicaraguan representative Dr Paul Oquist, argues that the high level of social and economic destruction caused by Covid-19 and its impact on humanity will be ‘small, transient and recoverable’ compared with the potential total, irreversible destruction of the climate crisis.

This is now a view shared by millions across the globe.

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Paul Oquist argues for climate change reparations for poor countries.

Climate injustice is inseparable from social and economic injustice

Countries of the Global South, such as Nicaragua, have been impoverished by colonialism and centuries of subjugation to the needs and wants of the North. The resulting climate injustice is therefore inseparable from the multiple forms of social and economic injustice and inequality between and within nations.

In the case of the climate crisis, countries of the Global South – such as Nicaragua – and their most marginalised citizens suffer the most severe consequences of climate extremes for which they bear the least responsibility. These countries also lack the resources to confront the violence of poverty, the violence of Covid-19 and the violence of the climate crisis.

Climate Justice and reparations for loss and damage

COP13 in Warsaw agreed to the ‘Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage’ which acknowledges that ‘loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change includes, and in some cases involves, more than that which can be reduced by adaptation.’

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Massive Hurricanes Eta and Iota hit Nicaragua in November 2020.

An Alliance of Small Island States and Least Developed countries argued a long standing claim for reparations for the disproportionate loss and damage they had suffered. However, this was strongly resisted by developed countries and the final agreement focuses on ‘enhancing knowledge and understanding’ and ‘strengthening dialogue and coordination’, and ‘capacity building’.

The Paris Agreement 2015 (COP21) fudges on loss and damage

Nicaragua initially refused to sign the *Paris Agreement arguing that ‘doing so would mean being complicit in an Agreement that would lead to a catastrophic three degree increase in global warming because ‘the largest polluters lack the political will and ambition’ to address the most pressing issue facing the planet and humanity. Five years on, millions of people around the world would strongly agree with this view.

The Paris Agreement provides for the continuation of the Warsaw International Mechanism but explicitly states that its inclusion ‘does not involve or provide a basis for any liability or compensation’. The inclusion of this clause was the condition on which developed countries, particularly the United States, agreed to a reference to loss and damage.

This meant that there was no apportioning of blame on the largest polluters, including the UK, historically responsible for the highest levels of emissions. In effect this means forcing countries of the Global South to bear the cost of climate extremes through loss of lives, livelihoods and environmental destruction.

After COP21 Paul Oquist stated: ‘The Paris outcome is similar to the rescue by governments of the banks that caused the 2008 financial and economic crisis, passing the bill for the crisis on to workers, pensioners and taxpayers. In Paris, the rescue was by the COP21 governments of the countries which have caused global warming, passing the cost to those least responsible who will die in the largest numbers unable to make good their losses, much less adapt to a change in climate increasing in intensity as the century wears on.’

COP26 in Glasgow, November 2021

In the lead up to COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, in November, the Nicaraguan government and other countries in the Global South will continue to call on COP26 leaders to address the question of climate justice by accepting the historical blame of developed countries and agreeing the principle of reparations.

*Nicaragua ratified the Paris Agreement in 2017 after finding itself – for completely opposite reasons – in a club of two with the Trump administration.

https://afgj.org/nicanotes-nicaragua-co ... eparations
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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Fri Feb 19, 2021 12:48 pm

NICANOTES
NicaNotes: A Conversation with Leaders of the Mayangna Nation
February 18, 2021
Interview by Stephen Sefton

Image
Mayangna President Arisio Genaro Selso and Secretary Eloy Frank Gomez, in Siuna

[Stephen Sefton is a community worker who has lived for the last twenty-five years in Nicaragua. Susan Lagos, long-time resident of Dario, helped with transcription, translation and editing of the interview.]

In November of 2020, between hurricanes Eta and Iota, Stephen Sefton interviewed Indigenous leaders and others in Nicaragua’s North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region. The interviews mainly address long standing misapprehensions and outright falsehoods about Nicaragua’s Sandinista government’s defense of Indigenous people’s rights, an issue inseparable from defense of the natural environment. More immediately, the interviews exposed several poorly researched, inaccurate reports of the Oakland Institute, published in 2020, clearly seeking to damage Nicaragua’s economy by means of misleading, sensationalist and simply false allegations of abuse of Indigenous people’s rights and environmental depredation.


You can find all the interviews in Spanish here http://www.tortillaconsal.com/tortilla/node/11105

Translator’s note: The Mayangna Nation’s territory is mainly located in the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve and its buffer zone, which is part of the Western Hemisphere’s second largest area of tropical forest. Covering around 20,000 km², it was designated in 1997 as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. The reserve comprises about 15% of the nation’s total land area. Bosawas is said to be the richest biome in the planet, and is reckoned to contain 13% of known species worldwide.

Interview with Mayangna Nation leaders, President Arisio Genaro Selso and Secretary Eloy Frank Gomez, in Siuna, RACCN, November 11, 2020.

Part One

Stephen Sefton: What is your perception of the seriousness of the problem of the intrusion of outsiders into Indigenous lands, in your case of the Mayangna people?

Arisio Genaro Celso: We need to go back a bit to the past, to remember some negative actions generated by past governments. For example, this problem of the invasion of mestizo settlers from the Pacific, towards our lands in the Caribbean, Indigenous lands, Mayangna land especially, is because the Bosawás Reserve is located within Mayangna territories because these have been our ancestral lands.

The limits of the Mayangna territory border with the Miskito territory, but the problem of invasion is not between Miskitos and Mayangnas. It is with mestizos coming from the Pacific. Go back to the 90’s, to the government of [President] Arnoldo Alemán, who was the one who promoted colonization of the Caribbean by mestizos, with the purpose of destabilizing the whole Autonomy project, which was being developed at that time. The Liberals then led by Alemán, wanted to disappear the Autonomy project in the Caribbean, to invade the Caribbean Coast with a mestizo population, to have control, especially at election time, to be favored with the votes of the mestizo settlers they were sending to Indigenous territories. I remember at the time the Nicaraguan army once detained about eight or ten trucks belonging to Liberal authorities, full of mestizo people whom the Alemán government was sending to take over lands on the Caribbean Coast.

The problem was also that back then, they decided that the Caribbean Coast lands were national lands. There was the question of recognition of the culture of the original peoples, we the Mayangna, for example, and the Miskitos too, traditionally divided the territories into hunting areas, reproduction areas, artisanal mining areas, production areas, fishing areas. That has been the way the territories have been organized. With the Autonomy process, this was reinforced. Prior to this, after the 1979 Revolution, the Indigenous peoples knew their limits, where they could go hunting, where they could not cut down trees, because there were already large wooded areas or areas for the reproduction of bird species. But for the mestizo culture of the Pacific, the people who arrived there said “There are many manzanas of land but nobody lives there.” For them, it was understood that they were national lands, because nobody lived there. However they were territories belonging to the Indigenous peoples where they went to hunt, protected areas, reserves.

The great Natural Reserve is in the Indigenous territories. The Bosawas Reserve is in our Mayangna territories, which our ancestors, our grandparents have been taking care of for generations because conservation is also part of the culture. For example, if a boy cut down a tree and left it lying down and did not use it, the community was punished. In this way, values of protection and conservation of the environment and natural resources were instilled in our communities. Then, the issue of the invasion of Indigenous lands towards the Caribbean Coast began in the ’90s, in the time of Arnoldo Alemán.

Stephen: Not in the time of President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro?

Arisio: No, with Arnoldo Alemán. Although in Doña Violeta’s time, they also set up kind of land banks to locate some of the Nicaraguan Resistance [after the war].

Eloy Frank Gomez: We, the Mayangna People, are organized at the communal level, at the territorial level and the structure of the Mayangna Nation of which compañero Arisio is President, and myself as Secretary. We represent nine territories, of which four territories are located within the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve, and five are outside the area of the Reserve. Before 1990, we lived in our communities and we did not need to have documents. The Mayangna vision is to live in nature, to live with the relationship between nature and living beings. Life was in the land, rivers and forests. But for them, starting with Violeta de Chamorro, their interest was power.

They made commitments with their people and at that time in the ’90s, they began to organize what they called development poles, without thinking about where; they had no lands, but they sent people on to our lands. On seeing that situation, we the Mayangna Nation organized to seek the title of communal property of the nine territories. Since 2007 with the arrival to power of our Commander Daniel, we have achieved the titling of our lands, an area of 8,101 square kilometers, the title handed over by our Comandante Daniel to the communities.

So what happened in that period of 16 years, the time of Violeta, the time of Arnoldo Alemán, the time of Bolaños: they began promoting the invasion of our lands. But nowadays, we are able to enjoy this space, where we historically lived with the land. Today, we have problems because we have artisanal mining areas. Our people use those areas to survive. For example, at Christmas time, people work there but in an artisanal way, not on the scale of large exports but rather to solve basic needs. Now the mestizos are trying to take over. They go there because there are rivers, there is forest, there is gold, there is wood. We do not live off the export of wood, our life has been agriculture to feed our families, or hunting, fishing.

But now invasion is everywhere, the rivers are drying up, and our anxiety is for our government to sustain its interest in maintaining the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve; we all have to unite here at the level of the municipal and regional authorities. On the other hand, we accuse the invaders, because these people are not poor people. They are individuals who have money and they send their people. They are not being sent by the government because there they not only clear land for pasture but rather they are like traffickers, land traffickers. They come in, they sell. We don’t have resources ourselves because those resources are there, we live with nature. But these people set out boundaries, and then they sell….

Stephen: How can they sell if they don’t have title? You have the title. So how can they sell it?

Eloy: That is why I said traffickers, mafia, because sometimes they are armed. For example, some documents came to light claiming in such and such an area, but they are not in that area, rather they are inside Bosawas, with a rubric that might say Kukalaya, for example, with an area of such and such, but it is not in Kukalaya, instead it’s in Bosawas. There are forged documents, with forged signatures of authorities. We don’t believe our government is doing that, because we have seen at various times how, rather, the government has restored our right to property with title deeds. What happens is that people manipulate things and go out in the media to blame the government. We are convinced that it is not like that, rather it’s the other way around and they want to take advantage of this situation for their political aspirations.

Arisio: It’s worth highlighting some elements on this issue, as the Secretary says. It is necessary to see the situation of land trafficking from different perspectives as well. For example, the vision of our people is one of respect, of coexistence, of harmonious relationship between the Indigenous Mayangna and nature. Someone said to me, “Where do you Mayangnas have your pharmacy? Our pharmacies are the large natural reserves in the mountains; those are our pharmacies. However, with the large clearings that settlers are making in the Indigenous territories, they are also exterminating those resources that we have used historically for traditional medicine, from the wisdom of our culture. So, the culture of conservation, as I was saying, has been with us over time, for many generations.

However, another perspective on the issue means looking at several elements. One is organized crime, because organized crime is fully involved in this issue of usurpation of Indigenous property, trafficking of Indigenous lands, even the sale of the wealth of Indigenous lands. Apart from that, there are also armed groups, armed delinquents who come to harass, threaten the community members and dispossess the communities of their lands. We have this situation too.

Then again, there are political operators. There have been incidents in some Mayangna and Miskito Indigenous territories and there were also deaths in our Indigenous territories because of the land issue. The settlers invading the lands, killing Indigenous people. But when we realized that those who were behind this were regional councilors of Yatama [an Indigenous political party that has been utilized and financed by the US], Yatama mayors, and even some of them were deputies of Yatama, also involved in the sale of Indigenous lands. The community members didn’t know, the mestizos came in big numbers, families after families entering Indigenous territories, for example in the area of the Rio Coco. In certain areas of our communities in the Bosawas Reserve, which border with Miskito land, many mestizo settlers entered our Mayangna lands, through these sales authorized by politicians from Yatama.

And another issue that is well known, it’s no secret that the Liberal mayors and municipalities with mayors opposed to the government also promoted land trafficking, even financed organized groups, armed groups to invade Indigenous lands and to dispossess the Indigenous people of their lands. There is evidence of that. We have spent years following this situation. And we know that El Cuá and in San José de Bocay, were invaded and financed by the mayor who was at that time a Liberal. He financed the groups. He recruited peasants and told them: get organized, go there, take the land. We will support you. And he gave them weapons and that is not a secret.

If you look at the history of Nicaragua, the Mayangnas are one of the most peaceful people. During the time of the war of the ’80s, perhaps some communities got involved in the war in an involuntary and forced way as well. It was not their wish to go to Honduras with the Nicaraguan Resistance. Many were kidnapped. They have been a peaceful people, a peaceful culture. We do not go around inciting violence in these types of situations. So, these political operators came to impose a war on us, invading Indigenous lands, but the effect was unfortunate, because many families were displaced, both Miskito and Mayangna families.

Stephen: Do you produce cattle on the lands of your people in Bosawas?

Arisio: In the lands of the Reserve where our territories are located, there is very little cattle ranching. Only recently, in the Caribbean Coast is there cattle ranching, but in areas that are not Indigenous territories, but on private properties, where people from the Pacific have come to buy private property and have doubled the rate of cattle ranching. Look, what we are seeing is that the invasion of Indigenous lands by mestizos is for two reasons.

Many are dedicated to large-scale production. Indigenous farmers work the land only to sustain their families, for subsistence, self-consumption. On the other hand, the mestizo farmer produces more, works the land more because he trades the product. They are dedicated to selling their produce. The Indigenous are not. So, yes, production has increased, but in the buffer zones which are also protected. Indigenous lands are mainly inside the Reserve and inside the Reserve is the main concentration of forestry reserves and biodiversity.

But these cases get a different treatment. For example, with the settlers in the buffer zone in the Indigenous territories, an agreement has been made: you can stay on those lands but with the agreement that at the same time you are going produce there, you are also going to protect it so that no more families enter, so that they do not continue causing deforestation.

