“I don’t want candies in Hell”: A 20-year look at violence against women
2021 Mayo Nicaragua
The woman who sat facing me was still recognizable after more than twenty years. When I first met Ana Cristina in 1995, she was a young law student...

The human face of police harassment
2021 Mayo Nicaragua
On May 17, it’ll be a month of uninterrupted harassment at my home by the National Police. Around six to eight officers, sometimes in civilian clothes...

On our way to the “worst election possible”
2021 Mayo Nicaragua
Last October, the Organization of American States (OAS) issued a strongly worded resolution “urging” Nicaragua’s President Ortega to make seven specific...

Nicaragua briefs
2021 Mayo Nicaragua
RISE IN GOLD MINING Raw gold has become Nicaragua’s number-one export since 2020, over beef, coffee and sugar. This year, the sector hopes...

Nicaragua briefs
2021 Abril Nicaragua
NATIONAL PANDEMIC ALERT “The health crisis the coronavirus pandemic caused in Costa Rica should have led the Nicaraguan government to declare...

“Uniting our voices to categorically reject the government’s reforms”
2021 Abril Nicaragua
For our homeland to peacefully overcome the profound national crisis, aggravated by the regime’s escalating repression since 2018, it is essential to...

Given the government’s lack of political will…
2021 Abril Nicaragua
On April 19, Nicaraguans commemorated three years of confronting the most serious socio-political crisis ever experienced in peacetime. Different actors...

“We can beat Ortega if we vote en masse and united”
2021 Abril Nicaragua
French writer Victor Hugo said there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. The time for electoral reforms has finally come. We...

Hopefully waiting to find a way out
2021 Abril Nicaragua
Three years have passed since the spontaneous uprising against the authoritari-an regime of Daniel Ortega in April 2018 that many see as a watershed...

Nicaragura briefs
2021 Marzo Nicaragua
POLITICAL PRISONERS The latest Amnesty International (AI) report says that 1,614 political prisoners have passed through Nicaragua’s jails...

Year one of the pandemic
2021 Marzo Nicaragua
March 18 marked one year since the first COVID-19 case was detected in Nicaragua. In that time, officialdom irresponsibly and persistently concealed...

The pieces are starting to fall into place for the election race
2021 Marzo Nicaragua
We are fast approaching the crucial month of May, set in a resolution by the Organization of American States (OAS) last October as the deadline by which...

“Environmental protection is going through its worst moments”
2021 Marzo Nicaragua
In April, the Humboldt Center will celebrate 30 years of working for the environment. To commemorate this date, we offer our country a balance sheet...

Alea iacta est?
2021 Enero Nicaragua
Nicaragua is beginning the new year clueless about the evolution and possible mutations of the coronavirus in our country as it waits for at least one...

After the hurricanes, someone has to speak for the Caribbean Coast
2021 Enero Nicaragua
As envío described in its last issue of 2020, Eta, the first of two powerful hurricanes that tore through northeastern Nicaragua this year, made landfall...

Nicaragura briefs
2021 Enero Nicaragua
PANDEMIC—NEW OUTBREAK As predicted, Nicaragua has experienced a new COVID-19 outbreak since December due to end-of-year festivities and the...

“Not even one has been fulfilled”
2020 Diciembre Nicaragua
Madam María Arena, president of the subcommi¬¬ttee on Human Rights, esteemed members of the European Parliament. I would like to begin by thanking...

Two hurricanes and a financial deluge were game changers
2020 Diciembre Nicaragua
Both the dictatorship and the blue and white opposition were clearer about the steps to take—or avoid—as long as President Trump and his ever-changing...

The Indio Maíz Biological Reserve: We’re losing this national treasure
2020 Diciembre Nicaragua
In late September, in the community of Nueva Quezada in the department of Río San Juan, the Nicaraguan Army detained 18 members of the Rama Kriol Territorial...

Remembering for History: Memories of “El Cap”
2020 Diciembre Nicaragua
“When I got to my house, I saw a large poster with my picture on the wall. I went in and gave my mom a hug. ‘The poster was the one we took to the...

“We need to talk to others with empathy and trust in their good faith”
2020 Diciembre Nicaragua
I can speak from inside the Civic Alliance, but don’t regard me as its spokesperson because that I’m not. These days I’m just trying to discuss...

Nicaragura briefs
2020 Diciembre Nicaragua
THE PANDEMIC ADVANCES While the government reduces the number of infections and deaths from the coronavirus pandemic in each of its brief weekly...

Priorities for dealing with Nicaragua’s new COVID-19 phase
2020 Noviembre Nicaragua
Nicaraguans have been hit hard by COVID-19. The pandemic has caused many deaths, as well as significant economic losses due to the downturn in productivity...

The OAS sets a deadline: Is this the regime’s last opportunity?
2020 Noviembre Nicaragua
T here have been numerous OAS General Assembly and Permanent Council meetings, reports and resolutions about Nica¬ragua’s crisis over the past two years....

Nicaragura briefs
2020 Noviembre Nicaragua
LAKE COCIBOLCA CONTAMINATED Amaru Ruiz, director of Fundación del Río, sounded a warning about the serious consequences of a recent shipwreck...

“After the OAS resolution, pressuring Ortega daily is our job”
2020 Noviembre Nicaragua
In 1979 I was a priest and a member of what was called the Group of Twelve, made up of intellectuals, profe¬ssionals, and business and religious leaders...

Before night sets in
2020 Octubre Nicaragua
September, the month of Nicaragua’s Independence celebrations, showed us a regime determined to let nothing stand in the way of it remaining in power...

“It’s time to be clear: Without unity we won’t defeat Ortega”
2020 Octubre Nicaragua
I ’m thankful for the opportunity to share with envoi things I’ve had stuck in my heart and my mind for some time and for which I’ve not always...

Nicaragua briefs
2020 Octubre Nicaragua
CITIZEN’S OBSERVATORY REPORT ON COVID-19 On September 11, six months after the first case of COVID-19 was officially recognized in Nicaragua,...

“Justice will come. It’s merited… and we will be there”
2020 Octubre Nicaragua
The seriousness of the crimes of sexual violence, specifically those committed in Nicaragua, matched the requirements of this Court. I think telling...

“The sexual violence committed by the State of Nicaragua is a crime against humanity”
2020 Octubre Nicaragua
Eleven women and seven men had the courage to tell their stories of torture that took place at different locations in Nicaragua between April 21 and...

“Until the storm clouds pass”
2020 Septiembre Nicaragua
The National Coalition’s prospects of being a strong and united force against the autho¬ritarian regime of Daniel Ortega and his wife are increasingly...

External resources give the regime economic breathing room
2020 Septiembre Nicaragua
Just as Fox News portrays a “parallel universe” much more favorable to President Trump than the other media outlets in the United States report on,...

“Changing Nicaragua is about becoming aware of the environmental emergency”
2020 Septiembre Nicaragua
Will the pandemic have positive or negative environmental effects in Nicaragua? Before addressing this urgent question, it’s necessary to understand...

Nicaragua Briefs
2020 Septiembre Nicaragua
TARGETING THE CATHOLIC CHURCH The regime has added ongoing subjugation tactics, like those deployed against the Catholic Church, to its strategy...

Nicaragua Briefs
2020 Agosto Nicaragua
DEADLY CELEBRATIONS IN LA TRINIDAD During the afternoon of July 19, a vehicle carrying FSLN sympathizers was driving through a neighborhood...

“I want Nicaraguan society to see COSEP with fresh eyes”
2020 Agosto Nicaragua
Independent of the results of COSEP’s elections last September, a desire for change can be felt in this umbrella organization. And I’m pleased to have...

Angels and demons
2020 Agosto Nicaragua
In the weeks before this year’s July 19th anniversary of the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship, the question of how the regime would celebrate...

Nicaragua briefs
2020 Julio Nicaragua
SANCTIONS FROM SWITZERLAND The Federal Council of Switzerland, a European country that is not a member of the European Union (EU), sanctioned...

“Online education has been our lifeline”
2020 Julio Nicaragua
I am an anthropologist and my doctoral thesis was a sociological analysis of the results of neoliberal reforms in university education. I want to discuss...

The ignominious end of Edén Pastora
2020 Julio Nicaragua
The death of guerrilla comandante Edén Pastora Gómez, alias Comandante Cero, from COVID-19 on June 16 attracted both national and international...

Can the social majority turn itself into the political majority?
2020 Julio Nicaragua
CID-Gallup used three words to sum up the findings of its latest poll, presented on June 17: “Nicaraguans want change.” That same day, seeing that the...

Nicaragua briefs
2020 Junio Nicaragua
HUNGER AND POVERTY A report by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization predicts that the coronavirus pandemic will bring more...

“Our health system responds to political orders, not to the public”
2020 Junio Nicaragua
After 44 years working in this profession, I am now, for the first time in my life, seeing Nicaraguans asking—crying out for—us to guide them about what...

“I can’t envision the FSLN’s future”
2020 Junio Nicaragua
I ’ve never been a theoretician of anything; I’m not an intellectual. What I am is a practical man; an operator, a “shoemaker,” as they once called...

The regime’s worst hours... to date
2020 Junio Nicaragua
For three months President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, consistently denied the pandemic, ignoring the World Health Organization’s...

“The Coronavirus has lain bare the tragedy we’re experiencing”
2020 Mayo Nicaragua
NICARAGUA Jorge A. Huete Pérez Our world has experienced pandemics of different magnitudes over the last hundred years. All have allowed...

April 2018 + 2: Resisting the dictatorship and now the virus
2020 Mayo Nicaragua
In an April 6 article titled “Love in the time of COVID-19: negligence in the Nicaraguan response,” the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet...

Nicaragua briefs
2020 Mayo Nicaragua
ECONOMIC MEASURES The Multidisciplinary Scientific Committee, created to respond to the pandemic, issued a statement on March 7 in which it...

Nicaragau briefs
2020 Abril Nicaragua
ALMAGRO REELECTED TO OAS AND TRUJILLO MOVED TO THE STATE DEPT. With the votes of 23 of the 34 States attending, Luis Almagro was reelected...

The virus changed everything …
2020 Abril Nicaragua
The COVID-19 virus has drastically changed personal, famlily, national and global plans everywhere, and those of the Ortega regime have been no exception....

“We’re getting better organized to engage the dictatorship”
2020 Abril Nicaragua
The National Coalition, presented to the Nicaraguan public on February 25, was convened by the Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy and the National...

Letter to Ernesto Cardenal from a young poet
2020 Abril Nicaragua
My first contact with your work was at the age of 15, when I found an edition of “Oración por Marilyn Monroe” (Prayer for Marilyn Monroe) on...

The marathon has begun …
2020 Marzo Nicaragua
With more than 60 political prisoners still behind bars, the entire country under official control, paramilitaries flaunting their repressive viciousness...

“We’re facing an educational emergency”
2020 Marzo Nicaragua
What is the educational context in today’s world? And in what context is education happening in Nicaragua? The answers to these questions and a brief...

Continued social polarization or cohesion? A particular look at Masaya
2020 Marzo Nicaragua
What is social polarization? According to the well-known social psychologist Ignacio Martín-Baró, who analyzed the conflicts in the Central American...

Nicaragua briefs
2020 Marzo Nicaragua
ANOTHER MEGAPROJECT? Behind closed doors the government signed a 25-year sales agreement on February 17 with New Fortress Energy, a US company,...

“The public health system is incapable of responding to our mental health crisis”
2020 Febrero Nicaragua
The crisis in Nicaragua these past two years has affected the life and mental health of many people. It began brewing as the public institutions, including...

2020 will be a year of birth pains
2020 Febrero Nicaragua
Nicaragua is trying to break through the shell of its old political and social history to make way for a new one, but such a birth necessarily involves...

Nicaragua briefs
2020 Febrero Nicaragua
ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE NATIONAL COALITION This is the text released by the Blue and White National Unity and the Civic Alliance for Democracy...

The effects of the unexpected Evo factor
2019 Diciembre Nicaragua
Evo Morales’ government, which enjoyed the best international media image of any in the ALBA group, came to an end following the loss of army and police...

Nicaragua briefs
2019 Diciembre Nicaragua
LULA KNOWS WHEN TO QUIT In a November 8 speech in which he railed against Nicaragua’s bishops and business elite, Daniel Ortega celebrated...

Land takeovers in the 2018 crisis and Nicaragua’s housing deficit
2019 Diciembre Nicaragua
When I woke up in the morning, I heard that everyone was going house to house advising us to go out and see because outsiders and people from around...

“We journalists have taken sides”
2019 Diciembre Nicaragua
Neither as citizens nor as journalists were we prepared for what we have gone through in Nicaragua since April 2018. The Nicaraguan media have developed...

Nicaragua briefs
2019 Noviembre Nicaragua
ORTEGA GOVERNMENT NO. 1 LETHAL REPRESSOR OF CIVIL PROTESTS On October 25, Nicaragua’s daily newspaper La Prensa presented a journalistic...

“We already won the elections; now we need to organize to make it real”
2019 Noviembre Nicaragua
The Electoral Reform Promotion Group has been working in Nicaragua since 2002, and has made a very important contribution to this institutional challenge....

Will we have new Army leadership or five more years of the same?
2019 Noviembre Nicaragua
The military leadership’s succession process is very relevant to the building of democratic institutions in Nicaragua. To date, despite that importance,...

Reflections of Nicaragua’s crisis in Latin America’s new social uprisings
2019 Noviembre Nicaragua
Before comparing and contrasting what has been happening the past couple of months in countries as near as Honduras and as far away as Chile with what...

Nicaragua briefs
2019 Octubre Nicaragua
THE NATIONAL FLAG AS A COMPETITIVE SYMBOL? Starting in April 2018, the blue and white national flag became a symbol of the rebellion. It’s...

From the UN to a regime that denies its human rights violations
2019 Octubre Nicaragua
A t the onset of Nicaragua’s socio-political and human rights crisis in April 2018, the Of¬fice of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)...

Utopias in Central America (part 2): The dreams and nightmares in literature
2019 Octubre Nicaragua
Central America had more than its share of writers in the 1980s who dreamed about living in a country without injustices. A sacrificial war was the...

The standoff between the majority and the dictatorship hits the year-and-a-half mark
2019 Octubre Nicaragua
The political drama between the Ortega-Murillo regime and the blue and white opposition continues after all these months, with neither side ceding. ...

“We want to help create a coalition that represents the whole movement”
2019 Septiembre Nicaragua
Once Ortega decided to end negotiations this July, the Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy entered a new phase in the struggle to find a way out...

Nicaragua briefs
2019 Septiembre Nicaragua
ROWING TENSIONS BETWEEN NICARAGUA AND COSTA RICA In the middle of the night on August 12, Costa Rica’s police force confronted a group of...

The players move to their own beat as real time advances relentlessly
2019 Septiembre Nicaragua
In this year’s second national survey by the Borge y Asociados polling firm, conducted in mid-July, 63% of those surveyed said the country has not “returned...

Nicaragua briefs
2019 Agosto Nicaragua
CAPITAL SINS In an article published by the Spanish newspaper El País titled “El sueño de la razón” (taken from the Goya painting,...

Words are my machete
2019 Agosto Nicaragua
Those whose calling is to write were readers first. It’s practically a law. My father was a journalist, and his workspace was packed with books. I...

The six phases of state repression against the civic uprising
2019 Agosto Nicaragua
Ever since the civic insurrection kicked off in April 2018, the government of Daniel Ortega has responded to the massive peaceful protests with repressive...

Has there ever been rural development in Nicaragua?
2019 Agosto Nicaragua
When we were nomads, our entire lives were in contact with nature. We human beings would interact permanently with the earth, waters, trees, their fruits…...

The beginning of the April uprising…
2019 Agosto Nicaragua
Regardless of the specific nature of all the events examined by the GIEI, the protests were at first peaceful. Use of mortars The marches,...

Here until 2021… and even beyond?
2019 Agosto Nicaragua
On July 25, Nicaragua’s Student Day, representatives of the different university coalitions formed around the April 2018 rebellion against the Ortega...

The Ortega–Murillo partnership’s perverse repression and betrayal
2019 Julio Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s history is piled high with battles in defense of its identity. Like the rest of Latin America, the country fought for its political, cultural...

Nicaragua briefs
2019 Julio Nicaragua
RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION Abelardo Mata, the bishop of Estelí, went to the United States in late May to meet with the Nicaraguan diaspora in various...

40 years of the Sandinista revolution: Could it have been different?
2019 Julio Nicaragua
I ’ll do my best to evaluate the revolution, though I’m hesitant to do so for several reasons. First because I was there as a protagonist so share responsibilities...

Repression in the prisons and abuse in the courts
2019 Julio Nicaragua
This report examines what happened, after the crackdown in the streets, to many of the hundreds of people arrested by police or abducted by armed pro-government...

An ultimatum to the dictatorship?
2019 Julio Nicaragua
Fifteen months after the civic rebellion sparked in April 2018, some analysts say the regime now has some serious dilemmas. It’s clear that “el...

40 years later: How women from both sides experienced the revolution
2019 Julio Nicaragua
Was there a female way of experiencing the revolution? The answer is affirmative. Yes, there was and it was very different if we’re talking about the...

Nicaragua briefs
2019 Junio Nicaragua
CID-GALLUP POLL In the latest CID-Gallup poll, which surveyed a national sample of 1,205 people between May 7 and 21, a total of 77%—among...

The Caribbean Coast’s voice in the Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy
2019 Junio Nicaragua
I still remember when Monsignor David Zywiec, the Catholic bishop of Siuna, up until a few months ago Auxiliary Bishop of Bluefields, called me on...

Will the transition speed up or will Ortega kill the negotiations?
2019 Junio Nicaragua
Although the way out of the national crisis is clear—a serious negotiation that returns civil liberties, guarantees justice to the victims and establishes...

Torture in the detention centers
2019 Junio Nicaragua
When we interviewed Alex Pérez, a former political prisoner, after his release, he answered our greeting, “How are you?” with: “I’m here, going back...

Overhaul the existing Police or create a new one?
2019 Junio Nicaragua
Two years ago no one could have even imagined that Nicaragua would be shaken by the most severe political crisis of its recent history—an unarmed civic...

Where’s the way out…?
2019 Mayo Nicaragua
Nicaragua has not had a single day of “normality” since April 2018. The economy is paralyzed, and with no hint of recovery it looks worse every day:...

Nicaragua briefs
2019 Mayo Nicaragua
CENTRAL BANK’S ANNUAL ECONOMIC REPORT On April 9, Ovidio Reyes, president of the Central Bank of Nicaragua (BCN), presented his institution’s...

