Nicaragua

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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Fri Nov 19, 2021 3:17 pm

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If There Was “Fraud” in Nicaragua’s Elections, Where is the Proof?
November 18, 2021
By John Perry – Nov 16, 2021

Official results from Nicaragua’s elections on November 7 showed Daniel Ortega re-elected as president with 75% of the vote. On the same day, President Joe Biden dismissed the ballot as a “pantomime election”[1] and within 48 hours the Organization of American States (OAS) had produced a 16-page report setting out its criticisms.[2] It demanded the annulment of the elections and the holding of new ones, disregarding international and OAS rules that require respect for the sovereignty of nations. Yet it contained no evidence of problems on election day itself that would substantiate its objections. Nevertheless, local and international media were quick to endorse the accusations that widespread fraud had taken place.

This article tries to identify the basis of these accusations, examines the evidence offered to support them and shows why, in practice, the massive fraud being alleged was very unlikely to have happened.

The electoral process – in brief
Before addressing the allegations, let’s look briefly at the process. Nicaragua has developed an electoral system which is probably one of the most secure and tamper-proof in Latin America, with multiple checks on the identity of voters and the validity of ballots.[3] There were 13,459 polling stations covering up to 400 voters each, in an operation involving about 245,000 volunteers and officials across the country.

Jill Clark-Gollub has described at COHA how this worked on the day.[4] Briefly, each voter must:

1.- Go to vote in person (there are no postal or proxy votes).
2.- Have a valid identity card that carries their photo and signature.
3.- Be entered on the electoral register for the polling station, where their name is ticked off (in most cases this is computerized).
4.- Have their ID checked against a print-out which has a small version of their photo and their signature: they sign on top of this to certify that they are going to use their vote.
5.- Be given a ballot paper, which is stamped and initialed by an official before being handed over (see photo).
6.- Make their vote in secret and put the paper in a ballot box.
7.- Retrieve their ID card, and have their right thumb marked with indelible ink to show they have voted.

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A ballot paper is stamped and authorized before being handed to the voter (Photo credit: Lauren Smith)

Each polling station has representatives of the political parties (in the U.S. they would be called party poll watchers). The poll watchers are there from the time the polling station opens until it closes – they watch everything – and at the end of the day they also sign the record of the polling. The numbers of votes, in total and for each party, are counted when polling closes and the results certified by the party representatives. The ballot boxes are then taken to a central counting center, accompanied by police or army officers, with each box tagged to ensure that it cannot be tampered with or replaced. The count at the center must match the count in the polling station, and this is again monitored by the poll watchers. Counting starts as the boxes are received and continues non-stop until every vote has been dealt with.

Despite these precautions, the international media and the opposition groups who were not represented on the ballot have not hesitated to condemn the process. For example, William Robinson, writing for NACLA, claims there was “a total absence of safeguards against fraud.”[5] The different critics make one or more of these accusations:

1.- That opponents who would have entered the election were prevented from running, and their participation would have secured Ortega’s defeat.
2.- That the size of the registered electorate was manipulated in the government’s favor.
3.- That polls showed that the government was deeply unpopular, therefore the election result must have been a fake.
4.- That the high proportion of spoiled ballots was a concerted “protest vote.”
5.- That, after the opposition called on its supporters to abstain, most people did so.
6.- That the government “added” one million votes in its favor.

Here we show the plentiful evidence to contest these allegations.

1.- Potential election winners were excluded
“After methodically choking off competition and dissent, Mr. Ortega has all but ensured his victory in presidential elections on Sunday, representing a turn toward an openly dictatorial model that could set an example for other leaders across Latin America.” (New York Times, November 7)[6]

Most of the international media ignored who was on the ballot and focused instead on the arrests of opposition figures earlier this year, which allegedly removed all effective opposition. The reasons for the arrests have been dealt with by Yader Lanuza and Peter Bolton,[7] but briefly they were for violations of laws relating to improper use of money sent to non-profit organizations, receiving money from a foreign power intended to undermine the Nicaraguan state and influence its elections, and seeking international sanctions against Nicaragua.

But in fact, the ballot included five candidates challenging Daniel Ortega for the presidency (see photo). The NYT said, wrongly, that all “are little-known members of parties aligned with his Sandinista government”). However, these are historic parties – two of them (the PLC and PLI) had formed governments in the years 1990-2006, and in the case of the PLC in particular enjoy strong traditional support. The Sandinista front itself won as part of an alliance of nine legal parties.

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A ballot paper from León.

Regardless of the arguments about the validity of the arrests, there is no plausible scenario where, if one of those arrested had been eligible to stand, they would have amassed sufficient votes to win. Not only was this unlikely because of the math (see below), but also because not a single one of those arrested had then been chosen as a candidate, the newer opposition parties that might have chosen them were unable to agree on how to stand or who to choose, and none had any program other than vague calls to re-establish “democracy” and “release political prisoners.”

Nevertheless, according to a CID-Gallup poll in October,[8] the most popular opposition figure, Juan Sebastián Chamorro, had 63% popular support. Let us take a look at a possible scenario, assuming he had been allowed to stand for one of the newer parties:

• Suppose that, as a consequence of his participation, electoral turnout had increased, reaching its highest in recent elections (73.9% in 2011). This would have produced a total of 3,309,000 valid votes, an increase of around 400,000.

•Assume for the moment that the Ortega vote remained the same, and that Chamorro had gained all the non-Ortega votes, including all those won by the other opposition parties:

Chamorro’s total vote would have been about 1,200,000.

• However, it would still have fallen short of Ortega’s by more than 800,000 votes.
• So to have won, Chamorro would have needed to persuade over a fifth of Ortega voters (almost 440,000) to swap sides, despite the deep hostility towards the Chamorros shown by most Sandinistas.

In practice, of course, it was highly unlikely that Chamorro would have stood as the sole opposition candidate, not only because he had rivals from the “traditional” opposition parties such as the PLC, but also because even as the election approached the newer opposition was divided into different groups backing different potential candidates. A divided opposition would have had an even smaller chance of winning.

2.- The size of the registered electorate was manipulated
“In order to put Ortega’s electoral victory cards on the table, the CSE [Electoral Council] proceeded to increase the registration of the number of people eligible to vote.” (Confidencial)

“…experts estimated that this year’s roll should be at least 5.5 million.” (La Prensa)

The second accusation is that the electoral register of 4,478,334 potential voters was manipulated in the government’s favor, although critics can’t agree on whether the register was inflated or deliberately shrunk.

Opposition website Confidencial argued that the growth since 2016 of around 600,000 in the total numbers eligible to vote was implausible, and it was also implausible that 97% of those eligible were actually registered.[9] However, when opposition newspaper La Prensa assessed the size of the registered electorate, their complaint was that it was too small.[10] According to their analysis, the register should have had approximately 5.5 million voters, so the government was presumably intent on cutting out voters in areas where it has low support.

Either accusation is easily answered. The natural growth in the tranche of the population aged over 16 (those eligible to vote) accounts for about half the increase in the size of the register.[11] Both Confidencial and La Prensa deliberately ignore the huge improvement in the registry of citizenship since 2016, so that almost all the adult population now have identity cards, needed for many everyday transactions, and which automatically enter the holder on the electoral register. Rather than being implausible that 97% of citizens are registered, as Confidencial claimed, it is an intended outcome of the modernized system, which aims for 100% registration. This means that the register has gained in accuracy as the campaign to extend ID cards to the whole population nears its goal.

3.- The government is deeply unpopular, contradicting the election result
“A recent poll showed that 78 percent of Nicaraguans see the possible re-election of Mr. Ortega as illegitimate and that just 9 percent support the governing party.” (New York Times, November 7)[12]

The official election results give the ruling Sandinista Front 71.67% of the votes, if spoiled ballots are included (75.87% if they are excluded). This is similar to the 72.44% vote share obtained in the 2016 election. The second party, the PLC, gained 14% of the vote, similar to its 15% share in 2016.

Opinion polls cited by the international media and the opposition purport to tell an entirely different story. According to a poll by Costa Rican firm CID Gallup (not part of the internationally known Gallup organization), in September-October only 19% of adults would have voted for Ortega had the election been held then, while 65% would support an opposition candidate. In a slightly later CID Gallup survey, paid for by Confidencial, 76% of adults questioned said that Ortega’s re-election would be “illegitimate;” his party’s level of support had by then fallen to only 9% (i.e. about 400,000 potential votes).

The CID Gallup poll’s findings on levels of support for different political parties are rather baffling. While some 68% of those questioned said they were likely to vote, the vast majority (77%) claimed to favor no particular party. Levels of support for individual parties were therefore tiny: the Sandinista Front was judged to have most support, but favored by only 8% of voters, while others had even smaller followings. Those questioned had the option of choosing one of the supposedly popular parties that were prevented from running, but these also received miniscule support: 5% for the CxL (Ciudadanos por la Libertad) and just 2% for the UNAB (Unidad Azul y Blanco). Had these parties been allowed to take part in the election, their candidates might have been one of the supposedly popular figures arrested beforehand, such as Juan Sebastián Chamorro.

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CID Gallup survey results from “Confidencial”.

None of the international media who cite the CID Gallup poll question the credibility and consistency of these findings. Nor do they ever mention the more regular and more extensive opinion polls conducted by Nicaragua-based M&R Consultores, which gave a much different picture (see chart). Their results show Daniel Ortega with a 70% share of the vote, a percentage which had increased steadily as the polls approached. M&R claims its surveys are more rigorous, covering more of the country, with 4,282 face-to-face interviews while CID Gallup relies on cell phone calls for its 1,200 responses.

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M&R Consultores’ last opinion poll before the election.

Adding to the implausibility of the CID Gallup poll findings is the fact that some 2.1 million Nicaraguans, slightly under half the adult population, are card-carrying members (militantes) of the Sandinista Front, following a membership drive over the last two years. That less than a quarter of these would vote for the party of which they are members seems, at best, highly unlikely. CID Gallup’s findings would also of course imply that no one who was not a party member would support the government, which is also highly unlikely. Nevertheless, even on election day, opposition leaders such as Kitty Monterrey (herself prevented from standing) hubristically claimed that more than 90% of voters would cast their ballot against Ortega.[13]

4.- Invalid votes “won”
“Null votes confirm Daniel Ortega’s re-election farce” (headline in El Faro)

Because the CID Gallup poll appeared to show a high proportion of voters having no party allegiance, there have been a couple of attempts to argue that a protest vote, ie. people spoiling their ballots, “won” the election. There is some very limited truth in this, in that the proportion of ballots spoiled was notably higher than usual, at about 5%, rather than a more typical 1-2%, and these additional spoiled ballots may have represented a “protest vote.”

The El Salvadoran website El Faro, which regularly gives a platform to Nicaragua’s opposition, tried to show “the strength of the invalid votes.” After claiming that abstentions reflected a “third force,” El Faro published a graphic (below) showing how spoiled ballots “outvoted” the opposition parties.[14]

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Chart by El Faro.
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Source: Author calculations based on official results.

However, a proper comparison between the percentage of invalid votes and those gained by the different parties puts this in perspective (see pie chart). As can be seen, the partial graphic displayed by El Faro gives the votos nulos far more importance than they merit: yes, there were more spoilt ballots than votes for some of the minor parties, but the proportion was well below that gained by the PLC and, of course, by the FSLN. The 161,687 spoiled votes hardly show the electoral “farce,” depicted by El Faro. They were presumably hoping that their readers, glancing at the story and the graphic, would get the impression that the protest vote had “won.” Inadvertently, El Faro’s story also undermines the accusation (see below) that abstentions “won.” If it were really true that only 850,000 people voted, as the abstention camp claims, the 161,687 spoiled votes would have formed an improbably high proportion (19%) of the total.

Another approach to exaggerating the importance of votos nulos was pursued by La Prensa.[15] On each ballot paper there were four voting options so, according to La Prensa, the protest vote was four times the actual total of invalid votes, therefore reaching 666,866, rather than 161,687. This suggests a degree of desperation on La Prensa’s part in its search for ways to discredit the election.

5.- Abstentions “won”
“Once polls opened early on Sunday morning, some polling stations had lines as Nicaraguans turned out to cast their ballots. But as the day progressed, many of the stations were largely empty. The streets of the capital, Managua, were also quiet, with little to show that a significant election was underway.” (New York Times, November 7)[16]

Official results show 66% of registered voters took part in the election, a level within the range (61-74%) of the previous three elections. It is also a level of participation similar to the last elections in the U.S. and the U.K. (which were both higher than normal) and in the middle of the range of participation in other countries’ recent elections.[17]

The international media largely ignore this and cite the opposition website Urnas Abiertas (“Open ballot boxes”) which claims that 81.5% of voters abstained (see graphic).[18] In other words, while officially 2,921,430 voted (including spoiled ballots), Urnas Abiertas say the real figure was more like 850,000.

Urnas Abiertas do not, however, provide any evidence of it other than their claimed survey of attendance at a sample of polling stations, which is only briefly described in a few lines of their four-page report.[19] It offers no technical details of their work or examples of polling stations which they surveyed. Described as “independent” by right-wing newspaper La Prensa,[20] Ben Norton shows how Urnas Abiertas is an obscure organization with few followers and is operated by known opposition supporters.[21]

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Various opposition media, such as 100% Noticias, published pictures of “empty streets” or empty polling stations” on November 7, presumably as evidence that the opposition’s campaign to boycott the elections had been successful.[22] In typical fashion, international media picked up the story and, of course, opposition supporters were busy phoning their contacts in the U.S. and elsewhere to give the story credence.

The local media had conveniently forgotten a story they covered earlier in the year. In July, the electoral authorities published a provisional electoral register, and invited voters to verify their entries and check they were allocated to the correct polling station. This exercise was massively supported, by 2.82 million voters out of a possible 4.34 million then registered (the registered total has since increased by about 130,000 as entries were updated).[23] The opposition media, intent on showing supposed anomalies in this process, inadvertently also showed the scale of the response it received from the public, with videos of queues of people waiting to verify their vote.[24] The likelihood is that, having turned up at the polling station to check their right to vote, people turned up again on November 7 to use it, and the similarity in numbers who did both confirms that this was the case.

The photos of “empty streets” and “empty polling stations” were in any case highly misleading: it is easy to take such shots, especially on a Sunday when businesses and schools are closed, and especially at the hottest time of day. Furthermore, a simple calculation of the likely attendance at each polling station, open for 11 hours with (on average) 333 potential voters and 216 who actually voted, shows that roughly 20 people an hour would have passed through each one. Given that each person needs only a few minutes to vote, it is obvious why queues occurred only when groups of voters arrived simultaneously.

6.- The Sandinistas added at least one million votes
“To the amount of votes reported in favor of Ortega, the CSE [Electoral Council] fraud added about one million extra votes.” (Confidencial)

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Table comparing the 2021 election results with previous elections and with alternative analyses of the 2021 results by Urnas Abiertas and Confidencial. Note that the 2017 elections were for municipalities, where turnout was lower and people were more likely to vote for diverse parties.

Critics argue that massive abstentions mean that fake votes were created, but they can’t agree how many. Confidencial suggests that it was 1,069,225, while the implication of the “survey” by Urnas Abiertas is that false votes totaled 2,032,067. Confidencial helpfully produced a table (see above) comparing the official (CSE) result with its own and those from Urnas Abiertas, adding for comparison the official results from previous elections.[25] (As with many of the other opposition graphics, one suspects that spurious accuracy is given to their data to make them appear more authentic.)

An attempt was made to substantiate the fraud accusation when a false image of a “manipulated” electoral scrutiny form was circulated by the opposition ahead of the election, suggesting that exaggerated vote totals were being prepared in readiness for November 7.[26] It proved to be a copy of a sample document circulated openly in its briefing materials by the Electoral Council.

In practice, the obstacles to the organization of this scale of fraud can be seen from the brief description already given of how votes were verified on polling day. Clearly, creating 1 to 2 million false votes would require a large proportion of the 13,459 polling stations and 245,000 officials to be engaged in the process. This is because the fraud would have to start at the points where votes were cast, because if the false votes had been created centrally the discrepancy with local voting tallies would be blatantly obvious.

Is it really feasible that every polling station (or most of them) created up to 200 false votes from entries on their register using blank ballot forms, stamped as authorized by officials, at the risk that real people with those votes would turn up and find they had already “voted”? Or, if it was done after polls closed, would there have been no complaint from poll watchers from rival parties, and would none of the 245,000 people involved have leaked the truth about what really happened, in a country as chismoso (gossipy) as Nicaragua? The whole notion is absurd.

As I write this, it is one week since the election took place. I have been unable to find any evidence of actual fraud (as opposed to speculation about fraud) in any of the main media which support the main opposition groups.

The real response to the accusations
While this article has exposed the implausibility of the various accusations, the real response to them was the scenes on the streets on election day and during the celebrations when the results were announced officially on November 8. While some of the media portrayed empty streets and deserted polling stations, there were hundreds of photos (see below, from Bilwí) which showed the opposite.

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People queuing to vote in Bilwí (photo credit: Gerry Condon).
Many international representatives who acted as election “accompaniers” confirm that the polls were well attended and that people talked freely and often enthusiastically about the process, even those opposed to the government (see reports by, for example, Roger Harris, Rick Sterling and Margaret Kimberley).[27]

Living in Masaya, which had been a stronghold of opposition support in the violence of 2018, I was amazed by the response to the president’s speech after the result was announced: tens of thousands of people poured onto the streets on Monday November 8, especially in poorer barrios, waving Sandinista flags and even holding up portraits of Daniel Ortega. While clearly a minority opposed his re-election, it was equally clear that the majority supported it.



Sources
[1] “Statement by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. on Nicaragua’s Sham Elections,” https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-roo ... elections/

[2] See https://twitter.com/OAS_official/status ... 11051?s=20

[3] Nan McCurdy provides a detailed description here: http://www.tortillaconsal.com/tortilla/node/13116

[4] “Despite US led Dirty Campaign, Nicaraguans Came Out in Force in Support of the FSLN,” https://www.coha.org/despite-us-led-dir ... -the-fsln/

[5] “Nicaragua: Chronicle of an Election Foretold,” https://nacla.org/news/2021/11/08/nicar ... ion-ortega

[6] “Nicaragua Descends Into Autocratic Rule as Ortega Crushes Dissent,” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/07/worl ... rtega.html

[7] “United States Once Again Attacking Government of Nicaragua,” https://afgj.org/nicanotes-09-23-2021; “Here’s what the corporate-owned media won’t tell you about the arrests in Nicaragua,” https://www.thecanary.co/global/2021/06 ... nicaragua/

[8] “CID-Gallup: Candidato opositor barrería a Ortega el 7 de noviembre: 65% vs. 19%,” https://www.confidencial.com.ni/politic ... -65-vs-19/

[9] “Chronicle of a massive and premeditated electoral fraud on November 7,” https://www.confidencial.com.ni/english ... ovember-7/

[10] “CSE publica Padrón Electoral definitivo que usará en la votación del 7 de noviembre,” https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2021/09/26/ ... -noviembre

[11] Data on the age-ranges of the Nicaraguan population can be found at https://datosmacro.expansion.com/demogr ... /nicaragua

[12] “Nicaragua Descends Into Autocratic Rule as Ortega Crushes Dissent,” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/07/worl ... rtega.html

[13] “Más del 90% va a votar en contra de Ortega en las elecciones en Nicaragua, asegura opositora,” https://www.vozdeamerica.com/a/mas-del- ... 03518.html

[14] “Los votos nulos confirman la farsa en la reelección de Daniel Ortega,” https://elfaro.net/es/202111/centroamer ... Ortega.htm

[15] “El voto nulo y el abstencionismo, los dos grandes ganadores en las votaciones,” https://nicaraguainvestiga.com/politica ... otaciones/

[16] “Nicaragua Descends Into Autocratic Rule as Ortega Crushes Dissent,” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/07/worl ... rtega.html

[17] “In past elections, U.S. trailed most developed countries in voter turnout,” https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2 ... r-turnout/

[18] “Urnas Abiertas estima 81.5% de abstención en votaciones,” https://www.confidencial.com.ni/politic ... -abiertas/

[19] Downloadable at https://urnasabiertas.com/wp-content/up ... on-Day.pdf

[20] “¿Qué hay detrás del 75 por ciento que se recetó Ortega como resultado electoral?,” https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2021/11/13/ ... -electoral

[21] “Debunking Myths About Nicaragua’s 2021 Election,” https://thegrayzone.com/2021/11/11/nica ... elections/

[22] “Calles vacías en Managua, ante inicio de proceso de votaciones electorales,” https://100noticias.com.ni/galerias/18537/

[23] “Casi tres millones se verificaron para votar en Nicaragua, según Electoral,” https://www.swissinfo.ch/spa/nicaragua- ... l/46818586

[24] “Padrón con personas fallecidas, asedio y control del FSLN marcan verificación ciudadana en Nicaragua,” https://www.expedientepublico.org/padro ... nicaragua/

[25] “Crónica de un fraude electoral masivo (y premeditado) el 7 de noviembre,” https://www.confidencial.com.ni/opinion ... noviembre/

[26] “La foto que muestra una acta de escrutinio electoral de Jalapa, Nueva Segovia, es falsa,” https://www.despacho505.com/la-foto-que ... -es-falsa/

[27] See respectively: https://popularresistance.org/nicaragua ... ay-report/; https://www.laprogressive.com/election- ... nicaragua/; https://www.blackagendareport.com/us-th ... -nicaragua



Featured image: People waiting in line to vote. Credit photo: El 19 Digital

(Council on Hemispheric Affairs)

https://orinocotribune.com/if-there-was ... the-proof/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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blindpig
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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Sat Dec 04, 2021 2:18 pm

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Sandinistas Won a Landslide Victory Not Through Fraud but Because They Uplifted Nicaragua’s Poor Despite Intervention Efforts Including the 2018 US-Backed Coup Attempt: The Working Class Explains… and Debunks Common Lies
December 2, 2021
By Yader Lanuza – Nov 30, 2021

As predicted by multiple polls, Sandinistas, led by Daniel Ortega, won a resounding victory in the November 7th elections in Nicaragua. The elections were a referendum on the path that the Sandinista government has taken the country, a path grounded on large investments in social programs that have benefited people, especially the most disadvantaged, in every nook and cranny of the national territory.