We, the government of the Mayangna Nation, are an Indigenous institution with a national character that covers six territories nationally with 75 communities, and we also participate in government decision making. We are members of the National Commission for the Defense of Mother Earth where there is also the Army, the Police, the Attorney General’s Office, the Supreme Court, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Regional Government, the Secretariat of the Caribbean Coast, the entire government structure, also MARENA [Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources]. This allows us to do advocacy work, to be able to dialogue, to make proposals to the government, and to participate in decision making. Before, we did not have that possibility.

What was the political reality of the Indigenous peoples in the Caribbean from the ’90s until 2006? That was the period where we lived with racism and discrimination practiced on a large scale against the Indigenous people by the neoliberal governments. And that is not a lie. That is a reality. In the ’90s that situation was very difficult, because all the functionaries came from Managua to govern here in the Caribbean Coast. Here the Indigenous peoples had no opportunities, they had no right to express their opinion, to participate in the decision-making process over policies that were made at the whim of the government. So now, for example, as of 2006, or before even, from ’79 in the first stage of the Revolution, this issue was changed. Back then it was improving so as to recognize the rights of Indigenous peoples.

There are many important elements. The issue of education in the languages of the Indigenous peoples, the issue of the restitution of their rights to Indigenous territories. This issue was being worked on during the first stage of the Revolution. The issue of a health model that gathers the knowledge, experience, and wisdom of the Indigenous peoples’ traditional medicine.

Now, since 2006, the delay of the Autonomy project has been reversed and it has become more concrete. Take the example of the existence of regional government structures. This has allowed the region to manage all its political, social and cultural issues. Everything. Since 2006, the autonomous institutions have been strengthened. There is a Regional Secretariat of Natural Resources, SERENA, so here everything is coordinated with Managua. We have here a Regional Secretariat of Education that is working and administering the model of Intercultural Bilingual Education, to strengthen the issue of Indigenous languages and to rescue the literary culture of our peoples. We have a regional health model, an intercultural health model that also incorporates the knowledge and wisdom of the Indigenous peoples. And in this way, Western knowledge and the knowledge of the native peoples work together. Another element that must be highlighted. Before, Indigenous peoples were relegated, there was no recognition by previous governments. Today, since the creation of the Territorial Governments, their territories have been restored.You were asking about how they are financed. The government is funding the strengthening of these Indigenous territorial governments; they have an economic allocation from the government’s national budget, from the Ministry of Finance to strengthen and develop capacity in such a way that these structures of the Indigenous governments support some social things but also pay attention to all the organizational matters within their communities.

Eloy: For example, every two or three months the regional government convenes the territorial governments of the whole region. There, the communities participate and present their proposals to the government. This is a new way for the Mayangna people to participate in this system of government.

Arisio: Something else that is important. During those three neoliberal governments, there was a large project financed by GTZ, the Germans [German Cooperation]. It was a large project in the Bosawás Reserve. I remember that at the time they called a consultation meeting with all the leaders of the territorial governments within the Reserve. It was understood that it was for the Indigenous peoples to make proposals for development programs within their territories and that they were going to be financed by that project for Bosawas of the GTZ. But what happened with that project? Instead of stopping the issue of the invasion of the colonists, it got worse, invasion increased.

So there are organizations, NGOs that use the name of the Indigenous peoples to denigrate the government, to try to destroy the government’s image and its work within the protected areas, such as the Río San Juan, or the Indio Maíz Reserve, and here in the Bosawas Reserve. However, at the time when their side had power [1990 to 2006], there was no decision-making for Indigenous people to participate in, so that the decisions would have some real effect. At no time was this the case. Right now there is an issue that is very topical that is under discussion, the issue of the Bioclimate, the Green Fund, a project. This is an issue about which a consultation process was carried out with the territories within the Reserve.

Stephen: Someone told me that they held 400 assemblies.

Arisio: There were consultations, at least the Mayangna territories were part of the consultation team. With a national team sent by the government, the Mayangna Nation provided a team of personnel to participate in the consultation, so that they could also participate in the design of the project, what they want to do, how it is going to be done, why it is going to be done, where it is going to be implemented and how it is going to be implemented. The point is that now it is possible for Indigenous peoples to participate in the decision-making process.

For example, there is much mention of the issue of prior, free and informed consultation, where the Indigenous peoples also have the right to participate, to be consulted, when a program or project is to be implemented and executed in their territories, and this process has been complied with. The Indigenous people are taken into account for consultation. This project was about the deforested areas, due to the effect of the invasions of the settlers, how they were going to work on the natural regeneration of trees, or they are going to work on reforestation projects in all those areas to give life back to those affected areas, and this has been coordinated with the territorial governments, with the Indigenous institutions.

Before, there was this great project for Bosawas, but it was worse, there was no consultation, the decisions weren’t made by the Indigenous communities. Now things are different, so this is an opportunity for the Indigenous peoples, this recognition and respect by the government towards Indigenous institutions and peoples, and this also allows Indigenous peoples to participate directly in decisions that are being made.

Next week read Part Two of the interview!

https://afgj.org/nicanotes-a-conversati ... gna-nation
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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Sat Feb 27, 2021 2:07 pm

NicaNotes: A Conversation with Leaders of the Mayangna Nation (Part Two)
February 25, 2021
Interview by Stephen Sefton



[Stephen Sefton is a community worker who has lived for the last twenty-five years in Nicaragua. Susan Lagos, long-time resident of Dario, helped with transcription, translation and editing of the interview.]

You can read all of the interviews of Indigenous leaders here and read Part One of this interview here.

Translator’s note: The Mayangna Nation’s territory is mainly located in the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve and its buffer zone, which is part of the Western Hemisphere’s second largest area of tropical forest. Covering around 20,000 km², it was designated in 1997 as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. The reserve comprises about 15% of the nation’s total land area. Bosawas is said to be the richest biome in the planet, and is reckoned to contain 13% of known species worldwide.

Interview with Mayangna Nation leaders, President Arisio Genaro Selso
and Secretary Eloy Frank Gomez, in Siuna, RACCN, November 11, 2020.

Part Two

Stephen has been discussing with Arisio and Eloy important issues of the Mayangna people, especially the invasion of settlers from the Pacific into Indigenous territory.

Arisio: Years ago, there was this great project for Bosawas, but it was worse, there was no consultation, the decisions weren’t made by the Indigenous communities. Now things are different, so this is an opportunity for the Indigenous peoples, this recognition and respect by the government towards Indigenous institutions and peoples, and this also allows Indigenous peoples to participate directly in decisions that are being made.

On the issue of artisanal mining in the Mayangna territories, and in the Reserve we don’t have problems with mining companies, with the large mining companies that are in the Indigenous territories. We do not have that problem. The problem is with groups of settlers, because it is known that we have large mining reserves in our territories. So, as the compañero said, settlers enter for two reasons. One is to take advantage of the mining reserves, and the other is to take over land for production.

Stephen: But they do it illegally, right? Because in order to do it legally, they have to have a document that allows them to do that work.

Eloy: There is a management plan in the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve where the use of this resource by the community members is outlined. Our people do not work permanently in the Reserve; maybe in December, September, a few people go work for a week. That is why nature is virgin in the Reserve and that is why we do not want other people to go there, because other people have other cultures, they make large land clearings and they want to bring in machinery and we do not agree with this.

Arisio: With the large extractive mining companies we do not have that problem but over the long term, many of the settlers that are invading establish themselves in a violent way, not with the consent of the communities. That is the problem, but we are also working on it.

As a result of this situation of invasion, experience is being developed in the Mayangna territorial governments and the government of the Mayangna Nation, and we are making an articulated effort with the Army and the Police and also with some groups of Indigenous forest rangers with recognition from the police. The Mayangna Indigenous rangers do their patrols of the boundaries, and if there are settlers there without authorization, they detain them and hand them over to the police. There are also joint patrols with the Police and the Army, the Ecological Battalion. We have consolidated this working relationship, this coordination between the Mayangna Nation, the territorial governments, the Police, MARENA and the Nicaraguan Army. Patrols are carried out, that is how surveillance and protection are carried out. But this requires more effort between all the parties concerned because it takes resources for this to happen.

Because the police cannot be there for a month: they go to set boundaries, to clean up the boundaries or to go on patrol. So these are quick interventions, maybe four or five days to see how the area is. If there is more invasion, encroachment, or settlement, MARENA accompanies these patrols to identify the damage caused; if they identify invaders with chainsaws, then on the order from MARENA these people are captured and brought to court, where they are prosecuted, and MARENA accuses them of environmental damage, the Indigenous territorial governments accuse them of usurpation of Indigenous property. We have made progress in consolidating this working relationship with these institutions.

We have good communication with the National Police and the Army in the Mining Triangle, where we have four or five Mayangna territories, which are also within the reserve. So, we present a joint plan, we have meetings with the Police and the Army, with BECO, the Ecological Battalion, with MARENA. A plan is made, the plan is shared, the necessary resources are negotiated and the patrolling plan is made. Now we don’t have many problems with that.

Before it was difficult, very difficult for the Army to get involved, or for the police to get involved in these issues of Indigenous land ownership. But not now. Now they are accompanying the Indigenous peoples, and the relationship with the police and the Army has been a good experience. We always get advised if there is a change of authorities in the Army or the police; they invite us, we are always working with them.

Stephen: Is it fair to say that there has also been an improvement in terms of your relationship with the Attorney General’s Office?

Arisio: Of course. Look, the good things must be highlighted. During this period of the second stage of the Revolution, on the issue of the restitution of rights of the Indigenous peoples, we feel that there is greater recognition, greater respect, greater opportunity. On that score, we have had some situations.

For example, if the forest rangers or the police captured the settlers and brought them to the courts, it used to happen that after three, four days, they would release them and let them go. So there were some anomalous situations within the system and we started to raise questions with the government authorities, in the National Commission, that we needed more support from the Supreme Court of Justice, from the Public Prosecutor’s Office, from the Public Defender’s Office, even from the PGR [attorney general] itself, and there has been progress. The government authorized the creation of a body within the courts, the Defenders of Indigenous Peoples, wherever there is Indigenous population. What is the function of these Defenders? These Defenders provide direct accompaniment to the Indigenous organizations for the judicial process of settlers, those who are destroying the environment, all these types of cases.

And the other important element we have also achieved is that, within the judiciary, our Indigenous officials also hold positions in the courts. So now the recent appointments of the Defenders of Indigenous and Afro-descendant Peoples are also Indigenous people who speak the Indigenous languages, which for us is vital that there is an Indigenous official in the judiciary, in the courts. A Mayangna or Miskito Indigenous person may arrive who does not speak Spanish, so he has communication problems as well as procedural delays to do with the charges that have to be made.

The government has guaranteed that in all the municipalities where Indigenous peoples are present, there will also be functionaries who speak Indigenous languages. Now these Defenders of Indigenous Peoples are accompanying the organizations to file the complaint, because sometimes due to technical issues, perhaps the Indigenous organizations cannot lodge an accusation correctly, with the relevant technical criteria. So these Defenders of Indigenous Peoples accompany them to place the accusation and prepare it so that the accusation is duly filed and those guilty of the damage in the territories are punished.

Stephen: How do you view the work of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) led by people like Lottie Cunningham?

Arisio: Look at the Center for Justice and Human Rights in the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua (CEJUDHCAN); for Lottie Cunningham it’s like her piggy bank, because CEJUDHCAN is not the institution she claims it is, or as it projects itself internationally, as an organization or institution defending Indigenous rights. Why doesn’t she ever come to the communities to consult us? Why not consult our national leadership leading the national government of the Mayangna Nation, or the presidents in our territorial governments? She is not present. She speaks from afar.

She uses the Indigenous name without having been there when the events were taking place. When the Alal case occurred in the Reserve, she said that the government was not defending the Indigenous people. But we have advanced together with the government institutions for the defense of Mother Earth. And what does Lottie do? Lottie works with opposition activists, making accusations against the government. She exploits the NGO to say that the government does such and such, but really if it were the organization she says it is, she should be open to consultation. But she is not. She just turns up for a short while and exaggerates things. And she makes use of the Indigenous peoples. And that is why Autonomy gave us the right for each native Indigenous people to have its own voice.

No one else can represent us ever. Brooklyn Rivera said: I am the leader of the Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean Coast. This is not true, this is a lie. Brooklyn Rivera [Miskito leader of the Yatama party who has received money from the US] does not represent the Mayangnas. The Mayangnas have our own Indigenous institutions, we have our own government that is of a national character and we have our territorial governments and the municipalities. So each one has its own voice. They give their opinion. They contribute. They can say and decide on the model of government that is being developed there in the communities, but it isn’t that Brooklyn or Yatama can come and say: I represent the Indigenous people of Nicaragua. Because that is not true. Because here each People is sovereign. Each People has its autonomy. We have self-determination so that each people can decide for itself.

Stephen: In the case of Alal what is your appreciation of that terrible incident? How do you perceive it? [The attack on the Mayangna community of Alal took place in a remote part of the buffer zone of the Reserve. The incident happened in the context of longstanding land disputes between Indigenous groups and encroaching settlers. The group that attacked Alal also committed crimes near communities located along the river Kahaska Kukun. In the community of Alal, the police found 12 houses were burned down and two people had been injured. Contrary to international news reports no one was killed there. In the following days police checked other nearby communities and found no evidence of murder or kidnapping. Local community leaders condemned false news reports. Later, at a completely different place east of Alal, near the community of Wakuruskasna, police found and identified four bodies, two in one part of the river and two in another part, who had died from gunshot wounds. Senior police and government officials met with the community to explain the investigation and enforcement work they were doing, as well as confirming that people would get help to rebuild their destroyed houses. A few weeks later, at least two of the attackers were arrested. Interviews with local families in the area reveal a pattern of violent intimidation by criminal gangs in the region where Alal is located. Some of these gangs try to give their crimes political cover by publicly identifying with Nicaragua’s political opposition. In some cases, local opposition politicians have even participated openly in violent attacks, like the massacre of police officers near Mulukuku in 2018.]