The repressive structures will eventually have to be investigated
2019 Mayo Nicaragua
With Ortega’s return to official power in 2007, political violence began to increase throughout Nicaragua. The police became increasingly drawn into...

Today’s challenge for the Blue and White opposition
2019 Mayo Nicaragua
In January 2018, just three months before the April uprising, I wrote in envío that “I refuse to believe today’s youth, despite the heavy dose of entertainment...

A year after the April rebellion: Still resisting and searching for resolution
2019 Abril Nicaragua
Way back in May-June 2018, a first round of talks was held to resolve the national political crisis that had been simmering silently for years but boiled...

The lasting imprint of pain and indignation
2019 Abril Nicaragua
There are many cases of family members of April’s victims being subjected to revictimization. One exam¬ple of revictimization in found in the consequences...

Nicaragua briefs
2019 Abril Nicaragua
ON THE IACHR BLACK LIST Back on December 21, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) added Nicaragua to its “black list” for...

“Even with the best agreements, the economy won’t recover until 2023
2019 Abril Nicaragua
I don’t bring good news and probably with what I’ll share I’ll add to the perception that things are much worse than we imagine in Nicaragua. I’ll...

Negotiation time again: For real or another stall?
2019 Marzo Nicaragua
“We can no longer talk about how we’re going to return to the situation before April. No longer! That has now passed! .... We need to have a table,...

The Ortega regime in the global and regional context
2019 Marzo Nicaragua
Nicaraguans’ civil struggle against the Ortega dictatorship is influenced by what’s happening in Latin America. At the same time, what’s happening in...

Nicaragua briefs
2019 Marzo Nicaragua
SENTENCES AGAINST PEASANT LEADERS the rural farmers Medardo Mairena, Tedro Mena and Luis Orlando Icabalceta, leaders of the anti-canal peasant...

“I want this nightmare to be over”
2019 Marzo Nicaragua
In our work as the GIEI, we considered it important to reflect the psycho-social impact of the human rights violations endured by victims and their families...

How did adults view April’s rebellious youth?
2019 Marzo Nicaragua
Five university youth organizations made up the heart and muscle of last April’s revolt. Their debut on the nation’s political stage took analysts by...

Nicaragua briefs
2019 Febrero Nicaragua
DANIEL BADMOUTHS HIS BROTHER Speaking at an event called by the pro-government National Student Union on December 3, Daniel Ortega effectively...

“Crimes against humanity were committed”
2019 Febrero Nicaragua
The significance of the acts of violence perpetrated by the State starting on April 18, 2018, compels the question of whether they may be considered...

An urgent message for the Army of Nicaragua
2019 Febrero Nicaragua
The national crisis resulting from the Ortega-Murillo regime’s bloody repression of the unarmed civic uprising starting last April 18 has had devastating...

Are we getting closer to the way out of the crisis?
2019 Febrero Nicaragua
Daniel Ortega’s project has been closely linked to Venezuela’s ever since 2007, when Ortega signed a political and economic alliance with Venezuelan...

April 2018: An insurrection of the nation’s consciousness
2018 Diciembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua hadn’t been front-page news in the international media for almost three decades. In April when the bloodshed began in Managua and later in...

A regime shooting at a civic revolution
2018 Diciembre Nicaragua
The insurrection of civic consciousness that exploded in April was still very much alive in May. Many people in many municipalities continued protesting...

In the lead-up to the insurrection the country was in a “betting mode”
2018 Diciembre Nicaragua
Tension was already in the air for the Ortega–Murillo government as we entered 2018. All through 2017 the economy had begun to chafe with the drop in...

Between uncertainty about the end and hope that “we’re winning”
2018 Diciembre Nicaragua
In April and even into May, a solution had seemed just around the corner. But the regime’s disproportionate and criminal use of force against the protests...

After 100 days of insurrection, the world now knows what’s happening
2018 Diciembre Nicaragua
The massive and unjustifiable emotional stress on Nicaraguans imposed by the government’s policy of terror had become palpable by July. Everyone had...

Blue and white resistance v. the state of exception
2018 Diciembre Nicaragua
Six months into the April insurrection, Nicaragua entered an undeclared state of exception, the economy was poised for a nosedive and Washington’s sanctions...

Prologue
2018 Diciembre Nicaragua
April 2018 will be engraved forever on the national consciousness. The regime’s disproportionately repressive response to the first civic protests...

Pressing questions at the end of this year of rebellion
2018 Diciembre Nicaragua
This was a year of economic belt-tightening. If the political, social, economic and definitely humanitarian crisis doesn’t move toward resolution soon,...

Year-end postscript
2018 Diciembre Nicaragua
As we close this special edition in English three weeks after the Spanish one, a series of particularly important events, some expected and some not,...

Resisting the strategy of terror
2018 Diciembre Nicaragua
By the May 30 attack on the Mothers’ Day march, the government’s strategy for dealing with the grassroots rebellion had become clear: repress (dismantle...

Nicaragua briefs
2018 Noviembre Nicaragua
IACHR IN COSTA RICA A delegation of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and its Follow-up Mechanism in Nicaragua (MESENI)...

The Nicaraguan Army: Spectator or accomplice?
2018 Noviembre Nicaragua
From the moment on April 22, five days into the unprecedented peaceful civic rebellion, that the Ortega-Murillo government withdrew its controversial...

Thoughts and emotions behind the April insurrection
2018 Noviembre Nicaragua
The April 2018 uprising was not, as has been said about the fall of the Bastille, “a clap of thunder in a serene sky.” The political protests against...

“We must avoid a civil war at all cost”
2018 Noviembre Nicaragua
There’s nothing good about war. I experienced it for years and I’m increasingly convinced that nothing good comes of it. Now, thanks to what we’ve...

What happened in the Police under Aminta Granera’s command?
2018 Noviembre Nicaragua
The departure of First Commissioner Aminta Granera as chief of the National Police wasn’t a dignified event, quite the contrary. After almost 13 years...

Pressing questions at the end of this year of rebellion
2018 Noviembre Nicaragua
This was a year of economic belt-tightening, largely but not only as a result of the political crisis. If that crisis continues unresolved, the coming...

University struggles in Nicaragua (part 2) The April students: More challenges and new possibilities
2018 Octubre Nicaragua
British historian Christopher Hill firmly believed that “Hhstory has to be rewritten in every generation, because although the past does not change,...

Blue and white resistance v. the state of exception
2018 Octubre Nicaragua
Breaking news: On October 4, just as this issue was closing, more than 40 national and territorial-level civil society organizations headed by the Civic...

Nicaragua briefs
2018 Octubre Nicaragua
CENTRAL BANK FIGURES NO LONGER PUBLISHED On September 6 the Central Bank of Nicaragua (BCN) stopped publishing daily reports about the status...

“Together we’re a volcano... but we had forgotten it”
2018 Octubre Nicaragua
If someone had told me six months ago that young Nicaraguans would be leading a citizens’ insurrection against Daniel Ortega’s tyranny today, I would...

“The regime is using the judicial system as a repressive political weapon”
2018 Octubre Nicaragua
The political crisis we’re going through caught us all by surprise. We were an apathetic society, with even the energy of our youth, which is so fundamental...

A time of uncertainty, a time of hope
2018 Septiembre Nicaragua
Five months into the insurrection of civic consciousness that hit the country in April, President Ortega is now proclaiming that the country is “normalized.”...

What are the economic limits to Ortega’s political project?
2018 Septiembre Nicaragua
In recent months, Nicaragua’s economy has been in a critical situation known as a slowdown, which means a lower rate of economic growth. Technically...

University struggles in Nicaragua (part 1) How we got to the 1959 student massacre
2018 Septiembre Nicaragua
British historian Christopher Hill firmly believed that “history had to be rewritten in every generation because, although the past doesn’t change, the...

Human rights violations and abuses in the context of protests in Nicaragua
2018 Septiembre Nicaragua
The present report describes the patterns of human rights violations and abuses committed between 18 April and 18 August 2018 in relation to the social...

Nicaragua briefs
2018 Septiembre Nicaragua
APA SOUNDS A NICARAGUA ALARM” A joint mission of the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) and Reporters without Borders, headed by IAPA...

The world now knows what’s happening in Nicaragua
2018 Agosto Nicaragua
For some years now, poet-priest Ernesto Cardenal, Nicaragua’s “ambassador-at-large,” repeated wherever he has traveled that “the world needs to know...

“The best solution for everyone, especially Ortega, is early elections”
2018 Agosto Nicaragua
We in Ethics & Transparency called a press conference at the end of June in which we said the crisiswe’re now experiencing in Nicaragua is the result...

Musings on the April rebellion from a historical perspective
2018 Agosto Nicaragua
In one of his controversial books, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek recalls an old Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times!” The social...

Nicaragua briefs
2018 Agosto Nicaragua
BRAZILIAN STUDENT MURDERED On July 23, Raynéia Gabrielle da Costa Lima Rocha, a 30-year-old Brazilian medical student who was finishing up...

“The solution lies in measuring strength at the ballot box, not with weapons”
2018 Agosto Nicaragua
Nicaragua today is—continues to be—a victim of violence, repression and murder, with utterly disastrous consequences for the country. We condemn each...

The government’s policy of terror has created a dilemma for the Army
2018 Julio Nicaragua
It’s hard, if not impossible to fully analyze the complexities of the civic insurrection and socio-political crisis that have been Nicaragua’s daily...

Nicaragua briefs
2018 Julio Nicaragua
THE IACHR ADDS NINE MORE RECOMMENDATIONS In its final report, presented to the OAS Permanent Council on June 22, the Inter-American Commission...

“We’ll never be the same”
2018 Julio Nicaragua
“ Just like Álvaro Conrado, I too have difficulty breathing now. Yesterday they killed one of ours. They found his body on the Cuesta del Plomo [a hill...

“I’m certain we’ll bring down this dictatorship”
2018 Julio Nicaragua
I’ve known Daniel since we were both young. I was president of the Ramírez Goyena Institute’s student center and leader of the Maestro Gabriel High...

The open veins of Nicaragua
2018 Julio Nicaragua
I belong to the generation of those whose heart throbbed to the beat of the Sandinista revolution in the 1980s, actively supporting it. Latin...

Resisting the strategy of terror
2018 Julio Nicaragua
On May 30, when the regime’s police and parapolice—a.k.a. irregular paramilitary groups, thugs, mobs, shock troops—fired on the mammoth Mothers’ Day...

Are April and May’s “vandals” Reparto Schick gang members?
2018 Junio Nicaragua
Gangs have been the bête noir politicians and social analysts alike use to explain Central America’s excessive brutality. In the Northern Triangle countries...

A cornered regime is shooting at a mounting civic revolution
2018 Junio Nicaragua
“ Mr. President, rethink with your Cabinet the path you have taken. An unarmed revolution has begun. There is no army vs. army here. It is a population...

Dozens dead, hundreds wounded or detained, plus torture and censorship...
2018 Junio Nicaragua
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) culminated today a working visit to Nicaragua that took place May 17-21, 2018. The objective of...

Nicaragua briefs
2018 Junio Nicaragua
REVOLUTION - DECALOGUE These 10 commandments were among the many memes, photos and videos that have appeared on social media, demonstrating...

“The Civic Alliance is a huge achievement of the people’s rebellion”
2018 Junio Nicaragua
In the midst of the massacre on April 21 led by the National Police anti-riot forces, Daniel Ortega offered to dialogue with private enterprise about...

Roadmap to democratization
2018 Junio Nicaragua
I. DEMOCRATIZATION Constitutional mechanisms for holding a free and transparent electoral process in Nicaragua. A. Free elections and constitutional...

The Nicaraguan tiger and the April rebellion
2018 Mayo Nicaragua
They say that on May 31, 1911, when Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz was about to board the ship that would take him from Veracruz to exile in Paris, after...

CERVANTES PRIZE 2017 A journey outward and back
2018 Mayo Nicaragua
Your Majesties: I come from a small country with its volcanic mountain range rising up in the center of the searing Central American landscape that Neruda,...

April 2018: An insurrection of the nation’s consciousness
2018 Mayo Nicaragua
Nicaragua hasn’t been front-page news in the international media for years, but we returned to the headlines this historic April and the media will surely...

Nicaragua briefs
2018 Mayo Nicaragua
THE ORIGINAL SIN In an op-ed piece in the e-bulletin Confidencial, Nicaraguan novelist Gioconda Belli wrote that “if Daniel Ortega and...

CERVANTES PRIZE 2017 Signatures
2018 Mayo Nicaragua
One of the ceremonies prior to the presentation of the Cervantes Prize, which I will receive in a few days’ time from the King of Spain in the auditorium...

With the international siege closing in, the social networks are now a target
2018 Abril Nicaragua
The executive branch’s spokeswoman announced on March 12 that the legislative branch would be asked to conduct a “grand national debate” on “issues we...

A country’s prisons reflect its social and political reality
2018 Abril Nicaragua
I want to share not so much a legal or technical analysis of Nicaragua’s penitentiary system as some of my experiencces defending prisoners, given that...

Why are we ignoring science?
2018 Abril Nicaragua
Nicaragua is a natural laboratory for evolution, just as the Galapagos Islands were for Charles Darwin more than a century ago, declared Melisa Olave,...

Nicaragua briefs
2018 Abril Nicaragua
CONGRATS TO RUSSIA……BUT NOT TO COSTA RICA Heading into the second week after Carlos Alvarado, the presidential candidate for Costa Rica’s...

Nicaragua briefs
2018 Marzo Nicaragua
LATIN AMERICA SUDDENLY ON THE US PUBLIC AGENDA In addition to the University of Texas symposium on “US Involvement and Engagement in Western...

“We need a strategy for transitioning to democracy”
2018 Marzo Nicaragua
It was anticipated in early 2016, the year of Nicaragua’s latest presidential elections, that Nicaragua’s relations with the United States might take...

The dilemmas of this “other time”
2018 Marzo Nicaragua
U S Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s visit to five allied Latin American counties between February 2 and 7 just weeks before his inexplicable firing,...

“We need a proposal that inspires hope”
2018 Febrero Nicaragua
The results of last November’s municipal elections showed us once again that, aside from independent voters, the majority of whom didn’t vote, Nicaragua’s...

Nicaragua briefs
2018 Febrero Nicaragua
ARMY TROOPS KILL SIX INLA CRUZ DEL RÍO GRANDE Troops of the Army’s Sixth Regional Military Command killed six people on November 12 in an operation...

The government and its allies are calling Washington’s cards
2018 Febrero Nicaragua
Never in Daniel Ortega’s presidency these past 11 years has his government experienced the level of tension with Washington it has in the last year or...

“My writing has always been spurred by obsession”
2018 Febrero Nicaragua
To the ladies and gentlemen of Salamanca who this year are celebrating—and I with them—the 800th anniversary of their wonderful university’s founding,...

The FSLN’s relationship with religion has always been contradictory
2018 Febrero Nicaragua
On November 29, 2017, President Ortega introduced a fast-track bill in the National Assembly to declare the festivities honoring the Blessed Virgin Mary’s...

After 30 years of the Autonomy Statute, another autonomy is possible
2017 Diciembre Nicaragua
We four researchers met to evaluate these first 30 years of the application of Autonomy Statute for the Caribbean Coast regions, authorized in 1987....

What’s behind the upcoming municipal model?
2017 Diciembre Nicaragua
Among the various predictions about this year’s municipal elections, one predicted an intensification of the model of already hierarchical relations...

Will Ortega make concessions between now and 2021?
2017 Diciembre Nicaragua
Nicaraguans have gone to the polls four times since Daniel Ortega took office in January 2007: to elect municipal government officials in 2008 and 2012...

Three electoral scenarios in three Nicaraguas
2017 Diciembre Nicaragua
The government’s elite business allies and their lobbyists in Washington, hired to halt approval of the Nica Act designed to sanction the government...

Nicaragua briefs
2017 Diciembre Nicaragua
THE US ELIMINATES TPS STATUS FOR NICARAGUANS On November 7, the US government’s Department of Homeland Security lifted the Temporary Protection...

Nicaragua briets
2017 Octubre Nicaragua
OFFICIAL RESPONSE TO THE NICA ACT Not surprisingly, Vice President Rosario Murillo issued a communique responding to the unanimous approval...

The curtain’s up, the stage set and the script written
2017 Octubre Nicaragua
By unanimous voice vote, the US House of Representatives definitively approved the revised Nica Act on October 3, after Cuban-American Representatives...

“Femicides tell us about the society we’ve constructed”
2017 Octubre Nicaragua
Some call it “violence against women” while others prefer the term “gender violence.” In the feminist current I’m part of we use the term “machista...

The specter of the Nica Act is hovering over our already endangered economy
2017 Septiembre Nicaragua
I f you were to ask me how Nicaragua’s economy is doing today, I wouldn’t hesitate to say it’s in very good shape, with strong growth. But while economic...

A brief history of our chameleon Army
2017 Septiembre Nicaragua
The Nicaraguan Army, the youngest military body in the hemisphere, celebrates its founding every yearon September 2 even though it isn’t the date the...

Observers of the institutional eclipse
2017 Septiembre Nicaragua
With a month and a half to go before the November 5 municipal elections, historical militants of the once-revolutionary Sandinista National Liberation...

Nicaragua briets
2017 Septiembre Nicaragua
NICARAGUAN “DREAMERS” According to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), a component of the US Department of Homeland...

The Rancho Grande experience: Environmentalism in rebellion
2017 Agosto Nicaragua
On October 12, 2015, the mining project of B2Gold, a Canadian transnational mining company, in the Cerro Pavón area of the municipality of Rancho Grande,...

The “buds” are pinning their hopes on the OAS electoral observation
2017 Agosto Nicaragua
On the afternoon of July 19, at the celebration of the 38th anniversary of Nicaragua’s revolution, an already overcast and increasingly angry-looking...

“The world has to learn what’s happening in Nicaragua”
2017 Agosto Nicaragua
In an interview in August 2015, Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal said something we’ve quoted repeatedly here at home and in our tours abroad: “The world...

Nicaragua briets
2017 Agosto Nicaragua
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL VS. THE INTEROCEANIC CANAL On August 3, Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s director for the Americas, visited...

Mining brings us neither growth nor development
2017 Julio Nicaragua
There is increasingly frequent and concerned talk in Latin America about the expansion of extractive industries and their activities. These industries...

Nicaragua briets
2017 Julio Nicaragua
PENAL REFORMS The National Assembly, now totally controlled by the governing party, approved reforms to the Penal Code and Penal Processing...

Unsure where all this will end
2017 Julio Nicaragua
This month, in a national and international context laden with so many uncertainties it’s hard to imagine where it will all end, Nicaragua commemorates...