Support for the reelection of the Sandinista government was astounding. Of the entire patron electoral (eligible voters), about 65% came out to vote and, of those, about 75.9% voted for the FLSN (Sandinista National Liberation Front) alliance ticket.

The victory of Sandinistas generated expected attacks, which seek to delegitimize the newly elected government in Nicaragua. The US, Canada, EU, OAS and their proxies – cynically claiming to be acting on behalf of the “Nicaraguan people” – seek to cripple the Sandinista government’s ability to provide for its population. The November 7th elections revealed the will of the Nicaraguan people, but because this will does not align with U.S. preferences, the elections are marred as “illegitimate,” a “sham,” and “authoritarian.”

Some of the Western imperial left, including academics and journalists, have joined the U.S. State Department to delegitimize the will of the Nicaraguan electorate and to manufacture consent against the Sandinista government.

These individuals legitimize the economic and political attack against Nicaragua. The burden of this aggression will be heaviest for the working class. Importantly, the mainstream media and the imperial left did not go on the ground to speak to farmers, union members, indigenous communities, or low-income Nicaraguans about the electoral process, their preferences, and the reason for those preferences. Worse yet, they ignored the multiple outlets that did just that.

None of these individuals parroting imperial propaganda decried the unjust detention of Steve Sweeny, a journalist and editor of the Morning Star Daily, Britain’s only socialist newspaper, who was prevented by Mexico from covering the Nicaraguan elections.

Instead, these stenographers condemned the electoral process from afar, portraying a dystopian world inside Nicaragua despite not providing a shred of on-the-ground evidence. A self-described “left” outlet, for example, would rather talk to clowns spewing right-wing imperialist talking points in Costa Rica than to working class people in Nicaragua, whose opinion they have ignored and suppressed in their coverage.

Unlike these propagandists, I spoke to Nicaraguan factory workers, domestic workers, stay-at-home mothers, truck drivers, farmers, and community leaders in the outskirts of the city of Estelí, where international electoral companions observed a free and fair election. I sought the opinions of Sandinistas and those who do not identify as such to understand electoral results.

Below, I document the reasons why the Sandinista government enjoys support from the majority of the electorate as well as some grievances some sectors of the population wish the government would address. The platitude-, lie-, and interventionist-filled propaganda from Western media, the imperial left, and interventionist governments do not come close to providing an accurate picture of Nicaragua, its culture, or its popular will – or explaining the resounding Sandinista electoral win.

Abstentions: The Case of Esteban

I spoke to Esteban (all names are pseudonyms) on the eve of the elections. Esteban is not a Sandinista—by a long shot. He is a sort of jack-of-all-trades handyman. He is a blue-collar worker who does not support the Sandinista government. Esteban’s main grievance is, he argues, that Nicaraguans pay too much taxes. This concern was startling to me, because he does not pay into the IR system—a 15% income tax.

He suggests that income taxes should be capped at 7%. When I asked him about government projects that taxes help fund, he acknowledged them. He acknowledged, too, that these projects are beneficial to the population, but, each time, he articulated something wrong with them. For example, Esteban suggests that people who do not use public services, like hospitals, should not pay for them.

He does not argue that Nicaraguans should not have public hospitals. In fact, I was surprised at his defense of a public system. Esteban argued we should have a public system, but that it is unfair for those who do not use it to pay for it. He had an accident recently and had major surgery in Nicaragua at no cost in a public hospital. His perspective reminded me of the “all-government-is-bad” opinion in some sectors of the rightwing in the United States. Importantly, he did not vote.

What Can We Learn from Esteban? Myth and Reality about Abstentions
I begin with Esteban because one of the attacks against the legitimacy of the Sandinista electoral victory is that there was massive abstention due to political repression. This is demonstrably false. Esteban did not tell me that he feared political repression for his views, which he articulated loudly and proudly; political repression did not figure into his decision not to vote.

His abstention stemmed from his worldview about governments more generally, especially one whose politics prioritize investment in the public sphere for which communal sacrifices are shared.

Furthermore, abstention in this election cycle was not widespread, as the US-backed opposition had hoped and called for. In the figure below, I chart election participation history in Nicaragua since 1984, including the percentage of those who ended up voting (% participation) and, out of those who participated, the percentage who voted for the FSLN. Percent of participation has been rather stable since the FSLN returned to power in 2006—between a low of 61% (in 2006) and a high of 73% (in 2011)—after a steady decline in participation during the neoliberal period (1990-2006).

In this election cycle, the percentage participating was 65%. The chart also shows that percentage support for the FSLN has been increasing since their return to power.

The 80% abstention rate that some in the mainstream media and imperial left are repeating is a baseless lie. Ben Norton looked into the one organization that has made up the “80%” abstention statistic: Urnas Abiertas. He thoroughly documents its unseriousness, but, more importantly, its links to the U.S.-funded opposition, part of a larger regime change effort directed against the FSLN.

For example, he documents that the only two people who have been publicly identified with this organization are “both partisan right-wing activists who work in the Western government-funded nonprofit-industrial complex, without any technical background or experience in election monitoring.” Organizations like this pop up to provide their regime-change operations a veneer of independence and credibility.

“Soft” Support for the Sandinista Government

Carlos is a driver by trade. Yuniel and Joel are factory workers. Before my conversation about the elections with them, I rarely heard them say much about politics. The few things that I had heard were criticisms. I really wanted to understand their perspective because I thought they would be in favor of the opposition.

I was wrong.

Yuniel is primarily concerned with taxes. He informs me that his salary is not enough; therefore, he is upset that he has to pay income taxes from it. He deems it unfair having to pay more taxes if he earns more (in absolute terms, because the rate is fixed). It seemed to me that Yuniel was unclear as to what the taxes are used for, which may explain part of his frustration. Carlos is a sub-contractor for a government-funded infrastructure project. He stated that the Sandinista government has done both good things and things he has disagreed with. Carlos says he mostly keeps his opinions to himself because he works with different kinds of people with varying political views.

He describes his job and pay as good, a consequence of infrastructure investments from the government. He is afraid that a new (opposition) president would not invest as much in infrastructure, which would decrease jobs and other economic activities. Joel, finally, does not say much. On the eve of the election, Joel said that the president had done good things. He said it as if to say, we have to admit it. Like Carlos, he also said that if another person wins the presidency, this new president will invest less.

Yuniel, Carlos, and Joel, despite disagreements with the Sandinista government, support the re-election of Daniel Ortega because any other individual – from an opposition party – would not invest as much in the country.

“Soft” Support for Sandinismo and Its Dynamics Across Nicaragua

Yuniel, Carlos and Joel exemplify what some characterize as “soft support” for the FSLN. The opposition (inside and outside the country) hopes to remove Ortega to decapitate and neutralize Sandinismo. To do so, a key propaganda strategy of the opposition, especially the U.S.-funded faction and interventionists abroad, is to demonize Daniel Ortega – and his family.

This strategy has not been successful. Yuniel, Carlos, and Joel acknowledged that the Sandinista government has invested in broad-reaching social programs and public infrastructure. President Ortega, they said, has accomplished “good things,” whereas a new president will steal without investing in the country. Government projects will not occur with an opposition-led administration. The support for public health, in particular, is palpable. I asked Carlos what would happen if any government tried to privatized the health system. Immediately, he replied, that it would not happen. He argued that Nicaraguans would rise up in defiance against such a move. In short, despite vague criticism, all three supported the re-election of Daniel Ortega and the Sandinista government.

Although it was my impression that Yuniel was the least likely to vote for the continuation of the Sandinista government (if voting at all) on election day, he revealed that he voted for the FSLN alliance ticket.

Further, “soft support” partly explains why the FSLN achieved a remarkable 75.9% support among Nicaraguan voters. The journalist William Grigsby points out that there were municipalities in which Daniel Ortega received more votes than there are registered Sandinistas. This dynamic occurred, for example, in six out of eight municipalities of Caribe Sur, including Paigua, La Desenbocadura de Rio Grande, Corn Island, and Parlagu. Even non-Sandinistas, Grigsby shows, voted for Daniel Ortega across the country.

One of my respondents, Fanor (see below), referred to this phenomenon as voto progreso – a vote that recognizes the social progress that the Sandinista government has accomplished for Nicaragua and signals desire for its continuation.

Voto ideológico, on the other hand, is a vote for the FSLN that is not only rooted in support of the socialist-oriented policies of the Sandinista government, but one that recognizes the importance of the FSLN as a revolutionary project against imperialism whose significance in and out of Nicaragua lies in providing an alternative to the “savage” capitalism that the U.S. wants to impose on the country – and the world. In the latest credible poll before the election, the expected “voto suave” (soft vote) constituted 17.4% support for the FSLN.

In addition to the soft vote, support from those who “tend to vote” for the FSLN (4.5%) and those who strongly support the FSLN (voto duro, 53.4%) add up to the expected more than 70% support for the FSLN in the elections. The FSLN eventually attained 75.9% of the vote on Nov. 7th.

Yuniel, Carlos, and Joel are part of the “soft” support that materialized for the FSLN. Even those who have disagreements with the government, cannot deny – and, in fact, defend – socialist policies that have benefited all of Nicaraguan society.

Falsehoods From the U.S.-backed Opposition

To provide ammunition for those who seek to delegitimize the Sandinista government, the CID-Gallup (not part of the internationally known Gallup) completed a poll on behalf of the opposition that presented widely inaccurate predictions. Unlike the M&R Consultores, which had completed a number of polls across Nicaragua in the months leading up to the election, the single CID-Gallup poll stated that only 19% of the population supported Daniel Ortega.

This poll ignores over 2 million card-carrying Sandinistas in the country and votes from individuals like Yuniel, Carlos, and Joel. The implausible CID-Gallup poll, which has been criticized for its methodology, does not accurately capture “hard” support and totally ignores “soft” support.

None of the people with whom I spoke expressed support for the U.S.-funded opposition members currently detained. The U.S.-funded opposition is lionized by the West outside of Nicaragua. Inside the country, they are largely ignored.

Even if the U.S.-funded opposition had participated in the elections, it wouldn’t have made any difference in the outcome; this faction of the opposition does not have much support in the country, perhaps only among the (very tiny) upper class.

Reporters have documented their political irrelevance. None my interviewees – not even Esteban – told me they would have voted for any of the people currently in jail, whom the mainstream media and imperial leftists – untethered from reality – call “pre-presidential candidates,” “presidential hopefuls,” or more recently “presidential candidates.” No matter how many times this lie is debunked, it re-appears like a regime change zombie.

Why Does the U.S.-backed Opposition Have So Little Support?

To understand why the U.S.-funded opposition has so little support, we have to remember at least two things. First, the U.S.-funded opposition never coalesced around a single candidate.

Hunger for power fueled infighting and prevented a viable opposition coalition. They only share hatred towards Sandinismo and reliance on U.S. funding.

Frustrated, the U.S. (including its embassy in Nicaragua) was working on getting everyone behind Cristiana Chamorro (to the chagrin of others in the opposition). She was being groomed to be the Nicaraguan Guaidó. Video of a meeting with U.S. officials and their lackeys show how giddy regime changers were about her placement (not election!) in power, repeatedly calling her “President Chamorro.”

The Sandinista government dismantled this plan, which unraveled after her corruption was exposed and she was subsequently placed under house arrest.

The second issue is even more important. The U.S.-funded opposition in jail (and abroad) is intimately associated with the 2018 deadly barricades and subsequent havoc they wreaked on the country. For this reason, even those who disagree with some aspects of the Sandinista government are not turning to the U.S.-funded opposition, nor do they care about their detention.

The U.S.-backed 2018 coup d’état attempt was detrimental to most people in the country. There is no support for another violent clash, as the attempted 2018 coup d’état inflicted economic, psychological, and social devastation on most of the society, especially the most disadvantaged.

For example, in total, the estimated economic loss due to the coup is about $24,000 million dollars, which include $206.5 million dollars’ worth of damage to local and national governmental institutions, the collapse of 8,708 small businesses, and loss of 119,000 jobs. The last thing Nicaraguans want is violence in their communities, after having lived through the barricades in 2018 that destroyed their household economy, regardless of their political leanings. I was in Nicaragua at the time. Only those who lived through it can understand the attempted coup’s horror.

According to Danto, a campesino who works the land for a living, only the upper class, especially members of the COSEP (Nicaragua’s powerful chamber of commerce), want another revuelta (violent clash), because they are able to weather its associated economic storm and will eventually recoup losses (should they suffer any). COSEP loudly supported the 2018 coup d’état attempt.

Had it succeeded, members of the COSEP would have wielded more political and economic power, hoarding even more wealth away from the Nicaraguan people. (In an opposition newspaper in Nicaragua, which is the voice of the upper-class opposition, there are renewed calls for another revuelta.)

Rejection to violence was loud and clear across the country on election day. As of this writing, not a single violent incident has been documented at polling places on what turned out to be a peaceful election day. Thus, it is not true that Daniel Ortega won re-election because some members of the currently-detained U.S.-backed opposition did not participate. Nicaraguans do not want what they have to offer.

A Final Lesson from “Soft” Supporters of the Sandinista Government

Yuniel, Carlos, Joel, and Esteban all articulate something else: Health care is a fundamental right and should be provided for free. This idea is now entrenched in Nicaraguan society, after fourteen years of the second phase of the Sandinista revolution.

Nicaraguans have come to expect public and free access to medical care. Support for the idea that education should be a fundamental right is also prevalent. Should anyone try to privatize these services, they will find considerable resistance. Privatization efforts, especially of public services, will face stiff resistance, even among non-Sandinistas. This is because public access to these services benefits most of the society.

Nicaraguans do not spend anywhere near in health care what people do in the U.S. Even some right-wing Nicaraguans who have gained green cards, or who have been naturalized in the United States and are doing well economically take care of their medical needs in free and public hospitals in Nicaragua, given how expensive it is in the United States (while railing against the Sandinista government that provides it).

The “Hard Vote” and a Winning Strategy

Virna, Juliana, and Fanor are part of the “hard vote” and the heart of the Sandinista revolution victory at the polls. All three are leaders in their respective communities. They are all active members of the FSLN.

Virna, a domestic worker with kids, comes from a family of Sandinistas. She sees her militancy as a family legacy that must endure. She supports Daniel Ortega and his government because, above all, he looks out for the poor. Everyone whom I interviewed who identified as Sandinista (whether or not they were directly involved in politics) said this, over and over again. The Sandinista government, they repeated, cares about the most disadvantaged.

Virna explained to me that the FSLN had been organizing and were prepared to win this election. As a leader, part of her responsibilities included finding people to help at the polls; she also made sure they had what they needed (including coffee) and that they were safe, though she did not work the polls (because she is a local leader for the FSLN—it is against the rules).

She and her colleagues arranged transportation for the elderly and disabled people who wanted to vote but had no means of getting to the polls. Virna was not worried about the FSLN losing the election, because, as she argues, there have been so many benefits for the population, including public and free health care, that it is inconceivable for most of the population to want to put a break on those services. Fanor agreed.

Fanor, a younger local leader, told me that FSLN’s winning strategy was simple: acompañamiento a las familias (to accompany families) to help address their needs. For some time now, the FSLN has been working to make sure that, as he says, the Sandinista government has a strong and constant presence within households, not just during election time.

Fanor listed a range of services and programs from the Sandinista government that he has helped deliver, including helping elderly with wheelchairs, providing food to those in need, Plan Techo (giving roofing material to disadvantaged households), community cleaning, cemetery upkeep, defraying costs associated with funeral services, disseminating information about vaccination, building communal homes, providing access to clean water, Bono Productivo (through which women are given pigs, chickens, and cows to stimulate household food sovereignty and economic subsistence), and others.

These local activities, he argues, constitute one type of help the FSLN provides to families. The FSLN, he says, is working on a range of other projects to spur economic growth and to build on food sovereignty. He notes that the FSLN is not relying on big business to spur economic growth. They are working on economic self-sufficiency, prioritizing small and medium businesses and enterprises. His comments are supported by the data.

The Sandinista government’s incentives for a “people’s economy”—one that primarily relies on production from families, communities, cooperatives and associations (small and medium producers/enterprises)—have grown dramatically since the attempted 2018 coup d’état. Although the Sandinista government had been supporting a people’s economy prior to the coup, the reliance on the capitalist class for wealth generation was higher prior to the 2018 coup d’état attempt than it has been subsequently.

Fanor also explained to me that home visits are key to the FSLN’s strategy because community members often do not air all of their grievances in public forums. But in the privacy of their homes, they are more forthcoming about issues they would like addressed in their communities.

As such, he and other people serve as conduits between community members—of all political stripes—and their local FSLN governments. Importantly, the services that Fanor and his associates help deliver are distributed Parejo—to everyone, irrespective of political affiliation. Juliana, a stay-at-home mother and FSLN community leader, underscored this point.

Juliana, who takes care of a family member, told me that, as a FSLN community leader, she sees her work as providing for her community and delivering government assistance to all who need it, regardless of political leaning. She started working with the FSLN after being inspired by the Sandinista takeover of Managua in 1979.

Her mother also has a long history of supporting Sandinistas. Juliana reached her leadership position due to internationally recognized gender equality efforts from the FSLN, for which Nicaragua ranks, in 2021, #1 in the Americas. She notes that before the FSLN returned to power, there were few, if any, benefits from the government.

Since 2007, she has worked on helping deliver a range of projects to her community. Recently, she helped shepherd an electricity project for her town. Sandinistas and non-Sandinistas benefited from this and other projects in which she has been involved, including Plan Techo. She notes that even “liberales”—a term used for people who support some faction of the opposition – can see what the government has accomplished for them. She even notes that some Sandinistas get upset because liberales are given jobs at governmental institutions and use these posts to rail against—and undermine—the revolutionary Sandinista project.

All three expected the FSLN to win, describing peaceful free and fair elections in their respective communities. Juliana told me that most people in her community came out to vote in the afternoon after church. She informed me that because a faction of the opposition had called for a no vote, at least one bus company who supported the opposition did not offer its services that Sunday. This had a negligible impact on participation because voting locations were widely available. People drove, walked, or got rides to their voting centers.

Rank-and-file Sandinistas

I also spoke to Helena, Danto, and Tamo. These individuals support Sandinistas, and Helena and Danto identify as such. I did not ask Tamo if he did as well, though it would be surprising if he didn’t identify as Sandinista. All three noted the importance of voting.

Danto recalled that during the Somoza dictatorship, in his town, the vote was bought and paid for with 5 córdobas, a nacatamal (a local dish), and un trago (alcohol). Sandinistas changed all of that, he said. Sandinistas supported the most vulnerable citizens with literacy campaigns, social rights, a legitimate legal authority, and the reduction of corruption in government.

He noted, with confidence, that because Sandinismo advocates for the poor and Sandinistas are well organized, it will be hard to topple the Sandinista government. Helena, along similar lines, argues that the Sandinista government has provided hospitals, schools, housing, and social security benefits to Nicaraguans. In the neoliberal years, she said, they did not get any of that.

A family member of hers received the Bono Productivo and has been trained to work the land to support household economic independence and food sovereignty. She told me that Sandinistas will be in power as long as they have popular support. Ana, an elderly woman, told me that Sandinistas are people of good conscience. Daniel Ortega, in particular, is a good man, she says, who helps those most in need. Reverence for El Comandante (Ortega) has been documented elsewhere. During the Somoza dictatorship, she did not vote, but has voted Sandinista ever since the triumph of the revolution.

Of all the people I spoke to, I gathered that Tamo has the least material resources. He works as a cuidandero, or someone who is hired to live on someone else’s land to work it and protect it so that its harvest is not stolen from its owner. Tamo is shy but agreed to speak with me about the forthcoming elections. He had never been interviewed before (like on TV, he said).

He mentioned the new hospitals, but spent more time talking about the roads that the Sandinista government has built and fixed over the last 14 years in the town he hails from—far away from where he works. The roads, he says, have made a big difference to people in his town, who can now move their “commodities” with ease and sell them elsewhere.

He had been planning to go back to his hometown to vote, but, due to his job, he was not able to vote. In addition to Danto, Sandinistas who left for the U.S. were not able to vote during this election cycle. As Juliana notes, support for the re-election of Daniel Ortega and the Sandinista government would have been higher had all those people been able to vote.

The Attempted 2018 U.S.-backed Coup D’état: Its Role in the Electoral Win of the FSLN Alliance Ticket
Virna, Juliana, and Fanor all agree that the FSLN is more organized now than it was prior to the attempted U.S.-backed coup d’état in 2018, which, for each of them, was quite difficult to live through. Fanor noted that he was targeted through social media.