Eloy: At the root, there was a problem of settlers who attacked the community, but afterwards the government immediately attended to the community, rebuilt the houses, provided care, and ensured the presence of the Police and the Army to guarantee the security of the families. So, the government has looked after and continues to look after the families of Alal.

Stephen: Was it a criminal gang of the type of organized crime? What was it?

Eloy: Yes, they were practically organized settlers, criminal gangs. But the police and the army did their job, and that situation has calmed down.

Arisio: I think that cattle ranching in the Caribbean has increased, but it is on private properties. Here in the Mining Triangle, there have been people who had private properties with large extensions of land, but they did not make much use of them. The landowner maybe had a few animals, but they had large amounts of land. Then the farmers from the Pacific came and bought and started to put in a lot of cattle. Of course, after a year there is a valuable production of these cattle, and people will remark how many cattle trucks are leaving the Caribbean Coast for the slaughterhouses, because cattle ranching has grown. But in the Reserve, we have seen very little extensive cattle ranching. There we have seen more agricultural production, and the artisanal mining activities. These things have to be regulated.

Stephen: In relation to deforestation, are you optimistic that there is slowly a process that will reverse this? Or is it going to be a problem that will become even more acute?

Arisio: We consider that this issue is going to improve, because government institutions are paying attention to the issue. An effort is being made to make large investments in these affected areas, and there are also some local initiatives on the part of the territorial governments, in conjunction with some environmental institutions, MARENA, INAFOR. A youth group called Guardabarranco coordinates with INAFOR which has large tree nurseries, and they deliver the plants so that the youth can work in some watersheds that are quite degraded and reforestation work is being done. So in all the boundaries marking Mayangna territories, they are planting fruit trees or other types of trees for timber to recover from the deforestation in our Reserve where there was damage. There are plans for the future to continue working on this.

Stephen: There are people who criticize the Indigenous peoples and say that they themselves or people within the Indigenous populations break the rules. How true is this phenomenon in your experience?

Eloy: According to our assessment of the matter, yes there are some irresponsible people who commit these types of crimes. But maybe they don’t involve the large extensions that get mentioned, because the settlers also have the strategy of using those people to traffic large extensions of land. But we have already proved that there are Mayangnas who are also involved in this illegal business.

Stephen: Yes, because I imagine that they offer bribes…

Arisio: Yes, because there are good children and bad children anywhere, so unfortunately we have cases of violence that have occurred in some territories for that very reason. Although within the statutes of the constitution of the national organization, it states that any Mayangna—be it a person in authority or someone from the community that incurs in the crime of buying and selling or trafficking of lands—has to be tried according to the laws of the State of Nicaragua. And there are also Mayangnas who are serving jail time for the sale of land; they were convicted. Another issue must be mentioned. Namely there are mafia, criminal groups, that are dedicated to land trafficking, recruiting peasants and putting them on Indigenous lands, and then when that’s done, it is not the peasants who are the owners of the land but other people who have money.

The peasants do what they are told. Someone tells them to take 200,000 pesos, go, get in there, buy, and when the tensions calm down and there is no longer a problem, there he comes with the fancy SUVs. They use the peasants, they swindle them too, and there are also cases of Indigenous brothers who have dedicated themselves to this. But they have been prosecuted by the law. They are serving jail time.

Stephen: In general, do you think that the situation is getting better or worse in terms of invasions?

Arisio: Well, the situation is quite moderate, there is nothing massive like it was at one point. Maybe there are four or five families in some sectors, but there are other sectors where they continue to enter from other parts. The territory of Siquita, this Mayangna territory here in Siuna, is a part of this territory that borders with the department of Jinotega with San José de Bocay, so they are border territories. It borders with Siuna, it borders with Jinotega, it borders with Bonanza, so settlers enter there from all sides and sometimes it is uncontrollable. While in another territory, one that is in the center between Rosita and Bonanza, that doesn’t border with other departments with a mestizo population, there is less of an invasion issue.

Stephen: And how is your relationship with your neighboring Miskitos?

Eloy: As Mayangnas, we each have our limits and we have no problems with them; there is good communication. I mentioned that the Mayangna territories and the Miskito territories through the regional governments meet every so often and there they share the situations of their territories. I consider that there are no problems between Mayangnas and Miskitos.

Arisio: Maybe we have to reinforce what the compañero says of the relationship between the Miskitos and the Mayangnas. I think that the experience of life has marked a direction to follow. I believe the experience that both the Maynagnas and the Miskitos have lived through, because of the invasion of property, has made them more aware of the unity between Indigenous peoples. Because now we cannot be divided. It doesn’t matter if you are Kriol, Miskito or Mayangna, the problem is the same, and we all have to be united to face this situation. If we are more united we are stronger, better able to sit down, to make proposals to the government.

And the government itself sees that we are united. Many achievements have been reached because that culture of internal conflicts from before has been changed. During the ’80s the ethnic war in the Caribbean Coast was also not only against the government, but also, between the Miskitos and the Mayangnas there was a history of antagonism. They never got along well because the Miskitos kidnapped Mayangna women and children, stole their property, burned their communities. So the elders remember that we suffered like this because the Mayangna communities are mostly in rural areas, in the big mountains.

Many elders say we are here because they persecuted us, and it was a way to protect ourselves in the mountains from the Miskitos so that they would not exterminate us. I think we are now living another reality. Both we and the Miskito sisters and brothers have realized that was a thing of the past, and the reality is different now, and we have to be united, and that has strengthened us, and brought us progress. So we have come a long way and we have overcome the past.

Eloy: Miskitos have their organizations and we have to see that not all Miskitos are from Yatama.

Arisio: And internally they have their conflicts as well. Here is another element that is important. Before there was a mistrust on the part of the Mayangnas towards the Miskitos who were in power during the Liberal governments. Sixteen years they had control of the Regional Council governing body, they kept everything for themselves, and the Mayangnas were forgotten. And not all their Miskito people received those benefits, it was just a group of them. It was a Yatama elite that benefited. But thanks to the second stage of the Revolution, there was recognition and institutionalization of the territorial governments in 2009, and the allocation of a budget to each one. This also allowed for greater autonomy and better governance for the territorial governments to administer their own territories.

Stephen: What do you understand by the phrase “remediation” [saneamiento] and what does that mean?

Eloy: According to Law 445 there are five stages for the property titling process. So, we complied with all of them. The last stage is remediation. And that is a legal term. For us, there is another way of dealing with it that is a reordering of property. In the zone mentioned, perhaps people are currently entering there without knowing that this area is a conservation area, and not even the Indigenous peoples can live there. So, one way of managing that could be to place them in another part of a buffer zone of the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve. This is the term “reordering”, to bring order to our property, if someone came here, and we don’t want them there, we want them to be in another part. But that has to come about through the opinion of the majority of our population through a communal assembly, a territorial assembly of the people themselves. There they can approve if those people can be there or not.

Arisio: We have to understand that the concept of remediation does not only imply eviction. The remediation also has to do with the way we establish the mechanisms for coexistence. We cannot enter a situation where there is already conflict, and stoke that conflict even more, but it has to be a strategy proposed by the Indigenous peoples.

For example, when the situation of Alal occurred, we Mayangnas did not go to shout to the four winds, nor make demonstrations against the government, because we have a direct communication channel from the Mayangna Nation to the central government. We are the spokespersons for the situations in the territorial governments, and we make the national government aware of what is going on. What happened? We said we need to sit down to review this situation of Alal. Immediately, the government ordered that the police, the army, the PGR, all the structures of the responsible institutions be there to look for a way out of this problem. To make an analysis of what provoked that conflict, those deaths. And we directly drew up an analysis; we realized that in certain sectors of Mayangna territory, in the areas of Musawas, Alal, the Betlel River, Suliwas, people had entered in an uncontrolled way, they had taken lands, some even went as far as to fence off part of the properties of the Indigenous people, so that cannot be…

In these extreme situations, where Indigenous people are no longer allowed freedom of movement, freedom to produce, and feel under siege, we cannot allow it. We have to evict them. And so we coordinated with the government institutions, and the evictions of the 140-odd families in the area of the Reserve were carried out in coordination with our government institutions. That is why I was telling you that we have no problems in the relationship with the Police, the Army and the government. And this was a demonstration of the fact that yes, we coordinate, we articulate with government institutions. The eviction of these families that had invaded that territory, those 140-odd families, was carried out. Then, their representatives arrived to say yes, we recognize that these are your lands, we respect that, but we want to live there, we want to return. But what was the basic idea? Really to give Indigenous peoples the opportunity to decide how they want to administer their territory. And on that score the government has never denied that. On the contrary, it has said, well, you are free, decide what you want. Are you going to lease your territory or do you want eviction?

Immediately the territorial assembly was summoned. A consultation was made to know the consent of the communities. Immediately, 23 communities gathered from that territory. And the communities said well, we want our territory to be cleaned up, but more in the zones where they no longer allow free circulation. There are areas in the buffer zone, which are being treated differently, where there is a different spirit and dialogue with the peasants as well. So they remain, but under an agreement with the owners of the territories. Some can stay, some cannot, but always maintaining that balance of dialogue, peace and tranquility, because what everyone wants is to avoid violent situations like Alal.

These are the strategies that are being used. So, remediation is not only ordering evictions, dialogue is also part of it. And it also has to do with the process of reviewing Indigenous properties. For example, there are rural families who bought Indigenous lands and went to register them in the property registry of the region, but they cannot. The law says no; it is not allowed; it is illegal. So remediation is also part of that, reviewing all the documentation and if people went to register it when it was Indigenous land, a revocation is made. This is also part of the reordering of the territories. So the position of someone like Lottie who goes around saying that the remediation is not being done, is not correct. Each person manages their discourse as they please, according to their interests. And our people say what we are experiencing, what we are living in the communities. Our vision is different because we are living the experience ourselves.

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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Sat Mar 06, 2021 12:46 pm

NicaNotes: San José de las Mulas: February 27, 1983
March 4, 2021
By Magda Lanuza

Magda Lanuza is an analyst from Esteli, Nicaragua, who writes on different topics. This article is based on a visit to San José de las Mulas in June of 2019.


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Mario Castill and his wife Julia Siles remember 1983.

[Editor’s note: Last week we reported that the National Assembly, on Feb. 18, declared San José de las Mulas, located in the municipality of Matiguás, Department of Matagalpa, a historic site. Here is one story about what is behind that declaration.]
Mario Castill Blandón and his wife Julia Nelly Siles, remember every day of the before, during and after of February 27, 1983, in their small hamlet. This couple shows their age, the passing of the years in country people who live off daily hard work, with a lot of sweat, long days in the sun and long distances to walk. The youngest of their 12 children is now 21 years old. Don Mario says that his little house is still where it was during the hard years of the war, a little below the school. Back then there was no electricity, the road was dirt and the poverty was overwhelming. But the Contra were coming from Honduras into the nearby mountains. The memories are still vivid among the families in San José de las Mulas, and they told me the story of how they lived through the massacre:

The little wooden school was in the most strategic place in the community. It had been built at the end of the 70’s by some parents. Already in 1982, people heard that the Contras were in the mountains nearby and the Army had set up a camp in the region. The youngsters [members of the Sandinista Youth] had arrived three weeks earlier, visited the houses in the community and exchanged some of their rations for cigarettes, fresh cheese or eggs because they were bored with canned food. They were cheerful, some were very young and they arrived with no idea of the cruelties of war. The hardest work they had done was walking, and for days, digging a big trench in an L shape at the edge of the school for their shelter.

The sudden loud detonations of the machine guns and bombs caught them asleep at midnight on February 27. Doña Julia tells how they left their little wooden house and went out into the forest, believing that they would never wake up again and could only think of the poor young fighters. They say that the attack was non-stop, for hours and hours, until the sun rose and the cannon-fire stopped. At about 9:00 a.m., some families returned to their homes and found the courage to go up to the school. What they saw there, they could never have imagined and it will never be erased from their memory. There was blood everywhere; there was no school, only ruins; the trees were splintered; bodies were everywhere in the trenches, some piled up and it already smelled like death. Don Mario related how they found a boy lost in the mountains, dazed, full of blood, in total desolation, and they hid him from house to house, until he was safe in Matagalpa. It took days for the Nicaraguan Army to get up there and recover the bodies that the community had buried and cared for. Nobody talked about anything else; nobody ate. There was only crying. They did not sleep in their little houses; every noise caused a jump, and they only hoped that those noises were from the Army.

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A tile commemorating Batallion 30-62 of the Sandinista Youth

In February 1983, I was a third-year student at the Mexico Experimental Institute in Managua. It was a large high school full of students of all ages, some seemed too old to be in high school, but that was the result of the liberation war of 1979. Every Monday and Friday we were trained on the basketball court; sometimes for half an hour. We sang the national anthem, listened to instructions from teachers, then words from the Sandinista Youth and ended with the FSLN anthem. One of those days, we said goodbye on that field to five young men who were leaving on a volunteer brigade to defend the homeland. It was an unusual day, but you could feel the pride of seeing the courage of those young men who were leaving for war and leaving everything behind to the cry of “Free Homeland or Death!”

A few weeks later, the fateful news reached the Institute. The boys had been killed in a brutal attack by the Contras. We spent days and days waiting at school; they told us tomorrow and then the next day. They were sad and cloudy days; we had almost no classes, until one day three coffins arrived at our school. There was a ceremony with all the students, silence, songs, speeches and the honor guard with the mothers there. My photo is in the newspaper Barricada on March 3, 1983, with the other students, part of the honor guard.


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The school at San José de las Mulas today.