Fear is the message of the first 100 days of Trump’s migration policies
2017 Junio Nicaragua
During his election campaign, Donald Trump said he would expel millions of undocumented immigrants and would complete the wall along the US-Mexican...

Sexual abuse of children is a Nicaraguan pandemic
2017 Junio Nicaragua
A team of eight women—four of us psychologists who are survivors of sexual abuse and have become experts on the subject and four other women, not necessarily...

Three economic storm clouds looming in Nicaragua’s skies
2017 Junio Nicaragua
Fernando Delgado, the International Monetary Fund’s mission chief in Nicaragua, presented the IMF’s periodic evaluation of the country’s economy to President...

Nicaragua briets
2017 Junio Nicaragua
NICARAGUA’S INTEROCEANIC CANAL NOT ON CHINA’S RADAR In a two-day summit held in China in mid-May, attended by representatives of 110 countries...

How can we free ourselves from something this serious?
2017 Mayo Nicaragua
Various analysts who know what goes on behind the scenes in Washington have been telling Nicaragua’s government advisers they’re making a big mistake...

Nicaragua briets
2017 Mayo Nicaragua
CLIMATE CHANGE Although there are now more technological means in Nicaragua than ever before to predict climate trends, the country’s scientists...

“The State is mainly responsable for the country’s water problems”
2017 Mayo Nicaragua
Reflecting on the quality, distribution and uses of water in Nicaragua has been a pivotal part of my professional career. Back when I was a student...

To participate or not to participate: Is that the question?
2017 Abril Nicaragua
Three months into his adminis tration, President Trump has yet to define his policy toward Latin America. The members of Congress who sponsored the...

Stripped of its own nature, the Police is a satellite of the regime
2017 Abril Nicaragua
Since 2007 the refrain “Nicaragua, the safest country in Central America” has been promoted both nationally and internationally. Police Director General...

What can we expect fromthe agreements with the OAS?
2017 Abril Nicaragua
How does one classify Daniel Ortega’s government? The term “electoral authoritarian regime” is being used with increasing frequency to define a particular...

Nicaragua briets
2017 Abril Nicaragua
>THE WATER SITUATION WILL BECOME CRITICAL On World Water Day, March 22, with the wells in numerous rural areas of Nicaragua already dry, experts...

Seven priorities for achieving quality education
2017 Marzo Nicaragua
In 2006 a group of education professionals formulated a public proposal we called “Seven priorities of Nicaraguan education.” Our objective was to put...

Nicaragua briefs
2017 Marzo Nicaragua
ERNESTO CARDENAL Late last year, Nicaragua’s renowned poet Ernesto Cardenal accompanied his valuable personal archive of books, letters,...

Criminal indifference to the violence on the Caribbean Coast
2017 Marzo Nicaragua
The law defining the communal property regime for the Caribbean Coast’s indigenous peoples and ethnic communities and for the Bocay, Coco, Indio and...

Under pressure, the government is buying time
2017 Marzo Nicaragua
The Ortega-Murillo government is under political pressure on at least two counts: the weight Daniel Ortega’s illegitimate reelection last November 6...

A presidential inauguration under clouding skies
2017 Febrero Nicaragua
President Ortega began his fourth term in office in conditions bearing little resemblance to those that ushered in his second and third terms in 2007...

We’re overwhelmed by an enormous educational backwardness
2017 Febrero Nicaragua
In 2006 a group of education professionals formulated a public proposal we called “Seven priorities of Nicaraguan education.” The objective was to...

Nica-US relations in the Era of Trump
2017 Febrero Nicaragua
We’ve been observing Donald Trump for over 18 months as a pre-candidate then candidate for the US Presidency, almost three months as President-elect...

Nicaragua briets
2017 Febrero Nicaragua
INTEROCEANIC CANAL ON AGAIN, OFF AGAIN… At the end of last year it was unofficially confirmed that the government has discarded the interoceanic...

Peasant voices against the canal Project
2016 Noviembre Nicaragua
The interoceanic canal project has never consulted the peasant communities along the route of the channel that will split Nicaragua in two. The government...

A new move on the game board: The voters’ massive “NO!”
2016 Noviembre Nicaragua
The governing party was guaranteed a massive victory with no need for ballot fraud this time after having prohibited both national and international...

“We need new, authentic elections and a government of national unity”
2016 Noviembre Nicaragua
So, what now, after the consummated electoral farce of November 6? Answering this question requires us to look further into the future. Discussing...

Four keys to the volatile success of the Ortega-Murillo project
2016 Noviembre Nicaragua
The regime built by the late President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela is breaking up over a stormy sea of oil, Honduran President Mel Zelaya was deposed in...

Nicaragua briets
2016 Noviembre Nicaragua
ELECTION EXPENSES This year’s atypical elections cost the country US$55.25 million, $12.6 million more than the last elections in 2011, with...

“This time they committed the perfect fraud”
2016 Noviembre Nicaragua
Between Daniel Ortega’s first consecutive reelection on November 6, 2011, and his re-inauguration on January 10, 2012, a group of Nicaraguan statis¬ticians...

Nicaragua briets
2016 Octubre Nicaragua
RENÉ NÚÑEZ DIES AT 69 René Núñez, a member of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) since his youth and one of the party’s most respected...

Armed to the teeth:Nicaragua’s remilitarization
2016 Octubre Nicaragua
In April of this year, the Russian media confirmed that Nicaragua is obtaining lethal materiel via bilateral agreements with Russia. The April 25 Spanish...

At a critical juncture without knowing where we’re bound
2016 Octubre Nicaragua
In response to all the moves by President Ortega to render Nicaragua’s November 6 general elections both a fraud and a farce, the opposition has been...

The Nica Act puts us at high risk but must we repeat the Myth of Sisyphus?
2016 Octubre Nicaragua
The Nicaraguan government’s urgent need to replace Venezuela’s collapsed cooperation with more fiscal resources for its social spending and public investment...

The task right now is to avoid the consolidation of a family dictatorship
2016 Septiembre Nicaragua
How did we get to where we are today? And I’m not talking about how the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) got us here… because it no longer...

What does settler Catalino’s story tell us?
2016 Septiembre Nicaragua
I have lived among indigenous communities and mestizo settlements during various conflicts between the two and between them and the State since the eighties,...

Nicaragua briets
2016 Septiembre Nicaragua
MASAYA VOLCANO National Geographic’s documentary producer Sam Cossman and former NASA astronaut Scott Parazinsky left Nicaragua at the end...

Thousands of African migrants on our borders
2016 Septiembre Nicaragua
Globalization is shaking up Central America. One evidence of that can be seen when we trace the spatial-temporal starting points of the growing numbers...

To vote or not to vote? That is the question
2016 Septiembre Nicaragua
Vote, abstain, annul one’s vote by damaging the ballot… these choices are causing anguishing discussions among Nicaraguans. The dilemma of whether to...

Nicaragua briets
2016 Agosto Nicaragua
REPRESSION IN RANCHO GRANDE CENIDH has been receiving charges of arbitrary acts committed by Nicaraguan police against the peasant population...

Armed and politically motivated: A repeating tragedy
2016 Agosto Nicaragua
Since 1990, the inability, insensitivity and lack of political will of Nicaragua’s successive governments to acknowledge and deal withthe civil war’s...

Not a stone will be left standing…
2016 Agosto Nicaragua
On July 28, Daniel Ortega made one of the most defining decisions of the single-party model he seems bent on imposing on this country: having already...

Nicaragua’s electoral farce augurs a conflict with whoever wins in the US
2016 Agosto Nicaragua
Deputy foreign minister during the revolutionary years, the author recalls the general lines of US-Nicaraguan relations then and analyzes the possible...

The civic path is taking on tinges of rebellion
2016 Julio Nicaragua
We in the Independent Liberal Party (PLI) were expecting the blow Daniel Ortega delivered, which prevents us from running in the upcoming elections....

No bridge over these troubled waters
2016 Julio Nicaragua
Not even a week of uncertainty had passed since President Ortega had called electoral observers “shameless” and angrily decreed that “observation is...

A chronicle of guerrilla warfare and mosaic pieces of the Mosquitia
2016 Julio Nicaragua
I’m aware of the problems the outcome of my re¬search could cause. As the statement by Pierre Vidal-Naquet that I used as an epigraph warns: “Just because...

Nicaragua briets
2016 Julio Nicaragua
INVOKE THE DEMOCRATIC CHARTER? In mid-June, Violeta Granera, the National Coalition for Democracy’s vice presidential candidate before it...

Though Ortega holds a stacked deck, the opposition played its first cards
2016 Junio Nicaragua
On May 6, at the last possible legal minute, the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) finally issued the official call for this year’s general elections....

Powerful winds are blowing against the Grand Canal
2016 Junio Nicaragua
El Gran Canal Interoceánico de Nicaragua—Nicaragua’s Grand Interoceanic Canal: it has a 19th-century ring to it. At the end of that century,...

Municipal autonomy isn’t a concession, but a right the government has undermined
2016 Junio Nicaragua
Local government autonomy isn’t a gracious concession by central governments. It’s a right all peoples have to govern themselves. Municipal autonomy...

Nicaragua briets
2016 Junio Nicaragua
TUMARÍN PROJECT SUSPENDED It was learned in late May that as a precautionary measure the Brazilian government had suspended funds to the State...

How many more stones are in the river?
2016 Mayo Nicaragua
Just why President Ortega has dragged his feet for so long in giving the electoral branch the order to officially call the elections remains unanswered...

We have to adopt not just a tree, but Nicaragua itself to save it from disaster
2016 Mayo Nicaragua
After two years of drought and this year’s long hot summer, we’ve seen evidence throughout the country of an environmental crisis like none before. ...

Nicaragua briets
2016 Mayo Nicaragua
DEFORESTATION CRISIS In mid-April the presidential office finally reacted to weeks of pressure from residents of the mountainous northern...

We’re facing the worst environmental crisis in recent history
2016 Mayo Nicaragua
We, the organizations that have signed this report, have analyzed the country’s environmental situation using satellite images, data gathered by the...

No path ahead
2016 Abril Nicaragua
The world and regional panorama has changed radically since Daniel Ortega won the presidency of Nicaragua for the third time in the 2011 elections. ...

Three mutilating blows to the law against violence to women
2016 Abril Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s police stations for women and children, a relatively novel institution created in Nicaragua in 1993 for woman to denounce the violence they...

Nicaragua briets
2016 Abril Nicaragua
IMF CLOSES ITS MANAGUA OFFICE Alluding to “the macroeconomic stability and growth” the country is experiencing, the International Monetary...

It isn’t “harvest time” yet in the Northern Triangle
2016 Abril Nicaragua
The US Congress finally approved $750 million for the Northern Triangle’s Alliance for Prosperity Plan (PAP-TN) on December 15, 2015, after almost a...

Only human development produces economic development
2016 Marzo Nicaragua
Most economic analyses of Latin America in the 1980s can be summed up in the famous phrase coined by the UN’s Economic Commission on Latin America: “a...

Nicaragua briets
2016 Marzo Nicaragua
HONDURAN HUMAN RIGHTS LEADER BERTHA CÁCERES MURDERED In the early morning of March 3, Bertha Cáceres, a leader of Honduras’ Lenca people whose...

Has the government’s communication strategy worked?
2016 Marzo Nicaragua
I’d like to start by commenting on the findings of some recent surveys in Nicaragua. While I’m quite skeptical of surveys, they are tools to be considered...

Unifying of the dispersed forces and reckless signs of power
2016 Marzo Nicaragua
Raúl Obregón, general manager of the polling firm M&R Consultores, said again in February that President Daniel Ortega is “unbeatable” and that this...

A preliminary sketch of this year’s electoral scenario
2016 Febrero Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the only Latin American country today in which confidence in elections as a civic mechanism for changing government has taken a major dive....

Nicaragua Briefs
2016 Febrero Nicaragua
NICARAGUA-COSTA RICA DISPUTES RESOLVED BY WORLD COURT On December 15, the International Court of Justice at The Hague issued its ruling on...

The Paris climate agreement is patently insufficient
2016 Febrero Nicaragua
Still reeling from the excessive rejoicing and media acclaim that greeted the climate agreement reached in Paris in December, I’ll try to evaluate some...

Money laundering is a huge challenge for our institutions and our societies
2015 Diciembre Nicaragua
The US government’s recent addition of the owners of Honduras’ Continental Group to its Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) list for laundering the...

Interoceanic canal: “Stop that project!”
2015 Diciembre Nicaragua
On November 5, in an event that excluded independent media, the Nicaraguan government announced its approval of the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment...

Nicaragua briefs
2015 Diciembre Nicaragua
CUBAN MIGRANTS STUCK AT THE BORDER Thousands of Cuban citizens trying to enter Nicaragua from Costa Rica on November 15 were prevented from...

Steeled against “risks” and “threats” Steeled against “risks” and “threats”
2015 Diciembre Nicaragua
All polls indicate majority support for already three-term president Ortega against a splintered and programless opposition that has allowed itself to...

The sum of all fears
2015 Noviembre Nicaragua
This month’s main events included the representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), who is also represents the UN system in the...

Nicaragua Briefs
2015 Noviembre Nicaragua
PUTIN DECORATES ORTEGA On November 4, Russia’s health minister, Veronika Skvortsova, presented the Order of Friendship to Nicaragua’s President...

We’re at an inflection point and should be concerned
2015 Noviembre Nicaragua
I first want to begin by offering my analysis of Nicaragua’s poverty picture because we finally have relatively fresh data. On October 6 the government...

Image at all cost
2015 Octubre Nicaragua
The first days of September brought a new outbreak of violence in Nicaragua’s North Cari¬bbean coast, specifically in indi¬ge¬nous communities of the...

NICARAGUA BREVES
2015 Octubre Nicaragua
FENACOOP FORCIBLY “DISSOLVED” On September 3, paradoxically the Day of the Peasant, the presidency ordered the Ministry of the Family, Community,...

We have to expand our thinking to understand the conflicts on the coast
2015 Octubre Nicaragua
I have visited the Caribbean Coast region many times during the 1980s and 90s and more recently through my work with a research team from the Central...

A longstanding need: Credit for the rural poor
2015 Octubre Nicaragua
Even though Nicaragua’s poverty is concentrated in the rural zones, the country has no national rural development plan that includes all sectors. The...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2015 Septiembre Nicaragua
NICA EXTRADITION REQUESTED IN FIFA CORRUPTION CASE On August 13, the Nicaraguan government formally asked the Swiss justice authorities to...

“The Police has changed its role to guarantee the regime’s security”
2015 Septiembre Nicaragua
I want to begin by warning that I’m not bearing good news. The way things are going in our country, we can expect a worsening of the political violence....

Centralism + secrecy: A toxic combination
2015 Septiembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s current governing model, increasingly centralized over the past eight years, is already grappling with its latest challenge: to align everyone...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2015 Agosto Nicaragua
CORRUPTION IN THE TUMARÍN HYDROELECTRIC PROJECT The digital publication Istoé Brasil reported in early August that the private Brazilian...

We need to demand annulment of the canal concession and law
2015 Agosto Nicaragua
On May 31, the Chinese company HKND Group’s general manager in Nicaragua delivered a 14- volume Environmental and Social Impact Assess¬ment (ESIA) on...

Some are already milling around the electoral starting gate
2015 Agosto Nicaragua
With the traumatic Experience of the fraud in the 2011 presidential election and the 2008 and 2012 municipal ones still fresh in their mind, Nicaragua’s...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2015 Julio Nicaragua
CONFIDENCIAL INVESTIGATES ALBANISA For three months a joint team of journalists from the Nicaraguan weekly bulletin Confidencial...

What territories will the canal divide and what populations will be displaced?
2015 Julio Nicaragua
The canal route will directly affect ten of the country’s municipalities: Bluefields, Nueva Guinea, San Miguelito, San Carlos, Rivas, Tola, El Castillo,...

Words for changing course
2015 Julio Nicaragua
Social justice and national sovereignty were General Sandino’s rallying cries. Fifty years later, the Sandinista revolution added three more—political...

Only the maquilas are benefiting from our demographic dividend
2015 Julio Nicaragua
The information shared here was obtained in meetings, forums and focus groups held by the María Elena cuadra Movement of Employed and Unem¬ployed Women...

“Let’s say a huge NO to mining”
2015 Julio Nicaragua
The Bishops’ Conferences throughout Latin America, especially here in Central America—Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua—have always opposed...

“If Nicaragua embraces science, I see a magnificent future for it”
2015 Julio Nicaragua
I’ve come to Nicaragua several times and I always see areas in which the country could do important things, embracing science and involving scientists...

The canal and its subprojects will provoke a cultural tragedy
2015 Julio Nicaragua
The huge number of potential environmental impacts that may occur from construction of the Nicaraguan canal and its secondary development projects has...

Reflections on development by a Japanese volunteer in Nicaragua
2015 Junio Nicaragua
There’s a saying that goes: “The apples always seem better in the neighbor’s orchard.” I soon realized that Nicaraguans have an idealized image of Japan...

May 23 in San Salvador, recounting Central America’s story
2015 Junio Nicaragua
The ceremony for the beatification of Monsignor Romero on Saturday, May 23, drew the largest gathering of people in El Salvador’s recent history. ...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2015 Junio Nicaragua
NICA IN THE FIFA SCANDALA Nicaraguan was among the seven top-level directors of the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA)...

The local media are overshadowed and under threat
2015 Junio Nicaragua
Nicaragua isn’t Managua. The country has 153 municipalities, which share certain problems but also have their own specific ones. Many of the decisions...

A chronicle of thousands of ignored deaths
2015 Mayo Nicaragua
In May, once all the sugarcane harvest is in, there’s a contest in the Central American and Caribbean sugar refineries to see who obtained the most raw...

Nicaragua in Eduardo Galeano’s words
2015 Mayo Nicaragua
The book that first made Galeano famous was The Open Veins of Latin America, his 1971 essay on the history of Latin America’s economic pillage and...

Governing with his back to it all
2015 Mayo Nicaragua
For a few years—how very long ago they now seem—Nicaragua was something of a Mecca to which anyone who wanted to be “someone with something to say” in...

The Family Code is the final link in a project of social control
2015 Mayo Nicaragua
We now have a Family Code for the first time in Nicaragua. The government and its institutions have woven together a media campaign that presents this...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2015 Mayo Nicaragua
RUSSIAN PLANES: MILITARY OR COMMERCIAL?In an interview with the Nicaraguan newspaper El Nuevo Diario in April, Russian ambassador to Nicaragua...

A country’s foreign policy must defend national interests
2015 Abril Nicaragua
Before commenting on the state of the Ortega government’s international relations it’s useful to establish the conceptual framework on which the essential...