Although Fanor was disappointed by some young people in his generation who initially bought the U.S.-backed propaganda, he and others worked with families during the attempted coup to make sure their family members did not join the deadly barricades so as to avoid a tragedy, which would have divided the community. Not a lot of people in his community, he says, got involved in the coup. During the attempted coup and after, he and his comrades worked to debunk the various lies from the U.S.-funded opposition.

Fanor tells me that he knew the attempted coup was not going to work because he saw, firsthand, how much families were suffering economically as a result of the revuelta, which prevented them from getting to and from work, from reaching hospitals, or from completing other necessary tasks. Thousands of small family businesses collapsed. Fanor saw how angry community members were about the devastation.

Virna was the subject of attacks and insults from her neighbors. She was surprised because she had been working in her community by providing help and shepherding projects for everyone, regardless of their political affiliation. There was a point at the height of the violence that she thought about resigning from her post as FSLN community leader out of fear, but she decided to remain steadfast in her work.

Compañeros protected and took care of her because she is well known for her community leadership. They were afraid that she was being targeted for an attack, which were rampant against Sandinistas all over the country.

Sandinistas were subjected to insults, beatings, torture, burnings, and killings. Some had their property vandalized or destroyed. Virna spoke heartbreakingly about how difficult it was to endure during the 2018 coup attempt. She used to cry, she says, every time someone was killed, including a young man from her community who was shot in the back by opposition mercenaries. Her story underscores the importance of women in the resistance to the attempted 2018 coup d’état.

Juliana relayed similar fears during the attempted coup due to her leadership in the community. She did not go to the city because she feared the barricades. Juliana was afraid she would be recognized as Sandinista and targeted. She was petrified of walking to her job because opposition mercenaries manning the barricades would sometimes pass by on her way to work.

Working hard to assure an FSLN electoral win is one way, Juliana and others argue, to prevent the rise of a new violent coup.

Despite a mountain of evidence that the 2018 violence was a consequence of a U.S.-backed coup attempt, Western media and imperial left \refuse to recognize it. In doing so, they obscure, ignore, and erase the suffering and targeting of Sandinistas, who were the victims of U.S. aggression through local proxies. Anyone who refuses to acknowledge this fact will not understand FSLN’s subsequent organization, priorities, and eventual win at the ballot box.

Conclusion

In speaking to regular working people in Nicaragua, I found overwhelming commitment to the second phase of the Sandinista revolution, even among those who expressed some disagreements with the Sandinista government and constantly consume anti-Sandinista propaganda through social and other opposition media.

For Sandinistas and non-Sandinistas alike, the achievements of the Sandinista government since returning to power in 2007 cannot be denied. Moreover, the second phase of the Sandinista revolution has helped change Nicaraguan society, such that people across the political spectrum think of their public services as rights that should not be privatized— rights they are prepared to defend.

This is particularly important when it comes to healthcare. Investments in health, including infrastructure and programming, have garnered plenty of support for the Sandinista government. Recently, the Ministry of Health started vaccinating people for COVID at home who, for whatever reason, are unable to attend a health center but would like to be vaccinated.

Western mainstream media and imperial leftists ignore the voices and perspectives of working-class people, like those I interviewed, because they do not conform to the U.S. and their proxies’ narratives. Importantly, my respondents’ views do not conform to the narratives that members of the now-defunct MRS feeds the imperial left in the U.S.

U.S. State Department cables published by Wikileaks show that leaders of the MRS are U.S. informants. They have publicly lobbied for economic warfare against their own country. Yet these individuals present themselves as leftists to an international audience, obscuring their support for the Nicaraguan rightwing and the goals of U.S. empire in Nicaragua.

Disturbingly, the imperial left takes the vitriol of the MRS members as the voice of the Nicaraguan people and ignore the perspectives of people like those I highlight here. When imperial leftists write and speak on behalf of “the Nicaraguan people,” they mean to say “my friends from the MRS and other members of the Nicaraguan upper class.”

The importance of the social class dimension in understanding the Sandinista win at the ballot box cannot be overstated. The FSLN won because it has the support of the working class.

Although they are the majority, their perspective is largely ignored by the Western mainstream media and the imperial left. By contrast, the perspective of the Nicaraguan upper class – especially its elites who live off of U.S. funds, which largely pay for anti-Sandinista propaganda – is magnified and prioritized the Western world over. For this reason, I did not speak to members of the Nicaraguan upper class.

Note on the Term “Imperial Left”

I use the term “imperial left” following Vijay Prashad’s retort to David Harvey: You live on the other side of imperialism. I say the same thing to leftists in the imperial core, who, whatever their intentions, refuse to acknowledge Nicaraguan sovereignty and have bent themselves into a pretzel trying to justify their alignment with the U.S. State Department’s regime change efforts. Instead of listening to working-class Nicaraguans as I have done here, they pontificate, presuming to speak on behalf of Nicaraguans, judging what they don’t know, including how socialist the socialist-oriented Sandinista government really is.

This an old habit of the imperial left. Why can’t they understand that only Nicaraguans get to decide whether the Sandinista government is committed to their revolutionary aspirations, whether it’s socialist enough, and whether it is worth supporting? It is easy to point the finger at a developing country for its imperfect revolution. It would be much harder to oppose empire and work on building a socialist-oriented project in the United States by listening to and learning from working-class Nicaraguans who engage in building this political project every day.

Do not believe them when they tell you the left is divided. There is no division. The (anti-imperialist) Left is standing with the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua. The rest are either confused or advocating an imperialist political project.

I urge the imperial left to join calls that reject any and all U.S. intervention in Nicaraguan society, even if their Nicaraguan friends want otherwise. The imperial left will not suffer the consequences of U.S, EU, and OAS aggression, which will only generate economic suffering and political conflict for and among Nicaraguans, especially the most vulnerable. Esteban, Carlos, Yuniel, Joel, Fanor, Danto, Juliana, Virna, and Helena will suffer from U.S. aggression, not you.

U.S. unilateral coercive measures against Nicaragua will increase its population’s economic pain and will force more people to migrate to the U.S. in search of economic sustenance. The histrionic response from the U.S. to the Sandinista electoral victory has led some Nicaraguans to believe that the United States will accept all Nicaraguan migrants. Political aggression from the U.S. coupled with economic difficulties that stem from sanctions will increase Nicaraguan migration to the United States. Migration is the harvest of empire.

The 232 international companions from 27 countries observed peaceful, fair, and democratic elections in Nicaragua. Celebrations erupted all over the country once results were announced.

The FSLN will visit with communities to hear their grievances, needs, and desires. Elected members of the National Assembly will participate in this effort, which is meant to bolster the FSLN’s bold plan to reduce poverty and increase well-being for all Nicaraguans. As William Grigsby argues, in the next few years Nicaragua will begin to reap what the Sandinista government has been sowing for 14 years—a great leap forward is coming.

Sandinistas are far from done with their revolutionary project.



Yader Lanuza is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Lanuza’s research examines the causes and consequences of social inequality in three domains: education, family and the criminal justice system. He focuses largely, though not exclusively, on the experiences of immigrants and their offspring from Latin America and Asia. Yader can be reached at: yaders@gmail.com.

Featured image: Supporters of Nicaragua’s president Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo wave a Nicaraguan flag and flags of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, or FSLN, while celebrating after preliminary results showed Ortega was on course for re-election. Photograph: Oswaldo Rivas/Reuters

(Covert Action Magazine)

https://orinocotribune.com/sandinistas- ... ass-expla/

Here's the bigshot of the imperial left:
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, in 1990, it’s true that the—first of all, there were plenty of problems even in the '80s, but by the standards of the region it stood out as almost a stellar record—bad but by the standards of the region. In 1990, the President Bush, first President Bush, essentially informed the population of Nicaragua that either you vote for our candidate, or else the Contra war, the terrorist war, continues, and harsh sanctions will strangle the country. And, indeed, at the point of a gun, the population voted the Sandinistas out, and partially for internal reasons. There were many things they were doing they shouldn't have. Since then, it hasn’t been anywhere near as bad as the other Central American countries, the ones that are, more or less, overwhelmingly, influenced by the U.S. But there’s been a lot of corruption, a lot of repression. It’s autocratic, undoubtedly. The opposition is nothing to write home about, either, for the most part. So, it’s by no means a pretty situation. One would hope that negotiations could reduce the tensions. And my own view is that I think it would be a good thing for Nicaragua if Ortega were to call early elections and allow them to be run without corruption and brutality. But that doesn’t look as if it’s—it’s hard to hard to see a simple way out at this point. It’s a very unfortunate situation.

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/7/27/ ... ment_urges
Like the infantile anarchist that he is, Chomsky demands perfection in any socialist oriented government, else it is declared 'authoritarian' and no better than the US. An easy and convenient way to paralyze progress, No wonder he's a millionaire.

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NicaNotes: Nicaragua’s Election Was Free and Fair
December 2, 2021
By Richard Kohn, Ph.D.

(Rick Kohn is a Professor in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Maryland. He has worked on extension and research projects in the US, Nigeria, and Nicaragua. He covered the Nov. 7 general election in Nicaragua.)

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Voting Center in Bilwi, North Caribbean Autonomous Region

CNN and other mainstream media have been promoting a conspiracy theory without evidence that the Nicaraguan national election was rigged. However CNN and other corporate media did not send anyone to cover the election. I was one of the 170 international witnesses and 67 international reporters who witnessed the Nicaraguan election first hand. We found the election to be very fair and extremely secure. After watching the elections and vote tallying closely, I am completely confident in the election results. Most Nicaraguans voted in support of the incumbent Sandinista government.

There is no evidence supporting the conspiracy theories propagated by the mainstream media. Claims were made that there was low voter turnout and non-votes were converted to votes for the Sandinistas. However, the rate of voting we observed was consistent with the high voter turnout reported by officials: about 65% of voters voted, similar to 2011 and 2016. Furthermore, as I will explain in this article, the ballot boxes, voter sign-in, and vote counting are under constant scrutiny by members of multiple political parties throughout the process. There are many safeguards against tampering. International observers like myself found the conspiracy theories of fraud unfeasible.

Let me review a few of the security procedures that were used. First, they do not have absentee voting or early voting. It is certainly an inconvenience, especially for the handicapped, but they do have elections on a Sunday which is declared a national holiday. Students are given time off to get back to their homes for voting. The Voting Center staff provided assistance to handicapped voters. The reason they only allow direct voting on paper ballots is to ensure security of the process. There is no vote harvesting or mailing in of ballots. And it doesn’t leave questions about whether certain votes were valid.

National political parties do not have to collect hundreds of thousands of signatures to be on the ballot. They only have to have their own board of directors and elected boards of directors in 80% of 153 municipalities. One of 16 parties was disqualified because the leader was a US citizen. One party with a representative in the National Assembly decided not to run. That left 14 political parties which combined into alliances to back 6 candidates for President and 7 sets of candidates for the National Assembly. The last three parties to have won the presidency were all on the ballot.

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Election Ballot in the North Caribbean Autonomous Region.

Any Nicaraguan at least 16 years of age can vote. They are automatically registered when they receive their national picture ID (like a social security card but with a photograph). There is no issue of people having their voter registrations purged. Starting last July, all voters had the opportunity to check their registration with the system and confirm their voting place, and most people (2.8 million) opted to do so.

The polls opened at 7:00 AM and lines had already formed. First, the voter’s ID was looked up in a computerized database (offline and backed up on paper), and then the voter was sent to the appropriate room of a school to vote (polling place). Here, there were short lines of a few minutes. There were 3 poll workers from 3 different parties: a president, first and second member. The president looked up the person’s voter ID on a list of names with photos, and directed each voter to sign in. Another poll worker stamped the ballot and signed it (so that it couldn’t easily be substituted), and the president explained the ballot and how to mark it. At least three official poll watchers from at least 3 political parties at a time stood behind the poll workers as observers. The voters moved to a private space to mark the ballot behind a barrier, and placed it in the ballot box. There is no way anyone could have known who they voted for. Then the second member applied indelible ink to the voter’s thumb to prevent them from voting again, although they already had several checks against duplicate voting. I took photographs of every step of the process. I think it is safe to say the odds of anyone voting more than once were highly improbable.

The poll workers and the party poll watchers count the votes at the end of the day making sure each used ballot is accounted for and equal to the number of people who signed in to vote. They also make sure the total number of ballots received at the beginning of the day equals the number of used ballots, unused ballots and null ballots. After counting the votes, the poll workers and poll watchers sign the minutes (summary of results) which are called in, posted outside of the voting center, and hand delivered by the poll workers and watchers with the secured ballots to the municipal office for verification. This process is repeated in each of 13,459 polling stations across the country.

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Voter signs in to vote in Nicaragua while four different poll watchers (political party representatives, standing) observe the process until votes are counted.

If there were a conspiracy to alter the outcome of the count, it would have to involve people from all participating political parties in the room counting the votes, it would only affect the few hundred votes counted in that room, and it could still be caught upstream. If ballots were added or subtracted, they wouldn’t have the right stamps and signatures and the count totals compared to sign-ins would be wrong. To substantially change the outcome of the election would require a conspiracy of hundreds of thousands of poll workers and poll watchers from different political parties in the polling stations across the country without any of them disclosing the secret. The conspiracy theories reported in the mainstream press are impossible.

The very reliable vote tallies in Nicaragua at the end of the day showed about 65% of the eligible voters voted [very good considering there was a campaign encouraging abstention called Manos Limpias (Clean Hands) meaning no stained thumb which marked voters]. Seventy-six percent of the people voted to re-elect the President and FSLN Party candidates to the National Assembly. Based on how many people filed past us on election day, and the vocal support for the incumbent government, there is no doubt who the Nicaraguan people were voting for. Many people told us they support the government because of the social programs like universal health care, free public education including university and technical schools, infrastructure like roads, hospitals and schools, and advances in water and electricity. I am very confident that the election results reflect the will of the Nicaraguan people.

The US and other colonial powers did not recognize the vote. Biden and the US press said without evidence that the election was a sham, and Biden signed a bill passed by both houses of Congress to escalate a hybrid war against Nicaragua. But more than 153 nations did recognize the election! According to the United Nations no country needs the recognition of other nations. It’s the recognition by their own people that is important.

https://afgj.org/nicanotes-12-02-2021
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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Thu Dec 16, 2021 3:48 pm

Nicaragua’s Evidence-Based Democracy Threatens U.S. Oppression Domestically and Abroad
By Lauren Smith - December 6, 2021 7

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President Daniel Ortega shown dancing with musicians and supporters at the first public event after his and Vice President, Rosario Murillo’s reelection on November 8th. [Source: photo by Lauren Smith]

Despite Washington’s best effort to derail Nicaragua’s electoral process through hybrid warfare, strong voter turnout resulted in a decisive victory by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), and the reelection of President Daniel Ortega with 75.92% of the votes cast. Nicaragua’s non-partisan, independent Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) reported on Monday, November 8th that 65.23% of 4.4 million eligible voters (16 years and older) participated in Sunday’s election. Supporters attribute the FSLN’s success to its ability to ensure peace and achieve socioeconomic & political objectives that strengthen the wellbeing of the people of Nicaragua.

This markedly contrasts the widespread neglect and corruption endemic under Nicaragua’s U.S. supported neoliberal period from 1990-2007. It is precisely President Ortega and the Sandinista administration’s showing of evidence-based democracy that threatens the U.S., for Washington in comparison has become unabashedly authoritarian in its futile attempt to maintain its Hollywood-styled democratic image both domestically & abroad.

[youtube]http://covertactionmagazine.com/wp-cont ... 0crowd.MOV[/youtube]
President Daniel Ortega shown dancing with musicians and supporters at the first public event after his and Vice President, Rosario Murillo’s reelection on November 8th. Songs of struggle and freedom were also performed at the Commemoration of the Assassination of Comandante Carlos Fonseca as well as ones written by Bob Marley and John Lennon—respectively, One Love and Give Peace a Chance. [Source: Lauren Smith]

Failure of U.S. Democracy in Voting

While the United States reports a relatively similar participation rate to Nicaragua—between 59.5% to 66.8% of citizens (18 years and older) voted in elections from 2000 to 2020—in stark contrast, candidates that actually lost the popular vote have won the U.S. presidency 5 times since 1824. Matter of fact, U.S. elections are so badly discredited by constituents of both its two corporate parties, that the U.S. symbolic seat of power (the Capitol building) was stormed by election protestors in January 2021.

Critics of the U.S. representative electoral voting system claim: issues with securing and preserving the chain of custody of ballots; the stuffing of ballot boxes; the fraudulent harvesting of ballots; issues with the transparency and security of black box voting such as easy hacking and tampering, and that there is no verifiable back-up paper trail. Pundits routinely report unusual divergence from exit polls, and the CEO of Diebold (the manufacturer of voting machines) claimed in 2007 that he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year”.

Further, voter disfranchisement methods were documented by Greg Palast and others which include the gerrymandering of voting districts; reduced polling locations; too few voting machines and failure to replace broken ones in black/brown and low-income communities; as well as the use of voter/felon “scrub” lists; ominous changes in voter ID requirements; fake ballots; missing ballots; poorly constructed and/or confusing hard to read instructions on ballots; voter suppression; voter intimidation; and understaffed polling sites, etc.

If the United States wasn’t such a bully militarily and economically, the rest of the world might be clamoring for multilateral sanctions against it until the U.S. takes effective steps to hold free, fair, and transparent elections.

Failure of Washington’s Hybrid/Covert Warfare

Even with Washington’s looming threat of using more egregious unilateral economic sanctions than the NICA Act, with the fast tracked RENACER Act (which was signed into law on November 10th) and its full-throttle regime change program RAIN (already underway)—which collectively violate a panoply of international and humanitarian laws—the people of Nicaragua stood resolute in their desire to exercise their sovereign right to choose their own leadership.

Unlike countries in the northern triangle, which includes Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, there are no gangs or drug, human and weapon trafficking in Nicaragua. Additionally, Nicaragua’s national police force is exemplary since its founded on the principles of community policing, unlike that of the United States which is often militarized and captive to white supremacists. Despite Washington controlled IMF and World Bank, they respectively still released reports in 2018 stating that up until that year Nicaragua had sustained outstanding growth in GDP; improved its social indicators; expanded tourism; and provided regional leadership in public safety and sustainable energy.

Further, unlike Nicaragua, the U.S government also stands in violation of its own Bill of Rights, by virtue of its Freedom Reauthorization Act of 2020, an update to the Patriot Act. In contrast to Nicaragua, its judicial-prison-parole-industrial complex is racist, as prisoners are predominately of African-American descent. With 2.12 million people incarcerated in 2020, the United States has the largest per capita prison population in the world at 639 per 100,000. The incarceration rate is now more than 4.3 times what is was nearly 50 years ago. Additionally, there are approximately 50,000 immigrants in detention centers, which are called, even by U.S. politicians, concentration camps. Within this total, there are over 60 political prisoners in its domestic prison system. Torture and inhumane living conditions are routinely cited by human rights organizations in regard to U.S. prisoners and detainees. Additionally, the U.S. has incarcerated and killed an untold number of political prisoners in Guantanamo and its even more abysmal worldwide black sites. In comparison, Nicaragua, has 332 prisoners per 100,000 (half that of the United States) and it is number 24 on the same list.

The longest serving political prisoner in the U.S. is Leonard Peltier. He’s spent 44 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit and was an actual VP candidate on the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) ticket in 2020, unlike the false claims of Nicaragua’s alleged “pre-candidates” that had no viable political party affiliation and are guilty of organizing violent crimes, money-laundering and treason.

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PSL Presidential & Vice-Presidential Candidate: Gloria La Riva and Leonard Peltier [Source:Telesurenglish.net]

Unlike Nicaragua, the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011 allows Washington to criminalize protest. It is a federal offense, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, to enter or remain in an area designated as restricted (such as a tar sands pipeline on indigenous land) or to protest anywhere the Secret Service might be guarding someone. Unlike Nicaragua, the U.S. military was empowered in 2013 to attack its citizens through changes in the rules of engagement under the Posse Comitatus Act. Further, the United States military routinely practices war games against its civilians, and it acknowledges in its reports that due to the failings of capitalism it is only a matter of time before civil unrest erupts over: scarce resources; disparities in wealth and power; collapsing financial systems; climate change and natural disasters.

Even with Washington’s deletion, through proxies (Facebook and Instagram), of more than a thousand pro-Sandinista accounts just days before the election, voters turned out in droves in support of the FSLN party.

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Bilwi, Voting Center 1, Nov 7,2021 [Source: photo by Lauren Smith]

Even with Washington funneling multimillions in U.S. taxpayer and debt dollars in bribes and rewards through CIA cutout institutions like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), USAID, Freedom House, and the International Republican Institute to individuals found guilty of violent insurrection in the 2018 coup d’état attempt—which resulted in the death of approximately 200 people on both sides, the loss of $420 million in tourism and 130 thousand jobs—and who blatantly defied the 2018 Amnesty Law, Nicaraguans were not only unperturbed but mostly celebratory throughout their peaceful and efficient voting process and while waiting for provisional results. Peace is attributed to just and effective law enforcement undertaken by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Attorney General, two completely separate institutions within Nicaragua.