In June 2019 I arrived at San José de las Mulas, in Matiguas, Matagalpa. We climbed up to school twice rebuilt since 1983. More than 40 children were playing outside and there, in an important part of the courtyard, was the finished monument to the 23 young men who were killed. The teachers are less than 30 years old, but they know the history of the site very well. I arrived in silence, greeted each of the teachers; there was Don Mario’s son. I could not take it anymore, and I burst into tears in front of everyone, I couldn’t stand up. I don’t remember a single name, I didn’t know anyone, nor was I very close to any of those boys, but it still hurts deeply. The monument was just inaugurated in February 2020, the effort led by some mothers who are still alive and climb up with canes every year. Don Mario said that Marvin Vallecillo, one of the survivors, was in charge of the monument and that they enjoyed having him back with them. In these communities, there is still much to mourn. Nicaragua has not had time to mourn the losses or collect so many tears. That is why, after 38 years, the National Assembly has declared San José de las Mulas a historic site. It was time because the history of this courageous people cannot be erased and it must be a source of inspiration for the dreams of a better world in peace.

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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Sat Mar 13, 2021 2:20 pm

NICANOTES
NicaNotes: Nicaragua’s ‘Foreign Agents’ Law Explained
March 11, 2021
By Louise Richards

(Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign Action Group-UK)

[This article was originally published by NSCAG on 22 February 2021 at https://www.nscag.org/news/article/333/ ... -explained]

Image

In October 2020, Nicaragua passed a ‘Foreign Agents’ law. The law requires all organisations, agencies or individuals, who work with, receive funds from or respond to organizations that are owned or controlled directly or indirectly by foreign governments or entities, to register as foreign agents with the Ministry of the Interior. The fundamental objective of the law is to establish a legal framework that will regulate natural or legal persons that respond to foreign interests and funding, and use this funding to carry out activities that lead to interference by foreign governments or organisations in the internal affairs of Nicaragua, putting at risk the sovereign security of the country.

Predictably, the law has caused an outcry from the United States, who accuse Nicaragua of sliding towards dictatorship (when in fact the new law mirrors a similar and even more stringent law in the United States) and organisations like Amnesty Interrnational who claim that President Ortega plans to ‘silence those who criticise government policies, inform the population and defend human rights.’

The truth of the matter is that the intention behind the law is very simple – to create a tool that allows Nicaragua to ensure or prevent foreign powers, countries, governments, agencies or organisations from developing acts of interference in Nicaragua’s domestic affairs or national domestic policy, something that not only Nicaragua seeks to do and condemn, but very much something that international organisations of all kinds also condemn. There are Resolutions of the United Nations; there are Resolutions of the Organization of American States; there are Rulings of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, where they condemn, in a clear and categorical way, all these acts of interference, by any foreign Government in the domestic matters of another country.

For years now, the US has poured millions of dollars into opposition NGOs and media in Nicaragua in an attempt to destabilise the country, undermine the democratically elected government and bring about ‘regime change’. Since 2017, a handful of Nicaraguan NGOs and media have received well over US$100 million from USAID alone. There are clear signs that the US intends to intensify these actions in the run up to Nicaragua’ national elections in November. In passing the Foreign Agents law, the Nicaraguan government has acted only to stem the tide of US funding which has been used until now to create chaos and instability and attack the country’s sovereignty.

There are around 5000 NGOs in Nicaragua – the vast majority are engaged in perfectly legitimate activities around health and social issues for example and none of them will be affected by this law which is targeted solely at a minority of organisations who have been heavily funded by the US merely to act as proxies for US and right wing opposition ambitions in the country.

‘Nicaragua has the right to know about and protect itself from foreign funding of its domestic opposition – a country is not required to cooperate in its own overthrow by a foreign power.’ – Chuck Kaufman, Alliance for Global Justice

Sources:-

Council on Hemispheric Affairs, article by John Perry

The Grayzone article by Ben Norton

Interview with Deputy Walmaro Gutierrez, President of the Economic Commission of Nicaragua’s National Assembly, Tortilla con Sal



Briefs

By Nan McCurdy

UNICEF Says Not Closing Schools Was Best Decision
Jean Gough, UNICEF regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, acknowledged the decision of the Nicaraguan government not to close schools in the face of the pandemic. The regional director of the United Nations Children’s Fund congratulated the efforts made by Nicaragua to give continuity to education, among them the “best decision was not to close the schools in time of pandemic.” During a meeting at the headquarters of the Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Denis Moncada, Gough expressed UNICEF’s decision to continue supporting the actions of the Nicaraguan government. The meeting allowed both parties to discuss the current Cooperation Program between UNICEF and Nicaragua for the period 2019-2023. Moncada thanked the representative of the United Nations agency for the support they provide to programs on education and protection of children and adolescents. (Radio La Primerisima, 7 March 2021)

Vaccinations Begin against Covid-19
On March 2 immunization against Covid-19 began, using the Sputnik V vaccine developed by the Gamaleya Research Center of Russia. Patients with oncological or cardiovascular issues and kidney failure will be able to immunize against COVID-19. The first batch of the SPUTNIK V vaccine, donated by the Russia Direct Investment Fund arrived on February 24. (Nicaragua News, 2 March 2021)

Donation of Vaccines Arrives from India
A donation of 200,000 doses of vaccine against Covid-19 arrived March 7 from India.

With these new vaccines, the Government will give continuity to the National Voluntary Vaccination Program that has been carried out since March 2. So far, patients with severe health issues like persons on dialysis are receiving the vaccine. (Radio La Primerisima, 7 March 2021)

Nutritional Census Begins
The Ministry of Health (MINSA), with support of the Community Healthcare Workers Network, launched the first phase of the 2021 Nutrition Census March 2. The purpose of the census is to study the nutritional conditions of children to improve implementation of programs like Zero Hunger, Home Vegetable Gardens, the School Meal Program, and the Food Production Bonus Program that have contributed to 46% reduction of chronic malnutrition in children under six. (Nicaragua News, 3 March 2021)

Recent COVID-19 Reports
The Health Ministry reported 34 new registered cases of COVID-19 and 36 people recuperated for the week of Feb. 23 to March 1 with total cases since March 2020 at 5,176 and total number of registered recuperations at 4,958. For the week of March 2 to 8, there were 40 registered cases and 35 people recuperated. Since March 2020 there have been 5,216 registered cases, 4,993 people recuperated and 175 deaths. (Radio La Primerisima, 2 and 9 March, 2021)

Large CABEI Loan for Low Income Housing
Felix Baltodano, president of CADUR (Chamber of Developers of Nicaragua) stated that “We have the disbursement of a loan granted last year to Nicaragua by the Central American Bank for Economic Integration for more than US$171 million for low-income housing, of which US$100 million will be used to finance long-term low-income housing. With that, we can easily build more than 7,000 homes in the next 2 or 3 years.” The developers expect this disbursement from CABEI to be ready by the middle of this year. (Informe Pastran, 8 March 2021)

Weekly Health Attention in Neighborhoods
The Health Ministry announced that this week 800 Health Fairs will be held throughout the country to attend to 80,000 people in 56,000 medical consultations, 9,000 with specialists; 9,000 with dental care; 9,000 with ultrasounds; 6,000 with HIV tests; 7,000 with PAP tests; 7,000 with natural medicine; 7,000 with specialized exams; and 7,000 with medical examinations. (Informe Pastran, 8 March 2021)

INATEC Support for Women
The Rural Development Program is providing loans to women to improve production with equipment, water pumps, corrals, wells, improved pastures, installation of fences, and more. So far this year the National Technological Institute (INATEC has assisted 52,000 women with technical courses and careers in trade schools. Women make up 62% of enrollment. Since 2007, 3.5 million women, 69% of the total served, have taken courses, internships, workshops, and seminars to strengthen work skills through INATEC. (Informe Pastran, 8 March 2021)

New Innovative Businesses Receive Support
More than 1,000 ventures will receive financing this year through the Business Acceleration Program of the National Commission of Creative Economy of the Presidency, its director Humberto Gonzalez said on March 9. “These ventures have something that makes them unique in the market. Businesses are developing in the beekeeping industry, the leather industry, the design industry, the furniture industry and more,” said the official. He added that another 300 small businesses in the industrial sector will benefit with technological support, financing, diagnostics on energy efficiency and environmental integration systems. (Radio La Primerisima, 9 March 2021)

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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Sat Mar 20, 2021 2:03 pm

NicaNotes: Nicaragua’s Indigenous Peoples: Neocolonial ties, autonomous reality
March 18, 2021
Conversations with Indigenous leaders, and people at the grass roots in Nicaragua’s Northern Caribbean Autonomous Region March 2021

Introduction

By Stephen Sefton

[The interviews in their entirety can be read at: https://afgj.org/download/nicaraguas-In ... us-reality ]
Between November 11 and 16, 2020, between the passing of Hurricane Eta and the arrival of Hurricane Iota, the Tortilla con Sal media collective visited Nicaragua’s Autonomous Region of the Northern Caribbean Coast. There we interviewed representatives of different Indigenous and Afro-descendant territorial governments in Siuna, Bilwi, Waspam and community members of the Miskito communities of Wisconsin and Santa Clara. We also spoke with cattle farmers, residents and officials from the municipalities of Siuna and Prinzapolka about various aspects of the area’s social and economic development. The interviews confirm the success of Nicaragua’s Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples in their historic struggle to reclaim their ancestral rights.

The conversations also confirm that the Indigenous peoples of Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast have achieved progressive restitution of their rights in large part due to the commitment to the reincorporation of the Caribbean Coast by the FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional) ever since their historic program of 1969. While in government in 1987, the FSLN passed Law 28 “Statute of Autonomy of the Regions of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua”. Later, while in opposition, the FSLN in 2005 managed to secure the passage of Law 445 “Law of Communal Property Regime of the Indigenous Peoples and Ethnic Communities of the Autonomous Regions of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua and of the Bocay, Coco, Indio and Maíz Rivers”.

To date on Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast, 23 original peoples’ territories have been titled and delimited, covering 314 communities with a territorial extension of 37,859.32 km² in which lives a population of more than 200,000 people in more than 35,000 families. The area is equivalent to 31% of the national territory and more than 55% of the territory of Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast. A significant body of laws, administrative norms and declarations attest to the reality of an innovative and ambitious process vindicating the rights of Nicaragua’s Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples.

The interviews collected here also explain how these legislative and administrative advances were achieved in various extremely adverse contexts. For example, in 1987 Nicaragua was in the seventh year of a war imposed by the U.S. government in which much of Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast was the scene of constant military conflict.

Then, after 1990, during the period of the neo-liberal governments, the process of defending and promoting the rights of Nicaragua’s native peoples was in effect deliberately undermined. So, when Daniel Ortega and the FSLN took office in January 2007, they inherited a process seriously sabotaged and damaged by the neoliberal policies of the previous sixteen years.

The interviews collected here demonstrate, too, the great scope of the process of restauration of the rights of Nicaragua’s original peoples since 2007, in all its social, political, economic and cultural complexity. For example, they clarify that the leaders of the Indigenous and Afro-descendant Territories are people elected by their communities not on the basis of political allegiances but on the basis of community criteria.

Their Territorial Governments and their Community Governments are two of the five levels of government working together in the Autonomous Regions of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua. The two levels of government of the Indigenous peoples collaborate intimately with the relevant instances of the National Government, with the Regional Governments and with the respective municipal authorities.

This system of government has enabled important changes on Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast, for example, in terms of electrification and the development of health and water infrastructure and land communications with the Pacific Coast and also in terms of judicial practice, education and health care.

On the Northern Caribbean Coast, the new road to Bilwi, which includes the construction of a 240-meter long bridge over the Wawa River, will shorten the overland travel time to Managua from 24 to 12 hours. In 2021, the entire northern Caribbean coast will be connected to the national electric power system.

A new regional hospital and a new drinking water system are being built in Bilwi. Economic democratization promoted by the central government has promoted new commercial possibilities for the region’s agricultural, fishing and other producers.

In this context of infrastructure modernization and important social and economic advances, the political opposition desperately uses downright falsehoods exploiting the issue of property conflicts in order to attack the Sandinista government led by President Daniel Ortega.

The big lie promoted by the political opposition in relation to the phenomenon of property conflicts in the territories and communities of the native peoples is that the Sandinista government promotes the invasion by Mestizo families of Indigenous and Afro-descendant lands.

These interviews with Indigenous and Afro-descendant leaders completely disprove this gross lie. Instead, they explain the historical context in which Indigenous leaders associated with the Miskito Yatama political party have sold lands that were allocated to them under the government of Violeta Chamorro.

Subsequently, during the period in which Yatama and the ruling government Liberal party controlled the regional government and most of the region’s municipal authorities, various corrupt Indigenous leaders continued with the illegal sale of Indigenous lands to Mestizo families. The natural consequence of this process has been that the Mestizo families who bought those lands, in turn sold them on to other Mestizo families, thus making the problem progressively more complicated and difficult to solve.

The problem of property conflicts only became international news from 2012 onward because in that year the FSLN displaced Yatama in the municipal elections as the region’s main political force and then in 2014 managed to gain control of the regional government.

The following table indicates the development of the change of political control in the Northern Caribbean of Nicaragua at the municipal level through the results of municipal elections from 2008 to 2017.

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In 2009 Yatama and the Constitutional Liberal Party controlled seven of the eight municipalities in the Northern Caribbean Region. In the 2012 municipal elections Yatama and the Independent Liberal Party won four municipalities between them and the FSLN also four. Then in 2014 Yatama lost the regional elections to the FSLN and in the 2017 municipal elections the FSLN won seven municipalities, leaving only the municipality of Mulukukú in the hands of the PLC. Yatama and the PLC still won a good number of municipal councilors, but without overall control of any municipality.

In response to this decline in the power and influence of Yatama and the Liberal parties in the region, an intense smear campaign has been mounted against the Sandinista government. The campaign is promoted by Yatama and its allies in Nicaragua’s non-governmental organizations associated with the national political opposition, such as the Movimiento Renovador Sandinista, financed from the United States and countries of the European Union.

Similarly, Yatama lost influence at the territorial government level partly because of the deep internal differences within the party and partly because many community members stopped giving the same level of support they had previously given to Yatama’s historic leader Brooklyn Rivera and the Indigenous leaders associated with him.