What the bishops are saying about the canal Project
2015 Abril Nicaragua
2014: “We are extremely concerned”The Grand Interoceanic Canal of Nicaragua project will directly affect three of our jurisdictions and indirectly...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2015 Abril Nicaragua
IMF MISSION VISITAn International Monetary Fund mission visited Nicaragua for a week between March 4 and 11. Even though Nicaragua has not...

Is Ortega’s project sinking in the quicksand?
2015 Abril Nicaragua
To identify the changes that have taken place in Nicaragua and beyond that don’t favor President Ortega, it’s worth recalling the advice a crony gave...

Zero Hunger: How are the women doing?
2015 Marzo Nicaragua
In 2007, Daniel Ortega’s government launched the “Zero Hunger” Food Production Program (PPA), as the main instrument of its food security policy. The...

Insecurities in the region’ssafest country
2015 Marzo Nicaragua
THE MONTH Two current realities are causing major insecurity among the peasant populations of various rural areas. In the north, it’s the government’s...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2015 Marzo Nicaragua
TIME PERIODS AND LAND LIMITS TO THE CANAL CONCESSIONEnvironmental lawyer Mónica López Baltodano provided more precise data this month about...

A correct energy strategy must be aimed at Nicaragua’s development
2015 Marzo Nicaragua
Acountry’s total energy demand includes the needs related to transport, light, making machines run, cooking, etc., and is supplied by a variety of sources....

The Grand Canal and the “grand” job expectations
2015 Febrero Nicaragua
The announcement about the construction of the interoceanic canal generated huge expectations about the jobs this megaproject would create. They talked...

The river that must be crossed and the stones that must be felt for
2015 Febrero Nicaragua
Chinese business magnate Wang Jing made a brief stopover in Nicaragua in December to star in a curiously insignificant inaugural act for such a colossal...

The UNESCO study alerts us that we’re falling behind in education
2015 Febrero Nicaragua
For over 12 years UNESCO has been measuring the learning of primary students in Latin American countries through what it has called the Regional Comparative...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2015 Febrero Nicaragua
COSTA RICA RE THE CANALIn mid-December, Costa Rican Deputy Foreign Minister Alejandro Solano referred to the “many doubts” his country has about...

Nicaragua has to engage in dialogue
2015 Febrero Nicaragua
German philosopher Hannah Arendt coined the term “banal evil” to refer to actions or behaviors that are clearly evil and may even end up becoming perverse...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2014 Diciembre Nicaragua
OXFAM REPORT ON WORLD INEQUALITYOxfam International’s extensively researched and powerfully written report, “Even it up: Time to end extreme...

The canal will jeopardize our ability to adapt to climate change
2014 Diciembre Nicaragua
Global warming, as we know, is the increase in the Earth’s mean temperature. This climate change is provoked by carbon dioxide emissions, known as greenhouse...

2014 wasn’t just any old year
2014 Diciembre Nicaragua
The favorable elements that for the past seven years have so amply bankrolled President Daniel Ortega’s economic and political maneuvering room began...

We can’t resign ourselves to losing Lake Cocibolca
2014 Diciembre Nicaragua
Very much in line with Comandante Daniel Ortega Saavedra’s urging in June 2012 that the design of the Great Interoceanic Canal must be “conceived and...

Nicaragua’s proposed interoceanic canal: Many more questions than answers
2014 Diciembre Nicaragua
The Academy of Sciences of Nicaragua invited the InterAmerican Network of Academies of Science (IANAS) and the International Council for Science’s Regional...

One black, one clear: Two vital liquids under threat
2014 Noviembre Nicaragua
The significant drop in oil prices could have seismic effects in Venezuela, with the aftershocks rattling the project of our presidential couple here...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2014 Noviembre Nicaragua
DISASTERS CAUSED BY THE RAINSAfter a severe drought in a good part of the country, October brought excessive rains, causing flooding and disasters...

The ship of education is foundering
2014 Noviembre Nicaragua
The problems, limitations and deficits of education in Nicaragua are not only getting no better, but are actually getting so much worse that it could...

The painful load we Nicaraguans carry
2014 Octubre Nicaragua
I’m here to talk about love. Yes, about love, even if it doesn’t seem so from the title. I’m here to talk about the work I’ve had the privilege of doing...

Questions about the canal’s economic “viability”
2014 Octubre Nicaragua
I’m increasingly surprised by the tremendous ease with which concepts about the interoceanic canal’s economic impact are being bandied about in a debate...

“We’re going to defend our paradise against mining”
2014 Octubre Nicaragua
Petronilo López (PL): My name is Petronilo López; I’m a Christian and a member of the Assemblies of God. In my municipality, Rancho Grande,...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2014 Octubre Nicaragua
PRESIDENT ORTEGA’S HEALTHA September 10 communiqué by the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) responding to the official information about...

The right to the truth and the duty to provide it
2014 Octubre Nicaragua
The communication strategy for Daniel Ortega’s new stage in government was revealed barely a month after his return to the presidency in 2007. It had...

The canal will affect ecosystems, species and even genes
2014 Septiembre Nicaragua
Before talking about the impact the interoceanic canal will have on the environment and biodiversity, we would like to touch on some points that, although...

Rape-imposed motherhood has a little girl’s face
2014 Septiembre Nicaragua
As you are reading this text, a girl, a teenager or a woman is being sexually abused somewhere in Nicaragua. And on top of the trauma of sexual aggression...

Clouds in the government’s statistical heaven
2014 Septiembre Nicaragua
Extended drought, hunger, thirst, skyrocketing prices for beans and other staples, repercussions from the coffee fungus plague, economic downturn, budget...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2014 Septiembre Nicaragua
A BIRD? A FISH? A METEORITE?At roughly 11:30 the night of September 6, a huge explosion in a wooded area perilously near Managua’s international...

The politicizing of the institutions is the greatest risk to our security
2014 Septiembre Nicaragua
It goes without saying that we must condemn the shooting at the convoys of buses taking people back to northern municipalities after celebrating the...

Will we always use violence to deal with our problems?
2014 Agosto Nicaragua
Chinese businessman Wang Jing arrived in Nicaragua on July 5, accompanied by a retinue of functionaries from HKND, the company he says will make the...

NICARAGUA BREVES
2014 Agosto Nicaragua
EXPLOSIVES FOR THE CANALTiang Je, an executive of the HKND Group, the Chinese company granted the interoceanic canal construction concession,...

There’ll be no development by ignoring Science
2014 Agosto Nicaragua
If impoverished countries are to progress towards a knowledge-based economy, the environment has to be conducive to innovation and the economic regime...

How much longer will the country’s water last?
2014 Agosto Nicaragua
Although the issue of water is essential and understanding the problems it presents involves a certain complexity, virtually no one seems to want to...

Signs of climate change North and South
2014 Julio Nicaragua
After Nicaragua’s bishops presented their 14-page list of Social, institutional and environmental problems and challenges to President Ortega on May...

My questions about July 19 on the 35th anniversary of the revolution
2014 Julio Nicaragua
A new July 19 celebration. A few days earlier I sought out some young men and women from the Sandinista Youth organization, many of whom are my age...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2014 Julio Nicaragua
INTEROCEANIC CANALOn June 5, the web page of HKND, the company of Wang Jing, the businessman whom President Ortega granted the right to construct...

The interoceanic canal: An ever-present but never realized dream
2014 Julio Nicaragua
In May 2012 President Daniel Ortega announced the intention to construct an interoceanic canal through Nicaragua. He first mentioned it at the Central...

An expert speaks on political ethics
2014 Julio Nicaragua
Jorge Luis Borges used to say: “I think that in time we will deserve not to have governments.” This phrase engraved itself on my memory the first...

What influence will Pope Francis have on the Nicaraguan Church?
2014 Julio Nicaragua
Pope Francis is exercising a notable degree of leadership in global society. The influence he could have on the Catholic Church depends on a number...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2014 Junio Nicaragua
POST-EARTHQUAKE After April’s earthquake crisis, described as a “complex event not easy to understand” by Wilfried Strauch, a German scientist...

The bishops’ document: A road map?
2014 Junio Nicaragua
When Archbishop of Managua Leopoldo Brenes returned to Nicaragua on March 4 after having been invested cardinal in Vatican City, we learned that, after...

Would a truth commission be possible here?
2014 Junio Nicaragua
What is transitional justice? What does it mean? It’s a relatively new concept in human rights doctrine that refers to the justice that should be fostered...

In search of new horizons for a better Nicaragua
2014 Junio Nicaragua
Mr. President and Madam First Lady, on behalf of all my brother bishops of the Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua, I thank you for the kindness you have...

Caribbean Coast elections: Between conspiracy and responsibility
2014 Mayo Nicaragua
Quantitatively and qualitatively analyzing election results on the Caribbean Coast is always a challenge due to the dynamics of the elections themselves,...

Deceit, disappointment and anger are again accumulating in rural Nicaragua
2014 Mayo Nicaragua
The history of the Nicaraguan peasantry is one of continuous processes of expropriation and usurpation of its resources. In recent history, the multiethnic...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2014 Mayo Nicaragua
EARTHQUAKE DAMAGEAs of May 3, the date of the last report before this issue closed, there had been a total of 661 aftershocks following the...

Seismic red alert on the Ides of April
2014 Mayo Nicaragua
In ancient Rome, the middle day of each calendar month was called the ides, and was considered to bring good omens. The ides of March went down in history...

We don’t want today’s tripartite system; the social economy is a major actor too
2014 Abril Nicaragua
First of all let me tell you a bit about myself, so you’ll know where I’m coming from. I own a farm in Masaya where I have nearly two hectares of oranges,...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2014 Abril Nicaragua
TUMARÍN HIDROELECTRIC PLANTAn agreement of understanding between the Brazilian consortium Electrobras – Queiroz Galvao and CHN of Nicaragua...

An interoceanic canal is an anachronistic view of development
2014 Abril Nicaragua
Nicaragua is recognized as a country of creative people. Intellectuals of the stature of poets Rubén Darío and Ernesto Cardenal and writers Sergio Ramírez...

Less and less institutionality; more and more inequality
2014 Abril Nicaragua
The New Year kicked off with a surprise for Nicaragua when Pope Francis announced that one of his new cardinals would be Leopoldo Brenes, archbishop...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2014 Marzo Nicaragua
WASHINGTON ON NICARAGUA’S HUMAN RIGHTSThe 2013 US State Department report on the world’s human rights situation, released in February, contained...

Three mirrors to see ourselves in
2014 Marzo Nicaragua
In this globalized and hyper-informed planet on which more than seven billion human beings currently coexist, it’s almost impossible to avoid comparisons...

The public health system needs to opt for prevention, education and quality
2014 Marzo Nicaragua
Compared with the three governments that preceded it, we can see that the current government has definitely increased the public health coverage, upped...

“A mere delegate of the people, I do not recognize party colors”
2014 Marzo Nicaragua
Nicaraguans: Raised by your votes to the Presidency of the Republic and extremely grateful for the distinguished honor you have done me by putting the...

The ROOF Project: Not just a fad
2014 Marzo Nicaragua
There’s a lot of talk in Nicaragua about the demographic dividend. Knowledgeable pro- fessionals explain that “we’re reducing the birth rate and increasing...

The Army is the final piece in Ortega’s political Project
2014 Enero Nicaragua
The changes to the Military Code were pushed through with an urgency very similar to what we saw with the constitutional reforms. After extremely limited...

What mutations have turned the FSLN into what it is today?
2014 Enero Nicaragua
What are the essential, most distinctive features of Daniel Ortega’s regime? What ruptures, involutions or mutations can we see in these features and...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2014 Enero Nicaragua
DECREE ON SOCIAL SECURITY An administrative reform to the social security pension system went into effect on January 1. It was instituted by...

Truths about the canal concession all Nicaraguans should know
2014 Enero Nicaragua
My name is Mónica López Baltodano. I am 29 years old. I am a lawyer and notary public with a master’s degree in political studies and am an expert on...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2013 Diciembre Nicaragua
INTEROCEANIC CANALIn the 19th Climate Change Conference, held in Poland in mid-November, Nicaragua was represented by President Ortega’s public...

“The reforms favor the long-term absolute power of a person or party”
2013 Diciembre Nicaragua
Honorable members of the National Assembly Special Constitutional Committee to study, consult and issue its findings on constitutional aspects of the...

Chronicle of a reform foretold
2013 Diciembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua will have a new Constitution in 2014, imposed by Daniel Ortega through the parliamentary majority he has enjoyed since the 2011 electoral fraud...

The constitutional reforms will institutionalize Ortega’s total control
2013 Diciembre Nicaragua
With the Purísima (Immaculate Conception) festivities nearly upon us and a Christmas mood growing by the day as Managua is lit up by the thousands...

NICARAGUA BREVES
2013 Noviembre Nicaragua
HEALTH RED ALERTCentral America is grappling with the most serious dengue epidemic of the past five years. The Pan American Health Organization...

Rearming in the north and reforming the Constitution
2013 Noviembre Nicaragua
Right before the Day of the Dead, we learned that the FSLN National Assembly bench had been given a sneak preview of a bill reforming 39 articles of...

The reform of Law 779 sends society a very negative message
2013 Noviembre Nicaragua
The “Comprehensive Law against Violence toward Women” (Law 779) was passed unanimously by the National Assembly on June 22, 2012, and went into effect...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2013 Octubre Nicaragua
NICARAGUA’S CANAL PROJECT: THE UN SPEECH…September 30 was the date of Nicaragua’s turn at the United Nations General Assembly podium. With...

Ernesto Cardenal: Revolutionary, rebel, poet
2013 Octubre Nicaragua
Beloved Father Ernesto Cardenal: I would like to express the reasons France, my country, wants to show its esteem and admiration for you. And I personally...

The corporative government’s “miracle”
2013 Octubre Nicaragua
After a 10-month silence, on September 9 Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos finally announced his official response to the International Court of...

Will the canal help build the nation or only further fracture it?
2013 Octubre Nicaragua
The canal concession appeared virtually overnight, approved as law only three days after it was sent to the National Assembly with no serious discussion...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2013 Septiembre Nicaragua
NEVER-ENDING TERRITORIAL SQUABBLES WITH COSTA RICA…In a speech on August 13, President Ortega obliquely responded to Costa Rica’s insistence...

The priority has to be enabling people to eat at least tortillas and beans all year
2013 Septiembre Nicaragua
Every day they tell us Nicaragua is having significant cconomic growth, recovery and improvement. Is this true of the rural sector? What do the rural...

Two political initiatives and a canal in times of moral crisis
2013 Septiembre Nicaragua
Meeting in a Managua hotel, representatives from 14 expressions of political and social opposition to the “dictatorial Ortega government” who had come...

The canal and the illusion of development
2013 Agosto Nicaragua
Ongoing dynamic change in the productive and employment structures is crucial to a country’s development. In this process, the productive factors, including...

34 years of blameful forgetfulness, 23 of interested memory (part 2)
2013 Agosto Nicaragua
In an insightful paper delivered to circumspect lawyers, German historian Reinhart Koselleck took a look at various historiographical tendencies, distinguishing...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2013 Agosto Nicaragua
OIL EXPLORATION: WHO OWNS SEAFLOWER?Minister of Energy and Mines Emilio Rappaccioli confirmed the existence of a presidential decree granting...

Just how communal are rural communities?
2013 Agosto Nicaragua
We in the Center for Political Studies and Analysis (CEAP) have commonly done research from the municipal perspective, but one day we ques-tioned the...

Notes written beneath the trees of life
2013 Agosto Nicaragua
Is Nicaragua emerging from poverty? Will the interoceanic canal be built or is that megaproject only a fortune cookie prediction? Is the government...

The challenge of the others
2013 Julio Nicaragua
It’s been a good while since Nicaragua was the focus of international news. This month two issues caught media attention abroad. One is a macro-project—the...

The canal will irreversibly damage Lake Cocibolca
2013 Julio Nicaragua
We in the environmentalist organizations were just as surprised as almost all other national sectors by the haste with which the concession to businessman...

34 years of blameful forgetfulness, 23 of interested memory
2013 Julio Nicaragua
In crossing out February 25, 1990, the day the FSLN lost its first elections, with a red pen, viewing it as a historic watershed, those with Sandinista...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2013 Julio Nicaragua
PETROCARIBE SUMMIT The eighth Petrocaribe Summit was held in Managua between June 27 and 29, and was attended by top officials and Heads of...

Memories of a committed generation
2013 Junio Nicaragua
In early May, 800 nuns, mother superiors of their orders, met in Rome for the general assembly of the International Union of Mother Superiors. Pope...

The Grand Canal: Dreams and smokescreens
2013 Junio Nicaragua
In his speech commemorating the birth of General César Augusto Sandino on May 18, President Daniel Ortega reported that during the Central American Presidents’...

Nicaragua’s future development depends on quality teacher training
2013 Junio Nicaragua
On March 2, Nicaragua’s Ministry of Education initiated a diploma in continuing education and values for teachers of public and subsidized schools. ...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2013 Junio Nicaragua
FOREIGN MINISTER’S EUROPEAN TOURNicaragua’s Foreign Minister Samuel Santos visited several European Union countries in the third week of May,...

Obama, Ortega and “meanwhile” in Venezuela
2013 Mayo Nicaragua
At just before midnight on Sunday, April 14, after Venezuela’s National Electoral Council announced the unexpectedly tight results that gave Nicolás...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2013 Mayo Nicaragua
OPPOSITION TO LAW 779Barely 10 months after the Comprehensive Law against Violence toward Women, an important victory of Nicaragua’s women’s...

What we know and don’t know about the Tumarín mega-project
2013 Mayo Nicaragua
Mendoza: We journalists go to where things are happening so we can talk to the people there and give them a voice. We’re not satisfied with...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2013 Abril Nicaragua
VICE PRESIDENT ATTENDS POPE FRANCIS’ INVESTITURENeither Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega nor First Lady Rosario Murillo went to the investiture...

Reflections from the “end of the world”
2013 Abril Nicaragua
The Latin American Left has come up with two widely opposing interpretations of the meaning of an Argentine cardinal of Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s stripe...

In six years the gold will all be gone
2013 Abril Nicaragua
I’m both the son and the grandson of miners, and the child of a mining tragedy. My grandfather, who was born in the indigenous Monimbó neighborhood...

Who’s responsible for the coffee rust plague and what can be done?
2013 Marzo Nicaragua
Every day now, the news leads with articles about the advance and consequences of the rust plague that’s severely affecting coffee crops from Mexico...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2013 Marzo Nicaragua
NICARAGUA’S RESPONSE TO THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT CHÁVEZThe evening of March 4, hours after Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s death was announced,...