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Bilwi, Voting Center 2, Nov.7, 2021 [Source: photo by Lauren Smith]

President Ortega and the Sandinista administration aptly blocked Washington’s 2021 coup promoters by identifying violations of the following domestic laws: Law 147, General Law on Non Profit Legal Entities; Law 919, Law on Sovereign Security; Law 977, Law against the Laundering of Assets, Funding of Terrorism, and Funding of the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction; Law 996, Amnesty Law; Law 1040, Law Regulating Foreign Agents; and Law 1055, Law in Defense of the People’s Right to Independence, Sovereignty and Self-Determination for Peace. The offences concerned and related crimes committed during the failed coup attempt of 2018 also violate numerous international legal statutes ratified by Nicaragua, for example: UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime; the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism and the International Convention against the Taking of Hostages.

Without compunction, Nicaragua’s 2018 coup-promoters followed the undisputedly illegal and immoral instructions detailed in Washington’s 1980’s Psychological Operations in Guerilla Warfare handbook. The CIA’s scripted handbook outlines how to use domestic terrorism strategically to destabilize Nicaragua through the hiring of criminals and agent provocateurs (page 11); the destruction of police installations and the kidnapping of Sandinistas (page 28); and the killing of journalists and others to create “martyrs” for the cause (page 71). The 2021 coup-promoters were apprehended planning to again use these same unconscionable tactics.

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Edgar Chamorro Reading Torture Manual [Source: Fair.org]

Even with the placing of anti-government and libelous propaganda in CIA directed press and media such as La Prensa, Confidencial, Radio Corporacion and 100 % Noticias, the voters refused to adhere to coup-promoting opposition’s clarion call to abstain from casting their ballots. To better understand this insidious influence, refer to “Confessions of a Contra” and “CIA and Media Manipulation” in which Edgar Chamorro, family member of the wealthiest Nicaraguan clan, outlines the greed of fellow Nicaraguan exiles; CIA scripted press conferences; his payoff for being a traitor; and egregious passages from the above referenced PSYOP manual which he helped the CIA author.

For more information, view Redfish’s documentary called the New Battle for Nicaragua and Dan Kovalik’s Nicaragua: the April Crisis and Beyond as they expose the brutality and media disinformation campaign around the 2018 coup attempt.

At roadblocks, set up by a U.S. organized network of criminal mercenaries, women were raped, while passers-by were beaten and robbed. In many instances these horrific acts of domestic terrorism were videotaped, due to the perverse sense of pride and impunity the perpetrators experienced in accomplishing these treasonous and inhumane acts as well as to prove their value and loyalty to their foreign benefactors. Within this context, it is important to further detail the crimes committed and planned that necessitated the arrest of MRS members.
“As for the opposition figures who were detained several months before the election, The Grayzone documented how they were arrested for conspiring with a foreign government (the United States), taking millions of dollars from Washington in a large money-laundering scheme to organize a violent coup attempt in 2018, in which hundreds of Nicaraguans were killed and the country was destabilized, and in which right-wing extremists hunted down, tortured, and murdered Sandinista activists and state security forces, even setting some on fire.


That the opposition leaders who were detained received millions of dollars from the US government to carry out these operations is an undeniable matter of public record, confirmed by documents from CIA cutouts such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and United States Agency for International Development (USAID).”
According to State Department cables obtained by the Grayzone, MRS leaders Dora Maria Téllez, Hugo Torres Jiménez, and Victor Hugo Tinoco, were U.S. embassy informants for at least 15 years. The above referenced were charged with “inciting foreign interference” in internal affairs and arrested under Nicaragua’s law 1055, which was approved by the country’s democratically elected National Assembly in December 2020. At the time of writing, MRS president Sergio Ramirez remains at large as he lives in Costa Rica.

Even with the lie that seven “pre-candidates” were arrested to limit competition, voters already had 6 political party options to choose from for the presidency—as clearly indicated on the ballot. And if these supposed candidates had been legitimate presidential hopefuls backed by national political parties (which they were not), they would have further split the opposition vote—which already dwindled down to 1.7% for the Liberal Independent Party (PLI). Further, it is important to note that the arrests were all for various criminal offences linked to continued violent coup plotting activity, in violation of the government granted amnesty to those involved in the 2018 coup attempt, similar to the amnesty granted to Contra forces in the 1980’s.

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Bilwi Regional Ballot Nov. 7, 2021. Note the 6 various parties running for President and Vice-President, National Assembly, and that a 7th candidate from the regional Yatam party is listed 3 lines down. [Source: photo by Lauren Smith]

While five of the various people arrested (Cristiana Chamorro, Arturo Cruz, Felix Maradiaga, Juan Sebastian Chamorro, and Miguel Mora) expressed aspirations to run as presidential candidates, none of them are members of any of the seventeen political parties eligible to take part in the elections. And all have long records of collaboration with U.S. and European governments, and agencies funded by those governments and by foreign corporations which render their aspirations to be presidential candidates moot, as Nicaragua’s Supreme Electoral Council explained in a communiqué on the issue on June 3rd this year.

Regarding the false claim that Nicaragua is limiting the role of NGOs, note that Nicaragua’s National Assembly responded to the Washington-sponsored violence and destabilization efforts by passing a law in October 2020 that requires organizations funded by outside governments to register as foreign agents. The legislation is very similar to a law passed by the United States in 1938 known as the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

Even Washington’s dictates to vassal multi-State organizations such as the Organization of American States (OAS), from which Nicaragua formally withdrew from on November 19th, and its human rights troll (IACHR) and its marshaling of right-wing priests to commit ungodly acts of torture (captured on video), could not produce any notable traction in the minds or hearts of the people of Nicaragua.

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Foreign Election Contingent visit “God’s Blessing” Community Potable Water and Sanitation Committee, Ciudad Sandino, Managua Nov.5, 2021. [Source: photo by Lauren Smith]

Moreover, Washington’s fear tactics not only proved useless in keeping voters away from the polls but also, they neglected to sway voters to select one of the five alternate candidates running against Nicaragua’s sitting president in any meaningful way. The next highest vote count was for the Liberal Constitutional Party at 14.15%.

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Bilwi Voting Center 3, Nov. 7, 2021 [Source: photo by Lauren Smith]

Washington’s Plan B—Pretend and Isolate

Thus, Washington moved to Plan B. This involves pretending the election is invalid and refusing to acknowledge the presidency of Daniel Ortega, just like it did in Venezuela with President Nicolás Maduro. Perhaps the White House will pull a rabbit out of a hat, like they did with Juan Guaidó, and anoint it interim president. Keep in mind, Guaidó was never a presidential candidate in Venezuela, and remains just another sock puppet manufactured by the CIA’s cutout mill.

Outside of declaring unilateral war against a relatively tiny country, the second poorest in the Western Hemisphere, one that has no nuclear weapons and presents no terrorist threat and is approximately the geographic size of New York State with a population about 2.5 million less than NYC, it appears Washington must use another strategy in its playbook to maintain the ruse that Nicaragua is “An unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States”.

Nicaragua has borne this spurious designation on and off since the Reagan administration. Note, there is no foreign policy difference between former President Donald Trump and current President Joseph Biden when it comes to imperialism and full spectrum dominance as described by Ajamu Baraka, from the Black Alliance for Peace. So, Washington repeats baseless disinformation until the obvious truth is obscured by its subservient mainstream news media (MSM) and captive “left” media, such as, Democracy Now, The Guardian, The Nation and National Public Radio (NPR). The only issue for Washington is that the truth is the elephant-in-the-room and no one with boots-on-the-ground can be fooled by U.S. lies, irrespective of their ceaseless repetition.

While the situation in Nicaragua is similar today to when the Reagan administration unleashed the illegal Contra force upon it, what’s changed is that alt-media has failed to inform its base. The sad result is that the NICA act passed unanimously in the Senate and RENACER passed with little opposition. Consider how similar the words and policies issued by President Biden are to former President Reagan, a more popular president, and how Reagan’s policy on Nicaragua was still opposed by senators and congresspersons as well as the left.

Foreign Election Contingent

Thus, intelligence agency directed presidential statements and proxy armchair press releases that are outrageously false in regard to the election hold no water when countrywide interviews are conducted by 232 international journalists & electoral accompaniers from 27 countries who traveled to various departments and two autonomous regions, representing all corners of the country: Esteli, Matagalpa, Leon, Bluefields, Bilwi, Chontales, Chinandega, Granada, Masaya, Rivas and Managua. The electoral contingent visited around 50 different voting centers and interviewed voters, poll workers as well as political representatives from the 6 participating parties. I was part of the contingent and personally observed the election process as a correspondent on location for CovertAction Magazine (CAM) in Bilwi, a Miskito municipality formerly known as Puerto Cabezas in Nicaragua’s Northern Caribbean Autonomous Region—it was peaceful and historic.

Bilwi, Declan McKenna, election accompanier from Ireland, explains the Nicaragua voting process, Nov.7, 2021. [Source: Lauren Smith]

Managua, Declan McKenna, election accompanier from Ireland, explains the strength of Nicaragua’s electoral process compared to that used in Ireland, Nov 8, 2021. [Source: Lauren Smith]


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Bilwi, Voting Center 4, Nov 7, 2021 [Source: photo by Lauren Smith]

In Bilwi, we visited 4 polling sites, met with election officials, and interviewed Myrna Cunningham, a Miskito feminist and indigenous rights activist, and medical surgeon. In Managua, we visited the Bismark Martinez housing development. In Ciudad Sandino, we met with community members from “God’s Blessing” Community Potable Water and Sanitation Committee Trinidad Central and Cuajachillo Number 2 and health care providers with Nueva Vida Clinic. Both projects in Managua are made possible through creative public/non-profit partnerships.

(more...)

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2021/1 ... nd-abroad/
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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Sat Dec 25, 2021 3:58 pm

Nicaragua – national reality, neocolonial delusion
Submitted by tortilla on Mar, 21/12/2021 - 17:15
Stephen Sefton and Jorge Capelan, Tortilla con Sal, December 22nd 2021



An academic called Jonah Walters has recently published a couple of attacks on the political and economic model being worked out in Nicaragua under the country's Sandinista government led by President Daniel Ortega. One attack published by the North American Congress on Latin America “Ortega’s Developmentalism Is Based on the “Popular Economy”—But What Does that Mean?” alleges that the unquestionable economic democratization of Nicaragua's economy is in fact a mirage, in reality reinforcing neoliberal patterns of oligarchic and corporate economic power in Nicaragua. Another attack in New Left Review, “Ortega’s Synthesis” deploys a series of falsehoods to justify Walters' argument that Nicaragua's political and economic model is in crisis and unlikely to survive.



Both attacks follow the familiar pathological moebius strip logic Western psychological warfare always follows against target nations from Cuba to Syria or Iran to Venezuela. NATO country governments fund local opposition media and NGOs to generate falsehoods frequently based on deliberate terrorist provocations by opposition political activists. Those false opposition reports get recycled as fact by Western academics, media and NGOs which in turn generate reactions in international institutions. Those reactions are then taken up by the original local sources of the false reports to intensify their NATO country funded psychological warfare campaign both domestically and overseas. The process is endless.



In that context, Walters' articles are simply one more example of the faithless deceit and self-deceit of the Western pseudo-progressive intellectual managerial classes in academia and non governmental organizations overwhelmingly funded by NATO country governments and multinational corporations. In relation to Nicaragua, this phony-progressive intellectual managerial class have used their media outlets and NGOs for over twenty years to attack the Sandinista Front, categorically siding with the country's US government sponsored, right wing aligned political forces, most particularly the social democrat Sandinista Renewal Movement originally led by Sergio Ramirez and Dora Maria Tellez, supported by other leading ex-Sandinistas like Monica Baltodano.



When Rodolfo Walsh wrote, "History looks much like a piece of private property whose owners are the the owners of everything else” he prefigured the class role of media outlets like NACLA and the New Left Review. These and other apparently radical or progressive media report on international affairs essentially publishing neocolonial propaganda with a progressive flavor. As often as not, these outlets instruct the majority world on where they have gone wrong and admonish majority world governments and political movements for alleged human rights failings or for not being sufficiently progressive or revolutionary.



Walter's two articles on Nicaragua follow that neocolonial template. His NACLA article concludes of President Ortega's government that “having already heightened the rate of exploitation in key capitalist sectors to an unsustainable degree, it also lacked the popular influence to contain disruptive social conflicts any longer. This is the source of the Ortega administration’s deep and ongoing political crisis, which will not be easily overcome...”



Walter's false, obfuscating conclusions betray the fact that he lacks even the first clue of the grass roots development of Nicaragua's political and economic life since 1990. His perspective is dominated by the delusional views of the social democrat ex-Sandinistas who split from the Sandinista Front in 1994. That fact becomes even more self-evident when one reads Walters' misleading and downright inaccurate misrepresentations of the 2018 crisis that he advances in his New Left Review article where he attributes as a cause of the crisis in 2018: “a proposed social security reform that would have increased personal and employer contributions while imposing a 5% reduction in benefits”



To the contrary, there was no proposed across the board 5% cut in workers and pensioners benefits. The full text of the proposed Social Security reform clearly defends workers and pensioners rights, seeking to extend to pensioners the same comprehensive health care enjoyed by active contributing workers financed by a modest 5% levy on retired people's pensions. Walters derisory summary completely ignores the reality of the proposed measure which put the burden of the Social Security increase on employers, not workers. In fact, the government sought to protect the social security health system and increase social security coverage and benefits as a collective public good, proposing:


* Gradually increasing the employer's contribution by 3.25 percent

* Increasing the employee's contribution by 0.75 percent

* Increasing the government's contribution for public sector workers by 1.25 percent

* Making people on high salaries pay social security contributions proportionate to their income

* Taking 5% from retirees' pensions to offer them the same health care as that of active workers

* Maintaining the number of weekly contributions to qualify for a full pension at 750

* Maintaining the reduced pension and the minimum pension for those eligible

* Maintaining the Christmas bonus

* Maintaining pensions' value against the annual Central Bank sliding devaluation

* Keeping all INSS clinics in the public system

Supporters of Nicaragua's social democrat political opposition, like Jonah Walters, constantly conceal the fact that the employers organization COSEP argued for stripping away most of these rights, doubling the number of weekly contributions and privatizing the INSS clinics. Thus, Walters' account of the Social Security issue in Nicaragua in April 2018 is downright mendacious. Any conscientious editor would have spotted that. Instead, throughout his New Left Review article Walters' gets away with advancing one US funded opposition lie after another while deliberately omitting accounts contradicting his misrepresentations.

For example, Walters also falsely asserts in the New Left Review that “the Ortega government has unleashed the police on striking workers and underwritten settler violence in Nicaragua’s indigenous regions.” But Nicaragua's police under the Sandinista governments in office since 2007 have never attacked striking workers and Walters offers no examples of such attacks. If he has in mind the fierce confrontations of 2018, then in fact the police were under constant savage attacks from heavily armed protestors, often under cover of otherwise supposedly peaceful demonstrations as verified by these interviews here , here and also here.



Similarly, Walters' claim of some government role in violence against indigenous peoples is utterly false. Since 2014, when the miskito Yatama party led by ex-CIA agent Brooklyn Rivera lost elections for control of the regional government in Nicaragua's Northern Caribbean Autonomous Region, foreign progressives have persistently repeated Yatama and other opposition propaganda claiming government inspired violence against indigenous peoples. But the reality of decisive government support for indigenous people's rights and of opposition lies about that reality can be gauged here, here, here and here. Nicaragua's government promotes and defends one the most advanced systems of indigenous peoples' self-government in the world.



Walters continues his mendacious account of events in Nicaragua in 2018 asserting : “On Mother’s Day, hundreds of thousands marched to mourn the university students slain by state forces. Police responded by firing bullets into the crowd.” In fact that day there were two huge marches, one by the opposition, largely organized by the Catholic Church, and one in support of the government. In the incidents Walters refers to in Managua, 20 police officers and several Sandinista supporters suffered serious injury from opposition snipers including several fatal woundings, those events have been covered here, here and here. That same day, in La Trinidad, near Estelí, opposition gunmen attacked a Sandinista peace caravan wounding a total of 47 police officers and Sandinista supporters, one of them fatally, while another died later of his wounds. Of around 260 deaths throughout the 2018 crisis around a dozen were either university or secondary school students of whom a number were killed by opposition violence.



These examples of Walters' mendacity in his New Left Review article lead us back to the false conclusions he draws in his NACLA article. Walters' key argument attacking Nicaragua's revolutionary economic democratization is that government policies promoting the popular, cooperative and associative economy in fact foment a kind of “neoliberalism from below”. But applying that formulation in Nicaragua is ridiculous and crass, given that Nicaragua's Sandinista Front has resolutely defended its historic 1969 revolutionary program for over fifty years. President Ortega's government has delivered universal free health care, free education from pre-school to university including free vocational technical training, food security, land reform, accesible housing as well as having among the most advanced policies on gender equality and indigenous peoples rights in all the Americas.



Walters consistently betrays his comprehensive ignorance of Nicaragua's reality and recent history, arguing for example, that leading Sandinista Orlando Nuñez Soto in the 1990s proposed a strategy for socialist transition, “which emphasized cooperative enterprise over political confrontation with neoliberalism". But this too is simply untrue. On the contrary, what the Sandinista Front leadership, including Orlando Nuñez, proposed was that peasants and workers in the countryside and in the cities should organize to defend the properties they had seized after decades of struggle.



Between 1990 and 2006 Nicaragua witnessed fierce battles of the country's popular sectors against neoliberalism, in defence of the revolutionary achievements of the 1980's, against moves to privatize public services like water, and supporting the defence of the country's universities' statutory share of 6% of the nation's budget, among many other examples of vigorous protests and determined civic action. Just as everywhere else in Latin America, Nicaragua during neoliberalism was a theatre of bitter social struggle, with the Sandinista Front both in its midst and at its head. The popular movement in post-1990 Nicaragua made key advances compared with other popular movements in the region.



Nicaragua had a mass radical political party, the largest in the country. It had decades of revolutionary experience with thousands of professionals from the popular sectors that had completed their university studies in the 1980's. Above all, it could face a neoliberal state whose security forces had not been educated and trained to attack workers and peasants. This is why no massacres took place during that period in Nicaragua, despite repeated efforts by the US backed neoliberal administrations to get Nicaragua's national police and army to use their firearms to shoot protestors.



Immediately after the electoral defeat of 1990, Comandante Daniel Ortega said that from then on the FSLN would "rule from below", meaning an open political confrontation with neoliberalism. He also affirmed that the FSLN would return to power by popular vote, not by violence, convinced that Nicaragua's people would inevitably hold the neoliberal US owned administrations accountable for the chaos and suffering caused by their policies. Daniel Ortega was proven right then and now, 30 years later, Nicaragua's people have once more ratified their faith both in his leadership and in the Sandinista Front in the country's first ever elections free of US and allied interference.



The country's popular, family, cooperative and associative economy has pulled Nicaragua politically, economically and socially intact through the crisis of 2018 and the severely damaging effects of the global economic measures taken to address Covid-19. As a result Nicaragua's economic growth in 2021 will be over 9% with conservative projections of between 4% and 5% for 2022. That reality makes nonsense of Walters assertion that the country has been undergoing a political crisis driven by economic contradictions. He pretends against all the facts that Nicaragua has experienced some kind of broad based popular resistance to the government' economic policies.



The very opposite is true. Through 2018 and 2019 Nicaragua's Sandinista government defeated a desperate, concerted attack by the country's financial, business and media oligarchy allied with US funded opposition organizations with practically no popular base. Only the now widely despised and discredited reactionary Catholic Church hierarchy was able to mobilize truly mass support for demonstrations during April and May 2018. In June the general population reacted against the criminal repression they were suffering at the hands of the thugs and delinquents extorting, assaulting and killing people on the orders of the coup organizers. By mid July, the attempted coup was over.



Via the coup attempt they organized, the country's US backed oligarchy – epitomized by the Chamorro family – sought to reverse the revolutionary economic democratization carried out under President Daniel Ortega since January 2007. Devoid of genuine popular support, they had to rely on criminal gangs like those organized by Felix Maradiaga in Managua that burned down the Managua central office of the country's most important savings and loan cooperative CARUNA. Or the gangs supplied and paid by Dora Maria Tellez in Masaya that burned down a large part of Masaya's popular market area.



This is the political and economic reality of the failed coup attempt in Nicaragua in 2018 which opposition apologists like Jonah Walters try to cover up in everything they write. Meanwhile in North America and Europe, the self same phony progressives and radicals attacking Nicaragua's revolutionary Sandinista government policies have proven incapable of defending even the most basic rights of their peoples. They have twice failed to prevent massive transfers of wealth to the ruling elites in North America and Europe, first during the crisis of 2008-2009 and again in 2020. Instead, most recently, they have colluded in the the most reactionary State and corporate abuse of public health pretexts to reset their economies and remake their societies in an anti-democratic, anti-humanitarian corporate mould.



Nor have they been able to mobilize effectively to protest against their NATO country governments' repeated overseas aggression targeting the majority world's peoples about whom all those neocolonial progressives and radicals claim to care about so much. In Nicaragua's case, the country's people have many challenges ahead to meet and overcome. They are doing so with pride and confidence in their own abilities and justified optimism that their Sandinista government will help them realize their country's sovereign potential. And they will do so together with the peoples of Bolivia, Cuba and Venezuela and the rest of the region to defeat continuing attempts from North American and European elites and governments and their class allies to dominate them .