This reality of the unfolding political scene in the Caribbean Coast region of Nicaragua has been systematically suppressed, both by national opposition aligned media and intellectuals and, internationally, by foreign academics and intellectuals allied with Yatama and the MRS. However, the testimony of the Indigenous leaders in these interviews convincingly demonstrates the reality, completely disproving the lies that have been spread internationally.

In relation to the issue of bad faith on the part of non-governmental human rights organizations, it may well be worth noting the personal testimony from our visit to interview community members of the Miskito communities of Wisconsin and Santa Clara in the Tasba Raya area, southwest of Waspam. Since 2013, this area has been the scene of some of the most violent incidents of conflict between the Indigenous peoples and Mestizo settlers.

We arrived in Wisconsin around four o’clock in the afternoon on Saturday, November 14th, 2020. Despite the heavy rains from Hurricane Eta, the road had not deteriorated so badly as to prevent our journey. We went to Wisconsin and Santa Clara because we wanted to talk to people there about their version of local history and events in their community since 2012.

However, the people we were seeking in Wisconsin told us they did not want to be interviewed because they were being watched by community members collaborating with the Center for Justice and Human Rights of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua (CEJUDHCAN) led by Lottie Cunningham Wren. One of the people we wanted to talk to told us, in the presence of three witnesses, that they were especially afraid to be interviewed because shortly before our visit, at a community assembly with CEJUDHCAN, Lottie Cunningham Wren had incited hatred against this person, saying that they deserved “to have their throat cut”.

Wisconsin is an impoverished community. However, the people observing our visit had the latest smart phones with which they filmed us. When we asked how it was possible for these very poor people to have such expensive cell phones, we were told that the phones were given out by Lottie Cunningham Wren and her colleagues to CEJUDHCAN collaborators in the community. In any case, we agreed with the community members at that time to record some brief interviews on the subject of local property conflicts and their possible resolution, which we did in a superficially friendly but somewhat tense atmosphere.

Indeed, without the presence of the territorial authorities who accompanied us, we believe it would not have been possible to record interviews in this community. Subsequently, after recording the interviews in Wisconsin, we went to the community of Santa Clara.

There, the community members spoke freely, without fear. They explained what had happened to them in previous years. They spoke of their anxieties and fears regarding the Mestizos and explained their hopes of being able to resolve the problem of property conflicts according to the law.

In both communities, Wisconsin and Santa Clara, the community members insisted that they wanted to avoid the kind of violent incidents of the past and called on the regional and central government authorities to provide the necessary support to expedite the last phase of the titling of their lands, which is called remediation [saneamiento]. This term is interpreted in different ways, but the Wisconsin and Santa Clara community members believe that this phase requires clearing a direct lane between the already established trig points [surveyor markers] in order to clearly define the limits of each territory on the ground.

Taken together, this series of interviews provides an extensive overview of the reality of the Northern Caribbean Coast region based on the concrete experiences of five of the region’s territorial leaders as well as local community members. An undeniable part of that experience has been the incitement to violence by political forces and allied organizations in opposition to the government.

The interviews make clear the mercenary role of foreign funded neocolonial clients like Lottie Cunningham Wren and CEJUDHCAN in that regard. But they also make clear how Liberal party activists and municipal officials have historically promoted the illegal invasion of Indigenous lands.

They also highlight the political aspect of organized crime activities in the region, for example the massacre of three police officers in June 2018 near Mulukukú. That massacre occurred in the context of a long-running campaign of systematic harassment in the Mining Triangle of Siuna, Rosita and Bonanza in which dozens of Sandinista militants have been killed in recent years.

It has been a campaign of violence promoted by people associated with the region’s Liberal parties very similar to what has happened in the South Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua. There, the activities of the socalled Anti-Canal Movement have been used to cover up organized crime activities aimed at displacing Sandinista families from the area on the municipal border between Nueva Guinea and Bluefields.

The interview series “Nicaragua 2018 – Uncensoring the Truth” extensively details the criminal activities promoted at the time by Anti Canal Movement leaders Francisca Ramirez and Medardo Mairena. Similarly, the interviews compiled here on the reality of Nicaragua’s Northern Caribbean Coast region reveal how opportunist local NGOs such as CEJUDHCAN distort the truth under the guise of promoting the rights of Indigenous peoples.

These interviews demonstrate once again that international human rights organizations by no means rigorously and seriously corroborate the denunciations they receive. On the contrary, they act in a morally obtuse, methodologically incompetent and politically biased way, in effect promoting the sinister anti-democratic and anti-humanitarian political agenda of the U.S. government and its allies.

In doing so, they harm and betray the human rights of the very populations they falsely claim they want to defend. Their bad faith has been demonstrated on multiple occasions in the case of Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela as well as other countries defending their autonomy and sovereignty against the North American and European imperialist powers.

When former UN Human Rights Rapporteur Alfredo de Zayas said in relation to Venezuela “I realized that the media narrative does not correspond to reality” he could just as well have been talking about Nicaragua. Taken together, the interviews compiled here offer yet more confirmation of the moral bankruptcy of the Western human rights industry and the international media that disseminate their reports with no serious effort to corroborate them, while suppressing other information, such as interviews like these, which contradict them.



Briefs

By Nan McCurdy

Millions of Dollars to Finance Destabilization during Election Year
U.S. imperialism continues with its foreign war policy financing activities to try to destabilize Nicaragua. On March 12 Radio La Primerísima’s news analysis program “Revista Sin Fronteras” offered details of 22 projects that are financed by the US Government through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

For these projects (posted on the NED website on February 23 of this year) US$1.57 million will be disbursed in five areas. US$335,000 will go to five projects aimed at young people; US$480,000 for eight propaganda projects distributed among the so-called “independent” journalists in charge of slander and falsehoods. US$363,000 for six “human rights” projects, US$248,000 aimed at women entrepreneurs linked to the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (COSEP). There is also US$65,000 for articles and reports to attempt to create a narrative in favor of reforms to the police, called “Reforms to the Nicaraguan Police System.” Youth, propaganda and human rights are the main areas funded to attempt destabilization. The NED no longer lists the names of the recipient organizations on the web site.

The NED was founded in 1983 at the initiative by the US Congress to finance projects that favor US interests in the world, under the mask of support for democracy. It was created to contribute to the so-called anti-communist struggle during the Cold War. Until then, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) carried out this type of financing. However, since the 1960s the CIA was involved in scandals that led Congress to limit its activities. Following congressional approval, the National Endowment for Democracy was created in November 1983 with initial annual funding of US$31.3 million.

During the 1980s, the NED carried out programs in Nicaragua complementary to U.S. support operations for the Contras. The NED financed, articulated and made decisions on the participation of the civilian arm of the Contras, for example, in the 1984 elections when they withdrew their chosen candidate Arturo Cruz Porras, who had been a member of the 1979 Revolutionary Government Junta along with Violeta Barrios [de Chamorro], Alfonso Robelo, Daniel Ortega and others. The US had Cruz drop out of that election as part of a strategy to say the elections would not be democratic.

The NED provided the funds to give a civilian face to the counterrevolution and created a body that included politicians such as Adolfo Calero and Alfredo Cesar. The NED also financed the National Opposition Union [a coalition of parties and people handpicked by the US to run together in the 1990 elections] in 1989 when it managed to group together several acronyms, incorporated COSEP, and decided that the candidate would be Violeta Barrios de Chamorro.

Currently, in this new stage of the Revolution, this US instrument seeks to destabilize the Sandinista government by financing extreme right-wing politicians.

The distribution of NED funds is mainly carried out through four US organizations:

► Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) created by the US Chamber of Commerce.

► The Free Trade Union Institute (FTUI) created by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).

► The National Democratic Institute (NDI) associated with the Democratic Party.

► International Republican Institute (IRI) associated with the Republican Party.

Considering the new law that requires foreign agents to register with the government and show how money they receive from a foreign government will be used – how does NED get this money into the hands of the heads of media and NGO’s?

Sin Fronteras describes various ways: First – cash is sent in the diplomatic pouch to the US embassy in Managua and then hand dispersed to the foreign agents, many of whom are announced candidates for the presidency or the National Assembly. Another way is through the Fundación Arias in Costa Rica and Hagamos Democracia [now also with activity in Costa Rica]. Both triangulate or launder money destined to candidates, journalists and NGO’s. These funds are for the first quarter of 2021. (Radio La Primerisima, Sin Fronteras, 12 March 2021)

(more...)

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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Fri Mar 26, 2021 1:15 pm

NICANOTES
NicaNotes: Nicaragua rebuffs attacks at human rights hearing
March 25, 2021

Nicaraguan Attorney General Wendy Morales defended Nicaraguan government Caribbean Coast policies at the hearing of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on March 18.

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Nicaraguan Attorney General Wendy Morales defended Nicaraguan government Caribbean Coast policies at the hearing of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on March 18.

By John Perry

Nicaragua was one of the first countries in Latin America to give constitutional rights to its Indigenous peoples and its laws to protect their territories are justly famous (especially the Autonomy Law of 1986 and the Demarcation Law of 2003). Some 40,000 Indigenous families live in areas that are legally owned and administered by over 300 Indigenous communities, covering almost a third of the country. Governmental recognition of land rights was the first step in tackling incursions by non-Indigenous settlers from western Nicaragua and the violent conflicts they sometimes produce. But because colonization of Indigenous territories has been taking place for decades, taking the next steps – delineation of the territories, dealing with illegal titles (primarily given under previous governments) and potentially removing settlers – is a complex process that involves delicate negotiation and agreement at the local level.

Sadly but inevitably, the invasions by settlers have become another issue on which to attack Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. A handful of local NGOs, in some cases funded by the US government and aided by US and European organizations such as California’s Oakland Institute, have weaponized the human rights of Indigenous Nicaraguans. They make outrageous claims that the government is not just trampling over such rights but is guilty of systematic assassinations, exterminating communities, forced disappearances and even genocide (using this term is particularly egregious: the NGOs claim there have been 46 deaths since 2015 and some of these cases are questionable; this is among more than 220,000 Indigenous Nicaraguans).

Claims such as these were repeated in an online hearing held by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on March 18. IACHR is part of the Organization of American States and gets much of its funding from the US government. The hearing began with the heads of two Nicaraguan “human rights” bodies, CEJUDHCAN and CALPI, making these accusations, giving few details and calling in evidence only one member of the communities said to be affected (who seems to have spent much of the last three years living in Europe). In fact, except for these two NGOs and the spokesperson for the Nicaraguan government, none of the eight other speakers at the IACHR hearing were Nicaraguan. IACHR called none of the democratically elected representatives of Indigenous communities nor did it accept any questions to the speakers during the 90-minute hearing, despite having invited and received several detailed questions beforehand (including questions from Nicaraguans and from AFGJ supporters). Before the hearing, AFGJ and Task Force on the Americas formally submitted as evidence the new report, Nicaragua’s Indigenous Peoples – Neocolonial Lies, Autonomous Reality: this was completely ignored.

Of the dozen people invited to take part, only one, Nicaragua’s attorney general Wendy Morales, was prepared to comment positively about developments in the Caribbean regions (her testimony is available in English and in Spanish). Morales responded very effectively and comprehensively to the allegations made by the NGOs. She pointed out that the constitution is unique in recognizing communal land rights, that the rights of Indigenous people to take part in decision-making and to use their own languages are not only protected but a key part of (for example) the school and health systems. She explained the investment which the government is making in good roads and highways as well as public services, and the steps already taken to regularize land holdings and mediate with settlers, many of whom are long-established in Indigenous areas and may have been illegally “sold” land even though it can only be held communally. She noted that 23 original peoples’ territories have been titled and delimited and gave examples of how these areas are protected (e.g. by community-appointed forest wardens and by locally agreed procedures for dealing with new settlers).

Morales also responded to some of the direct accusations made by the NGOs. One was that “precautionary measures” issued by the IACHR to protect local activists had been ignored by the government. In response she cited the case of Juan Carlos Ocampo, the Indigenous Miskitu giving testimony at the proceedings at the invitation of CEJUDHCAN; he had been granted such measures in 2018 but had never presented himself to the local judge, as required, to take advantage of them. Challenging the argument that the government was allowing indiscriminate logging and mining in tropical forests, Morales held up an article from the right-wing newspaper La Prensa in which logging companies were complaining that the government refuses permits and prevents them from operating. Another article in La Prensa praised an agreement made between an Indigenous community and a mining company. The Oakland Institute representative, Anuradha Mittal, repeated false accusations about cattle farming in Indigenous areas which were debunked last year by NicaNotes and in an article for FAIR. Morales explained how Nicaragua’s sophisticated traceability system prevents any meat coming from cattle in protected areas from entering the supply chain.

As the AFGJ National Co-Coordinator Chuck Kaufman said before the hearing, “It strains credulity that the IACHR will hold a legitimate and fair hearing when it has not invited any of the elected and traditional Indigenous leaders from the region. Why would it even choose to examine Nicaragua in the first place on the issue of colonization when it has by far the best record with regard to Indigenous sovereignty and rights in Central America, if not the whole hemisphere?”

No one denies that the land conflicts in Nicaragua’s Caribbean territories are real. But knowing that this part of the country is deeply divided between supporters and opponents of Nicaragua’s government, IACHR chooses to give voice only to one side, allowing the government to respond but ignoring the variety of views in the communities themselves. IACHR encourages a judgment that the government is deliberately refusing to adopt obvious solutions to land conflicts, when the reality is much more complex. In doing so, it overlooks the obstacles and supports allegations of government neglect, while disregarding the many advances being made alongside the problems that remain.

It remains to be seen whether – after a long history of treating the Sandinista government in a manner little short of contempt – the IACHR is capable of reaching a balanced appraisal of the problems faced by the people of the Caribbean coast and of the government’s efforts to resolve them. When the outcome of the hearing is received, NicaNotes will be ready to analyze it.