Is it a bird? A plane? A cultural revolution…?
2013 Marzo Nicaragua
What’s the government’s new ambitious and wide-reaching step all about? Is it a cultural revolution, inserted into what is officially called “the second...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2013 Enero Nicaragua
THE TELEVISA TRIALThe 17 men and 1 woman disguised as journalists for Mexico’s Televisa media network who were captured in August 2012 transporting...

Uncertainty is in the air
2013 Enero Nicaragua
On December 8, the national celebration of the Immaculate Conception in Nicaragua, things took a dramatic turn in Venezuela. The gravity of President...

The FSLN is now one family’s political machinery
2013 Enero Nicaragua
I’m often asked how Daniel Ortega got where he is, and how the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) ended up as it has. It’s not a question with...

The tax reform: As unjust as ever
2012 Diciembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua is about to sign a new three-year agreement with the International Monetary Fund. In exchange, the IMF has imposed—or “suggested”—three elements,...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2012 Diciembre Nicaragua
NICARAGUAN JOYPart of the November 26 message from the Communication and Citizenship coordinator reverberates with celebrations of The Hague...

Spaces are opening and closing
2012 Diciembre Nicaragua
The November 19 decision by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague overjoyed Nicaragua and deeply upset Colombia. It came only two days...

How we got to these “low intensity” elections
2012 Noviembre Nicaragua
If you were to ask me how reliable I think the upcoming municipal elections will be, I’d have to say hardly. And I’m referring to the technical point...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2012 Noviembre Nicaragua
CONTROVERSIAL PURÍSIMA PUBLICITYAt the initiative of President Ortega and his wife, the government of Nicaragua took steps to get UNESCO to...

2012 municipal elections: Chronicle of an outcome foretold
2012 Noviembre Nicaragua
According to the official data of the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE), the FSLN won 134 of the country’s 153 mayoral seats with 67.9% of the total votes....

“We could have a better country”
2012 Octubre Nicaragua
Mindful of having been called upon to be “co-workers in God’s service” (1 Corinthians 3:9) and “servants of Christ” (1 Corinthians 4:1) in proclaiming...

The path to the polls
2012 Octubre Nicaragua
As we approach the municipal elections on Sunday, November 4, two of the country’s de facto powers, the business elite and the Catholic hierarchy, took...

New clothes for the emperor... or is ALBA naked in Nicaragua?
2012 Octubre Nicaragua
In a lively bustling city there lived an emperor who used to spend all his money on elegant clothes. Not even his soldiers or meetings of the Council...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2012 Octubre Nicaragua
MAJOR ENVIRONMENTAL DANGERThe Humboldt Center, a Nicaraguan environmental NGO, unveiled a study in September warning of the environmental dangers...

We’re threatened by a tax reform from the catacombs
2012 Octubre Nicaragua
Ever since President Ortega took office in 2007, he’s been promising a profound change in the country’s tax structure. But he ended his first five-year...

The political grammar in the municipalities will change in 2013
2012 Septiembre Nicaragua
The framework of laws related to the life of the municipalities has been undergoing some changesin recent years, but none as daring as the ones this...

Memories of a generation of internationalists
2012 Septiembre Nicaragua
After Salvador Allende’s socialist government won in Chile in 1970, then was overthrown by Augusto Pinochet on September 11, 1973, the Sandinista Popular...

Silver bullets 25 years after Esquipulas
2012 Septiembre Nicaragua
The silver bullet is laden with symbolism due to the extraordinarily destructive power attributed to it over history. Balas de plata [Silver...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2012 Septiembre Nicaragua
BOSAWAS IN DANGER OF EXTINCTIONA study financed by the German cooperation agency GTZ on deforestation and the agricultural frontier’s advance...

Our future is at risk
2012 Agosto Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s immediate future is determined by the characteristics of its terrain, its natural resources, the development model being espoused, the economic...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2012 Agosto Nicaragua
TAX REFORM DEBATEThe debate between the government and the business elite over the tax reform the International Monetary Fund (IMF) requires...

Drug trafficking now has muscle and is generating a lot of money
2012 Agosto Nicaragua
Central America is currently considered the most violent region in the world, which has to do with the active presence of organized crime in our countries....

Pragmatism and shortsightedness rule the day
2012 Agosto Nicaragua
The Obama government’s decision on granting the Nicaraguan government the property waiver wasn’t expected until the July 31 deadline. But in the end...

Rhetoric, slogans and metaphors of the revolutionary years
2012 Julio Nicaragua
No memoirs of the Sandinista revolution record any sudden attack led by Tomás Borge in the guerrilla campaign that brought down Somoza. And although...

Coffee with the aroma of coops
2012 Julio Nicaragua
When in 1761 Scottish workers organized the first cooperative, selling oatmeal at discount prices and later including credit, savings, migration and...

The dilemmas of these rainy months
2012 Julio Nicaragua
The dilemmas currently facing virtually all stakeholders—both Nicaraguan and US—aren’t totally new; they’ve been building for months. So perhaps no...

Are we prepared for “the perfect storm”?
2012 Julio Nicaragua
For weeks Nicaraguan politics has been dominated by the debate over the US government’s decision not to grant one of the two waivers it gives Nicaragua...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2012 Julio Nicaragua
COSTA RICA REJECTS RULING AGAINST IT ON HIGHWAY ISSUEOn July 2 the six justices of the Central American Court of Justice (CCJ) issued a unanimous...

The Family Code bill, as it stands, is interventionist, conservative and neoliberal
2012 Junio Nicaragua
I’m going to speak to you as a feminist, although I run the risk that some will think that means I hate men. We’re often told that feminism is the other...

Memories of a scholarship generation
2012 Junio Nicaragua
Many young people left Nicaragua in the eighties with grants to study in countries that were part of the Socialist Bloc. The majority of them went to...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2012 Junio Nicaragua
NEW DISCOVERIES ABOUT THE RÍO SAN JUAN DISASTERAt the end of May, Costa Rica’s National Roadways Council admitted to the Costa Rican newspaper...

Trembles, shudders, waivers and narcs
2012 Junio Nicaragua
On May 11, during the American-Nicaraguan Chamber of Commerce lunch to welcome her, Phyllis Powers, the new US ambassador to Nicaragua warned that it...

In the “land of lakes” we don’t think about underground water
2012 Mayo Nicaragua
There will always be water: that’s how the majority of people in Nicaragua think when they use, and even abuse water, and when they demand it as a right....

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2012 Mayo Nicaragua
PLC CONVENTION AND DISSIDENCEThe Constitutionalist Liberal Party’s April 29 “Great Convention” was preceded by a lot of expectation given the...

The demarcating and titling are almost done but the “sanitizing” will take real maturity
2012 Mayo Nicaragua
I’m a Miskitu, born in Waspam on the Río Wanki, the river that divided Nicaragua and Honduras. I’m an agronomist by profession but have been involved...

The first 100 days: Between urgency and lethargy
2012 Mayo Nicaragua
Any new government opens with its strongest cards in its first 100 days. And taking advantage of the support won at the polls, it also implements the...

Talks? Horse-trading? A shady deal? A pact? A national dialogue?
2012 Abril Nicaragua
After the initial indignation of anti-Sandinista voters, the organized opposition and even many Sandinistas following the alleged electoral fraud last...

Has municipal autonomy been damaged? And what have we women gained?
2012 Abril Nicaragua
I wasn’t a municipality advocate when we began the “Onda Local” (Local Wave) radio program some 12 years ago. But over the years I realized that...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2012 Abril Nicaragua
MURDER OF FACUNDO CABRALAlejandro Jiménez, a Costa Rican known as “El Palidejo” (paleface), accused of murdering Argentine singer Facundo Cabral...

The quality of public education is endangering the country’s future
2012 Marzo Nicaragua
I want to reflect on the public education the State is offering the majority of the population, financed with the public money contributed by Nicaraguan...

Days of ash
2012 Marzo Nicaragua
The fraud so carefully organized by the electoral branch was designed to allow the governing Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) to go less heavy-handedly...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2012 Marzo Nicaragua
SEXUAL ABUSE IN THE CHURCHRome’s Pontifical Gregorian University held a symposium titled “Towards healing and renewal” in the Vatican during...

Memories of a feminist generation
2012 Marzo Nicaragua
My mother is a lawyer who’s over 50 years old. The years have marked her, but she still faces life with a firm attitude and retains her unalterably...

How did they commit the fraud?
2012 Enero Nicaragua
Before the presidential sash was re-bestowed upon Daniel Ortega on January 10, a group of Nicaraguan statisticians and mathematicians, coordinated...

A rerun with contradictions inside and out
2012 Enero Nicaragua
By January 10, the date of President Daniel Ortega’s second consecutive inauguration, the European governments still hadn’t congratulated him and Republican...

The human genome: A way to read the “book of life”
2012 Enero Nicaragua
The saga of sequencing the Human Genome has been modern science’s most significant international undertaking to date. It has been considered the greatest...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2012 Enero Nicaragua
LAW ON VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN APPROVEDBy an almost unanimous vote, the National Assembly passed the Comprehensive Law against Violence against...

Confronting the Ortega regime requires national unity
2012 Enero Nicaragua
Discussing the challenges facing the opposition in Nicaragua requires first characterizing today’s situation, because it’s radically different from what...

The government must take Gadea’s 800,000 voters into account
2011 Diciembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s history has been plagued by ongoing political conflicts. Even though all have had economic and social causal factors, they were all struggles...

SPECIAL - Thirty years of envío: The road traveled so far
2011 Diciembre Nicaragua
We are celebrating our birthday today. Three decades. Thirty years. They say that’s proof of maturity. We were born in February 1981, with the revolution,...

After this fraud, the future will be written with an R
2011 Diciembre Nicaragua
On November 15, the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) proclaimed Daniel Ortega reelected as President of Nicaragua until 2016 and allotted his party 62...

What was the revolution? What is Sandinismo?
2011 Diciembre Nicaragua
In the years following the revolution, FSLN leaders reaffirmed their traditional discourse in open negotiations with rightwing governments, media interviews,...

Notes on the elections in the North Caribbean region
2011 Diciembre Nicaragua
I traveled to the North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN) on November 1 to see how the “civic fiesta” was developing in Bilwi, the region’s capital,...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2011 Diciembre Nicaragua
NEW RÍO SAN JUAN CONFLICTA new conflict flared up in latef November between the governments of Nicaragua and Costa Rica, when Nicaragua learned...

European Union: A lack of neutrality and transparency
2011 Noviembre Nicaragua
The European Union (EU) Electoral Observation Mission arrived in Nicaragua on October 12 and soon spread out across the country. Led by socialist European...

Disquieting forecasts in the run-up to November 6
2011 Noviembre Nicaragua
Fifteen years ago, Ethics and Transparency (E&T), the Nicaraguan chapter of Transparency International, was only the second or third national electoral...

Ethics and Transparency: The published results don’t merit credibility
2011 Noviembre Nicaragua
Working under a concept of sovereignty and basic rights, the Ethics and Transparency Civic Group did not request authorization from the Supreme Electoral...

Elections 2011: Nicaragua lost again
2011 Noviembre Nicaragua
Two and a half weeks after election day, Nicaragua remains trapped between two utterly contradictory versions of what happened on November 6 and what...

FSLN wins by hook and by crook
2011 Noviembre Nicaragua
The FSLN painstakingly planned to win these elections by hook or by crook. And it won them by both… We’ll never know how many votes the FSLN won fairly...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2011 Octubre Nicaragua
A TABOO TOPIC GETS AIRED“A taboo topic in the Nicaraguan elections” written by Esteban Beltrán, director of Amnesty International Spain, for...

Last-minute pre-election fears, questions and warning signs
2011 Octubre Nicaragua
Following the fraudulent 2008 municipal elections, the specter of abstention began haunting many of the analyses of what could happen in the presidential...

The health system’s many pending issues
2011 Octubre Nicaragua
I have been participating in Nicaragua’s public health system since 1981 as a student, an intern, a doctor in social service, a resident doctor, a...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2011 Septiembre Nicaragua
ORTEGA – GHADDAFIOn September 2, after having delivered four speeches without mentioning what was happening in Libya, President Daniel Ortega...

What education priorities should this or the next government have?
2011 Septiembre Nicaragua
I want to begin by acknowledging that despite the continuing precariousness of Nicaraguan public education and the fact that education can only be planned...

Memories of the betrayed generation
2011 Septiembre Nicaragua
An extensive group of Nicaraguan adults survived the ten-year civil war that pitted members of the Sandinista Popular Army (EPS), including guys just...

A civic fiesta, less than healthy competition or utter chaos?
2011 Septiembre Nicaragua
Politicians and journalists have typically trumpeted electoral periods in Nicaragua as a “civic fiesta.” With less than two months to go before election...

What can and should a new government do about the economy?
2011 Agosto Nicaragua
Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC) candidate Arnoldo Alemán is going around promising to create a million jobs in five years if elected. Edmundo...

Another five years with more of the same?
2011 Agosto Nicaragua
It was assumed that at this year’s costly and colorful July 19 celebration President Ortega would announce some important aspects of the government...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2011 Agosto Nicaragua
FACUNDO CABRAL’S MURDERER HAS NICARAGUAN LINKSCentral Americans were deeply moved by the killing on July 9 in Guatemala of Argentine singer-songwriter...

Memories of a lost generation
2011 Julio Nicaragua
July marks the 32nd anniversary of the initiation of the Popular Sandinista Revolution, which inspired so many of our parents, committing them to a common...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2011 Julio Nicaragua
LEÓN’S COLONIAL CATHEDRAL DECLARED WORLD HERITAGEOn June 28, UNESCO unanimously added León’s Cathedral to its World Heritage list as an expression...

How do the youth of this generation feel, think and see themselves?
2011 Julio Nicaragua
The Research Center for Communication (CINCO), where I work, has developed a line of research on national actors we identify as most relevant to social...

Mysteries, times, fears and challenges
2011 Julio Nicaragua
According to the governing party’s official electoral campaign document, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) believes it is reaching the...

All governments have used the police for their own interests
2011 Junio Nicaragua
First of all, we have to look at the historical role played by the police force we founded when we brought downthe Somocista dictatorship, analyzing...

The end of a cycle or another FSLN mutation?
2011 Junio Nicaragua
The 17th Sao Paulo Forum was held in Managua in May. The forum began as an initiative of the Brazilian Workers’ Party in 1990 to discuss with other...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2011 Junio Nicaragua
THE CRISIS IN EL NUEVO DIARIOIn early May El Nuevo Diario’s journalists and public readers spend days of tense concern following an announcement...

Without structural changes there’ll be no sustainable reduction of rural poverty
2011 Mayo Nicaragua
Nicaragua proudly claims its identity as an agricultural country and boasts its exports of coffee, cheese and beans. But if we observe the public policies...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2011 Mayo Nicaragua
CARDINAL OBANDO ATTENDS BEATIFICATIONCardinal Miguel Obando attended the beatification of Pope John Paul II in Rome on May 1 at the invitation...

A storm hit when the sky seemed calm
2011 Mayo Nicaragua
In the second week of April, Walter Porras, general director of Nicaragua’s internal revenue service, the DGI, was suddenly fired. Two months earlier,...

Tell me the house you live in, and I’ll tell you if you receive remittances
2011 Mayo Nicaragua
The prudish reaction to consumption—which has its origins in Roman stoicism, hermit-like asceticism and even, paradoxically, the accumulating desire...

The Five Slots on November’s Ballot
2011 Abril Nicaragua
Meeting the deadline of the electoral calendar prepared by the Supreme Electoral Council, which continues to be headed by magistrates occupying their...

Chinandega’s Navigation In the Sea of Globalization
2011 Abril Nicaragua
Chinandega used to be the City of Oranges. The expression has survived what turned out to be an ephemeral reality. Chinandega’s orange groves have...

Is Ortega’s Project Christian? And What is the Church’s Project?
2011 Abril Nicaragua
On Sunday, March 20th, the great Belgian Catholic theologian José Comblin died in Brazil. He had worked for many years in Chile and Brazil and had visited...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2011 Abril Nicaragua
ORTEGA’S INAUGURAL LESSONThe news in March that the FSLN’s electoral campaign chief in León would be Róger Gurdián, rector of León’s National...

The FSLN Will Surely Win the Presidency But Also Wants a Qualified Majority in Parliament
2011 Marzo Nicaragua
During the Sandinista National Liberation Front’s four years in power, it has primarily concerned itself with reconstructing the country’s economic and...

The Libyan Connection
2011 Marzo Nicaragua
Although Libya is over 10,000 kilometers from Nicaragua, a good part of the Nicaraguan population has heard more references to this North African country...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2011 Marzo Nicaragua
CORRUPTION IN THE ELECTORAL BRANCHFor several days in the last week of February, El Nuevo Diario ran a powerful investigative series...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2011 Enero Nicaragua
THE COSTA RICA-NICARAGUA BORDER DISPUTE GOES ONOn January 11, Nicaragua and Costa Rica appeared before the International Court of Justice (ICJ)...

Concerns about the New Course Of International Cooperation
2011 Enero Nicaragua
International nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working for development in Nicaragua are very concerned by the change of direction currently being...

The Electoral Script
2011 Enero Nicaragua
One of the first campaign documents of the governing Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) makes clear that “2011 isn’t just another presidential...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2010 Diciembre Nicaragua
THE BISHOPS’ LETTEROn November 17, the nine bishops on Nicaragua’s Bishop’s Council released a message which stated, among other things, that...

The Adventure of Producing Blue Energy in the Caribbean Region
2010 Diciembre Nicaragua
In 2006, energy cuts in most of Nicaragua frequently lasted up to eight hours a day, affecting production and commerce and the collective and personal...

Knee Deep in the Big Muddy at Year's End
2010 Diciembre Nicaragua
Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary-General José Miguel Insulza described the geography of the Costa Rica-Nicaragua controversy as follows:...

Societal Validation for Drug Trafficking Is Growing
2010 Diciembre Nicaragua
Aphenomenon has appeared on the Caribbean Coast, in Managua and different areas on the Pacific Coast that we consider extremely dangerous: societal legitimization...

The Partial and Personal Chronicle Of a Cuban in Nicaragua
2010 Diciembre Nicaragua
When I got to the immigration desk at the Augusto César Sandino Airport, I glanced around while the official was checking my documents, stamping seals...

A Pre-electoral Reflection from the Liberal Window and the Emancipator Window
2010 Diciembre Nicaragua
Digging into all the political analyses of the Central American region, two paradigms can be identified that crystallize into two visions—the Liberal...

Maktub?
2010 Noviembre Nicaragua
Roberto Rivas—who still illegally occupies the presidency of the Supreme Electoral Council months after his term ended—announced on October 28 that the...