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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Mon Dec 27, 2021 3:08 pm

NicaNotes: From Building Roads to Bamboo Handicrafts: A Story of Nicaragua’s Social Economy
December 23, 2021

An interview by Jorge Capelán

(This interview was originally published by the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign in London: https://nicaraguasc.org.uk/2021/11/from ... andicraft/)

[Jorge Capelán is a Latin American journalist and political analyst who has worked for many years in Nicaragua. He appears weekly on news analysis programs and writes for several online news outlets.]

Construction worker Mauricio Antonio Núñez lost his job in 2018 because he defended the government during the violence associated with the failed coup.

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Mauricio Núñez shows some of his work in bamboo.

I visited him in his workshop south of Managua to find out about his new vocation as a bamboo craftsperson thanks to the support of the MEFCCA, the government ministry for the social economy. In addition Mauricio is a member of a co-operative set up to grow and sell bamboo.

Over 80% of the Nicaraguan workforce is employed in the social economy which creates 60% of disposable income. For this reason the Ministry of Family, Communal, Cooperative and Associative Economy (MEFCCA) is one of the country’s key ministries. Whole sectors of the economy are owned and controlled by this sector ranging from transport to food production to retail.

The sector is responsible for a large variety of startups such family owned shops, peasant co-operatives, and women’s organizations. MEFCCA supports these enterprises with training, funding and promotion. The logic of MEFCCA is not based on reproducing capital for its own sake, but rather to address the needs of the self-employed workers, their families, communities and society as a whole.

“We’ve been working with bamboo for three years now,” Mauricio explains. “I was totally ignorant about bamboo, and I had never even thought I could do drawings or art.” he adds. The progress Mauricio has made was rewarded in November 2020 when he won third place and a prize of 5,000 córdobas (£100) in a handicraft contest organized by MEFCCA.

When MEFCCA announced in 2018 that they were going to organize a bamboo training project in the area where Mauricio lives he signed up ‘out of curiosity’. He immediately felt a love for working with bamboo and has since taken MEFCCA courses in making toys, furniture, masks, chandeliers, walking sticks as well as how to do lamination and run a business.

Mauricio went on to explain what the training has meant to him: “I never imagined I could do this. I think the only thing that was missing was a little bit of discovery and some training and encouragement. I’m still learning because I’m new, I’m not like people from other places who already have ‘that gene’ [of craftsmanship that has been passed down through generations].”

The courses are taught by Nicaraguan, Central American, and also Taiwanese teachers, the latter from a country with a long tradition of using bamboo, not only for handicraft, but also for large constructions.

At the beginning, Mauricio received only training but when his commitment became clear, he received a loan from MEFCCA to buy raw materials and tools.

“From there I started to work a little more, to have clients… If you look here you will see that I have almost nothing, because they call me and ask me ‘look, can you do such and such a thing’ and then I make it.” “Everything associated with working with bamboo requires a wonderful technique’, he stresses, “it may look easy but it isn’t.”

The first piece he sold was a mask. “People loved it,” he says. “Now I have clients waiting for orders, but I tell them that they have to be patient because you have to make sure that what you are delivering is [a good product]; bamboo is very delicate.”

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Mauricio Núñez checks on a stand of young bamboo.

To ensure that it is well cured, the bamboo must be cut according to natural ancestral techniques during a particular phase of the moon and then dried evenly in the sun. If this doesn’t happen correctly there is a risk that termites will start eating it so “even if the piece looks beautiful” it will be a bad product.

Bamboo is grown in the Central Pacific region of northern Nicaragua. New varieties have been introduced including very thin varieties and thicker ones used in building construction.

Mauricio acknowledges how grateful he is to MEFCCA for the support they have provided so that he can dedicate himself to bamboo: ‘If it weren’t for MEFCCA, I wouldn’t be doing this right now; who knows how I would be… ‘

This is ongoing support not just in the form of technical training and loans but also on how to set up and run a business. ‘For example tomorrow they have invited us to a course on how to design an eye-catching logo.’ he says.

Mauricio is also member of a ten person co-operative that currently buys bamboo from other places such as Matagalpa, but they have also started to grow it in Managua to use as raw material and to sell plants to other people.

************************************************************

Briefs

72% of Nicaraguans Have at Least One Shot

The Nicaraguan Ministry of Health reported that 4,550,279 doses of vaccines have been administered to the population over two years of age. Jazmina Umaña, director of the immunization program, said that 76% of pregnant, breastfeeding, and postpartum women have been immunized with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine; 54% of children between the ages of two and 11 with the Cuban Soberana vaccine; 64% of children between the ages of 12 and 17 with the Cuban Abdala vaccine; 67% between the ages of 18 and 29 with the Russian Sputnik Light and the British Oxford AstraZeneca vaccines; and 81.51% of those over 30 with Oxford/AstraZeneca and Sputnik V vaccines. To date, 72% of the Nicaragua population has received at least one dose of the vaccine, Dr. Umaña said.

A new shipment of the Pfizer-BioNTec vaccine from the World Health Organization COVAX Mechanism was received on Dec. 13. Dr. Umaña explained that the shipment contained 827,190 doses. During the reception of the shipment, which was provided by the World Health Organization’s COVAX Mechanism, the Pan American Health Organization Representative in Nicaragua, Ana Treasure, stated that “PAHO congratulates the Ministry of Health for the immense work they are doing to advance the COVID-19 mass vaccination program in Nicaragua. It is impressive to see the brigades’ visiting homes, workplaces, public spaces, and remote areas throughout the country guaranteeing access to these life-saving vaccines. The commitment of Nicaragua healthcare personnel is the strength of the family and community health model.” For his part, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Representative Antero Almeida highlighted that “UNICEF wishes to congratulate the Nicaragua Government for the acceleration of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign that is showing, with clear and impressive data, the commitment and responsibility of the authorities and the Nicaraguan people in the fight against the pandemic”. (Nicaragua News, Dec. 14, 15, 16)

Higher Economic Growth Projected

On Dec. 13, the Nicaragua Central Bank published its “Third Quarter Gross Domestic Product and Nicaragua Economic Forecast Updates” report. The report stated that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) registered 9.7% during the third quarter of 2021 with a cumulative growth of 9.9%. BCN President Ovidio Reyes noted that “the growth was driven by increase in exports, national consumption, public and private investment, as well as the general dynamism of the different economic sectors”. He added that “the data presented will allow us to recalibrate the economic growth forecast for the country going from an estimated growth between 6% and 8% to a projected GDP increase between 7.9% and 9.5% by the end of 2021.” (Nicaragua News, Dec. 14)

Advances in Health in 2021
Nicaragua closes the year 2021 with the best hospital network in Central America. Twenty new health centers and hospitals were inaugurated—including the Chinandega Departmental Hospital—and dozens more were remodeled and updated. Community medical brigades made thousands of visits. Health Minister Dr. Martha Reyes stated that infant mortality has declined from 29 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2006 to 12.8 in 2021. With the construction and staffing of maternity wait homes around the entire country, maternal mortality has declined from 92.8 a 32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births during the same period. Chronic child malnutrition has declined from 21.7% to 9.3% of children under five years of age. Cancer diagnosis and treatment has vastly improved, including, for example, 22,200 endoscopies and 15,700 ultrasounds for the detection of stomach and prostate cancers. (Informe Pastran, Dec. 21)

Greater cooperation for highway infrastructure

The Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI) approved a US$ 382.6 million-dollar loan on Dec. 14 in support of Phase X of the Nicaragua Road Maintenance and Expansion Program. CABEI President Dante Mossi stated that “as the Central American Bank, we support initiatives that contribute to poverty reduction, expanding highway connectivity, boosting tourism, as well as strengthening regional commercial integration”. Phase X of the Nicaragua Road Maintenance and Expansion Program includes construction of four highways and sixteen bridges, benefiting 534,820 inhabitants in nine municipalities on the Pacific coast and both Nicaragua Caribbean Autonomous Regions. The connections between the Caribbean Coast cities and the Pacific strengthen national security and sovereignty as well as national unity and economic development, according to analysts. Meanwhile, the coastal highway, now under construction, will allow better access to Pacific Coast beaches for national and international tourists. (Nicaragua News, Dec. 15; Informe Pastran, Dec. 20)

More Technical Assistance to Small Producers
The Nicaragua Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA) trained and delivered Technology Packages to 399 small producers in the Department of Granada on Dec. 12. The Packages included improved seeds and tools to install storage silos to incentivize greater production of basic grains. The donation is part of the Rural Development Program that the Nicaragua Government is promoting throughout the country with support from the Italian Development Cooperation Agency. (Nicaragua News, Dec. 15)

640 New Property Titles

The Office of the Solicitor General announced that 640 new property titles were turned over yesterday to families in ten municipalities of the Departments of Río San Juan, Boaco, Estelí, Madriz, Masaya and both Nicaragua Caribbean Autonomous Regions. Solicitor General Wendy Morales stated that the titles were delivered house to house, in compliance with Covid-19 prevention measures, The program is part of the Legal Certainty and Family Stability Program that the Nicaraguan government is carrying out nationwide. (Nicaragua News, Dec. 16)

Increase in Fixed Private Investment Reported

The Nicaragua Central Bank (BCN) published a report last Tuesday on “Fixed Private Investment” corresponding to the third quarter of 2021. The report indicates that fixed private investment in Nicaragua totaled US$ 503 million during the third quarter of this year, 39.8% higher than the same period in 2020. The report also noted that cumulative private investment registered US$ 1.47 billion, a 35.2% increase over the previous year. The economic sectors with the highest capture of private investment net flow were construction (20.5%), and machinery and equipment (52.8%). (Nicaragua News, Dec. 16)

New Small Businesses Established

Vice-President Rosario Murillo reported that 950 new businesses were established in Nicaragua between November 16 and December 15, 2021, generating 4,520 new jobs. These new small and medium size businesses were in sectors such as transportation services, sale of food products, miscellaneous stores, credit centers, real estate, remittances, as well as mechanical and carpentry workshops. A total of 11,989 businesses have been established this year in Nicaragua, creating 59,945 new jobs in the country. (Nicaragua News, Dec. 17)

https://afgj.org/nicanotes-12-23-2021
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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Fri Jan 14, 2022 2:37 pm

NicaNotes: Legendary Sandinista Leader Inaugurated as President, Defies US & Monroe Doctrine
January 13, 2022

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Just after being sworn in, President Daniel Ortega with Vice President Rosario Murillo and National Assembly President Gustavo Porras. Photo by Jairo Cajina

By Dan Kovalik
(Daniel Kovalik teaches International Human Rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and is author of the recently-released No More War: How the West Violates International Law by Using “Humanitarian” Intervention to Advance Economic and Strategic Interests. Along with Margaret Kimberley, Lucille Murphey and S. Brian Willson, Kovalik was invited to be on the stage with other dignitaries.)

Since 1987, I have been coming to Nicaragua to show solidarity for its upstart band of merry men and women known as the Sandinistas. They, of course, led the unlikely successful revolution against the US-backed dictatorship of the Somoza family – a regime installed in 1934 and supported by the US to the bitter end until finally overthrown in 1979.

Tens of thousands of Nicaraguans were killed by Anastasio Somoza as he attempted to cling to power by gunning down his own people and bombing towns by air. And still the Sandinistas triumphed.

The US, which has been intervening in Nicaragua for more than a century, never accepted the Sandinista revolution and its leader. It has never abandoned the idea of the Monroe Doctrine announced in 1823 – a statement which declared the US claims sole dominion over the Western hemisphere, and, under the Roosevelt Corollary, reserves the right to intervene in any country in the Americas to maintain this domination and prevent nations from other parts of the world from asserting any influence of their own.

Ortega and the Sandinistas, who dared to overthrow a US-backed dictatorship and choose their own allies to defend their revolution – such as Cuba, USSR and other Warsaw Pact states – represent a direct threat to the Monroe Doctrine. And now Ortega, who has been in office since 2007 and was re-elected again as president in a landslide victory in November, has thrown down another gauntlet to challenge American domination – namely through his formal recognition of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the restoration of diplomatic relations for the first time since 1990, when Ortega lost a re-election bid to Violeta Chamorro.

One of the biggest fears of the US, and one of the greatest threats to the viability of the antiquated Monroe Doctrine, is that Ortega will partner with China to build a major shipping canal which would link Nicaragua’s Pacific and Atlantic coasts. The US has coveted such a canal, and its own ability to control and profit from it, since the 19th century. This is because such a canal, which would be built through an enormous lake that lies between Nicaragua’s coasts, could accommodate ships larger than those which can navigate the Panama Canal – which is now becoming obsolete – and even allow for two to travel through in both directions at the same time.

Indeed, according to the US State Department itself, it was the attempt of Nicaragua’s Liberal Party President, Jose Zelaya, to partner with Japan in building such a canal which led to the first of many US Marine invasions of Nicaragua in 1911.

The US Marines, repelled by the famed guerilla leader Augusto Cesar Sandino, ultimately left Nicaragua for good only after the Somoza dictatorship was installed in 1934. It is no wonder, then, that Ortega’s recognition of China, the presence of Chinese dignitaries at his inauguration and the announcement that Nicaragua is willing to sign up to China’s Belt and Road Initiative sent a tremor throughout Washington.

I had the honor of being invited to Nicaragua to attend the inauguration in the Plaza of the Revolution where a huge banner draped on the historic church there reads, “All With Love, All For Love.” As I have observed over the years, Ortega often talks about love in his speeches and slogans. This is not something I hear from politicians in the US, a place where love and compassion are rarely on the menu for the electorate. The slogan of the Inauguration itself was “Somos Pueblo Presidente” (“The People are The President”), and to emphasize this democratic notion, all the Nicaraguans in attendance held up their hand to take the oath of office along with Ortega.

Meanwhile, on the morning of the inauguration, both the EU and the US announced new rounds of sanctions against Nicaragua. As per usual, this was done based upon feigned concerns about democracy in the country. This ignores the fact that there was no democracy in Nicaragua until the Sandinistas overthrew the dictatorship in 1979 and then held Nicaragua’s first free and fair elections in 1984. It also ignores the fact that Ortega and the Sandinistas peacefully stepped down in 1990 after holding elections then.

Ortega had more to say about democracy at the inauguration, referring to events in Washington on January 6 last year, when hundreds of Americans stormed the US Capitol to protest what they – and millions of others – perceived as a fraudulent presidential election. He pointed out that many of these individuals have been arrested and given long sentences for what could be viewed as political actions – that is, they could be viewed as political prisoners. And yet, no country is seriously talking about sanctioning the US because of this.

Whatever one thinks of the events of January 6, it is important to note that the Nicaraguan government has been criticized, and indeed sanctioned, for prosecuting individuals who participated in and/or instigated a much more violent and deadly uprising in Nicaragua in 2018 –which was funded by the US and claimed the lives of well over 160 individuals. The differing treatment of these two situations is not lost on Nicaragua and other victims of the US’s claimed interest in defending democracy and human rights.

Regarding the US sponsorship of violence against Nicaragua, Ortega also spent considerable time at his inauguration discussing the US-backed Contra war of the 1980s which claimed the lives of around 30,000 Nicaraguans – an astronomical number for a country with a population that didn’t even reach three million at the time.

Indeed, Ortega started his speech by detailing the suffering of a woman present at the inauguration – Brenda Rocha, the president of Nicaragua’s electoral council –– who lost her arm to the contras at the age of 15, and whose electoral council is now being sanctioned by the EU. He emphasized that this was part and parcel of Western aggression against Nicaragua over the years, and also Venezuela and Cuba – two countries represented at the inauguration by their presidents.

He also had more to say about the US’s crocodile tears on human rights, referring to the case of S Brian Willson, who was another honored guest. Vietnam veteran turned peace activist, Willson lost his legs in 1987 after sitting down on a train track in California in an attempt to protest against and block arms shipments to the death squads of El Salvador.

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S. Brian Willson and Dan Kovalik just before President Ortega’s Inauguration

Willson was run over by a train, but it turned out that it was no mere accident; the conductor was ordered not to stop for him as he normally would do for pedestrians crossing the tracks. Ortega again rightly questioned the human rights bona fides of a nation which would allow such an atrocity to happen.

In short, Ortega, and the Nicaraguan people who were there cheering him on, remain defiant against US bullying and aggression. And, with ties with China restored, they now have the help they need to effectively defend themselves. This is quite a rebuke to those American leaders who believe that the US dominion over the world is unassailable.

Republican strategist Karl Rove famously bragged about the US, “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out.” The upstart Ortega, however, has demonstrated through his continued victories, and through his forming of new alliances with countries like China, that times have changed; that it is now the US, with its crumbling empire, which must watch on the sidelines as countries like tiny Nicaragua chart their own futures and create their own realities.

For those of us who instinctively root for David over Goliath, this will be a treat to witness.

https://afgj.org/nicanotes-01-13-2022
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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Sat Jan 22, 2022 3:44 pm

The Economics of the Sandinista Revolution in 2022
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 21, 2022

Kawsachun News

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Minister of Economy and Finance of Nicaragua, Ivan Acosta, in interview with Kawsachun News in Managua. January 14, 2022.

Nicaragua ended 2021 with extraordinary results in the economy, highly positive results in production and is leading economic growth in the region after three difficult years during which it faced a coup attempt, two devastating hurricanes, Covid-19 and permanent attempts by the United States and big capital to destroy the country’s economy.

In Managua, we interviewed Minister of Finance, Ivan Acosta, on Nicaragua’s model, regional economic integration and new prospects as Nicaragua and China seek cooperation after reestablishing relations in December. Kawsachun News’ Camila Escalante sat down with Minister Acosta on January 14, at the offices of the Ministerio de Hacienda y Crédito Público. What follows is a translation of the portion of our interview conducted in Spanish. We also asked some additional questions in English, which can be watched here.

Nicaragua experienced a year of economic recover in 2021. How has managed to control inflation when other countries have failed to do so?

The issue of inflation is very complex. In 2021 most countries have had strong growth and Nicaragua is one of them, but there has been some inflation and that inflation is imported because we’ve seen global price rises on goods that we import such as oil. If the price of energy goes up then that’s felt across the whole economy. However, we have also benefited from the rises in the international prices of other goods such as coffee and beef, these are goods that we export and the value of those exports is up 21% during 2021.

Our high level of food production has stopped inflation from really shooting up. When you visit Nicaragua and you see what is served as meals, you can see that 90% of what’s served up is produced within Nicaragua. Our President Daniel Ortega wants us to achieve food sovereignty and food security by making sure we produce all the food on people’s tables, such as chicken, beef, cheese, rice, beans, oil. We can control inflation on these goods because they’re produced here, but we can’t do much about the rising cost of energy and products that use hydrocarbons such as fertilizer.

To support our exports, we devalued the national currency by 2% this year, when this is accounted for then our rate of inflation last year was just below that of the US, which hit 7%, which is very high for them, it’s the highest since 1982. I don’t think inflation can be avoided because we import oil, so we’re sensitive to rises in its price. We can cushion the effect by boosting national production, particularly agricultural production, through public investment, by providing technical assistance, and guaranteeing access to markets for campesinos.

What are the prospects and opportunities for the national economy in the context of the new progressive governments in the region and the renewal of relations with China?

When we compare development and growth in Latin America, to that in Asia, we can see that regional integration is incredibly important. Our countries that share a border and a region, that share a history and culture, should unite to have a greater voice on issues of trade and exchange rates. This hasn’t happened in Latin America for our whole 200 year history, for different reasons, and the result is massive inequality, for us in Mesoamerica is meant that we are the poorest region in the Americas. If we are to tackle this poverty and inequality, then all countries must come together to exchange knowledge and experiences.

Look at how Cuba has produced its own vaccine and become the most vaccinated country in the Americas. Meanwhile, other Latin American countries with a free market economy have been unable to. If there can be exchange of that type of scientific and commercial knowledge in the region, then we could all benefit. We should remember that the alliance with Venezuela, especially over Petrocaribe that saved countries in the Caribbean and Central America during the 2008 financial crisis, it softened the international effects of the Lehman Brothers collapse. During that critical moment, Venezuela sent oil to Caribbean countries that rely on tourism and were going to be wiped out as rising energy prices made their hotels noncompetitive. Venezuelan oil averted that crisis. Nicaragua also benefited from this because we were sending them our excess agricultural produce in exchange for oil and as a result, poverty fell by 50% during that decade. The governments of the left in the region have to focus on these issues of integration to tackle poverty and inequality.

Can you tell us the new Memorandums of Understanding with China?

China is clearly the world leader in international trade and will lead the process of globalization going forward. In the last 30 years, they have lifted 800 million people out of poverty. Their Belt and Road Initiative has brought about a strategy of cooperation with more than 60 partners that constitute 75% of the world’s energy supplies. They have focused on helping countries build infrastructure and ports to boost trade in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, as well as transport links to China. For us, this is a huge opportunity and there’s no reason for us to be outside this process. For countries like us that export food, we always need new markets, and the Chinese market is the largest. This is a huge opportunity for us to bring in new investments, too, and thereby increase the productive capacity in the production of our export goods. We also need to build cooperation on science and technology with China, to help develop our industries and energy capacities. We need to connect our ports in the Caribbean and Pacific, so we require investments in new corridors and a canal that can compete with that of Panama. We think that our relationship with China opens a new space for our economic development and boost trade and integration.