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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Fri Apr 02, 2021 11:42 am

NICANOTES
NicaNotes: Violence against Women: Lessons from Nicaragua
April 1, 2021
[This article was published by the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign Action Committee (NSCAG) on March 24, 2021, at https://www.nscag.org/news/article/337/ ... -nicaragua)

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Women receive their diplomas from the National Technology Institute INATEC, where 62% of those enrolled are women

“In truth, the violence which we must eradicate in all its forms is violence against women – it destroys us, diminishes us, denigrates us, humiliates us all, not just women” – Rosario Murillo, Nicaraguan Vice-President, March 2021

Introduction
At a time when the issue of violence against women is being hotly debated in the UK, the UK government could learn some lessons from Nicaragua about how to tackle the problem. Nicaragua has the lowest rate of femicides in Central America (.7/100,000) according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC) and the Latin America and Caribbean Gender Equality Observatory and is testament to the Nicaraguan Government’s commitment to eradicating violence against women. In addition to a legal framework, Nicaragua has seen an ongoing education drive to continue changing the culture of the country so that misogyny and attacks on women have no place in society. At the same time, women have been empowered through programmes which ensure financial independence and equality in terms of participation in all aspects of society and which recognise their contribution to the development of the country.

The Nicaraguan Model
The model developed by Nicaragua’s government prioritises the prevention of and attention to gender-based violence with a focus on changing attitudes, behaviours and power relations and implementing laws and public policies that are based on the construction of new socio-cultural patterns for gender demands and the integral protection of women. Since 2007, the government has introduced a range of proactive policies including legally mandated equal representation, ensuring that at least 50% of public offices be held by women and a drive to change attitudes and practices across all areas of society.

In addition to legal measures, it is Government policy to guarantee the population a life free of violence which favours their development and wellbeing in accordance with the principles of equality and non-discrimination and at the same time to promote national campaigns aimed at the prevention of violence against women. There is an ongoing public education drive to continue changing the culture in the country; this has been extended also to schools and includes the principle of complementarity in terms of promoting the participation of men in caring and domestic tasks among others. Another element of the campaign is to work with family therapists to include ‘more values of tolerance, respect and understanding’ into women’s lives.

The Nicaraguan government realises that the work it has started needs to continue in order to totally eradicate the macho culture which existed in Nicaragua and in most countries around the world for many years. However, the empowerment of women, ending economic and social dependence on men and breaking the cycles of violence are signs that this can be achieved.

Unite to End Violence against Women
Nicaragua has joined the UN Secretary-General’s UNiTE to End Violence against Women campaign to end violence against women by 2030. As part of the campaign, the Nicaraguan government has made a commitment to take a series of political, legislative and administrative actions to eradicate violence against women and girls. In addition to ensuring that the legal framework is respected and that the relevant laws are implemented, specific steps taken by the Government will include implementing the public policy of State against violence against women; guaranteeing prompt and effective access to justice; creating the Observatory of Violence pursuant to the provisions of Act 779 and improving the statistical information system on violence against women. The Government will also broaden the coverage of specialised justice with new courts specialising in violence and recruiting auxiliary staff to carry out judicial activities. Capacity for the investigation and punishment of crimes will also be improved.

Women for Life – Women’s Police Stations
In February last year, Nicaragua launched a ‘Women for Life’ campaign to defend women’s rights. The campaign saw the re-launch of a network of police stations across the country run by and for women (these had existed previously, but most had to close some five or six years ago when international funding dried up). The aim of the police stations, of which there are currently 60 in the country with more planned, is to make it easier for women to file complaints for aggression, threats or attempts to undermine their dignity and their life. Government institutions – the Ministry of the Family, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Ministry of Youth and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs – are working hand in hand to strengthen women’s rights, as well as to form a culture of peace and non-violence from the beginning.

The Legal Framework
The Government has implemented a number of laws to counteract violence against women such as Law No. 779, the Integral Law against Violence against Women, and Law No. 641, the Penal Code.

On 20 January this year, Nicaragua’s National Assembly approved the Reform and Addition to the Criminal Code of the Republic of Nicaragua and Law 779, the Comprehensive Law against Violence against Women, which establishes a reviewable life sentence for those who commit crimes of extreme gravity and extreme danger, including rape and femicide. The sentence of life imprisonment is subject to review within a period of 30 years in which the degree of re-education of the prisoner can be assessed so that he can qualify for parole.

Sexual abuse in Nicaragua is taken very seriously. In a recent case involving a 13-year-old and her father, the police not only arrested the father but also set up a roadblock so that he was unable to escape. The child is receiving treatment from the Ministry of the Family, including planned psychological help. Immediately after the arrest, the police helped the child and her sister move out of the home where the abuse took place. There is a strong emphasis on treating the victim as credible, in contrast to – for example – countries such as Honduras where cases are not reported as they are not investigated or taken seriously. The prosecutor’s office is asking for life imprisonment for the abuser, in part for sexual abuse and in part for physical violence.

In the labour sphere, the elimination of discrimination against women has been institutionalised through a strengthened legal framework which includes laws guaranteeing access to the labour market for women from the poorest sectors of society and their right to a decent job and a decent salary, through active labour market policies and skills training.

Education
As part of its violence prevention strategies, the Government guarantees free, equitable and quality education. It implements programmes to strengthen the practice of values, such as Education Community Counselling and incorporates into the curriculum subjects such as Growing in Values. Government Ministries promote new models of raising children, based on the values of respect, love and protection from any form of discrimination and exploitation, in line with the best interests of the child. Meetings of citizen security assemblies address the prevention of violence against women, aimed at reducing risk factors and vulnerabilities of women in the family and in the community, as well as promoting rights, dignity and respect.

The Ministry of the Family, Mifamilia, also carries out house-to-house visits to raise awareness of the importance of preventing violence against women and the sexual abuse of children.

Political Participation
The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, also known as UN Women, has released a list of countries with the best gender balance in political participation, highlighting that Nicaragua ranks first worldwide in women heading government ministries and fourth in legislative positions.

According to a new Inter–Parliamentary Union report, Nicaragua has the world’s highest percentage (56.25%) of women in Ministerial positions in Latin America and the fourth highest in the legislature (46%). Women also lead top state institutions including the Nicaraguan Institute of Agricultural Technology INTA, the National Technology Institute INATEC and the National Forestry Institute INAFOR.

Highest Participation of Women in the Workforce
The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) presented its Special Report COVID-19 No. 9: “The Economic Autonomy of Women in Sustainable Recovery with Equality” on Feb. 10. The report states that 55.7% of women in Nicaragua participate in the job market or carry out some form of paid work, placing it as the country in Latin America and the Caribbean with the highest participation of women in the work force, followed by Jamaica (54.5%) and Bolivia (53.3%).

Seventy-three per cent of those working in education are women. In the health sector, the figure is 64%.

Economic Empowerment
In a move to enhance the financial independence of women, the government has given low interest loans to over 900,000 women over the last 14 years to enable them to start small businesses in urban areas. This programme, known as Zero Usury, serves not only to empower women but is also a key factor in combatting poverty, unlocking previously untapped pools of talent and driving inclusive, diverse and sustainable growth. Many of the women who have received loans are now turning their businesses into co-operatives in order to give jobs to more women.

In rural communities, of the more than 447,000 property titles delivered by the Sandinista government to families, women have been a priority, with around 1 million women benefitting, in addition to government support for women-led agricultural co-operatives.

The Rural Development Programme is also providing loans to women to improve production with equipment, water pumps, corrals, wells, improved pastures, installation of fences, and more. So far this year the National Technological Institute (INATEC has assisted 52,000 women with technical courses and careers in trade schools. Women make up 62% of enrolment. Since 2007, 3.5 million women, 69% of the total served, have taken courses, internships, workshops, and seminars to strengthen work skills through INATEC.

Health
Efforts made by the Sandinista government to eliminate the gender gap in health are also a contributing factor to preventing violence against women helping as they do to break the cycle of deprivation which is often a trigger for violence.

High priority is given to women’s health. For example, since 2007 there has been a constant and programmatic effort to make changes and improvements in the health system, and train health staff to drastically lower maternal mortality. The government has made significant investments in infrastructure and other means to improve the care of cancer patients and reduce the cervical cancer mortality rate, which has decreased by 34% since 2007. Among these actions is the creation of the National Cytology Centre to guarantee early diagnosis of cervical cancer. The number of women who receive Pap smears has increased from 181,491 in 2007 to 880,907 in 2020 and mammograms have increased from 151 in 2010 to 27,415 in 2020.

Nicaragua has been recognized for actions promoted by the Sandinista government in the health sector for women, children and adolescents. The award was granted by the Regional Interagency Coordination Movement EVERY WOMAN EVERY CHILD in Latin America and the Caribbean (EWEC-LAC), composed of a number of different organisations including UNICEF, UN Women, and the PAHO/WHO. These organisations value the strategy of reducing maternal and perinatal mortality. Since 2007, the number of maternity wait homes (casas maternas) has increased from 50 in 2007 to 178 in 2020. Maternal mortality has been reduced from 93 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2007 to 37 deaths in 2020. Neonatal mortality has also been reduced by more than half.

Conclusion
According to the World Economic Forum, Nicaragua is the world’s fifth most gender equal country, the highest non-Nordic country and the only country in the Western Hemisphere in the top 10.

The Nicaraguan government continues its drive for full gender equity across all sectors, with the liberation of women a fundamental pillar of Sandinismo. This has been listed by the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) as one of the drivers of Nicaragua’s economic growth and resilience, with the country achieving 8% export growth in 2020, the highest in Latin America, compared to a regional average of -13%, and projected to grow 3.5% this year.

As in many areas, Nicaragua continues to be a good example. Alongside the implementation of tougher laws, Nicaragua sees education, empowerment, participation and the eradication of poverty as key tools to eliminate violence against women. This is surely a model worth following.



Briefs

By Nan McCurdy

Best Hospital Network in the Region
Finance Minister Iván Acosta said that with the loan granted by the Central America Bank for Economic Integration, Nicaragua will advance towards the goal of creating the best and most modern hospital network in Central America. Acosta was accompanied by the presidential health advisor, Dr. Sonia Castro, who explained that these funds will be used to expand and improve six hospitals: New hospital wards will be built in the Alemán-Nicaragüense and Manolo Morales Hospitals in Managua; the Humberto Alvarado Hospital in Masaya, Asunción Hospital in Juigalpa, César Amador Molina Hospital in Matagalpa and San Juan de Dios Hospital in Estelí. “These six hospitals will have 400 new beds in different wards.” She added that this funding will also be used to build the oncology outpatient ward at the Bertha Calderón Women’s Hospital and the epidemiological laboratory at the Estelí Hospital. Radio (La Primerisima, 25 March 2021)

4,000 Titles Delivered
The Attorney General’s Office on March 31 will complete the delivery of 4,000 property titles to families throughout the country. Every week for the last month, 1,000 titles were delivered in Managua, Mateare, Ciudad Sandino, Rio San Juan, Rivas, Jinotega and Nueva Segovia. This gives legal security to the families who have been waiting years for this document. (Radio La Primerisima, 30 March 2021)

800 People Freed to House Arrest
The Ministry of the Interior granted house arrest, known in Nicaragua as the Family Coexistence Benefit, to 800 people serving sentences in the National Penitentiary System on March 25. María Amelia Coronel, head of the Ministry of the Interior stated that the benefit is extended to all the penitentiary centers as it is a state policy in favor of the reunification of families. “You should remember that there are opportunities in life that are not repeated and this is one of them, so you should be aware of the importance of this day for the rest of your lives. Do not forget your obligations and commitments, you will have moments of weakness and despair, but always remember that you can make the right decisions, you must be responsible with your freedom and lead your lives with joy, faith and hope for a better tomorrow.” Aracelly Flores, FSLN Political Secretary said that there is great satisfaction to know that none of the 169 inmates who received this benefit three months ago have returned to the Penitentiary System, which means that those who receive it are taking advantage of the opportunity they had to regain their freedom. See photos: https://radiolaprimerisima.com/noticias ... -del-pais/ (Radio La Primerisima, 25 March 2021)

Turtles Protected in the Caribbean Regions
During the V ordinary session of the Regional Autonomous Council of the Southern Caribbean, the council members unanimously approved the technical resolution of the permanent commission of Natural Resources (SERENA), on the updating of the system of consumption for subsistence purposes of green turtles in the territories of Awaltara, Tasba, and Marshall Point. The session was held in the community of Haulover, in the municipality of Laguna de Perlas, in commemoration of the 224th anniversary of the Garífuna peoples’ resistance. Attendees saw a presentation on conservation of the green turtle. “The Government has sought alternatives for families that used to survive on the green turtle and among them are projects such as NICAPESCA through which it will be possible to regulate the capture of turtles, as families will have other ways to support their families. (Radio La Primerisima, 25 March 2021)

XXXII Graduation of Inter-Cultural Bilingual Teachers
On March 27, 91 teachers received their diplomas at the XXXII graduation of inter-cultural monolingual and bilingual educators of the Bilwi Normal School. Of the graduates 83 belong to the Miskitu people, three Afro-descendants (Creole), three Mestizos and two Mayangna. “Year after year this center trains and sends to the regional education system teachers committed to quality teaching. Most of them come from Indigenous communities and they feel committed to their communities, the good thing is that these teachers have the ability to teach in their mother tongues, an advantage that facilitates teaching in the classroom” said Professor Javier Vicente. The preparation of teachers with a vocation for teaching has allowed more children in remote communities to receive the bread of knowledge in the same way they receive it in the main cities and in their own languages. (Radio La Primerisima, 28 March 2021)

SICA Countries Promote Eco-tourism post Covid-19
The national tourism entities of the member countries of the Central America System of Integration (SICA), through the Central American Tourism Promotion Agency (CATA), presented their star tourism products for 2021. The event was called “The Best of The Best” and was aimed at tourism and related agencies from Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Holland and the United Kingdom. According to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), international tourist arrivals during January to October 2020 fell by 68% in the Americas. The Organization estimates a rebound in international tourism starting in the third quarter of 2021. The countries of the region are betting on ecotourism in open environments, emphasizing nature, adventure, ecology and sustainability. The region occupies 1% of the planet’s surface and has 12% of the world’s biodiversity. It also has the second largest reef in the world, colonial cities, volcanoes, diverse cultures, and Pacific and Caribbean beaches. In the last ten years, regional tourism registered sustained growth.