The Latest Border Crisis: Bi-national Citizenship Revisited
2010 Noviembre Nicaragua
The Río San Juan is the sinuous strait discovered with premeditation and treachery by Spanish conquerors dreaming of a broad turquoise band of water...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2010 Noviembre Nicaragua
EXCESSIVE RAINS PRODUCED EPIDEMICS AND CROP LOSSESAs a consequence of the copious rains this winter, an outbreak of leptospirosis was detected...

The Two Main Electoral Issues Must Be Education and Fiscal Reform
2010 Noviembre Nicaragua
The most recent analyses by international finance organizations and socioeconomic institutions that study Central America are now sounding an optimistic...

When the Youngest Emigrate
2010 Octubre Nicaragua
Nicaraguan emigration also has the face of adolescents and children: 24% of our total emigrants are under 18, according to the country’s 2005 Living...

We Don’t Want Fear to Rob Us of Hope
2010 Octubre Nicaragua
We in the We’re Going with Eduardo Movement (VCE) recently decided that Eduardo Montealegre should resign his candidacy in the 2011 presidential elections,...

On Red Alert
2010 Octubre Nicaragua
The intensity and persistence of the rains that have fallen almost daily since mid-May have produced human, social and material disasters in nearly all...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2010 Octubre Nicaragua
HYDROELECTRIC MEGA-PROJECT In late September, El Nuevo Diario published the details of a mega-project that experts say will cause a mega-environmental...

The Sacarrín Effect
2010 Septiembre Nicaragua
There was nothing new about the political environment when the “sacarrín” was suddenly played. The executive branch was consummating its control over...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2010 Septiembre Nicaragua
ENDLESS RAINS CAUSE WIDESPREAD DISASTERAfter the climatic phenomenon called El Niño caused severe droughts last year, its sister phenomenon,...

Migrants: Submissive Victims or Engaging in Civil Disobedience?
2010 Septiembre Nicaragua
Imagine a starch-collared World Bank official stroking his brush moustache and adjusting his Gucci tie while introducing a panel on export incentives...

On Social Security the IMF Has Little to Tell Us and a Lot to Be Told
2010 Septiembre Nicaragua
Everything that has to do with the subject of social security is highly sensitive for any society because it’s about life; it’s of interest to all human...

Living with Ghosts
2010 Agosto Nicaragua
The huge plaza opposite Lake Xolotlán’s boardwalk was filled to overflowing with hundreds of thousands of people, as usual. And as usual, the multitude...

Municipal Autonomy Is More Threatened than Ever
2010 Agosto Nicaragua
My point of departure—and my arrival point—consist of two key ideas. The first is that municipal autonomy in Nicaragua is facing the greatest risk ever...

A Nicaraguan in the World Trade Organization
2010 Agosto Nicaragua
Three years ago a plane took me from the labyrinthine streets of Managua and landed me in Geneva, a multicultural, conservative city protected by mountains....

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2010 Agosto Nicaragua
A MEGA PORT PROJECT IN MONKEY POINTIn the first week of July, it was reported that a memorandum of understanding had been signed between...

Civil Society’s Representation In the Association Agreement
2010 Julio Nicaragua
The talks leading up to the Association Agreement between Central America and the European Union hasn’t been of general interest to our population,...

The Contradictory Legacy of the Sandinista Agrarian Reform
2010 Julio Nicaragua
Nicaragua embarked on an agrarian reform adventure during the 1980s, inspired by a revolutionary government longing to lead great transformations. The...

The Games We Played During the Soccer World Cup
2010 Julio Nicaragua
As the World Cup knockout stage approached, Nicaragua’s institutional crisis was still where we’d left it before the sound of vuvuzelas started trumpeting...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2010 Julio Nicaragua
MINE-FREE NICARAGUAThe Army of Nicaragua announced on June 18 that the National Humanitarian De-mining Program begun 21 years ago has finally...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2010 Junio Nicaragua
WHERE, OH WHERE, TO ISSUE THE SOLIDARITY BONUSMay was rife with speculations, proposals and backtracking about how and where the government...

The Rural CAPS: Ensuring Community Access to Water
2010 Junio Nicaragua
There’s a protest going on nearby, in Ticuantepe, that’s got something to do with water,” I told my mother in July 2005. “I’m going to check it out.”...

Invidious Messages and a Revealing “Joke”
2010 Junio Nicaragua
The COSEP members who at-attended the May 26 meeting brought the same two main demands they always insist on in the frequent and cordial meetings they’ve...

The New Education Strategy: A Quality Decision or an Electoral One?
2010 Junio Nicaragua
With the change of government in January 2007, the first decision made by Miguel de Castilla, the new education minister, was to abolish school autonomy....

They Sow Promises, We Harvest Disillusion
2010 Mayo Nicaragua
Nicaragua was affected yet again last year by that recurring climatic phenomenon known as El Niño, an ocean current that causes drought across Central...

Broad Brushstrokes and Fine Touches
2010 Mayo Nicaragua
Reelecting Daniel Ortega in 2011 is the Sandinista National Liberation Front’s absolute priority. But given that the Constitution prohibits him running...

Cargill: In the Belly of the Beast
2010 Mayo Nicaragua
Cargill is a privately held transnational company that has grown out of all measure to become one of the US corporations with the biggest profit volume...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2010 Mayo Nicaragua
MANAGUA COULD DISAPPEARIn an event held in Managua on April 13, Argentine geologist José Viramonte was awarded honorary membership by Nicaragua’s...

The Incredible and Sad Story of The Tax Reform in Three Acts
2010 Abril Nicaragua
When we talk about tax reform in our country, we’re talking about an event that has happened every seven years for the past two decades: episodic changes...

Mirages
2010 Abril Nicaragua
March revealed desperation among the actors dominating the nation’s political stage. Hovering over their heads is the National Assembly’s still pending...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2010 Abril Nicaragua
UNITED STATES AND ARNOLDO ALEMÁN Two US congressional aides, one from the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the other from the House...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2010 Marzo Nicaragua
PLAN TO COMBAT THE DROUGHT’S EFFECTS “WORKED OUT IN SILENCE”In mid-February President Ortega, who appeared concerned about forecasts that the...

The Economy Will Be Austere And Uncertain in 2010 and 2011
2010 Marzo Nicaragua
Unemployment is perhaps the main social and economic problem facing President Daniel Ortega as he enters the fourth of his five-year term and contemplates...

We Were a Small but Efficient Brigade And the Haitians Grew Fond of Us
2010 Marzo Nicaragua
We flew from Managua to Jamaica and from there to Haiti. When we landed in Jamaica, General Perezcassar called us together and asked us to work with...

Chaos All Around
2010 Marzo Nicaragua
This year began with a legal urgency that has set time limits. The constitutional terms of 25 officials heading the electoral branch, the Supreme Court...

Children’s Rights: From Paper to Reality
2010 Marzo Nicaragua
Twenty years have passed since the United Nations General Assembly unanimously approved the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) on November 20,...

Nicaragua Briefs
2010 Enero Nicaragua
DROUGHT AND HUNGEROn January 22, the agriculture and forestry minister announced that the government would create technical teams, including...

Stones in Their Shoes
2010 Enero Nicaragua
One of the Ortega government’s various colorful TV propaganda spots tells us that 2010 is a year of “sowing” and 2011 will be one of “reaping.” It’s...

Zero Hunger: Development or Just Raindrops?
2010 Enero Nicaragua
The implementation of a food security and nutrition program is justified in Nicaragua, where 22% of the population was malnourished between 2003 and...

Chilling Similarities Between Ortega and the Somozas
2010 Enero Nicaragua
In the old days, all armies in Nicaragua bore the seal of the caudillo or party that formed them. That explains why our history is saturated with civil...

A Decision of Principles and a Challenge to Ortega
2010 Enero Nicaragua
We have received a veritable avalanche of opinions in the great public debate unleashed by the dilemma facing the journalists of “Esta Semana” and “Esta...

The Ship-out Caribbeans Have Left the Coast on Cruise Ships
2009 Diciembre Nicaragua
My story isn’t nice or lovely at all, but it’s not horrible either. I left when I was 17 years old. I went with my sister and without knowing I would...

What to Add, What to Subtract, How to Multiply, Who to Divide?
2009 Diciembre Nicaragua
In August 2008 Ortega government sympathizers made such an aggressive attack on opposition members arriving for a demonstration in León that the demonstration...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2009 Diciembre Nicaragua
ERNESTO CARDENAL EVICTED FROM HIS OWN HOTELOn orders “from above” and using procedures riddled with irregularities, a group of police officers...

The Health System Nicaragua Needs Is Preventive Not Curative
2009 Diciembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s health system is made up of various sub-systems: the armed forces—army and police—sub-system; the public health sub-system under the Ministry...

The Caribbean Coast: Independence or Desperation?
2009 Noviembre Nicaragua
Last April, 400 delegates of the Council of Elders of the Moskitia, representing more than 300 Miskitu communities, met for four days with over a thousand...

Riding the Wind with the Sails Full
2009 Noviembre Nicaragua
Two months ago we analyzed the government’s running of the ship of state and speculated that Daniel Ortega and his team could veer off course and even...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2009 Noviembre Nicaragua
HURRICANE IDA: THE COAST LASHED AGAINOn November 4, Hurricane Ida hit the tourist centers of Corn Island and Little Corn Island with 75 mph...

An SOS for Climate Change: What Will We Young People Do?
2009 Noviembre Nicaragua
We are already seeing evidence of the environmental crisis, which has a greater effect on those of us living in the world’s basement, in the least advanced...

What Surprises Will the End of This Third Year Bring?
2009 Octubre Nicaragua
The end of 2009 will mark the conclusion of the third year of President Daniel Ortega’s second elected term in office. It doesn’t take a genius to predict...

Seven Deadly Sins We’re Bequeathing Our Young People
2009 Octubre Nicaragua
Every new development guru swears they have diagnosed our deficiencies and have the remedy to rescue us from the sad shore of underdevelopment on which...

What’s Going On in the Municipalities? And What’s With the CPCs?
2009 Octubre Nicaragua
Our network set up a Citizen Participation Observatory in 2007, in which we would “observe” the new municipal governments during their entire administration...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2009 Octubre Nicaragua
POLICE DISMANTLE DRUG LABOn September 10, the National Police dismantled a clandestine laboratory on the outskirts of the municipality of Achuapa,...

Corruption Is the Most Serious Aspect of The Ortega-Chávez Relationship
2009 Septiembre Nicaragua
Daniel Ortega began governing before Obama was elected, when the US government was dominated by the most rightwing conservatives. He also began when...

An Urgent Call to Use the Demographic Dividend
2009 Septiembre Nicaragua
On August 8, the Civil Coordinator, a Nicaraguan civil society umbrella organization made up of some 600 nongovernmental organizations, networks and...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2009 Septiembre Nicaragua
FREE OF ILLITERACYOn August 22, the government took advantage of the 29th anniversary of the conclusion of the 1980 Literacy Crusade to proclaim...

The Wind in Its Sails, Adrift or About to Run Aground?
2009 Septiembre Nicaragua
From the outset, Daniel Ortega’s new government charted its course according to economic and political coordinates. Economically, it concentrated on...

With Major New Structural Reforms, The Ball’s Now in Our Court
2009 Agosto Nicaragua
To assess what Daniel Ortega’s government has done after 30 months in office, the halfway mark, it seems to me that the first starting point should be...

Major Signs of Crisis, Minor Signs of Flexibility
2009 Agosto Nicaragua
The 30th anniversary of the in-surrection that ended half a century of Somoza family dictatorship found the FSLN government limited by an escalating...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2009 Agosto Nicaragua
WORLD COURT DECIDES RÍO SAN JUAN CASEAlter disputes that have dragged on for 11 years, the 15 justices of the International Court of Justice...

Ten Photos that Shook the Eighties
2009 Julio Nicaragua
Could any other historic event have divided Nicaraguan public opinion as much as the Sandinista revolution? The ideological and biographical bifurcations—which...

Explaining the FSLN’s Constitutional Reform Proposal
2009 Julio Nicaragua
Before analyzing the constitutional reform project the FSLN hopes to push through the National Asasembly this year, it would be useful to recall some...

Thirty Years Seen Through the Time Tunnel
2009 Julio Nicaragua
Managua became a continental political epicenter again on June 29. In three successive summits—the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), the...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2009 Julio Nicaragua
INFLUENZA A (H1N1) HITS NICARAGUAAfter several weeks in which the Ministry of Health attributed the new pandemic’s absence in Nicaragua to the...

El Salvador and Nicaragua: So Near and Yet So Far
2009 Junio Nicaragua
President Daniel Ortega made a last-minute decision not to show up at President Mauricio Funes’ inauguration the morning of June 1, despite his announced...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2009 Junio Nicaragua
MISKITU INDEPENDENCE SUPPORTED IN SOUTHIn an act held in Bluefields in May, representatives of the Miskitu population in Nicaragua’s southern...

So Far the AA Is of No Use to Us
2009 Junio Nicaragua
The European Union (EU) started negotiations for an association agreement (AA) with the region’s countries in October 2007. To understand what has happened...

Are We Surfing the Internet Or Have We Run Aground?
2009 Junio Nicaragua
According to a World Economic Forum report recently released in Guatemala, Nicaragua came in last in Central America with respect to information and...

A Portrait in Grays of Nicaragua’s Catholic Church
2009 Mayo Nicaragua
I want to start with the Caribbean Coast, Nicaragua’s most extensive territory yet the one least known in the rest of the country, because it is there...

Politics in the Time of Virus
2009 Mayo Nicaragua
Human influenza, nee swine flu, has not yet invaded Nicaragua. A presidential decree of two months of emergency, widespread publicizing of preventive...

The Constant Potter
2009 Mayo Nicaragua
The auditorium of Managua’s Central American University (UCA) was beyond standing room that September 6th Saturday. The smell of wet earth, drenched...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2009 Mayo Nicaragua
ANOTHER CHÁVEZ PROMISEAt the Seventh Summit of Latin American Bolivarian Alternative (ALBA) countries, held just before the Summit of the Americas...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2009 Abril Nicaragua
JOE BIDEN MEETS WITH THE REGION’S PRESIDENTSIn mid-March a Summit of Progressive Governments was held in which US Vice President Joe Biden...

Vulnerable to the Bottom-feeding Suckermouth
2009 Abril Nicaragua
The first Panama Suckermouth was accidentally caught a year ago in the Nacarime Lagoon, in Rivas. After 10 hours out of water the fish was still moving,...

The Crisis Cries for Dialogue but the Government Polarized the Country
2009 Abril Nicaragua
The economic crisis and how to deal with it is the main concern uniting all of humanity today. It’s already affecting everyone, including us in Nicaragua....

How Do Coast Women Understand Poverty?
2009 Abril Nicaragua
In the conventional literature, poverty is related exclusively to the lack of material goods and is measured by calculating the capacity to satisfy basic...

Before the Night Gets Much Darker…
2009 Marzo Nicaragua
On Saturday, February 28, a dozen civic organizations organized street demonstrations in eight Nicaraguan cities “against the electoral fraud, the dictatorship...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2009 Marzo Nicaragua
A LITTLE TRANSPARENCY PROBLEM The director of the government’s Zero Hunger program, Gustavo Moreno, resigned his post on February 10, after...

Blow by Blow, Step by Step, The Global Crisis Is Hitting Us Hard
2009 Marzo Nicaragua
The main characteristic of this new world economic crisis is that it started in the North, in the developed world. Unlike the most recent important...

Looking at the Ruins of a Defiled Electoral Process
2009 Marzo Nicaragua
Since its founding in 1996, the Ethics and Transparency Civic Group (E&T) has observed 9 electoral processes in Nicaragua and accompanied them in over...

Public Finances, and Thus the Common Good, Are Being Abused
2009 Enero Nicaragua
We’re going through an exceptional situation in Nicaragua right now. Eight new factors have appeared, or at least they’re happening for the first time...

The Lessons of Mitch: Learned, Not Learned and Unlearned
2009 Enero Nicaragua
To mark the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Mitch, the lucid and biting Nicaraguan caricaturist Pedro Molina drew two parallel sketches of the same family...

Abuse as Usual Means Many Accounts to Settle
2009 Enero Nicaragua
The crisis triggered by last November’s fraudulent municipal elections monopolized the political scene in Nicaragua for over two months. Then on January...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2009 Enero Nicaragua
FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE?Following the Latin American presidential summit in Brazil in mid-December, where he failed to get a word of support...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2008 Diciembre Nicaragua
OFFICIAL ELECTION RESULTSThe Supreme Electoral Council’s highly challenged results gave the Liberal Alliance 37 mayoral seats, four of which...

Who Do the Coast Lands Belong to And Who Will Get Them?
2008 Diciembre Nicaragua
What used to be called the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua and is now properly recognized as the Caribbean Coast is the historical home of three indigenous...

Three New Year Scenarios
2008 Diciembre Nicaragua
In another week or two we will have reached the New Year and the halfway mark of President Daniel Ortega’s term in office. The structural problems dragging...

These Elections Were Won by Both Fraud and Theft
2008 Diciembre Nicaragua
We’re wondering whether we committed the sin of ingenuousness by agreeing to participate in elections so plagued with anomalies, because throughout this...

Brief Notes on Foreign Cooperation At This Time of Uncertainty
2008 Diciembre Nicaragua
* According to the projections of the Medium-term Budget Framework attached to the 2008 Budget bill, the foreign cooperation resources to be disbursed...

DR-CAFTA, ALBA and the Sustainable Development Trinity
2008 Diciembre Nicaragua
Like corner posts of a house, three pillars support sustainable development: the economy, society and the environment. We don’t always see all three...

On the Track of Political Gangs: Has Mara 19 Been Born in Nicaragua?
2008 Diciembre Nicaragua
Martin Scorsese’s box office hit “Gangs of New York” shows a fierce confrontation between two gangs at the service of ethnic factions and political rivals....

International NGOs Won’t Give Up Our Work or Reason for Being Here
2008 Noviembre Nicaragua
Mundubat is part of the Secretariat of International nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working in Nicaragua, an umbrella organization that represents...

In These Times of Uncertainty and Insomnia…
2008 Noviembre Nicaragua
We often state that we live in uncertain times, harassed by injustice and a lack of well-being. In this regard, we have already cited a brief but extraordinary...

Nicaragua Is the Municipal Elections’ Big Loser
2008 Noviembre Nicaragua
Nicaraguans voted for new municipal authorities in the middle of a planetary economic crisis. Although it has hit this fragile country hard, President...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2008 Noviembre Nicaragua
EDGAR TIJERINO’S VOW OF SILENCEOn October 15, the influential Nicaraguan sports journalist Edgard Tijerino announced he would no longer be making...