We reestablished relations from the 10th of December, and that basically is a political agreement to accept One China policy. The principle of this agreement is to have political relations, trade relations and cooperation. This agreement we established and recently signed four memorandum. The first memorandum is to have a global operation between the People’s Republic of China and Nicaragua. The second memorandum is to have what you call the early harvest that gives a step ahead. In the meantime, we negotiate a free trade agreement. The third memorandum is that Nicaragua be included in the Belt and Road Initiative. The last memorandum is to be part of the initiative of economic dialog with China. That is the four memorandum that I think is very good for our country.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/01/ ... n-in-2022/

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Nicaragua: A Renewed Partnership with China Defangs US Regime Change Tactics
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 21, 2022
Ben Gutman

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In a bold and consequential decision with rippling geopolitical implications, Nicaragua recognized the “One-China Principle” and resumed diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for the first time since the beginning of the neoliberal period in 1990.[1] This was announced December 9, 2021 shortly after a meeting of the China-CELAC Forum in which CELAC’s 32 Latin American member states[2] agreed to adopt a China-CELAC Joint Action Plan for Cooperation. The strengthening of Chinese ties with Western Hemisphere partners in a forum without US presence comes as a red flag for US hegemony and control over its own “backyard,” which, since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, has been firmly fenced off from other “external” global actors seeking influence in the region. However, unlike the last two centuries of US imperialism, China offers an approach that respects the rule of law and national sovereignty.

Last January 16, the replacement of Taiwanese investment with the sustainable socio-economic development model of the PRC’s “Belt and Road Initiative” in Nicaragua is particularly threatening to regional US economic domination. In 2014, Nicaragua partnered with a Chinese firm to initiate construction of a second shipping lane connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in addition to the current US-dominated Panama Canal.[3] The anti-Sandinista opposition party Unamos (formerly known as the Sandinista Renovation Movement or MRS), whose leaders frequently met and provided information to the US embassy, helped organize an NED-engineered pseudo-movement in opposition to the project, which eventually came to a halt during the political violence of 2018.[4] The potential relaunch of the Nicaraguan canal project could prove to be a pivotal point in the US’s New Cold War and flailing bid to remain the world’s lone superpower.

Nicaragua leaves the OAS, the de facto diplomatic branch of the US in the Americas

On November 19, following the re-election of President Daniel Ortega, the Nicaraguan government announced its withdrawal from the US-dominated Organization of American States (OAS), joining Venezuela and Cuba in what former Bolivian president Evo Morales called “an act of dignity.”[5] In an official letter to OAS Secretary-General Luis Almagro, Nicaragua’s Foreign Minister Denis Moncada repeated previous condemnation of the OAS as an “instrument of interference and intervention” with the “mission to facilitate hegemony of the United States with its interventionism against the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.”[6]

As reported by John Perry for COHA, the OAS produced a 16-page report within 48 hours of the alleged “illegitimate elections” that contained no evidence of fraud on election day. In lockstep with the White House’s perverse and ridiculous claim of support for the “inalienable right to democratic self-determination of the Nicaraguan people,” Almagro’s coup-fomenting false narrative of fraud came straight out of the US/OAS playbook used during their facilitation of the 2019 coup d’état against Morales’ MAS party in Bolivia.[7] Constructed by the US as an anti-socialist alliance of right-wing regimes at the onset of the First Cold War, the OAS and its delegitimization of the 2021 Nicaraguan election reflects continuity of its role as “Ministry of Colonies” of the United States, as it was referred to by Fidel Castro.[8]

Nicaragua’s withdrawal from the OAS and its reestablishment of relations with the PRC are bold decisions that flex Nicaraguan sovereignty and communicate to developing countries that a path of resistance against Western coercion leads to independence, inclusive development, and promising new opportunities. The Sandinista Front’s defeat of a three-year long US regime change operation, which culminated in the inauguration of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega on January 10, 2022, has translated the sacrifices made by the Nicaraguan people into a concrete plan to further the egalitarian principles of the Sandinista Revolution.

Against a militarized and neoliberal model for Central America

With support from the fastest growing economy in the world with a population of 1.4 billion, in addition to an array of other governments and solidarity movements, Nicaragua has earned the ability to lead a more aggressive charge against Washington’s proposed militarized security and neoliberal development model for Central America.[9] Such a model which aims to enrich corporations through private investment and austerity to the detriment of the poor and working-class remains the antithesis to the Chinese and Sandinista revolutions. During his inauguration speech, President Ortega elucidated this key point, stating that the “Chinese revolution and the Sandinista revolution [have] the same north, the same path, the same destiny, which is to end poverty.”

As the process of poverty alleviation runs contrary to the exploitative goals of Western imperialists, the US and EU levied coordinated unilateral coercive measures against Nicaraguan officials on the day of President Ortega’s inauguration.[10] However, the strategy of relentless hybrid warfare used to isolate and punish “enemy states” like Nicaragua has lost some of its impact. “The unipolar world is over. It’s a multipolar world,” said Black Alliance for Peace’s Margaret Kimberley at the inauguration. The Nicaraguan people’s defeat of US regime change attempts over the last three years is a remarkable accomplishment that helped the paradigm shift towards a multi-polar world. However, it is important to recognize the inevitable sacrifices that come with resistance, to dissect imperial destabilization strategies, and to reflect on the manufactured policies that have brought us to where we are today.

Revisiting the 2018 Attempted Coup, and the US media supported narrative

In Nicaragua-based journalist Ben Norton’s investigation titled “How USAID Created Nicaragua’s Anti-Sandinista Media Apparatus, Now under Money Laundering Investigation,” Norton presents documented evidence that the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation received more than $7 million of the $10 million funneled to Nicaraguan opposition media from the US’s soft-power arm the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) between 2014 and 2021.[11] The majority of this funding was distributed amongst some 25 publications including Chamorro Foundation-owned outlets that are widely quoted by the international press and elite US think tanks like the Open Society Foundation, which characterized El Nuevo Diario, Confidencial, and La Prensa (all Chamorro owned) as “the most important online news providers” in Nicaragua.[12] As reported by Norton, the foreign funding and cultivation of these opposition and media groups led to arrests under Nicaragua’s law 1055, which was then framed by the corporate media as an authoritarian crackdown against opposition leaders.

Many international corporate media outlets like the BBC framed “Nicaragua’s worsening crisis” in 2018 as “unexpected” and a result of grassroots movements peacefully protesting against a corrupt dictatorship.[13] This false narrative was exposed by John Perry in a report for The Grayzone titled “A Response to Misinformation on Nicaragua: It Was a Coup, Not a ‘Massacre.’” First, Perry points out that even anti-Ortega mainstream academics had admitted that US institutions like the USAID and NED were “laying the groundwork for insurrection,” debunking the narrative that the protests were organic and fortuitous.[14] Second, Perry makes it clear that in an attempt to facilitate the established “peaceful protester” narrative by white-washing violence perpetrated by coup-supporters, academics and corporate media engaged in the systematic omission of inconvenient facts including the murder of 22 police officers and the torture of Sandinista civilians. The Nicaragua-based anti-imperialist collective Tortilla con Sal published independent researcher Enrique Hendrix’s in-depth analysis of this bad-faith framing as well as additional evidence backing claims of torture used against Sandinistas.

Much like corporate media and billionaire-funded foundations, a Nicaraguan human rights industry intricately connected and funded by US and European governments pushed propaganda, including the decontextualization of deaths and faulty death count figures, to provide cover for US regime change goals masquerading as unprovoked government repression.[15] In the article “The Rise and Fall of Nicaragua’s ‘Human Rights’ organizations” published in the Alliance for Global Justice’s NicaNotes, John Perry relays how three vocally anti-Sandinista human rights groups wielded disproportionate influence over the narratives presented in international bodies such as Amnesty International and the UN Commission for Human Rights (UNCHR). For example, included in the UNCHR’s 2018 report on Nicaragua were detailed references to the Nicaraguan Association for Human Rights (ANPDH), which was created by the Reagan administration to whitewash Contra atrocities and received $88,000 from the NED and $348,000 from other US sources in 2018.

In June of 2019, to the dismay of many Sandinistas whose family members were murdered during the coup attempt, the Nicaraguan government passed an Amnesty Law pardoning and expunging the records of those involved in violent and treasonous acts as part of a national dialogue with the opposition.[16] This clemency came even after the opposition refused to ask the United States to end illegal unilateral coercive measures packaged as the 2018 NICA Act (passed in the US House of Representatives with zero opposition by a 435-0 margin), which opposition activists themselves had requested in 2015.[17] During coverage of the peace and reconciliation process and in a continuation of the 2018 information warfare campaign, corporate media outlets like Reuters took a rather one-sided approach highlighting the law’s “protection to police and others who took part in a violent clampdown on anti-government protesters,” but failed to mention the violent acts committed against the police by these so-called anti-government protesters.[18]

US Hybrid Warfare Revisited during the 2021 Nicaraguan Presidential Election

In the months prior to the November 7 election, the US government and its affiliated ecosystem of obedient corporate media, social media, and hawkish think tanks took aim at Nicaragua in an effort to further isolate the nation with the ultimate goal of regime change to a more business-friendly neoliberal leadership.

A USAID regime change document leaked to independent Nicaraguan journalist William Grigsby in July 2020 and analyzed in John Perry’s “The US Contracts Out its Regime Change Operation in Nicaragua” provides useful insight into US destabilization plans. This RAIN or Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua document provides Terms of Reference for a contract to hire a company to oversee the “transition to democracy” in Nicaragua. The word “transition,” an obvious euphemism for regime change, is used more than 60 times throughout the document to describe different post-election scenarios. In the case of a “delayed transition” or Sandinista victory, the hired company would provide “research and planning for USAID and for civil society leadership with discrete technical assistance.” In other words, the company would continue USAID’s work subverting Nicaragua’s democratic process by funding, training, and directing opposition groups and media hostile to the FSLN.

However, despite clear evidence that the US was engaged in a multidimensional destabilization campaign before, during, and after the 2018 coup attempt, even progressive publications like NACLA failed to accurately report on events in Nicaragua. In the article “How Can Some Progressives Get Basic Information About Nicaragua So Wrong?” John Perry and Rick Stirling dismantle a popular State Department narrative promoted by NACLA that the November 7 election was rigged because seven potential candidates were prevented from running for president, by laying out the real crimes of which they are accused and the dubiousness of their candidacies. While the corporate media pushed this narrative ad nauseum regarding Nicaragua, it was almost completely absent prior to the 2021 Ecuadorian presidential election during which neoliberal president Lenin Moreno jailed, exiled, and banned Correístas from running in elections.[19]

In addition to news media propaganda, a bizarre censorship campaign launched by social media monopoly Facebook in the days leading up to the November 7 election silenced around 1,300 Nicaragua-based accounts run by pro-Sandinista media outlets, journalists, and activists on Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram, as reported by The Grayzone’s Ben Norton.[20] Facebook justified this action by claiming that the censored accounts were part of a “troll farm run by the government of Nicaragua and the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) party.”[21] In John Perry’s COHA article titled “Facebook Does the US Government’s Censorship Work in Nicaraguan Elections”, Perry points out that “many commentators suffered double censorship: blocked because they were falsely accused of being bots, then prevented from proving that the accusations were false when they posted videos of themselves as real people.” Facebook and other tech giants like Google and Microsoft have an extensive history of collaboration with the U.S. security state, often enjoying lucrative U.S. Defense Department contracts, and are known to have a revolving door with the public sector.[22] Norton shows this connection by exposing Facebook’s Head of Security Policy Nathaniel Gleicher as the former director for cybersecurity policy at the White House National Security Council who had also worked at the U.S. Department of Justice.

Despite intense and ongoing hybrid warfare targeting the integrity of Nicaragua’s 2021 presidential election, 65% of the eligible 4.4 million Nicaraguans voted and 75% of those voters chose to re-elect Comandante Daniel Ortega of the Sandinista Front. While the Nicaraguan government did prevent the OAS from sending observers given its role in the 2019 Bolivian coup, there were 165 election observers and 67 journalists from 27 countries present on November 7.[23] Members of delegations from the U.S. and Canada, including COHA’s Jill Clark-Gollub, who observed the elections held a press conference during which they characterized the election process as “efficient, transparent, with widespread turnout and participation of opposition parties.”[24] In the COHA report “Despite US led Dirty Campaign, Nicaraguans Came Out in Force in Support of the FSLN”, Clark-Gollub expressed her disbelief that corporate media and the Biden administration had declared the vote a fraud with as few as 20% of the electorate turned out to vote. “This flies in the face of my own experience,” Clark-Gollub said.[25] However, despite US and NATO rejection of the election results, 153 sovereign nations around the world supported Nicaraguan democracy by recognizing the election results at the United Nations.[26]

Conclusion: A Brighter Future for Inclusive Economic Development in Nicaragua?

After more than a century of US aggression, including three decades of global hegemonic control, Obama’s “pivot” to Asia in 2016 marked a paradigm shift and the start of a New Cold War against China. The People’s Republic of China’s unparalleled economic growth and eagerness to use its deep coffers to jumpstart economic development projects in the “third world” is a direct threat to neoliberal capitalist hegemony, as China offers developing nations an alternative to the predatory debt traps sprung by western lending institutions like the World Bank and IMF.

Mere weeks after Nicaragua’s resumption of diplomatic relations with the PRC, Chinese government representative Yu Bo extended an invitation to Nicaragua to join its Belt and Road Initiative during the newly established Chinese embassy’s flag-raising ceremony in Managua. Nicaragua’s Foreign Minister Denis Moncada responded to the invitation with approval stating, “we are sure that we will continue working together, strengthening each day the fraternal ties of friendship, cooperation, investment, [and] expanding communication channels with the Belt and Road…”.

This bilateral economic partnership brings a potential scaffolding with which the “pueblo presidente” can “start with a clean slate” and get back on the road to the progress being made prior to April 2018. In the words of Comandante Ortega, this means “building peace to combat poverty…so that there can be roads and paths…so families can feel confident; their children can feel confident in their work; [and so] they feel confident in having a dignified life.” Nicaraguans can also feel confident that economic development in partnership with the Chinese will not come with the relinquishment of national sovereignty through coerced neoliberal structural adjustment programs or debt trap gangsterism.

If the Sandinista government chooses to reject future development proposals put forth by China through Belt and Road, they can expect good faith negotiation without the threat of violent hybrid warfare favored by the U.S. and NATO. In a 2019 interview, Jamaican-British rapper Akala explains this key difference in the context of Jamaican participation in the Belt and Road Initiative: “there are several projects that the Chinese have proposed in Jamaica that the Jamaican people said ‘no’ to [so] the Jamaican government had to say ‘no’… what was the Chinese response? Was it to send the CIA in? Was it to overthrow the Jamaican democracy? Was it to cut off aid to Jamaica? No. They said ok, we proposed a business deal and you said no. Here’s another one.”

Ben Gutman is an independent writer, researcher, and organizer pursuing an MA in Global Communication from The George Washington University. He is currently working on his capstone research and digital media project on the outsourcing of US border militarization to Guatemala in collaboration with the Guatemala Solidarity Project and the Promoters of Migrant Liberation.

Jill-Clark Gollub, COHA’s Asistant Editor, and Patricio Zamorano, COHA’s Director, contributed as editors of this essay

[Main photo: video-screenshot from Kawsachun News]

Sources

[1] Escalante, Camila. “China and Nicaragua to Collab on New Multipolar World.” Kawsachun News, 10 Dec. 2021, kawsachunnews.com/china-and-nicaragua-to-collab-on-new-multipolar-world.

[2] Officially formalized in 2011 as an alternative to the OAS, CELAC (the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) is a cooperative venture among developing nations.

[3] Voltaire Network. “Nicaragua Could Bring Canal Project Back to Life.” Voltaire Network, 12 Dec. 2021, http://www.voltairenet.org/article215032.html.

[4] Norton, B. (2021, November 18). From Nicaraguan revolutionaries to US embassy informants: How Washington recruited ex-sandinistas like Dora María Téllez and her mrs party. The Grayzone. Retrieved January 15, 2022, from https://thegrayzone.com/2021/11/05/nica ... ellez-mrs/

[5] JF, teleSUR/. “Withdrawal of Nicaragua from OAS Is an Act of Dignity: Morales.” News | teleSUR English. teleSUR, November 22, 2021. https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Wit ... -0002.html.

[6] Norton, Benjamin. “Nicaragua Leaves US-Controlled, Coup-Plotting OAS: ‘We Are Not a Colony.’” Medium, 19 Nov. 2021, benjaminnorton.medium.com/nicaragua-leaves-us-controlled-coup-plotting-oas-we-are-not-a-colony-2ffe83c319ae.

[7] Curiel, John, and Jack Williams. “Bolivia Dismissed Its October Elections as Fraudulent. Our Research Found No Reason to Suspect Fraud.” Washington Post, 27 Feb. 2020, http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ ... pect-fraud.

[8] Staff, Reuters. “Castro Says Cuba Doesn’t Want to Rejoin ‘Vile’ OAS.” U.S., 15 Apr. 2009, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba- ... 7K20090415.

[9] Chomsky, A. (2021, March 30). Will Biden’s central american plan slow migration (or speed it up)? TomDispatch.com. Retrieved January 15, 2022, from https://tomdispatch.com/will-bidens-cen ... eed-it-up/

[10] Al Jazeera. (2022, January 10). US slaps new sanctions on Nicaragua on Ortega’s Inauguration Day. Elections News | Al Jazeera. Retrieved January 16, 2022, from https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/ ... ration-day

[11] Norton, Ben. “How USAID Created Nicaragua’s Anti-Sandinista Media Apparatus, Now under Money Laundering Investigation.” The Grayzone, 26 June 2021, thegrayzone.com/2021/06/01/cia-usaid-nicaragua-right-wing-media.

[12] Perry, John. “NPR Should Ask Where Nicaraguan Non-Profits’ Money Comes From.” CounterPunch.Org, 23 May 2021, http://www.counterpunch.org/2021/05/24/ ... comes-from.

[13] BBC News. “Downward Spiral: Nicaragua’s Worsening Crisis.” BBC News, 16 July 2018, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-44398673.

[14] Waddell, Benjamin. “Laying the Groundwork for Insurrection: A Closer Look at the U.S. Role in Nicaragua’s Social Unrest.” Global Americans, 10 July 2020, theglobalamericans.org/2018/05/laying-groundwork-insurrection-closer-look-u-s-role-nicaraguas-social-unrest.

[15] Perry, John. “NicaNotes: The Rise and Fall of Nicaragua’s ‘Human Rights’ Organizations.” Alliance for Global Justice, 21 Aug. 2019, afgj.org/nicanotes-the-rise-and-fall-of-nicaraguas-human-rights-organizations.

[16] teleSUR/ov-MV. “Nicaragua Approves Amnesty Law To Bring Peace.” News | TeleSUR English, 9 June 2019, http://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Nica ... -0001.html.

[17] Nicanotes: The revolution won’t be stopped: Nicaragua advances despite US unconventional warfare. Alliance for Global Justice. (2020, July 22). Retrieved January 16, 2022, from https://afgj.org/nicanotes-the-revoluti ... al-warfare

[18] Lopez, Ismael. “Nicaraguan Congress Approves Ortega-Backed Amnesty Law.” U.S., 9 June 2019, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-nicar ... SKCN1TA00U.

[19] Emersberger, J. (2021, February 16). Ignoring repression and dirty tricks in coverage of Ecuador’s election. FAIR. Retrieved January 19, 2022, from https://fair.org/home/ignoring-repressi ... -election/

[20] Norton, Ben. “Meet the Nicaraguans Facebook Falsely Branded Bots and Censored Days before Elections.” The Grayzone, 2 Nov. 2021, thegrayzone.com/2021/11/02/facebook-twitter-purge-sandinista-nicaragua.

[21] Company, Facebook. “October 2021 Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Report.” Meta, 5 Nov. 2021, about.fb.com/news/2021/11/october-2021-coordinated-inauthentic-behavior-report.

[22] Levine, Yasha. Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet. Icon Books Ltd, 2019.

[23] Norton, Ben. “Debunking Myths about Nicaragua’s 2021 Elections, under Attack by USA/EU/OAS.” The Grayzone, 12 Nov. 2021, thegrayzone.com/2021/11/11/nicaragua-2021-elections.

[24] Escalante, Camilla. “North Americans Debunk US & OAS Claims on Nicaragua Election.” Kawsachun News, 10 Nov. 2021, kawsachunnews.com/north-americans-debunk-us-oas-claims-on-nicaragua-election.

[25] Clark-Gollub, Rita Jill. “Despite US Led Dirty Campaign, Nicaraguans Came Out in Force in Support of the FSLN.” Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 12 Nov. 2021, http://www.coha.org/despite-us-led-dirt ... f-the-fsln.

[26] Kohn, Richard. “NicaNotes: Nicaragua’s Election Was Free and Fair.” Alliance for Global Justice, 2 Dec. 2021, afgj.org/nicanotes-12-02-2021.

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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Fri Jan 28, 2022 2:15 pm

NicaNotes: The Privilege of Public School in Nicaragua
January 27, 2022
By Becca Mohally Renk

(Becca Mohally Renk has lived and worked in sustainable community development in Nicaragua since 2001 with the Jubilee House Community and its project, the Center for Development in Central America.)