Nicaragua focuses on the theme of “Nature in the land of lakes and volcanoes”, a multicolored country, surrounded by seas, bordered by mountains. This country has great biodiversity and natural scenery, with three biosphere reserves, 165 private wildlife reserves, 72 protected areas representing 25% of its territory, 26 volcanoes, seven of which are active. Nicaragua highlights the natural biosphere reserves, volcanoes, lakes and lagoons, forests, jungles and waterfalls. (Radio La Primerisima, 29 March 2021)

90th Anniversary of 1931 Earthquake
90 years ago, March 31, 1931 a powerful earthquake of 5.8 magnitude devastated the city of Managua. Tragedy and chaos took over the city on the morning of that Holy Tuesday. Ninety years later, Managua is a different city and although the seismic risk is still latent, the city is better prepared to respond to such events. Managua was a small town of 45,000 and the majority of its houses and buildings were of wattle and daub construction. The earthquake destroyed the city and many surviving families sought refuge with relatives in other municipalities. In addition to the loss of many human lives, the earthquake also caused a large fire. Months after the earthquake the city was still full of rubble, fallen buildings, half-destroyed and abandoned houses. In1931 Managua had important buildings, warehouses, banks, drugstores and a varied commerce that imported and exported a variety of products. There were hotels, clubs, newspapers, churches, car and truck agencies, bicycles and motorcycles.

After the earthquake, only the iron framework of the old Cathedral construction (begun just three years earlier in 1928), the Pellas House, the Social Club, the Municipal Palace Building, the National Palace, which Radio La Primerisima reports was later burned by the US Marines, and the Presidential House on the Loma de Tiscapa, among other buildings, were left standing. On the day of the earthquake, the Central and San Miguel markets, the Variedades Theater, La Casa del Águila, the Candelaria, San Antonio and San Pedro churches and the National Penitentiary fell. The principal buildings of the central part of the city fell and those that remained standing were damaged. Thanks to the progress of science, technology and geological studies, it has been determined that the 1931 earthquake was precisely on the National Stadium fault.

The panorama was desolate, it is estimated that between 1,200 and 1,500 people died that day; 2,000 were injured and 36,000 people had property damage. There were no firefighters or Red Cross and the population was not educated on how to act at the time of an earthquake. Today Managua is one of the best capitals in Central America with lots of new infrastructure. See photos here: https://radiolaprimerisima.com/noticias ... a-managua/

(Radio La Primerisima, 31 March 2021)

Covid-19 Report for March 23 to 29
For the week of March 23 to 29 the Health Ministry reports 38 registered cases of Covid and 38 people recuperated and one death. Since March 2020 there have been 5,326 registered cases of Covid-19, 5,102 people recuperated and 178 deaths. (Radio La Primerisima, 30 March 2021)

Orchestrated Campaign against Sandinismo
The Board of Directors of “Friends of Nicaragua” (Peru chapter), made a statement about the new Amnesty International document regarding Nicaragua. The Peruvian statement states that conservative forces have promoted an orchestrated campaign against Sandinismo, and that the campaign has a clear electoral nature, given the elections will be held in November. This campaign encourages the conservative sectors of society to unite, since currently they are divided. “Amnesty International’s statement should come as no surprise. It is a known fact that in November of this year, elections will take place and will once again be the scene of a confrontation between the conservative forces and the majority of the people committed to developing and deepening social transformations aimed at raising the material living conditions of [Nicaragua’s] inhabitants, encouraging and promoting the construction of a better, more humane and just society,” details the statement. The Friends of Nicaragua state that since last year the reactionary forces have been fomenting an artificial climate of violence but the country’s authorities have not fallen into the trap. The statement indicates that this campaign is the continuation of the one initiated in April 2018 generating an artificial climate of confrontation and violence that damaged Nicaraguan society. During the attempted coup there were terrorist attacks, arson of public buildings, radio stations and private homes and businesses; barricades were built to obstruct the passage of people and vehicular traffic, FSLN headquarters were attacked, and crimes were committed against defenseless people, many of whom were barbarically tortured before perishing.

“We could all see, in effect, that the events in Nicaragua were the continuation of identical actions perpetrated a year earlier in Caracas against the Constitutional Government of President Nicolás Maduro; in Ecuador against Rafael Correa and in Bolivia against Evo Morales and his governmental administration,” the statement adds.

Within the framework of the upcoming elections, they seek to do the same in Nicaragua. And to achieve this, they need to undermine the prestige of the Sandinista Government beyond Nicaragua’s borders, since they feel defeated domestically. They try, then, to fool the uninformed, those who do not know the reality of Nicaragua and allow themselves to be influenced by major media at their service. In the face of the lies spread against Nicaragua, the Friends of Nicaragua have taken a clear position in defense of the Sandinista Revolution. “We consider ourselves, from Peru, in the obligation to act not only raising solidarity as a flag; but also safeguarding the interests of the peoples of Latin America affected by the constant aggressiveness of the Empire.” “We renew our support of the Sandinista Revolution and we call on all to keep our flag of solidarity with the cause it embodies on high.” (Radio La Primerisima, 28 March 2021)

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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Mon Apr 05, 2021 1:33 pm

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Nicaragua: Building the Good Life (Buen Vivir) Through Popular Revolution
April 4, 2021 Margaret Flowers

As I traveled in Nicaragua on the recent Sanctions Kill delegation, one thing was clear, social transformation (revolution) requires both political power and participation by the people. Without political power, revolutionary programs will not have the material resources they require. Without the participation of the people, revolutionary programs, even with resources, cannot be put into practice and defended.

Right now, Nicaraguans have both and they are making great progress in building a new society or as it is often referred to in Latin America, ‘Buen Vivir,’ (the good life). They are demonstrating what we mean when we say “transforming society to put people and the planet over profits.” And this is one of the reasons why the United States is targeting Nicaragua through hybrid warfare including a misinformation campaign, direct interference in the politics of the country and economic attacks. It is clear the United States is already working to undermine the upcoming presidential election in Nicaragua scheduled for November 7, but that is a necessary topic for another day.

In this newsletter, I will focus on two aspects of the ongoing Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua: building power through organizing peasant workers and building a multicultural society that respects the sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples. Both contain lessons for activists in the United States.


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Wall at the site of the tombs of revolutionary heroes in Managua (Margaret Flowers)

In the last newsletter, I wrote a bit about the history of the popular struggle in Nicaragua, the largest country in Central America that has a low-density population of around six million people. Through a mass armed movement, Nicaraguans ousted the US Marines in the early twentieth century but that was followed by almost 50 years of the brutal dictatorship of the US-backed liberal party led by the Somoza family. Throughout that period, a minority of people (5%) owned most of the land (80%).

In 1979, the same year that the US-backed Shah of Iran was defeated, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which began in the 1960s, overthrew the Somozas and was finally able to start putting its 13-point socialist program into practice. Although there were setbacks during the US-backed Contra War of the 1980s and the neoliberal period from 1990 to 2006, in the past 14 years, Nicaragua has made major achievements that other poor countries and many a rich country like the United States have not been able to make.

Their successes include access to free education from preschool through the university level for all people, universal healthcare, land ownership, a pension, the empowerment of women, youth, and marginalized populations and more. Nicaragua has a primarily popular economy composed of cooperatives and small farms and businesses. It has achieved food sovereignty with 90% of the food consumed being produced locally and a growing agricultural export market. It is building infrastructure, particularly roads, electricity, and potable water. Currently, over 98% of homes have electricity and 75% of that comes from renewable sources. Almost one-fourth of the energy produced is geothermal as Nicaragua is a land of volcanos. Learn more in this Clearing the FOG episode taped in Nicaragua.

It took many decades to create the conditions in which these achievements could be made. The struggle to put the Sandinista revolution into practice and to defend the gains continues. Both the FSLN and the Rural Workers Association (ATC) are integral parts of that struggle.


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Yorlis Luna, a professor and coordinator with IALA, lectures the delegation (Margaret Flowers)

The Rural Workers Association officially began forty three years ago this week, although the work to start organizing and unionizing peasant workers began in the early 1970s, at the same time that the FSLN was growing. In my interview with Fausto Torres, who has been with the ATC from early on and currently serves as the Secretary of International Relations, he explains that the ATC and FSLN were born out of the same struggle with the ATC being composed of workers and the FSLN providing a political platform rooted in worker empowerment. Both arms of the revolution complemented each other. For example, the ATC provided food and safe houses for FSLN fighters during the Contra War and many Sandinistas who defended the revolution during that time came from the ATC.

After the Somoza dictatorship was overthrown, it was the ATC that made the agrarian reform, which transferred land from large landowners to over 120,000 peasant families, a reality and helped to defend those land gains. The ATC provided literacy programs and helped new land owners learn to make their small farms productive. Some land owners formed cooperatives.

After the Contra War, the ATC facilitated a reconciliation process between people who fought on both sides. Today, Sandinistas and former Contras live and work side-by-side in many communities and belong to the same cooperatives. The ATC continues to organize rural workers and educate them about labor laws and it has special programs for youth and women.

The ATC has several schools. One of its newer ones is the Latin American Institute of Agroecology or IALA (based on the name in Spanish), which educates people from all over Latin America. IALA incorporates traditional knowledge and the latest science to create practices that are sustainable, address the climate crisis and serve the cultural needs of local communities. In line with the values of the ATC and FSLN, emphasis is placed on the inclusion and empowerment of youth and women to support the development of new leaders.

In the early 1990s, the ATC globalized its peasant movement by founding La Via Campesina, a member organization that currently operates in the Americas, Africa, Europe, Asia and Oceania and represents over 200 million rural families who are working to build a democratic and non-exploitative society. In addition to peasant workers, La Via Campesina members include migrants, landless peasants, and human rights defenders. There are four major areas of work: land reform, food sovereignty, peasant culture and socializing common goods. As an organization, it operates through collective leadership and participatory democracy. La Via Campesina values gender equality, youth participation, diversity, discipline and international solidarity. It is anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and anti-patriarchal.

La Via Campesina runs a number of campaigns. One of them targets transnational corporations, particularly those based in the United States, that are pushing the “Green Revolution,” which is trying to dominate land ownership, control food production and push a toxic and exploitative food system based on profits for a few. A recent success in that struggle was the passing of the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas in late 2018 at the United Nations. It should not be a surprise that the United States and some European Union countries opposed it.

The ATC and La Via Campesina are building the local and global popular movement necessary to challenge corporate power and capitalism and create a world that can protect the rights of all people and mitigate the climate crisis. We activists in the US have much to learn from them.


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Aminta Zea explains who our group is for members of the community council in Tuapi (Margaret Flowers)

Another accomplishment in Nicaragua is their ongoing work in the Autonomous Zone, composed of 47% of the nation’s land on the Northern and Southern Caribbean Coasts, to restore the rights of Indigenous Peoples and Afro-descendants who have been discriminated against for a long time. It offers a model for the United States to consider.

This work is grounded in the Nicaraguan Constitution passed after the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship that values a multi-ethnic society. Due to the Contra War and the neoliberal period that followed, most of the gains have been made in the last decade or so since Daniel Ortega was restored as the president. There was a ten year period of negotiations between the government and the autonomous communities that resulted in the titles of 33% of the national territory being granted to twenty three Indigenous and Afro-descendant Peoples who requested them.

Indigenous leaders decide what parts of the land are to be used for housing or agriculture and the regulations regarding whether or not non-Indigenous people could live there. For example, the capital of the Northern Caribbean Coast, Bilwi, is owned by the people in Karata and they receive taxes from the city, which was formerly called Puerto Cabezas.

In recent years, unprecedented amounts of money have been spent on building highways to connect the communities with each other and with markets for their goods. There was also a big expansion in health care facilities and infrastructure for electricity and water. Education is also a high priority. Schools are multilingual to include the maternal language as well as Spanish and English. The university system is dedicated to multiculturalism and “rescuing” traditional knowledge. Their development plan is based on human development rather than exploitation.

Some of the major industries in the region include mining, forestry and cattle. They are working on mining methods that reduce the environmental impact and pollution from it. For timber, the community has to approve any plans and it owns and benefits from the entire process. Similarly for cattle, the community decides who can have cattle farms. As the climate crisis expands the “dry zone” outside of the Autonomous Region, non-Indigenous cattle farmers have been looking for other areas to raise their herds and this has been used by the United States as a way to attack Nicaragua through a false tale of assaults on Indigenous communities, known as “the Conflict Beef” story. This is far from the reality, as John Perry explains.

Although there have been a few small victories recently in the United States of returning land to Native American tribes, we still have a long way to go. Nicaragua demonstrates a model that is indigenous-led with the state playing a supportive role. Imagine if land in the United States was returned to the Indigenous Peoples who would control what is done on the land, including who could live there. This would go a long way to reversing the centuries of oppression and stolen wealth and could finally end the era of settler colonialism.


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The Sanctions Kill delegation with members of the ATC in Managua. Friends of the ATC (ATC)

There is a lot we can learn from Nicaraguan people about how to organize, resist and build a multicultural society based on participatory democracy, empowerment and healing the Earth. The Sanctions Kill delegation provided a glimpse into this powerful work but there is more to know about the specific programs and how they could be translated into our work here to hold our government accountable and transform our society.

One concept that arose during the delegation is that of “revolutionary discipline.” Revolutions don’t just happen. They are the fruit of dedication to education and struggle. We can each practice revolutionary discipline in our communities through political education, organizing, putting pressure on the government and building alternative programs. Through this work, we will build the mass movement necessary to succeed.