Posoltega Ten Years Later: Buried Then, Uprooted Now
2008 Octubre Nicaragua
Posoltega was emblematic of the effects of a natural disaster and of a decided and tenacious effort to rebuild. But it was also plagued by animosity...

We Allied with the PLC Hoping to Transform Liberalism
2008 Octubre Nicaragua
If Nicaragua has suffered from something in the last five years, it’s a marked lowering of the tolerance leyels in our political class and our population....

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2008 Octubre Nicaragua
ZOILAMÉRICA CLOSES HER CASEOn September 26, Attorney General Hernán Estrada presented a letter sent by Zoilamérica Narváez—who charged her stepfather...

The Rules of the Game
2008 Octubre Nicaragua
We’re heading toward an electoral November. On Tuesday, November 4, US voters will choose between Obama and McCain, with the entire planet watching....

Criticism Isn’t Synonymous with Hatred
2008 Septiembre Nicaragua
It’s not pure speculation to assume that Daniel Ortega views this five-year term of government (2007-2011) as a “transition” to the next one. By that...

The Splendor and Squalor of National Ecotourism
2008 Septiembre Nicaragua
The twin-volcano island of Ometepe, emerging out of the legendary Lake Cocibolca, also known as Lake Nicaragua, was nominated as Nicaragua’s candidate...

I Know the FSLN’s History Well, But I Can’t Envision Its Future
2008 Septiembre Nicaragua
I’ve never been a theoretician of anything; I’m not an intellectual. What I am is a practical man; an operator, a “shoemaker,” as they once called me....

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2008 Septiembre Nicaragua
ORTEGA DIDN’T GO TO PARAGUAY…Although President Ortega was among those invited to the ceremony at which former Catholic Bishop Fernando Lugo...

To Read or Not to Read: That is the Question
2008 Agosto Nicaragua
According to Moroccan-French writer Daniel Pennac, readers are subject to 10 rights, the first of which is the right not to read. It appears that, consciously...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2008 Agosto Nicaragua
JULY 19 CELEBRATION OF THE SANDINISTA REVOLUTIONThe government celebrated the 29th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution with at least 300,000...

The Micro-Financing Institutions Are Politically Very Attractive
2008 Agosto Nicaragua
Micro-financing institutions emerged in Nicaragua and the rest of Latin America as one of the responses to the structural adjustment measures of the...

The Path Taking Us “There”
2008 Agosto Nicaragua
Many have already qualified the upcoming municipal elections as a referendum on the first two years of Daniel Ortega’s second shot at governing the country,...

Nicaragua’s Drastic Situation Obliged Me to Go on a Hunger Strike
2008 Julio Nicaragua
The Supreme Electoral Council took away the legal status of the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) to prevent us from participating in November’s municipal...

Rescuing and Renovating Sandinismo: A Critique of Nicaraguan Heroic Culture
2008 Julio Nicaragua
While it presents itself as a leftist option, the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) Alliance hasn’t succeeded in putting together a body of thought...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2008 Julio Nicaragua
NICHO MARENCOIn the first days of Dora María Téllez’s hunger strike, Dionisio Marenco, longtime FSLN luminary and currently mayor of Managua,...

Where Are We After 29 Years, And After 290 Hours?
2008 Julio Nicaragua
When the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) magistrates announced on May 23 that they were canceling the legal status of the Sandinista Renovation Movement...

Nicaraguans Squeezed on All Sides
2008 Junio Nicaragua
There are moments when every thing just seems to hit at the same time. Last month was like that. The global energy crisis, one of the roots of the...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2008 Junio Nicaragua
ABNORMAL CLIMATIC ACTIVITYTropical storm Alma hit Nicaragua’s Pacific zone with unexpected force on May 29. The damage caused by its 60-mile-an-hour...

Climate Change: We Can Already See What Our Future Will Be Like
2008 Junio Nicaragua
There’s no doubt that we’re seeing and feeling climate change around the world, Nicaragua included, but there are also effects that we still don’t know...

We Need More Action and Less Talk About the Food Crisis
2008 Junio Nicaragua
We hear about the food crisis around the world every day. We in the cooperative movement are working to educate our associates to understand this problem...

The Sea, the Ship And the Uncertain Course
2008 Mayo Nicaragua
The relentless rise in international oil and food prices is a constant item in the agitated sea of international news. Many people around the world...

Youth Gangs and Religion: Links and Differences
2008 Mayo Nicaragua
Is there a relationship between youth gangs and religion? Between violence and religious experience? Between youth transgression of the established...

We Have More Important Rights Pending Than Just the Vote
2008 Mayo Nicaragua
The Caribbean Coast hit the national headlines again on April 4 due to a violent confrontation in the streets of Bilwi between different factions of...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2008 Mayo Nicaragua
THE CENI CONFLICT RAGES ONContinuing the confusing and contradictory way the government has been treating the controversial case of the bank...

Our Education System Is Increasing Poverty and Inequality
2008 Mayo Nicaragua
In Nicaragua we’re all gradually beginning to agree on three ideas regarding education. The first already sounds like a cliché: education is a key factor...

Reflections on the Daily Violation Of the Secular State
2008 Mayo Nicaragua
Secularism is one of the main conquests in the fight for freedom of conscience, human rights, tolerance and democracy. Anywhere religious fundamentalism...

The “New” Chureca: From Garbage to Human Dignity
2008 Abril Nicaragua
La Chureca has existed since 1973. Over 30 years later, in December 2007, it was named one of the “20 Horrors of the Modern World” in a contest organized...

Sixteen Years Lost in Five Agreements with the IMF
2008 Abril Nicaragua
In September 1991, Nicaragua signed an 18-month “stand-by” program with the IMF in its first agreement with that institution after the FSLN’s 1990 electoral...

La Chureca and the North Caribbean: Two Man-Made Crises
2008 Abril Nicaragua
Managua spent the whole of March grappling with a “garbage crisis.” In part it was a battle of poor against poor, the kind nobody wins. But insofar...

We Have to Learn to Stop Taking Water for Granted
2008 Abril Nicaragua
When we were children in the eighties, we experienced something extraordinary: the generation before ours, young men and women only slightly older than...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2008 Abril Nicaragua
THE VIOLENCE JUST KEEPS ON GROWINGThe director of the National Police’s Women’s Police Stations, Commissioner Mercedes Ampié, revealed that...

CPCs Around the Country Are Waiting For ‘Guidance’ from Higher Up
2008 Marzo Nicaragua
The Local Democracy and Development Network is a collection of civil society organizations and individuals that works on three main themes: civic participation,...

A Story of Hope: Six Months of Breaking Silences
2008 Marzo Nicaragua
All over the world, including Nicaragua, sexual abuse is the worst expression of the unequal power relations between women and men, adults and children....

Indignant (and Substantiated) Clues To the CENI Fraud and Renegotiation
2008 Marzo Nicaragua
The Ortega government is accusing Liberal opposition leader Eduardo Montealegre of responsibility for the whole fraud related to the Central Bank’s Negotiable...

Lots of Clashes, Little Light And Still No Way Forward
2008 Marzo Nicaragua
The Ortega-Murillo government has definitely reorganized the set on the country’s political and economic stage, transforming whole areas and redecorating...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2008 Marzo Nicaragua
ANICARAGUA’S STARVED FUTURE Research by the Nutrition Unit of the Education Ministry’s Comprehensive School Nutrition Program (PINE) has revealed...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2008 Enero Nicaragua
BISHOPS WORRIEDDuring the Immaculate Conception (Purísima ) celebrations, the Catholic Bishops’ Council of Nicaragua published a document analyzing...

Storm Clouds of Ambiguous Days (Or the Ambiguities of Stormy Days)
2008 Enero Nicaragua
The end of 2007 was especially tense, both economically and politically. And because the calendar’s imaginary cutoff date does nothing to dissipate...

Are Raw Materials Our Only Contribution to Science?
2008 Enero Nicaragua
The state of scientific development in Nicaragua is depressing and worrying. The current rate of growth in this area is increasingly threatening the...

Ten Reflections in Defense of Freedom of Expresión
2008 Enero Nicaragua
Quoting his father, Carlos Fernando began, “As long as there is a typewriter, a sheet of paper, a microphone, a public square, a balcony or any space...

In Memory of Cecilia Torres: Women’s Rights Defender and Femicide Victim
2007 Diciembre Nicaragua
Cecilia Torres Hernández was very humble but also very strong. Quite clear about what her citizenship status afforded her, Cecilia was firmly convinced...

We Must Expose Ortega’s Plans From the Left
2007 Diciembre Nicaragua
When I analyze what’s happening in Nicaragua, I’m reminded of the Oriental story of a man who lost his keys. A friend comes to visit and finds him squatting...

How Many Conflicts Will the New “Direct Democracy” Trigger?
2007 Diciembre Nicaragua
President Daniel Ortega had begun to talk of setting up “direct democracy” in Nicaragua even before winning the elections and continued to insist on...

Who Gets a Key to the Doors on the Forest?
2007 Diciembre Nicaragua
On the boat trip from San Carlos to Boca de Sábalos along the Río San Juan I get an intensive course on the area’s metaphors: the Tarzans—or boatmen...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2007 Diciembre Nicaragua
IBERO-AMERICAN SUMMITAlthough playing a seconding role, Nicaragua’s President took part in the incident between the King of Spain and the President...

Ticaraguans: Bi-national Identities on the Liquid Border
2007 Noviembre Nicaragua
Feet run across the line. There’s no reason to feart heir murmur. What are they taking, what are they bringing? I don’t know. What’s important...

Gambling Away Our Future with Decisions We’re Making Today
2007 Noviembre Nicaragua
A little over a month ago macro-economy specialists were expressing their satisfaction in the media: we had finally come to an agreement with the International...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2007 Noviembre Nicaragua
HURRICANE FELIX: HELP AND HUNGERA month and a half after Hurricane Felix ravaged the North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN), Laura De Clementi,...

With Water, Water Everywhere, Who’s on the President’s Ark?
2007 Noviembre Nicaragua
One year after the FSLN’s squeaky victory in the presidential elections, there is still a generalized feeling of uncertainty in the country. Many of...

A Month after the Hurricane The Worst Is Yet to Come
2007 Octubre Nicaragua
Hurricane Felix slowly turned in toward the coast in the pre-dawn of Tuesday, September 4. The threat had become reality. It was only then that the...

The Hurricane Carried Away All Harmony
2007 Octubre Nicaragua
I live in Bilwi (Puerto Cabezas), and when they started saying a dangerous hurricane was advancing through the Caribbean, the first thing that went through...

Notes on a Scandal Of Historic Proportions
2007 Octubre Nicaragua
2006, October: A number of Sandinista women with the ear of FSLN National Assembly representatives tell them they have committed a gross human...

Nicaragua Briefs
2007 Octubre Nicaragua
MONEY LAUNDERINGWhile inaugurating a seminar on research techniques for financial crimes for officials of Nicaragua’s police department, attorney...

Ba’ra sma ki? The Caribbean’s Challenge
2007 Octubre Nicaragua
All witnesses of the now devastated communities in the North Caribbean, including two people who lived through the experience and write about it in these...

Nicaragua’s Justice System: A Portrait in Grays
2007 Octubre Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s judicial branch is always on the spot. The country has never had an authentic judicial system where that old principle of “give each one...

Rosa in the Land of Lovelessness
2007 Septiembre Nicaragua
Rosa, the only child of an illiterate Nicaraguan peasant couple working in Costa Rica who risked death in January-February 2003 due to a rape-induced...

Seven Messages from Power and One from the Left
2007 Septiembre Nicaragua
Beyond the judicial aberration, the disregard of a branch of state, the abuse committed by the caudillos’s “yes men” on the Supreme Court, the...

You Can’t Organize People and Raise Consciousness by Decree
2007 Septiembre Nicaragua
The first question we need to clear up if we’re going to analyze this Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) government is whether or not we’re...

The FSLN Government Pieces Together Its New International Policy Puzzle
2007 Septiembre Nicaragua
In the early morning of September 4, Hurricane Felix passed directly over the Miskito Keys off Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast then made landfall at the...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2007 Septiembre Nicaragua
AMNESTY PROJECTDuring August some PLC legislators dusted off the shelved general amnesty bill for all officials of the governments of Arnoldo...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2007 Agosto Nicaragua
ALEMÁN’S TRIAL SET IN PANAMAOn July 20, Panamanian criminal judge Adolfo Mejía subpoenaed former Nicaraguan President Arnoldo Alemán, his wife,...

Posoltega Nine Years After the Tragedy
2007 Agosto Nicaragua
Posoltega means “town near the land that burns.” Ironically, this burning land was swamped during Hurricane Mitch by a giant torrent of mud, sulphur...

It’s Up to Us to Curtail the Government’s Authoritarianism
2007 Agosto Nicaragua
There’s a saying that “a leopard is known by its spots.” Seven months into the government of Daniel Ortega we have enough spots to get a pretty good...

The Cards Are on the Table
2007 Agosto Nicaragua
July is always a month of political happenings, and this year was no exception. In fact it produced even more novelties than in recent years. The...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2007 Julio Nicaragua
DRUG TRAFFICKING AND THE JUDICIAL SYSTEMAs the National Police (PN) continued hammering away at the logistics of the international drug trade...

The Ortega-Murillo Project: Personal, Family, National or International?
2007 Julio Nicaragua
The leitmotifs of the preparations for the 28th anniversary of the revolution are established in a series of gigantic billboards that appeared all over...

From Citizen-as-Ward to Citizen-as-Client With No Solutions in Sight
2007 Julio Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s four governments in the last 27 years have applied two openly contrasting economic models: one based loosely on a planned economy and the...

“We’re Still Concerned about the Human Rights Situation”
2007 Julio Nicaragua
When Daniel Ortega was elected President, his sym-pathizers said to us in the Nicaraguan Human Rights Center (CENIDH), “You’re going to have no reason...

The Sound of Silence and The Noise of Tola
2007 Junio Nicaragua
The political and economic project of the government of “unity and reconciliation,” as the Ortega-Murillo government has labeled itself, has been taking...

From Telescopic to Microscopic: Three Youth Gang Members Speak
2007 Junio Nicaragua
Thirty years ago, comedian and movie director Woody Allen predicted that in the near future rape and kid-napping would be predominant forms of human...

“Gerardo Miranda And We the Thieves”
2007 Junio Nicaragua
Carlos Fernando Chamorro and the team of the Esta Semana current affairs television program have earned a place in the history of the fight against...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2007 Junio Nicaragua
OPPOSITION UNITY SEESAWSDuring the May 19 celebration of Sandino’s birth, President Ortega disparaged the various proposals for organizing and...

We Barely Know the Wealth of Biodiversity Surrounding Us
2007 Junio Nicaragua
Do we Nicaraguans know what animals co-inhabit our our country with us? Not really. The first thing we need to understand is that invertebrates, which...

In Defense of the Existing Civic Participation
2007 Junio Nicaragua
The Civil Coordinator is an autonomous coordinating body of Nicaragua’s civil society sectors, made up of unions, federations, associations, foundations,...

A Thirsty Country with Lots of Water
2007 Mayo Nicaragua
If Nicaragua has anything, it’s water. Fifteen percent of its surface is water: over 75 rivers, no fewer than 32 lagoons and two lakes that cover 9,000...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2007 Mayo Nicaragua
THREE MINISTERS FIRED ALREADYIn the first hundred days of his new government, President Ortega fired three Cabinet ministers, all of them women....

Rural Development Can’t Be Resolved in Secret
2007 Mayo Nicaragua
I’m talking as a farmer and a representative of a good part of Nicaragua’s rural cooperatives. We’re active farmers, convinced that our heads aren’t...

We Can’t Go on Paying Our Teachers Miserable Salaries
2007 Mayo Nicaragua
The day after the new government took office, Education Minister Miguel de Castilla declared that he had abolished the school autonomy system set up...

Where Are We Heading?
2007 Mayo Nicaragua
The new government’s first hundred days sparked a plethora of analyses, most of which considered that it lacked a defined program. Almost certainly...

A Hundred Days in Babel
2007 Abril Nicaragua
In the biblical Babel—the Hebrew name for the city of Babylon located in what was then Mesopo- tamia and is now occupied and bloodied Iraq—there was...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2007 Abril Nicaragua
THE DEBATE OVER ETHANOL HEATS UPAfter George W. Bush’s trip through Latin America in March, the issue of producing bio-fuels to replace the...

Navigating the Contradiction Between democracy and Social Justice
2007 Abril Nicaragua
I’ve observed that in the last 16 years of neoliberal ad-ministrations, the Nicaraguan state has used a government plus transnational corporations formula....

The Legacy of Mitch: Are We Ready for Another Disaster?
2007 Abril Nicaragua
Nine years have passed since Hurricane Match left Nicaragua prostrated. Since then, the international community collaborating with Central America has...

Needed Reflections on the New Government’s Communication Policy
2007 Marzo Nicaragua
The government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has a golden opportunity in the communications field, as it does in so many other areas, to lay the...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2007 Marzo Nicaragua
ARNOLDO ALEMÁN MEDDLES IN LIBERAL UNITY TALKSIn an interview for the Univision TV network, broadcast on February 15 in Miami and repeated...

The Government Wasn’t Able to Change the Budgetary Policy
2007 Marzo Nicaragua
Although the national budget bill for 2007 was only sent to the National Assembly a few days ago and has still been seen only by the country’s legislators,...

Sixty Days On: Signals, Seals and Superficiality
2007 Marzo Nicaragua
Two months into its term, the new government presided over by Daniel Ortega and his ever-present wife, Rosario Murillo, is still touting the slogan of...

“The Mettle of Our Civil Society Is Going to Be Put to the Test”
2007 Febrero Nicaragua
The official publication of Decree 03-2007, the third one Daniel Ortega issued the day he was sworn into office on January 10, has triggered serious...

What Must We Defend in Negotiations with the IMF?
2007 Febrero Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s three-year program with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the framework of the agreement on Financial Service for Poverty Reduction...

The Hopes, Dreams and Fears Are Already Starting to Unfold
2007 Febrero Nicaragua
Each step in the ceremony marking Daniel Ortega’s return to the presidential office on Jan- uary 10 sent out signals that delighted some and worried...

Nicaragua Briefs
2007 Febrero Nicaragua
MRS ALLIANCE BETRAYED BY TWO OF ITS LEGISLATORSThe MRS Alliance, which won five legislative seats in the elections last November 5, ended...

Who’s Who in the New Cabinet
2007 Febrero Nicaragua
Following the FSLN’s electoral victory, the greatest speculation revolved around the makeup of the new government Cabinet. Despite the best efforts...