This week the new school year started in Nicaragua and I waved my eldest daughter, Eibhlín, off to her final year of high school. I teared up remembering my three-year old in her first tiny blue and white uniform, proudly marching off to preschool in pigtails.

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Eibhlín’s third grade class on a walking field trip. Photo: Becca Mohally Renk

I’ve also been reflecting that this month marks 15 years since President Daniel Ortega declared public education to be free once again, just 24 hours after he was inaugurated. That was his second declaration; the first was to declare public health care free again. Those two declarations have led to the most significant improvements – among many important improvements – in the lives of Nicaraguan families in the past 15 years.

The Sandinista government had just been voted back into power following 17 years of neoliberal governments between 1990 and 2007. The neoliberal educational model considered the public school system as useful only in creating future clients, viewing the poor as a source of cheap labor and not worthy of investment in their education. To that end, budgets were cut and the “school autonomy” policy was introduced, which passed the cost of education on to families.

Under the neoliberal governments, Nicaraguan public schools received funding from the central government based on the number of students they had registered at their school. Because they were given so little funding, schools reported more students than were actually studying at their center in an attempt to cover their operating costs, then charged the families fees to cover the difference – even though the Nicaraguan Constitution guarantees a free education, preschool through university.

To save money, schools hired “empirical” teachers – those who had not formally studied education. By 2006, more than 45% of all teachers working in schools had not been formally trained. School buildings deteriorated to the point of being useless or even dangerous. Children had to bring their own desks or sit on the floor to receive their lessons. Girls were disproportionately affected by the disastrous neoliberal policy: families couldn’t afford to send all their children to school, so the eldest boy was prioritized; the girls stayed home to look after siblings while parents scraped together a living.

By 2003, the average Nicaraguan had just three and a half years of schooling and only 30% of those starting 1st grade were expected to finish 6th grade (United Nations Development Program, 2003). By 2006, nearly a quarter of the country was unable to read or write, a shameful statistic following on the triumphant National Literacy Crusade in 1980 that had managed to lower the 50.3% illiteracy under the Somoza dictatorship to 12.9% in a matter of months, and further lower it to 10% by 1990.

Economists agree that the progress of a country is dependent on education. Your earnings increase by 10% with each year of schooling you receive, a higher increase than any other individual action could provide (World Bank). Fifteen years ago, when more than half of Nicaragua’s population was under the age of 21, it was clear that without a significant investment in education, the economy and society was not going to advance.

Upon taking office in 2007, the Sandinista government began a revolution in education, making fundamental pedagogical changes to create an accessible education system placing students at the center.

Just two years later in 2009, my husband and I made the decision to send our kids to public school. At that time, we didn’t know any other foreigners in the public school system, and our Nicaraguan coworkers all sent their kids to private school as well. We made the decision because we wanted to be part of the rural community where we live, and because we believe in public schools – in free, quality education for everyone. So we sent three-year old Eibhlín to the public preschool near our home, and the next year our younger daughter Orla joined her. Since then, our family has had the opportunity to experience the Nicaraguan public school system for ourselves.

What has this educational revolution looked like firsthand?

In elementary school, my kids’ classes were three times larger than the classes ahead of them. Today, youth with no schooling at all has dropped from 24% to 4% since 2006. Their school buildings were expanded and improved to accommodate more students, just like 75% of all schools in the country.

Fundamental to the success of getting more kids enrolled and staying in school has been the school meal program, which now feeds 1.2 million school children a hot meal daily and has contributed to the 66% drop in chronic malnutrition in school age children since 2007.

Under neoliberal governments, there were no school meals – in 1990 they even discontinued the daily glass of milk that was provided during the 1980s. I knew parents who had to make the decision to send their kids to school and have them go hungry, or to send them to dig through garbage for recyclables to sell so they could eat. Of course the parents chose eating over school.

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Students enjoying the school lunch program. Photo: Becca Mohally Renk

When my kids started school, the meal program was beginning. Throughout elementary school, the children’s families took turns cooking for their class. When it was my week to cook, I would go to the school and the teacher would send me home with rice, beans, oil, sugar and a mixture of ground cereal grains. I would cook the rice and beans for each day and mix the cereal with water and the sugar to make a nutritious drink. Then, like the other families did, we would add what we could to round out the meal –cheese, vegetables, perhaps a bit of chicken. On one memorable occasion, we made the treat of repocheta – fried corn tortillas covered in refried beans, farmer’s cheese, cabbage salad, sour cream and ketchup. It was immensely satisfying watching the children eat a nutritious meal before running off to play at recess. One year when there was a severe drought that drove up the price of food, for several months our children were given two meals at school each day to take pressure off families and ensure kids got enough to eat.

Another important support for students’ families has been the program where each elementary school student gets a backpack filled with school supplies. Each year our daughters and their classmates received backpacks in bright colors with notebooks, pencils, erasers, rulers and more at the beginning of the year, a huge cost savings for families, especially those with several school age children. Since 2007, 5.7 million backpacks have been handed out.

Getting kids enrolled in school is the first step, helping them succeed is another challenge that this government took on with its program Battle for the Sixth Grade. When Orla began first grade, there was a 13 year-old in her class who had never learned to read and write. Many students had been held back year after year due to irregular attendance. Today, rates for passing elementary and secondary grades have increased from 79% to 91%. Youth with no schooling at all has dropped from 24% to 4% since 2006, and Nicaragua is now the number one country in the world for educational attainment for women (UN Women, Women Into Politics 2021).

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Eibhlín’s class graduating sixth grade. Photo: Becca Mohally Renk

During my time as a parent of children in the Nicaraguan public school system, I have also seen the changes in curriculum and pedagogy.

When my daughters reminisce about elementary school, they talk about the school clean up days when they would bring machetes to cut weeds and would make brooms to sweep the yard with their classmates. They talk about their love for their teachers who gave creative assignments, took them on walking field trips around the village, and who brought their own craft supplies to class so the kids could do art. Now the Ministry of Education gives each teacher a packet of didactic materials at the beginning of the year to facilitate creative learning.

When my girls first started school, significant classroom time was taken up with the teacher dictating and students writing. There were few school books and each quarter there were written exams in most subjects. Since 2007, the Ministry of Education holds monthly in-service days where teachers are trained in new techniques and changes to the curriculum, leading to significant shifts in the classroom.

While there are still quizzes and periodic exams, particularly in mathematics, in most subjects students’ grades are cumulative and the focus is on group projects involving research and presentation. There is less dictation, and school books are now digital and available free to download to any smart phone from the Ministry of Education website. Students of all ages are encouraged to do research: all secondary schools have internet access and tablets, and many have a digital projector for use in classrooms and tech support staff who work with all the teachers on how to appropriately use technology in the classroom. In high schools, there are a wide range of opportunities for participation. Last year my kids participated in school and municipal-wide activities including the Day of the Book competition (where they made giant books and acted out a book for younger students), Miss Recycling (a competition to create an entirely recycled outfit & present it), a Science Fair with the theme of innovate green business ideas, cultural celebrations of dance and food from around the country, and Search and Rescue Brigades (organized by the local Fire Department) which trains students to respond to natural disasters such as earthquakes and volcanic explosions.

As they ushered in the new school year this week, our daughters were excited to discover that there are only 38 students registered in their classes, in comparison to the rest of secondary school when they’ve been in classrooms with 55 or 60 students. Although classrooms are open with banks of windows on either side, with so many students it was often chaotic.

The reduced class size is a new national policy to improve the quality of education at all levels and to make it easier to comply with COVID-19 guidelines. This change is made possible in part by years of investment in teacher training – since 2007 there are nearly 30% more teaching positions. There is also training for other positions – now for the first time teachers are required to study school administration for two years in order to qualify to be a principal.

As Eibhlín’s school career draws to a close, I’m so proud of her and her classmates, because I know what feat it is that so many of them are finishing high school. Under the neoliberal governments, there was no secondary school in our community at all, and many families couldn’t afford the transportion cost of sending their kids out of the village to study. Now, however, most of the kids who started preschool with Eibhlín will graduate at the same time she does. Our village now has Saturday school, a country-wide program that uses rural elementary school buildings for high school classes on Saturday. Students study from 8 AM to 2 PM one day per week, a schedule that allows older students in rural areas who have to work or young people who have babies to finish high school. Most of Eibhlín’s former classmates from elementary school now attend rural high school on Saturday, although there are others like her who study during the week in town. Family support is important to get students through to graduation, but the Ministry of Education also gives support – when they graduate, each of them will be given a cash prize of $45, enough to help cover graduation costs and get them enrolled in further education.

There are lots of opportunities for graduating students to further their education. This year the Ministry of Education has started a program in high schools and created a map on their website to teach students about the many university programs, associate degrees, and technical training available to them for free throughout the country. This will acquaint students with opportunities and help them find a program that matches their interests. Thanks to free third-level education and improved opportunities, since 2006 the percentage of population with a university degree in Nicaragua has risen from 9% to 19%.

Looking back on my daughters’ school careers, it is clear to me that they and their classmates are getting an excellent education, and I’ve never regretted our decision to send them to public school. On the contrary, I feel absolutely privileged to be part of a public school system that is working for all children and young people.

(Unless otherwise noted, statistics are sourced from a talk by Presidential Advisor on Education Salvador Vanegas, 6 November 2021, and the Plan Nacional de Lucha Contra La Pobreza Para el Desarrollo Humano 2022-2026).

https://afgj.org/nicanotes-01-26-2022
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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Thu Feb 10, 2022 3:34 pm

How Nicaragua Fights Poverty & Empowers Women Through the Ministry of Family Economy

Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on FEBRUARY 9, 2022

Image
Camila EscalanteMinister Justa Pérez of the Ministry of Family, Community, Cooperative and Associative Economy (MEFCCA) in Managua. January 2022.

In Managua, Nicaragua, we interviewed Minister Justa Pérez of the Ministry of Family, Community, Cooperative and Associative Economy, known as MEFCCA.

Could you start us off with a summary of what MEFCCA does to stimulate, develop and promote the popular economy?

With pleasure, greetings. I would like to tell you that the Ministry of Family Economy arose as part of the strategy of the Sandinista government in the fight against poverty. When Comandante Daniel took office in 2007, he decided to launch a National Plan for Human Development in which a number of public policies and a number of programs and projects aimed at the fight against poverty are being implemented. There are programs and projects aimed at restoring the rights of Nicaraguan families, starting with basic rights such as health, education and above all, the Ministry of Family Economy is responsible for promoting production at this early stage aimed at food security.

Then the Hambre Cero program (Zero Hunger) was launched, which is a very successful strategy of the Sandinista government, where more than 200,000 women were provided with capital and goods for reproduction. We are talking about goods that in the countryside are used to produce foond. We are talking about cows, pigs, pork and poultry. So, in a short period of time it was possible to have food production so that families could contribute to this, to improve these conditions and added to this, we saw the restitution of rights, road infrastructure, electric energy and telecommunications.

In the 15 years that we have been Pueblo Presidente, we have been able to reduce poverty and extreme poverty, reduce the poverty figures of almost 50%. 1 in 2 Nicaraguans was in poverty and almost 20% in extreme poverty. Today we continue to fight against poverty but in smaller numbers. Today we can say that we have eliminated hunger here. No matter how humble a household may be, it has three meals a day.

This is because it is guaranteed by policies and socio-productive programs. Here families have produced a lot of basic grains, a lot of products for export. Now, 2021 was the year in which we recovered economically thanks to the efforts that families have been making hand in hand with the government. We now have emblematic programs such as Hambre Cero, emblematic programs such as Usura Cero, programs such as Patio Saludable, which has to do with promoting production in small spaces, in family places, through school, family and community gardens.

And now in this new stage, we are working to promote all kinds of entrepreneurship in the countryside and in the city. 26 productive strategies are being promoted by the Sandinista government, including genetic improvement of the main items of deportation.

Today we are promoting the beef sector in the top ten export products. We’re also exporting beans and producing significant amounts of food from Nicaragua that have come to serve for export to neighboring countries in Central America.

So the Ministry of Family Economy has a very important mission to promote family agriculture in all its forms in a sustainable manner, promoting environmentally friendly agriculture, agriculture that has to do with the diversification of family plots, the incorporation of practices that have to do with adaptation to climate change.

We also have important items such as coffee, which occupies a very important place in exports and in the life of the Nicaraguan family. A large number of producers are dedicated to coffee production. And they are not only producing it well, but they are transforming it and exporting it.

We are complying with the international norms of market requirements. We have a national production system, which is the one that also ensures that producers are complying with these standards and also as part of the work of the Ministry of Family Economy. We manage the organizational part. We give the legal status to the cooperatives. We are in charge of the cooperative organization. There are a large number of agricultural cooperatives, but also service cooperatives. So we are working to strengthen the model in order to produce more, to produce with higher quality and to look for national and international markets.

In our country, a very important strategy is the commercialization spaces throughout Nicaragua. There are fairgrounds, municipal fairgrounds, national fairgrounds, where the idea is that fair trade can take place, that the producer sells directly to the consumer and that both are winners.

We are also strengthening capacities and we are also providing capital with solidarity credit and with technological bonds that help the family to take a step forward in this task that it has assumed as part of its co-responsibility in the model of shared responsibility of the families. We have been promoting creativity and innovation. We are in the National Program of Creative Economy, which has come to enhance the cultural industries and how to combine art, culture with the talent of our people. It is a wonderful thing and how our people are aligned to that, to that invitation of the Sandinista Front that together we are going to move forward in a different model, where the center of development is the person.

So there is a lot of motivation from the family. We’ve recovered the economy from significant damage to our economy which was done in 2018, in a failed coup attempt sponsored by the enemies of humanity and who wanted to take power away from the people, from the Pueblo Presidente. But 2021 meant the rebound in the economy for Nicaraguan families. There was growth of more than 9%, giving us a starting point for 2022 where sooner rather than later we can say that we are going to declare Nicaragua poverty free.

What would you say was the state of things before the government introduced these approaches?

It is important to know the strength and fortitude of the Nicaraguan people. For 16 years a campaign of fear was introduced here to say the least, targeting families who voted for the Sandinista front. Then came the war, the military service and the economic blockade.

And so we spent 16 years suffering and impoverishing as a nation. Then Comandante Daniel returned to power and began with all the policies that we have described at this time, and this gave positive results in the family, economic growth, better living conditions, elimination of hunger and malnutrition. This gave confidence to the people.

Then, during the 2016 elections, there was also a very strong campaign around the NICA Act. That’s when the sanctions began. However, the people ratified the FSLN government because it had already generated the confidence that it is the only government which will guarantee those steps towards well-being, towards development. During the 2021 campaign, Nicaragua was also threatened with sanctions and the international media did their thing, smearing Nicaragua.

But the beautiful thing now is that the people, aware that this is all just a media campaign, decided to continue trusting the model of faith, of family, of community of the Sandinista Front. In this sense, the leadership of Comandante Daniel and of comrade Rosario play a very important role. Also the international relations that have been strengthening. Re-establishing relations with China provides us with a new challenge, because it is no longer a matter of making raw materials or grains available for exports, but to move towards more finished products, industrialized and in larger volumes. So we are happy. We knew about the challenge, but we are working and preparing those conditions to produce more, to produce better quality, meeting standards, but also to industrialize.

We have been working as a production system on a national industry policy that will require some investments, some of this momentum, but we are already on that work path. We are preparing ourselves to continue producing our nation’s food, to continue supplying food to our dear brothers in Central America, but also to position some of our Nicaraguan products in China, but also in Russia. We have learned through our Minister of Finance about Russia’s interest in knowing or being able to exchange. They are very interested in cigars. We have an award for the best cigars in the world, but we have quality coffee, we have an award for the best fine cocoa.

So Nicaragua has been working on that path of recognition, on that path of efficient performance and on that conscience, a collective conscience that makes us unique as Nicaraguans. The support of Commander Daniel for the productive sectors, for the economic sectors of the country, are the ones that have allowed us to have the results we have with the equal participation of men and women.

Can you tell us about how the democratization of the economy has promoted the inclusion of women?

We work on a gender policy that has to do not only with names of women in positions or women as numbers, but as women participating, women making revolution, women transforming their lives. A very important program is the solidarity credit, as assets are directed to women. The Comandante and the Sandinista Front know that to provide capital to a woman is to provide for that family.

Our program, in its majority 80% of the protagonists are women in the commercialization spaces, in the credit program, in the field, in all the spaces of value addition are women, many women are participating, many young people.

That is why we say that there is a positive energy that has been unleashed and that we are taking advantage of to promote all these processes of democracy in our country. Because as the President said in an interview, democracy is not about getting the vote, democracy is responding to the needs of the people.

That’s what it is all about. The Sandinista government is carrying out a historic program of restitution of rights to the family, but above all a program that gives them the capacity and the possibility to live better, because our people have the right to live better, our people deserve to live better and that is the course we have decided. That is the course we have set and that is the direction we are moving towards.

So we are talking about an efficient public policy, where all the government actors work in an articulated and coordinated manner to provide this service to the families, to provide this timely support.

I was telling you that the same ministry was created in 2012 as part of the strategy to fight poverty and, together with it, the National System of Production, Consumption and Trade was created. So, in the system we are all the institutions that have to do with production and with the dynamization of the economy and also with technology, with health. Our Commander, with his wisdom, has been able to articulate these efforts in an efficient way, so that a producer has the support of all the institutions. For example, today we call the entrepreneurial route for enterprises. 26 productive strategies that contribute to the family’s becoming involved in a more sustained production, with greater volume, higher quality and willing to get better markets for their commercialization.

This is also a very important contribution made by other complementary institutions such as energy, health and education. Because if the family has solved the issue of their children’s education, the school lunch, their school supplies, if they have health programs, if they have a road, where their production will go, if they have electricity to transform, the family has more possibility to think about how to improve their productive performance, how to make a business efficient and how to generate more income, which in the end, our objective is to achieve that the family has better income for each activity they carry out, which contributes to satisfy their needs.

So, well, we have a very big task, very big, but very important in these times, preparing ourselves for a better future for the Nicaraguan family.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/02/ ... y-economy/

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NICANOTES, NICARAGUA
NicaNotes: We Won’t Rest in Defending the Revolution
February 10, 2022
By William Grigsby Vado

[Transcribed and translated by Miguel Mairena and Nan McCurdy from “Sin Fronteras, Feb. 4, 2022, minute 7 to 27 and a short selection from Feb. 9]

(William Grigsby is a Nicaraguan journalist, analyst and historian.)

Let us begin with the decision taken by the National Assembly at the request of the Ministry of the Interior to cancel the legal status of a handful of non-governmental organizations which in practice are fronts for European and North American interference in Nicaragua’s internal affairs. I believe that the logic that must be understood in this type of decision is the logic of the defense of the power of the Nicaraguan people, the defense of revolutionary power. In other words, in this logic we must understand that these types of decisions are not capricious, they are not excessive…. They are fair.

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“The CIA does not rest, US imperialism does not rest.”

The Yankees do not stop working to overthrow the revolution, to overthrow the people of Nicaragua. The Europeans don’t stop working in that direction either; they are the mouse’s tail, and they are the gringos’ bootlickers. So they [agents of the US in Nicaragua] say to Sullivan [US ambassador in Nicaragua], they keep asking him: “What are we going to do now?” We have to be clear: they keep asking him for their tasks; “Yes, sir, what are we going to do now?” So the Yankee aggression against Nicaragua has not rested, I repeat, they do not rest in the logic of aggression.

Neither will we ever rest in defending the revolution.

So in that same logic they created an ideological and organizational apparatus, a powerful one that they have been working on for many years.

It did not start when Daniel assumed the presidency in 2007, no, it began much earlier. They have been creating and financing … garage universities that have no academic quality but are businesses; they serve for money laundering and also to identify and recruit people, which is no novelty in Nicaragua. ….

The main source of recruitment [of US agents] is the universities or centers of higher education [in the US]…. They recruit people who have athletic abilities, who have above-average intelligence and have a rebellious attitude; that’s how they recruit and train them. It is the style of forming the security apparatuses of the United States, which are many. They are not only the FBI and the CIA. And it is not a bunch of disguised people who look for these [future] intelligence assets, to keep the people of the United States under control. And in some cases it is to prepare agents for aggression against other peoples.

So that style is reproduced in Nicaragua and not from recent times but since Somoza’s time. I could mention several well-known personalities, some of them already deceased, who were CIA agents, and who never even revealed their names. And even the CIA had some of its agents here killed because they had decided to leave the agency and join the effort of the people of Nicaragua and that is why they sent people to kill them. I could quickly mention four names of people killed between 1979 and 1981, sent to be killed by the CIA. So let’s not believe that this is a fantastic invention; no, this is reality, pure reality. There was [also] a famous CIA agent who was in the upper echelons of the Sandinista People’s Army and did a lot of damage at the time… and like him, there were many others.

What I want to say is that the CIA does not rest, US imperialism does not rest. That is why the counter intelligence that the Nicaraguan Army and the National Police do to avoid penetration in their ranks, for example, is so important.