We must also work to protect Nicaragua and other revolutionary societies that are targeted by US foreign policy for daring to defend their self-determination and sovereignty. We witnessed the violence and destruction of the 2018 US-backed coup attempt. We already see the US laying the groundwork to interfere in the presidential election in Nicaragua this November. Let us also put revolutionary discipline into practice by not allowing ourselves to be fooled by false media narratives and by raising our voices against US interference.

The photo at the top of this newsletter was taken at the ATC School in Managua. It reads “Globalize the Struggle, Globalize the Hope.” This is our call to action so that we can build a world of Buen Vivir for everyone.

Featured image: “Globalize the Struggle, Globalize the Hope.” (Margaret Flowers)

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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Fri Apr 23, 2021 11:45 am

NicaNotes: With Nicaragua, Scary COVID Projections Are More Newsworthy Than Hopeful Results
April 22, 2021
By John Perry
(John Perry is a writer from the United Kingdom who lives in Masaya, Nicaragua.)

One year ago, as both the Trump administration in the US and the Johnson government in the UK responded fitfully to the growing pandemic, the international media were looking for whipping boys: other countries whose response to the virus was even worse.

There were some cases of obvious neglect—Brazil was and is a prime example (FAIR.org, 4/12/20). But the press also turned on Nicaragua, repeating allegations from local opposition groups that the Sandinista government was in denial about the dangers, and that the country was poised on the edge of disaster.

When, as the death toll in other countries grew alarmingly, Nicaragua “flattened the curve” of virus cases more quickly than its neighbors, its apparent success was ignored. Despite the importance of identifying how poorer countries can contain the virus effectively, measures used by Nicaragua remain uninvestigated by the international media. Why did this come about?

The Guardian (4/8/20) cited what it described as “wild speculation” and a “conspiratorial article” about President Daniel Ortega’s lack of public appearances.

The media’s feeding frenzy on the Sandinista government began with the BBC. Last April, BBC World (4/4/20) claimed that President Daniel Ortega’s government had taken “no measures at all” in the face of the virus threat. It invented a media trope: Ortega’s “long absence” from public view. (He’d not appeared in person or on TV for three weeks, something not at all unusual.)

Two days later, the New York Times (4/6/20) was asking, “Where Is Daniel Ortega?,” adding that his government had been “widely criticized for its cavalier approach,” and that the public “is deeply dubious about government claims.” The Guardian (4/8/20) joined the chorus that same week, claiming that Ortega was “nowhere to be seen,” adding four days later that the “authoritarian” Ortega was one of four world leaders in denial about the virus. According to the Washington Post (4/13/20), Ortega had “vanished,” leaving a government operating a “laissez-faire approach” to the pandemic.

Not only the headlines but the substance of the stories had many similarities. A government quote (often from Vice President Rosario Murillo) was parenthesized by statements from opposition groups, or by what appeared to be independent medical bodies, such as the Committee of Multidisciplinary Scientists and the Citizens’ Observatory for COVID-19, both of which were openly supported by the opposition.

Juan Sebastián Chamorro, an opposition leader with the same excellent connections to the international media as other Chamorro family members, is the “go to” opposition voice, while frequently quoted sources are Chamorro-owned newspaper La Prensa and opposition-supporting news website Confidencial, run by Carlos F. Chamorro. (Both of these outlets and the website 100% Noticias, also strongly critical of the government, have received regular financial support from the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation, which has benefited from $4.6 million in USAID funding in the past three years.)

The international media even use reporters with close ties to the opposition. For example, the Guardian describes the Managua-based writer of its COVID-19 stories, Wilfredo Miranda, as “freelance,” but at the time he was writing regularly for Confidencial. The Guardian has a track record of using opposition-aligned journalists: In 2018, along with the Washington Post and BBC, it ran stories by Carl David Goette-Luciak, who was shown by Max Blumenthal (Canary, 9/28/18) to be working with anti-Sandinista groups. (Blumenthal’s report led to open conflict between the Canary website and the Guardian.)

Similarly, the BBC’s report on April 4 was from Dora Luz Romero, head of digital information at right-wing La Prensa, and the first quote in her story was from that newspaper’s editor-in-chief. The Managua correspondent for the New York Times, Alfonso Flores Bermúdez, makes his political sympathies clear in his Twitter feed (for example, referring to those found guilty of armed attacks in the 2018 coup attempt as political prisoners).

The pandemic confirmed trends which have been growing anyway: that it is convenient and cheaper to use local journalists, even if they are uncommitted to balanced reporting, and to give voice to opposition figures who are readily available with quotable comments, often in fluent English. In part this is because government officials are reluctant to engage with the media—a stance which can be criticized, but is a response to the derisive way their comments are treated (coverage of Ortega’s “disappearance” providing some prime examples).

In COVID denial?
The New York Times (5/31/20) reported that “the signs are everywhere that the coronavirus is raging across Nicaragua.”

There were two main threads to the adverse media coverage in mid-2020. The first was that the Nicaraguan government was in denial about the pandemic, and either unprepared or unwilling to take the necessary steps to combat it. An article I wrote for COHA (5/30/20) last year responded to these criticisms: While the Nicaraguan government rejected the use of lockdowns as impractical in a country where most people survive on what they earn each day, and few can work without leaving home, in other respects its response to the pandemic was ahead of other countries.

Nicaragua announced its strategy much earlier (in late January, when most Western countries were still dismissing the likelihood of a pandemic); it prepared wards in 18 hospitals to receive COVID patients, and reserved one hospital solely for this purpose; it put health checks in place at points of entry to the country with mandatory quarantines, and it began a program to combat misinformation being purveyed via social media (several rounds of house-to-house visits, a free phone line, streetside clinics and more).

The measures were taken in consultation with experts in Asian countries already dealing with the crisis, such as Taiwan and South Korea, with which Nicaragua has strong links. Yet even when the government published a “white paper” (5/25/20) setting out its strategy in detail (in English as well as Spanish), it was ignored or discounted as inadequate by international media. The Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia (5/27/20), for example, dismissed it as promoting “herd immunity” when this term did not appear in the document.

If reporters had done some elementary research, they might have discovered that the plans had substance: More than one-fifth of Nicaraguan government spending goes to the public health service; it has built 19 new hospitals in 13 years, and has six more under construction. Nicaragua now has more hospital beds (1.8 per 1,000 population) than richer countries such as Mexico (1.5) and Colombia (1.7).

The second thread of criticism was that, as a result of government neglect, COVID-19 would run rampant. A huge caseload was forecast, clandestine burials were taking place, and ill-prepared health services were on the point of collapse. The BBC’s second report (5/4/20) on Nicaragua, also by Dora Luz Romero, included a prediction by a local NGO called FUNIDES that by June, there would be at least 120,000 virus cases and 650 deaths. (FUNIDES receives US government money from the National Endowment for Democracy.)

The New York Times (5/31/20) called Nicaragua “a place of midnight burials,” without noting the opposition’s practice of creating fake news items with which to confuse people. For example, Nicaraguan residents (like me) could follow pickup trucks loaded with coffins as they made meandering journeys through city streets, in blatant attempts to create panic.

The medical journal the Lancet (4/6/20) carried a report in April from 13 doctors, none based in Nicaragua, claiming that “the fragile public health infrastructure could collapse.” This was regularly cited by the general media, ignoring a response in the same journal (4/30/20) from this writer that rebutted the arguments.

Pessimists off the mark
Were the pessimists correct? No, they were widely off the mark. It is just one year since Nicaragua’s first official COVID-19 case, identified on March 18, 2020. Since then, official figures report 6,629 cases in total, whereas the unofficial Citizens’ Observatory reports double this number, 13,278. The higher figure is based on “suspected” (not tested) cases, and according to the observatory website includes “rumors” as one source of information. But even the higher figure is dramatically lower than those for adjoining countries, as this chart shows.


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COVID-19 Cases and Deaths per Million in Mexico and Central America
Source: Author calculations based on data from MINSA Nicaragua and Citizens’ Observatory for COVID-19 (3/29/21).

If deaths are counted rather than numbers of cases, Nicaragua’s official figure (26 per million inhabitants) is similarly low. The observatory’s figure for “suspicious” deaths is considerably higher (450 per million), but this includes reported pneumonia cases. In the event that these are all actually COVID cases, this would still be less than half the current Latin American average of 1,174, by official tallies. (It should be kept in mind that in most countries, the official count of COVID deaths is considerably less than the overall increase in mortality during the pandemic; if there are more deaths associated with COVID in Nicaragua than are officially tabulated, that would make the country the norm rather than the exception.)

But the statistics are not the real story. The untold and more significant one in terms of learning from the pandemic is that Nicaragua’s peak of cases and deaths was very short. Essentially it lasted for two months, from mid-May until mid-July. Half the official total cases in the past year occurred in these two months, and since then the daily total has been consistently low. (On no occasion since July has the observatory’s unofficial figure of “suspicious” cases exceeded 100 daily.)

The trend could be confirmed by talking to people working in the health service, as I did on various occasions. In late June, an epidemiologist monitoring the situation nationally told me that hospitals were reporting that the peak had passed. In July, I checked with a local hospital that was dealing with virus cases: Its intensive care unit still had COVID patients, two on ventilators, but wasn’t full. In August, the same hospital recognized the efforts of all the staff—doctors and nurses, porters and cleaners—in a moving ceremony to mark the end of the crisis, attended by many of the patients who had recovered, and who expressed their thanks for the attention they had received.

This achievement in turning the pandemic into what was, effectively, a short, sharp shock, came despite Nicaragua having no lockdowns. Adjoining countries such as Honduras, El Salvador and Costa Rica had strict lockdowns, yet had many more cases. In Costa Rica, there was a prolonged peak from September until January, an experience directly opposite to Nicaragua’s. Honduras continues to have a high incidence of the virus, with hospitals at the point of collapse even in 2021.

All the neighboring countries used the pandemic to become more authoritarian, provoking demonstrations often violently repressed by the police; Nicaragua’s measures were all advisory, not compulsory. Nevertheless, it was Nicaragua which was listed by the New York Times (7/29/20) as one of five Latin American countries where democracy “declined” during the pandemic.

What led to Nicaragua’s relative success during a period when the pandemic was rampant in neighboring countries? At this stage, no scientific study appears to have been undertaken, so any observations are speculative. One factor seems to be the relative absence of viral transmission by travelers from abroad, since (after the violent coup attempt in 2018) there were few tourists in early 2020 to bring the virus into the country. Health checks at border crossings were introduced and, together with quarantining of new arrivals, appear to have been very effective.

House-to-house visits by “health brigades,” approaching five million in number, served to raise awareness and combat fake news. Nicaragua’s 37,000 health personnel were all trained in handling COVID-19 at an early stage, and have long experience of controlling other viral epidemics. However, the true factors behind Nicaragua’s “flattening of the curve” of COVID cases after a short peak clearly warrant much fuller investigation.

Unrecognized success
In September, I wrote in Popular Resistance (9/22/20) that it can only be a matter of time before Nicaragua’s effective response to the pandemic is recognized by the corporate media, especially as it is in such contrast to the experience of most other Latin American countries, and of course that of the US and the UK.

Six months later, there is still no sign of this happening. At the beginning of this year, the Wall Street Journal (1/1/21) listed eight countries which handled COVID well; Time (2/25/20) ran a piece listing 11 countries with the “best global responses” to COVID. Neither included Nicaragua.

The Washington Post (8/8/20) attacked “Ortega’s bizarre and dangerous response to COVID-19,” citing an unofficial tally of 2,537 deaths. Almost eight months later, the same tally stands at 3,014 deaths—suggesting that Nicaragua did in fact succeed at limiting the COVID toll.

The Guardian ran an article (12/29/20) mentioning several low-income countries from which the US and UK could learn, omitting Nicaragua. When I pointed this out in a letter published on December 31, the newspaper immediately published a reply under the headline “Nicaragua’s COVID Story Far From Truth”—noting that the opposition has its own numbers for Nicaraguan COVID cases, but not mentioning that even those numbers are far lower than those of Nicaragua’s neighbors.

What is apparent is that Nicaragua’s unconventional approach has been derided but, when it turned out to be successful, has been ignored. The COVID-19 Observatory at the University of Miami, which monitors anti-virus measures in Latin America, has a public policy adoption index which monitors measures taken to reduce social contact (stay-at-home requirements, school closures, etc.): Nicaragua has the lowest score. But as the Guardian (9/19/20) pointed out in September, much of Latin America was subject to prolonged lockdowns, inducing severe poverty, yet produced five of the top ten countries globally for incidence of the virus. (See FAIR.org, 7/30/20.) As the exception, Nicaragua’s experience should have stood out, not least because it received so much initial media attention for eschewing lockdowns and keeping schools open.

Instead, the international media continued to pour scorn. Even as the pandemic subsided in Nicaragua, the Washington Post (8/8/20) was calling the government’s response “bizarre and dangerous.” The Financial Times (10/4/20) reported Nicaragua’s COVID statistics in October, but gave the impression that the numbers of cases were exceptionally high, part of “a worsening economic and social crisis.” As recently as this February, the Guardian (2/19/21) criticized Nicaragua’s “stumbling response to the coronavirus pandemic” in a cynical and misleading report characterizing the country’s efforts to monitor the use of its air space for satellites and other near-space activities as a grandiose “space agency.”

The picture that emerges is one where there was considerably more coverage of dire predictions than of the surprisingly mild outcome as the pandemic ran its course. COVID-19 was a convenient issue on which the Sandinista government, regularly criticized by the international media, could be attacked again.

Journalists, who should be more skeptical of negative reports from local opposition media and NGOs whose political alignment is well-known, simply repeated them as reliable indications of a disaster waiting to happen. Their apocalyptic warnings strengthened the media’s narrative that the Sandinista government is failing its people. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that politically useful guesses were found to be more newsworthy than politically inconvenient reality.

https://afgj.org/nicanotes-with-nicarag ... ul-results
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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