Envío Digital
 
Central American University - UCA  
  Number 265 | Agosto 2003

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Nicaragua

NICARAGUA BRIEFS

Envío team

HIGH-FLYING US BIRD BROUGHT DOWN

On July 11, the National Police captured a young US banker named Marc Harris and deported him in a matter of minutes in a lightning operation ordered directly by the US government without any consideration for Nicaragua’s migratory laws. Harris, a high roller, had created seven “briefcase businesses” to launder money all over the world; he had been most recently operating in several Latin American countries and took up residence in Nicaragua over a year ago. The US government had been tracking Harris’ steps since he left the United States in 1989, linking him to drug trafficking and other illegal dealings.
A week after putting Harris on the plane, the police searched his Managua house, seizing no fewer than 1,062 boxes of documents, 28 large filing cabinets, hundreds of videos and diskettes and
an array of computer equipment. In a letter promising to award Nicaragua part of the funds recovered from Harris if it collaborates in this case, the US Ambassador advised Nicaraguan Attorney General Julio Centeno tha ther government is very interested in getting its hands on all this documentation, 80% of which is in English. While Harris began his trips to Nicaragua in 1996, he entered and left the country 78 times in the last 13 months alone. The private jet he used, which tested positive for cocaine, was earlier used to flee the country by three top Alemán government officials accused of corruption.

A MORATORIUM ON THE FREE TRADE AGREEMENT?

At the beginning of August, various Nicaraguan civil society organizations, in coordination with similar organizations from other countries in the region, proposed a five-year moratorium on the US-Central America free trade agreement. The United States is hoping to wrap up the current negotiations by this December so that CAFTA, as the agreement is known, can go into effect by the end of 2004. Proponents of the moratorium justify their proposal on the grounds of the deep differences that have been emerging among the region’s countries, the small and medium producers’ unreadiness to deal with the enormous and unjust challenges implied and the worrying reality that the agreement’s objectives do not aid the national development strategies of any of the Central American countries.

NICARAGUA’S SECOND BIOSPHERE RESERVE
The Indio Maíz Reserve, which covers 265,000 hectares in southeast Nicaragua and is bordered by the San Juan, Maíz and Indio rivers, was designated a World Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in July. UNESCO considers the area an ecosystem with preserved landscapes, genetic diversity and a large variety of species that permits a balanced relationship between humanity and the environment. UNESCO granted a similar title to the Bosawás Reserve in Nicaragua’s north-central area in 1996.

NEW CENTRAL AMERICAN HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT

In July, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) presented its second human development report on Central America, which centers on issues related to democracy in the region. The first report showed Nicaragua dropping from 118 to 121 on the list of 175 countries analyzed in the course of a year. (Its neighbor Costa Rica occupies 42nd place). This second report sees the existing democratic systems and the end of the region’s wars as positive opportunities for progress, but calls that progress “slow and uncertain.” It also qualifies the region’s democratic systems as “intermittent” since the citizens only exercise democracy to elect those who will govern them, with no subsequent possibility of exercising any control over those they elected. When presenting the report in Nicaragua, UNDP officials spoke of the pending free trade agreement with the United States as both a “threat” and an “opportunity.” The report concludes that although there has been a drop in poverty rates in the area’s six countries, the actual number of poor has increased.

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