The US has helped create this organizational and ideological apparatus in the universities, in centers of higher education with the purpose of recruiting individuals to serve their interests and also their ideological purpose. Remember that the revolutionary struggle is ultimately an ideological struggle because at the same time that we are triumphing in the battle against poverty we must also defeat the idea of imperialism. It always ends up being a cultural battle, an ideological battle … Remember Marxism [which says] that the ideological apparatus is made up of the educational system, the media and the … churches. And now I would add the social networks. These ideological structures have been very much penetrated by the American interests. Who is unaware, for example, that the United States had financed and consolidated the ideological apparatus of the Diocese of Estelí and the Universidad Católica del Trópico Seco (UCATSE) – which just lost its legal status, formerly called Francisco Luis Espinoza School of Agriculture and Livestock. It was donated to the diocese by the revolution; it was personally owned by Bishop Abelardo Mata and he has all the people close to him studying or working there. And later [Mata] used other instruments of the diocese for the formation of youth cadres who in turn reproduced the Yankee discourse [and participated in the 2018 attempted coup].

We should not lose sight of these things, that is, the conspiracy of US imperialism. They have never ceased, they do not cease in the war against Nicaragua. We cannot just be waiting for them to hit us again. And they were again preparing conditions for another coup.

We cannot be naïve about what is going on. A guy who is a lawyer and who was once a Sandinista, took over one of the private universities. And he had started talking to the gringos years ago; he was already working as a petty cashier for them [money laundering]. I had information about that, a student there passed it on to me about three years ago…. Here on the radio two professors came to tell me how that character did it, how he laundered the money, how he traveled to the United States and brought money or hired people to travel disguised as merchants and brought money, and instructions, of course. Then, about 4 or 6 months ago, a colleague passed on more information to us. Imagine, that now this character is crying, and furious [because his university lost its legal status]. The guy is a criminal. I won’t even get started on how they have swindled thousands of young men and women, forcing them to pay thousands of dollars for a degree. The poor kids spend five, ten years to get their degree, swindled. And then they tell them that they have been trained in a certain profession and when they go out to the labor market the poor kids do not know even half of what they need to know for that degree they have supposedly obtained; they were swindled.

Years ago there were 53 universities here in the country. Anybody could go to the National Assembly, before 2007, and say “Here I come – I want you to approve this university.” “How much are you going to give me [would say an Assembly member], OK then.” And suddenly a classroom would appear in a garage of a house with a sign for such and such university … and just as it appeared, it disappeared.

How many youth paid and had their money stolen? But these universities fulfilled three objectives: First – a money-making business, second, money laundering, and third, to work for the strategy of US aggression. I believe that we cannot abstain from this struggle because it is for the defense of revolutionary power, the defense of the people of Nicaragua.

The main thing now with these universities [that have lost their legal status] is that no student will be left in the lurch. They can continue their classes normally; they will receive their degrees. The National Council of Universities (CNU) will be responsible until they are assigned to another university.

The band of outlaws, of the Somocista movement, of the Somocista renovation movement (MRS), came out with a communiqué [against the action of ending the legal status of some universities – see News Briefs]. When have they ever defended the students? What they did [in 2018] was to destroy the UPOLI [a private university that was used and abused during the coup attempt and is one that recently lost its legal status]. Don’t you remember what they did with the UPOLI in the Somocista coup of 2018? They destroyed it! And it was people from inside there; from the Somocismo outlaw gang [MRS]. And they have wanted to go back to the old ways plotting another coup there and also in other places.

This is the big mistake imperialism is making, as well as all its hired assassins here. They think that we are stupid, and we are anything but that. As we were saying the other day – we are peaceful but we are not defenseless. Not only are we not defenseless, we know how to defend ourselves and win.

They believe that we might be careless and, if we are careless, “we’ll hit them again.” That is their logic. They are crazy. Aggression itself is madness. What is the crime of President Daniel Ortega and the people of Nicaragua? What is the crime of the Sandinista Front? To benefit the people of Nicaragua.

Yesterday (Feb. 3), for example, two other convictions were issued [of those recently tried for treason, conspiracy, money laundering, etc.].

Then come imbeciles like Gabriel Boric, who unfortunately was elected president of Chile, talking nonsense. What moral authority has Boric, when he negotiated, negotiated, the betrayal of the popular movement that had put Piñera against the wall. Not only Piñera, but the Chilean political system; and he negotiates the surrender behind the back of this movement, because he thought he might lose? In Chile there are thousands of political prisoners at the moment, whose crime was to walk in the demonstrations, who were not involved in any conspiracy, who did not want to overthrow Piñera, who were not armed, who did not murder people, who did not rape women, who did not destroy state property [as opposed to what the violent opposition did in Nicaragua in 2018]. No. They are in prison for opposing the system.

What are the Argentines going to say to me? They have Milagros Sala in prison for about six years for the crime of organizing and fighting.

What are the Mexicans going to tell me; they have thousands of political prisoners. I was reading about one case – 12 years in prison and he has not been prosecuted. There are people there imprisoned on the basis of torture, demonstrated by different local and international institutions. Yesterday they threw one in jail – a secretary of public security [minister] of a state…

What authority does that little king have [in Spain]? Or [Prime Minister] Pedro Sanchez? What moral authority do they have to talk about prisons, trials and so on? When they have prosecuted singers and composers simply for composing songs against the king.

What are they going to talk to me about? What freedom are they going to talk to me about? Just now they threw a lot of workers in jail for the strike in Andalucía. And didn’t the fighters for the independence of Catalonia spend years in jail? And their only crime was to organize a referendum. That was their crime. They were finally released, but their record wasn’t erased.

What is the United States going to tell me with thousands of political prisoners….

And Julian Assange? What is he? Isn’t he a global political prisoner? He is the political prisoner of the world capitalist system. Why is he in prison? Why is he being held hostage? For the crime of revealing the secrets of imperialism. This is his great crime.

Why did Edward Snowden have to flee to Russia? He was persecuted for revealing the barbarities, the atrocities that imperialism carries out. What moral authority are these people going to have?

What are Salvadorans going to tell me? What is Bukele going to tell me? He has women in jail for having abortions! They have women in jail who had miscarriages.

[From Sin Fronteras, 9 Feb. 2022: There are now protests in four Canadian states with truck drivers blocking the national capital and the Ambassador Bridge, the busiest commercial bridge with the United States. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sent a tweet in which he affirmed that “Canadians have the right to protest, to disagree with their government and to make their voices heard. We will always protect that right. But let’s be clear: you do not have the right to block our economy, or our democracy, or the daily lives of our fellow citizens. It has to stop.” The paradox is that when between April and July 2018 in Nicaragua, U.S.-funded terrorists ravaged Nicaragua with blockades, assassinations, burnings of public buildings, mass kidnappings, among other criminal rampages, Trudeau did not hesitate to offer his support to the tranqueros (violent road blockers).]
Here it is proven: those being tried are traitors to the homeland. They went to the United States to ask the Yankees to attack Nicaragua; to cut off loans from international financial organizations; to take [Nicaragua] out of CAFTA, to ask for money to carry out a military adventure. That is treason.

This is proven, documented. I ask myself, what would any of these presidents do if the same thing happened to them, what would they do if what happened to us happened to them? What would they do? What would the Spanish king and the slimy Pedro Sanchez do, if the Catalans, for example, went to say to Russia, to ask for help to achieve independence – give us arms, give us money; and Putin gives it to them. What would they do? It’s funny, not to say tragic.

U.S. imperialism must understand once and for all, and so must their hitmen in Europe, their servile governments, their European servants, the Boris Johnson, Pedro Sanchez, and all the rest. They must understand that there is no way they can overthrow us by force, there is no way. And there is no way they will beat us in elections. There is no way. Because the people of Nicaragua continue to rule. And they have enough dignity and conscience to continue voting for the Sandinista Front to defend their revolutionary project. Understand this once and for all.

https://afgj.org/nicanotes-02-10-2022
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Wed Feb 16, 2022 2:26 pm

The Gains of Nicaraguan Women During the Second Sandinista Government
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on FEBRUARY 15, 2022
Stansfield Smith

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Women, particularly those in the Third World, often find themselves with limited ability to participate in community organizations and political life because of the bondage poverty and their traditional sex role imposes on them. On them falls sole responsibility to care for their children and other family members, especially when sick; they maintain the home, cook the meals, wash the dishes, the clothes, bathe the children, clean the house, mend the clothes. This labor becomes unending manual labor when households have no electricity (consequently, no lights, no refrigerator, no labor-saving electrical devices), and no running water. The burden of this work impedes the social participation, self-expectations, and education of the female population.

Women in the Third World (and increasingly in the imperial First World) face problems of violence at home and in public, problems of food and water for the family, of proper shelter, and lack of health care for the family, and their own lack of access to education and thus work opportunities.

In Nicaragua, before the 1979 Sandinista revolution, men typically fulfilled few obligations for their children; men often abandoned the family, leaving the care to women. It was not uncommon to hear the abuse that men inflicted on women, to see women running to a neighbor for refuge. It was not uncommon to encounter orphaned children whose mothers died in childbirth, since maternal mortality was high. Common illnesses were aggravated because there were few hospitals and if there were, cash payment was demanded.

After the 1979 Sandinista victory, living conditions for women drastically improved, achievements the period of neoliberal rule (1990-2006) did not completely overturn. Throughout the second Sandinista period (2007- today), the material and social position of women again made giant steps forward.

The greatest advance has been made by poor women in the rural areas and barrios, historically without safety, electricity, water and sanitation services, health care, or paved roads. The liberation women have attained during the Sandinista era cannot be measured only by what we apply in North America: equal pay for equal work, the right to abortion, the right to affordable childcare, freedom from sexual discrimination. Women’s liberation in Third World countries involves matters that may not appear on the surface as women’s rights issues. These include the paving of roads, improving housing, legalized land tenure, school meal programs, new clinics and hospitals, electrification, plumbing, literacy campaigns, potable water, aid programs to campesinos, and crime reduction programs.

Because half of Nicaraguan families are headed by single mothers, this infrastructure development promotes the liberation and well-being of women. Government programs that directly or indirectly shorten the hours of household drudgery frees women to participate more in community life and increases their self-confidence and leadership. A country can have no greater democratic achievement than bringing about full and equal participation of women.

Women’s liberation Boosted with the FSLN’s Zero Hunger and Zero Usury programs

These programs, launched in 2007, raise the socio-economic position of women. Zero Hunger furnishes pigs, a pregnant cow, chickens, plants, seeds, fertilizers, and building materials to women in rural areas to diversify their production, upgrade the family diet, and strengthen women-run household economies. The agricultural assets provided are put in the woman’s name, equipping women to become more self-sufficient producers; it gives them more direct control and security over food for their children. This breaks women’s historic dependency on male breadwinners and encourages their self-confidence. The program has aided 275,000 poor families, over one million people (of a total of 6.6 million Nicaraguans), and has increased both their own food security and the nation’s food sovereignty.

Nicaragua now produces close to 90% of its own food, with most coming from small and medium farmers, many of them women. As Fausto Torrez of the Nicaraguan Rural Workers Association (ATC) correctly noted, “A nation that cannot feed itself is not free.”

The Zero Usury program is a microcredit mechanism that now charges 0.5% annual interest, not the world microcredit average of 35%. Over 445,000 women have received these low interest loans, typically three loans each. The program not only empowers women but is a key factor reducing poverty, unlocking pools of talent, and driving diversified and sustainable growth. Many women receiving loans have turned their businesses into cooperatives, providing jobs to other women. Since 2007, about 5,900 cooperatives have formed, with 300 being women’s cooperatives.

Poverty has been reduced from 48% in 2007 to 25% and extreme poverty from 17.5% to 7%. This benefited women in particular, since single mother households suffered more from poverty. The Zero Hunger and Zero Usury programs have lessened the traditional domestic violence, given that women in poverty suffer greater risk of violence and abuse than others.

Giving Women Titles to Property Is a Step Towards Women’s Liberation

Since most Nicaraguans live by small-scale farming or by small business, possessing the title of legal ownership is a major concern. Between 2007 and 2021, the FSLN government has given out 451,250 land titles in the countryside and the city, with women making up 55% of the property-owners who benefited. Providing women with the legal title to their own land was a great step towards their economic independence.

Infrastructure Programs Expand Women’s Freedom

The Sandinista government funded the building or renovation of 290,000 homes since 2007, free of charge for those in extreme poverty, or with interest free long-term loans. This aided over one million Nicaraguans, particularly single mothers, who head half of all Nicaraguan families.

In 2006 only 65% of the urban population had potable drinking water; now 92% do. Access to potable water in rural areas has doubled, from 28% to 55%. This frees women from the toilsome daily walk to the village well to carry buckets of water home to cook every meal, wash the dishes and clothes, and bathe the children. Homes connected to sewage disposal systems have grown from 30% in 2007 to 57% in 2021.

Now 99% of the population has electricity compared to 54% in 2006. As we know from experiencing electrical blackouts, electricity significantly frees our lives from time-consuming tasks. Street lighting has more than doubled, increasing security for all. Reliable home electricity enables the use of electrical labor-saving devices, such as a refrigerator.

Today, high speed internet connects and unites most of the country, reducing people’s isolation and lack of access to information. Virtually everyone has a cell phone, and free internet is now available in many public parks.

Nicaragua’s road system is now among the best in Latin America and the Caribbean, given it has built more roads in the last 15 years than were built in the previous two hundred. Outlying towns are now connected to the national network. Now women in rural areas can travel elsewhere to work, sell their products in nearby markets, attend events in other towns, and take themselves or their children to the hospital. This contributes to the fight against poverty and the fight for women’s liberation.

Better roads and housing, almost universal electrical and internet access, as well as indoor plumbing greatly lightens the burdens placed on women homemakers and provide them with greater freedom to participate in the world they live in.

The Sandinista Educational System Emancipates Women

The humanitarian nature of the FSLN governments, as opposed to the disregard by previous neoliberal regimes, is revealed by statistics on illiteracy. When the FSLN revolution triumphed in 1979, illiteracy topped 56%. Within ten years they reduced it to 12%. Yet by the end of the 16-year neoliberal period in 2006, which dismantled the free education system, illiteracy had again risen to 23%. Today the FSLN government has cut illiteracy to under 4%.

The FSLN made education completely free, eliminating school fees. This, combined with the aid programs for poor women, has allowed 100,000 children to return to school. The government began a school lunch program, a meal of beans and rice to 1.5 million school and pre-school children every day. Preschool, primary and secondary students are supplied with backpacks, glasses when needed, and low-income students receive uniforms at no cost. Now a much higher proportion of children are able to attend school, which provides more opportunities for mothers to work outside the home.

Nicaragua has established a nationwide free day care system, now numbering 265 centers. Mothers can take their young children to day care, freeing them from another of the major hurdles to entering the workforce.

Due to the vastly expanded and free medical system, the Zero Hunger, Zero Usury and other programs, chronic malnutrition in children under five has been cut in half, with chronic malnutrition in children six to twelve cut by two-thirds. Now it is rare to see kids with visible malnutrition, removing another preoccupation off mothers.

Schools and businesses never closed during the covid pandemic, and Nicaragua’s health system has been among the most successful in the world addressing covid. The country has the lowest number of covid deaths per million inhabitants among all the countries of the Americas.

Nicaragua has also built a system of parks, playgrounds, and other free recreation where mothers can take their children.

Throughout the school system, the Ministry of Education promotes a culture of equal rights and non-discrimination. It has implemented the new subject “Women’s Rights and Dignities,” which teaches students about women’s right to a life without harassment and abuse and the injustices of the patriarchal system. Campaigns were launched to promote the participation of both mom and dad in a child’s education, such as emphasizing that attending school meetings or performances are shared responsibilities of both parents.

Sandinista Free Health Care System Liberates women

In stark contrast to Nicaragua’s neoliberal years, with its destruction of the medical system, in contrast to other Central American countries and the United States with their privatized health care for profit, the Sandinistas have established community-based, free, preventive public health care. Accordingly, life expectancy has risen from 72 years in 2006 to 77 years today, now equal to the US level.

Health care units number over 1700, including 1,259 health posts and 192 health centers, with one third built since 2007. The country has 77 hospitals, with 21 new hospitals built, and 46 existing hospitals remodeled and modernized. Nicaragua provides 178 maternity homes near medical centers for expectant mothers with high-risk pregnancies or from rural areas to stay during the last weeks of pregnancy.

The United States is the richest country in the Americas, while Nicaragua is the third poorest. Yet in the US since 2010, over 100 rural hospitals have closed, and fewer than 50% of rural women have access to perinatal services within a 30-mile drive from their home. This has disproportionately affected low-income women, particularly Black and Latino ones.

Nicaragua has equipped 66 mobile clinics, which gave nearly 1.9 million consultations in 2020. These include cervical and breast cancer screenings, helping to cut the cervical cancer mortality rate by 34% since 2007. The number of women receiving Pap tests has increased from 181,491 in 2007 to 880,907 in 2020.

In the pre-Sandinista era, a fourth of pregnant women gave birth at home, with no doctor. There were few hospitals and pregnant women often had to travel rough dirt roads to reach a clinic or hospital. Now women need not worry about reaching a distant hospital while in labor because they can reside in a local maternity home for the last two weeks of their pregnancies and be monitored by doctors. In 2020, 67,222 pregnant women roomed in one of these homes, and could be accompanied by their mothers or sisters. As a result, 99% of births today are in medical centers, and maternal mortality fell from 115 deaths per 100,000 births in 2006 to 36 in 2020. These are giant steps forward in the liberation of women.

Contrary to the indifference to women in the US, Nicaraguan mothers receive one month off work before their baby is born, and two months off after; even men get five days off work when their baby is born. Mothers also receive free milk for 6 months. Men and women get five days off work when they marry.

The Question of Abortion Rights

The law making abortion illegal, removing the “life and health of the mother” exception, was passed in the National Assembly under President Bolaños in 2006. There had been a well-organized and funded campaign by Catholics all over Latin America as well as large marches over the previous two years in Nicaragua in favor of this law.

The law, supported by 80% of the people, was proposed immediately before the presidential election as a vote-getting ploy by Bolaños. The Sandinistas were a minority in the National Assembly at the time, and the FSLN legislators were released from party discipline for the vote. The majority abstained, while several voted in favor. The law has never been implemented nor rescinded.

Since the return to power of the Sandinistas in 2007 no woman nor governmental or private health professional has ever been prosecuted for any action related to abortion. Any woman whose life is in danger receives an abortion in government health centers or hospitals. Many places exist for women to get abortions; none have been closed nor attacked, nor are clandestine. The morning after pill and contraceptive services are widely available.

Sandinista Measures to Free Women from Violence

Nicaragua has created 102 women’s police stations, special units that include protecting women and children from sexual and domestic violence and abuse. Now women can talk to female police officers about crimes committed against them, whether it be abuse or rape, making it easier and more comfortable for women to file complaints, receive counseling for trauma, and ensure that violent crimes against women are prosecuted in a thorough and timely manner.

Women make up 34.3% of the 16,399 National Police officers, a high number for a police department. For instance, New York City and Los Angeles police are 18% women and Chicago is 23%.

The United Nations finds Nicaragua the safest country in Central America, with the lowest homicide rate, 7.2 per 100,000 (down from 13.4 in 2006), less than half the regional average of 19. It also has the lowest rate of femicides in Central America (0.7 per 100,000), one more testament to the Sandinista commitment to ending mistreatment of women. The government organizes citizens security assemblies to raise consciousness concerning violence against women and to handle the vulnerabilities women face in the family and community. Mifamilia, the Ministry of the Family, carries out house-to-house visits to stress prevention of violence against women and sexual abuse of children.

Nicaragua is the most successful regional country in combating drug trafficking and organized crime, freeing women from the insecurity that plagues women in places such as Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.

Women Leadership in the Nicaragua Government

The progress women have made during the second FSLN era is reflected in their participation in government. The 1980s Sandinista directorate contained no women. In 2007, the second Sandinista government mandated equal representation for women, ensuring that at least 50% of public offices be filled by women, from the national level to the municipal. Today, 9 out of 16 national government cabinet ministers are women. Women head the Supreme Electoral Council, the Supreme Court, the Attorney General’s office, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and account for 60% of judges. Women make up half of the National Assembly, of mayors, of vice-mayors and of municipal council members. Women so represented in high positions provides a model and inspires all women and girls to participate in building a new society with more humane human relations.

No Greater Democratic Victory than the Liberation of Women

The headway made in women’s liberation is seen in the Global Gender Gap Index. In 2007, Nicaragua ranked 90th on the index, yet by 2020 had jumped 5th place, behind only Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden.

Nicaragua is one country that has accomplished the most in liberating women from household drudgery and domestic slavery because of its policies favoring the social and political participation and economic advancement of poor women. Women have gained a women’s police commissariat, legal recognition of their property, new homes for abused women and for poor single mothers, economic programs that empower poorer women, abortion is not criminalized in practice, half of all political candidates and public office holders are women, extreme poverty has been cut by half, mostly benefiting women and children, domestic toil has been greatly reduced because of modernized national infrastructure, women have convenient and free health care. In their liberation struggle, Nicaraguan women are becoming ever more self-sufficient and confident in enforcing their long-neglected human rights. They are revolutionizing their collective self-image and ensuring their central role in building a new society. This betters the working class and campesinos as a whole by improving the quality of life of all and is a vital weapon in combating US economic warfare. As Lenin observed, “The experience of all liberation movements has shown that the success of a revolution depends on how much the women take part in it.” Nicaragua is one more living example that a new world is possible.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/02/ ... overnment/

So why does the mainstream Women's Liberation movement of the US not wholeheartedly embrace Nicaragua?

Class interests, that's why.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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