A Respectful Message to The Sandinista Movement
2006 Noviembre Nicaragua
I think the vote for the MRS Alliance was considered and rational. It was a difficult vote for a part of the elector-ate because it required a psychological...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2006 Noviembre Nicaragua
CONSTITUTIONAL REFORMSThe constitutional reforms pushed through in 2005 by the FSLN and PLC benches in accord with the pact between their leaders...

The FSLN in the National Assembly: Pact with the PLC or Ally with the ALN?
2006 Noviembre Nicaragua
Although the Sandinista National Liberation Front’s electoral victory can be qualified in different ways, the fact that its candidates and propaganda...

Feminism Asks Questions Of the New Government
2006 Noviembre Nicaragua
The revolutionary years, when the FSLN leadership called on women to participate in building a new society “of equality with men,” are still fresh in...

A Dramatic Change and A Cultural Tragedy
2006 Noviembre Nicaragua
On October l6, Nicaragua’s Catholic bishops, accompanied by the leaders of some evangelical denominations, held a march against abortion in the streets...

From “Governing from Below” To Governing Right Up at the Top
2006 Noviembre Nicaragua
After 16 years making good on his promise to “govern from below” following his defeat in the 1990 elections, Daniel Ortega finally re-won the presidency...

A Characterization of FSLN Voters And a Few Forecasts
2006 Noviembre Nicaragua
The FSLN’s uproarious rejoicing began before the first vote was counted. Comes the parade now with one accord / Marching comes the army and the clear,...

In Tight Elections, Annulling Votes Can Change the Results
2006 Octubre Nicaragua
Citizens who participate in elections normally judge them as good or bad based on whether their favored candidates won or lost. For electoral observers,...

A Train Ride Through Memory and History
2006 Octubre Nicaragua
In August 2005, Jan Kees de Rooy—a Dutch-born Nicaraguan national who always thinks big—called to tell me about a dream he was working on in the Institute...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2006 Octubre Nicaragua
MASSIVE METHANOL POISONINGIn early September, the hospital in León suddenly began to fill up with patients suffering from severe cardiac, renal...

Surprises and Special Effects On the Way to Election Day
2006 Octubre Nicaragua
After a long hiatus in his public declarations about national politics and the electoral process, the US ambassador in Nicaragua, Paul Trivelli, announced...

Nicaragua Briefs
2006 Septiembre Nicaragua
ABORTION CONTROVERSYOn August 10, the final day of festivities honoring Santo Domingo, Managua’s patron saint, the tiny statue was carried through...

How Can Consensus Be Reached When the Conflict Is Denied?
2006 Septiembre Nicaragua
In her book On the Political (2005), Chantal Mouffe offers a lucid analysis of what she calls the “post-conflict” vision of politics, but which...

Are We Ready to Leap Out of Poverty In a Single Bound?
2006 Septiembre Nicaragua
This year’s electoral campaign officially kicked off on August 19. Under the slogan “Nicaragua united will triumph,” the Sandinista National Liberation...

The Odyssey of a Peasant Navigating the Seas of Power
2006 Septiembre Nicaragua
Matagalpa, August 2, 2006. Bearing corn stalks and banners proclaiming “you won’t intimidate me,” a crowd of over a hundred peasants, human rights activists...

Nicaraguan Youth Gangs: From Throwing Stones to Smoking Rocks
2006 Septiembre Nicaragua
The most distinguished mention of a 1970s youth gang member in Nicaragua is found in Ernesto Cardenal’s memoirs of the Sandinista revolution. Charrasca...

“Nicaragua Deserves a Decent Government”
2006 Agosto Nicaragua
We’re going into these elections with a seriously challenged electoral institutionality. Hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans still don’t have a voter...

The New National Police Chief Faces Colossal Challenges
2006 Agosto Nicaragua
The suspense ended on July 18. Aminta Granera was named general director of the National Police for the next five years, the second woman to hold that...

How Things Stacks Up on the Official Campaign Starting Date
2006 Agosto Nicaragua
Saturday, August 19, was the official starting date for this year’s national elections, but it was pure formality. Most of the five parties running...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2006 Agosto Nicaragua
OAS ELECTORAL OBSERVERS CRITICAL OF PROCESSThe following obstacles to the country’s electoral process are underscored in a report submitted...

Drugs and AIDS: Surely Now It’s Time for a National Alert
2006 Julio Nicaragua
In one of his writings, Leonardo Boff recalls the Greek myth of the rebirth of the eagle, similar to the phoenix of Egyptian culture. To achieve its...

The Words of Women from “Nicaragua’s Navel”
2006 Julio Nicaragua
Bocana de Paiwas is the navel of Nicaragua and, although the Bible doesn’t say so, it’s also the earthly paradise,” explain the women from this corner...

Has a Neoliberal Democracy Been Institutionalized in Nicaragua?
2006 Julio Nicaragua
One of the crucial questions we should ask ourselves in Nicaragua’s current political context is whether a neoliberal democracy has been institutionalized...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2006 Julio Nicaragua
HOW MANY ARE WE?On June 29 the Nicaraguan Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INEC) presented the results of its eighth population census...

Herty Lewites: Now a “Spiritual Candidate”
2006 Julio Nicaragua
Just as the presidential candidates were moving into position for the official starting bell of this year’s electoral race, Herty Lewites’ heart stopped...

International Cooperation and Civil Society: The High Price of Relations
2006 Junio Nicaragua
On May 27, Jürg Benz, the representative of Swiss cooperation in Nicaragua and coordinator of the European Union’s budgetary support group, announced...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2006 Junio Nicaragua
CENI BOND INVESTIGATION SINGES SOME FEATHERSThe institutional investigation into the CENI bonds continued through May. The CENIs were issued...

First Identikit of the Four Bands
2006 Junio Nicaragua
One definition of band is a musical group, with its repertoire, instruments, fans, managers and patrons. Another is a group organized to commit evil...

Interrupting Pregnancy: Deciding between Life and Life
2006 Junio Nicaragua
Abortion is a vital and controversial topic. It’s always important to include the religious perspective when we think, speak, debate and make proposals...

“We’re Independent Leftists”
2006 Mayo Nicaragua
Are you a leftist and is your alliance a leftist movement? The alliance we’re building is a modern Left, where we want things to function...

Do We Have the Police We Deserve?
2006 Mayo Nicaragua
Two bloody events have again called Nicaragua’s National Police into question. The inadequate training of police agents and officers, which has focused...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2006 Mayo Nicaragua
THE CENI BONDS: A MAMMOTH FRAUD?In early April, the Comptroller General’s Office (CGR) opened an investigation into the domestic debt dragging...

Is Nicaragua’s Electoral Race Between Trivelli and Chávez?
2006 Mayo Nicaragua
Washington seems to have finally grasped that Arnoldo Alemán still controls the Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC), thanks to his skilled handling...

A Challenge to Leftist Parties: Return to Marxism but Look Beyond It
2006 Mayo Nicaragua
What role can Marxist theory play in the reconstruction of the Latin American Left, particularly our Left here in Nicaragua? Is the Left’s future irreparably...

75 Days to Jockey for Position
2006 Abril Nicaragua
One major slot remained to be filled on the presidential ballot for the November 5 general elections. With the selection of José Rizo as the Constitutionalist...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2006 Abril Nicaragua
“MIRACLE MISSION”The government of Venezuela announced on March 10 that it is bringing its “Miracle Mission” to Nicaragua. Over the next ten...

Why We Joined the Movement to Rescue Sandinismo
2006 Abril Nicaragua
Our Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) was that of Carlos Fonseca and we first knew about it through the mysterious paintings that appeared...

Our Youth Has Inherited A National Failure
2006 Abril Nicaragua
Like the generations that preceded it, I belong to a generation that failed to build a just and dignified Nicaragua for everyone. Asked to talk about...

Maquilas, Fast Food, Casinos, Cells: Serpents in Paradise
2006 Marzo Nicaragua
Over a century ago, in his novel Hard Times, Charles Dickens described the thoughts of the businessman Bounderby: “Now, you have heard a lot of...

“We Want Respect from the National Government”
2006 Marzo Nicaragua
I was born in Puerto Cabezas, in the coast, and am from the black culture. I studied at the Moravian high school and then studied nursing in Bilwaskarma,...

Coast Elections: Whose Temperature Was Taken?
2006 Marzo Nicaragua
On March 5, voters on the Caribbean side of Nicaragua had their fifth opportunity to elect the 45 Regional Council members in what is officially called...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2006 Marzo Nicaragua
POLITICAL WITCHCRAFTA hand-rolled cigar riddled with pins and dripping with sulfur appeared in the Supreme Court’s plenary hall on February...

“The Problem Isn’t Lack of Resources; It’s Fiscal Inequity and Legalized Pillage”
2006 Marzo Nicaragua
Several acute social crises are being played out in the country right now. One of the two main ones is the strike of public-sector doctors and other...

Eyes on November And the South
2006 Enero Nicaragua
For many reasons Nicaragua was at the center of world attention in the eighties. That’s how we felt, and that’s how we were seen. As of 1990, that...

Is National Sovereignty Possible In These Times of Globalization?
2006 Enero Nicaragua
Arenewed and democratic Sandinista movement has to assume the defense of Nicaragua’s national sovereignty as one of its main tasks. But what does that...

Will the Elections in the Coast Be Anything to Celebrate?
2006 Enero Nicaragua
Six national and two regional groupings are running in the fifth election of autonomous governments in Nicaragua’s two Caribbean regions. The national...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2006 Enero Nicaragua
INTERBANK CASE DISMISSEDOn December 14, with public opinion turned to festive matters, Sandinista judge David Rojas definitively dismissed all...

El Güegüense: Heritage of Humanity
2005 Diciembre Nicaragua
In the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, UNESCO defines intangible cultural heritage as “the practices,...

“The Alliance Around Herty Lewites Is a Unique Opportunity We Mustn’t Waste”
2005 Diciembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua is going through extremely serious times right now, and the worst thing that could happen would be for things to remain exactly the same after...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2005 Diciembre Nicaragua
ALEMÁN’S TRIAL IN PANAMA POSTPONEDThe great expectations created in the Nicaraguan media about former President Arnoldo Alemán’s trial in Panama...

Elections in the Caribbean Coast: Drugs, Abandonment and Apathy
2005 Diciembre Nicaragua
Seldom has Nicaragua’s Caribbean region been so important to the country’s political class. It has nothing to do with the coast’s endemic hunger or...

New Times? Güegüense Times
2005 Diciembre Nicaragua
The Nicaraguan play El Güegüense o Macho-Ratón, written in Spanish and Nahuatl by an anonymous playwright, has been a cultural treasure of our...

While the Left Is Modernizing, The Right Is Stagnating
2005 Diciembre Nicaragua
While it is true that “Left” as a political concept has lost programmatic clarity, this should not push us into tossing out its ethical-political meaning,...

The Río San Juan: Source of Conflicts and Nationalism
2005 Noviembre Nicaragua
A river, an abandoned territory and a biological reserve all add up to problems. The Río San Juan, the Nicaraguan-Costa Rican border zone and the Indio-Maíz...

The Hands that Rock... Just About Everything
2005 Noviembre Nicaragua
On October 10, as the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States was being debated in the National Assembly, Daniel Ortega met privately...

Nicaragua Briefs
2005 Noviembre Nicaragua
DRUG MONEY GOES MISSINGA huge scandal involving a Supreme Court justice, various judges and an unnamed notary public—all of them mutual friends...

Alemán Still Controls the PLC and Will Hand Ortega the Victory
2005 Noviembre Nicaragua
It’s possible to predict the passing of a comet three centuries before it arrives, and meteorologists can forecast the weather for the next four or five...

“Our Electricity System Is One of Our Political Class’ Great Failures”
2005 Octubre Nicaragua
When you follow the thread of what’s happening in the Nicaraguan electricity sector, you realize we’re facing one of the greatest failures of the political...

The Left Nicaragua Needs
2005 Octubre Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s political parties have always been short on philosophical and doctrinal underpinnings. The pragmatic-resigned political thinking of Nicaraguan...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2005 Octubre Nicaragua
CONFLICT HEATS UP AGAIN OVER THE RÍO SAN JUANNicaragua and Costa Rica rekindled their long-time conflict over the Río San Juan, which marks...

How Will This Interminable Conflict End?
2005 Octubre Nicaragua
One of the first missions of José Miguel Insulza, the new secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS), involved a brief trip to Nicaragua...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2005 Septiembre Nicaragua
ELECTORAL BRANCH REELECTS LEADERSHIPAfter a month without holding its scheduled elections and 25 sessions scheduled then aborted because the...

“CAFTA Will Be Like a Brand-Name Hurricane Mitch”
2005 Septiembre Nicaragua
The Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States (now known as DR-CAFTA following the inclusion of the Dominican Republic) contained...

“We in the Coast Have Shown that We Know How to Use Autonomy”
2005 Septiembre Nicaragua
What’s the background to the autonomous regime in Nicaragua’s Caribbean region? How have the autonomous Regional Councils been performing? What problems...

More of the Same? Or Have We Touched Bottom?
2005 Septiembre Nicaragua
The institutional war that has put President Bolaños between the rock of the bipartite pact and the legal hard place that the PLC-FSLN constructed piece...

Garza Returns to Untie the Gordian Knot
2005 Agosto Nicaragua
Oliver Garza, US ambassador to Nicaragua during the government of Arnoldo Alemán, returned on July 22. His successor, Barbara Moore, has just completed...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2005 Agosto Nicaragua
BOLAÑOS’ SON DIES AT 50President Bolaños’ youngest son Jorge died at the age of 50 on July 27. He was rushed from Managua to a Miami hospital...

“The Whole Country Was a Huge School”
2005 Agosto Nicaragua
For five months, half of Nicaragua’s population lived for the Literacy Crusade. Some 60,000 young people, mostly teenage girls and boys, spread out...

The Poisonous Recipe of Electoral Democracy Without Social Consensus
2005 Agosto Nicaragua
Nicaragua is suffering an unprecedented crisis of governance. Its post-revolutionary political transition has evolved into an electoral democracy that...

Punches and Counterpunches; Proposals and Counterproposals
2005 Julio Nicaragua
The huge gap between the “real country” and the “legal country”—that brilliantly useful distinction invented by Octavio Paz, used by Carlos Fuentes and...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2005 Julio Nicaragua
MEGA-SALARIES SLASHED... BRIEFLYThe National Assembly finally approved the salary regulation law in June. This law, so unpopular with all the...

The Traido: A Key to Youth Gang Continuity
2005 Julio Nicaragua
The main character in Anthony Burgess’ novel A Clockwork Orange, 15-year-old Alex, is the leader of a small group of kids who terrorize the streets...

Why So Little Social Mobilization?
2005 Julio Nicaragua
The Sandinista Revolution provided one of the greatest examples of grassroots participation, organization and decision making in the history of Latin...

Twenty-six Years On: Memories of Solidarity
2005 Julio Nicaragua
At noon on a day in December 1986, I was driving slowly down Managua’s Bolívar Avenue in my modest Suzuki, heading toward the old cathedral. I was just...

“This Crisis Began in the FSLN, With an Unethical Pact”
2005 Julio Nicaragua
Nicaragua continues to suffer from an ongoing, chronic crisis, a crisis of poverty and backward-ness, of government incapacity, and of the incapacity...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2005 Junio Nicaragua
CIVIL COORDINATOR GIVEN A RUN FOR ITS MONEYThe Civil Coordinator, an umbrella group of some 450 social organizations and NGOs formed originally...

The Energy Crisis Explained
2005 Junio Nicaragua
According to data of the United Nations’ Economic Commission on Latin America (ECLA), updated in 2003, 72% of Nicaragua’s electrical energy capacity...

Victims of Nemagon Hit the Road
2005 Junio Nicaragua
The march began in February. More than three thousand men, women, children and elderly people walked the 150 kilometers from Chinandega to the capital...

A Divided, Divvied Up and Directionless Country
2005 Junio Nicaragua
Will Enrique Bolaños finish out his term? What side will the army take in the conflict between the branches of government? Is the country moving toward...

The Fuel Crisis and The Sparks that Ignite It
2005 Mayo Nicaragua
Once again international news headlines announced “Violence in Nicaragua,” a replay right down to the images from a few years ago: flaming tires in Managua’s...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2005 Mayo Nicaragua
ROUGH JUSTICE FOR FUTURE POLICE CHIEF?On April 16, as the protests against the bus fare hike began to peak, President Bolaños surprisingly...

The Code of Children and Adolescents: Comments on a Misunderstood Law
2005 Mayo Nicaragua
The Office of Special Attorney for Children and Adolescents, which forms part of the Human Rights Defense Attorney’s Office, was created in 2000. In...

Herty Lewites’ Movement Has a Sandinista Heart
2005 Abril Nicaragua
I bout five years ago now, I explained to envío why I withdrew from the FSLN, or more exactly, why I became inactive. I recall some of the things...

Hawks, Missiles, Pressure, Reasons and Resistance
2005 Abril Nicaragua
In March, the US government stepped up its pressure on the Nicaraguan Army to destroy all of its shoulderheld surface-to-air missiles, which are the...

Survivors’ Words: A New Tool for Nicaragua
2005 Abril Nicaragua
Sexual abuse is epidemic—or, perhaps more precisely, endemic—in Nicaragua. In just a short time, evidence of this has been making its way into people’s...

Vortexes in All Three Vertexes Of the Triangle
2005 Abril Nicaragua
Some months ago, historian, Conservative politician and former foreign minister Emilio Álvarez Montalván came up with a useful metaphor when he wrote...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2005 Abril Nicaragua
NICARAGUA BRIEFS NEMAGON VICTIMS WIN A ROUNDDozens of impoverished peasant families, some of the men and women terminally ill from the direct...

Intellectuals and Job Insecurity: I Don’t Think... Therefore I Am
2005 Marzo Nicaragua
Social scientists and other intellectuals have covered a lot of ground in studying the poor. We invade their homes without so much as a search warrant...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2005 Marzo Nicaragua
BLOODY EVICTION: WHO’S AT FAULT?A group of squatters took over about ten hectares of land on the outskirts of Chinandega on February 23, but...

“We Must All Demand the Restructuring of the Domestic Debt”
2005 Marzo Nicaragua
When we in the Civil Coordinator began to research and reflect on the national budget, some found such macroeconomic issues too complicated and...

Breaking Free of Fear To Defend Ideas and Rights
2005 Marzo Nicaragua
Herty Lewites’ rebellion has put Daniel Ortega in check, leading him to display the worst side of his personality. In just one week, Ortega’s measures...

Lessons from the Teachers …and the Former Mayor
2005 Marzo Nicaragua
The new school semester opened late this year. Nicaragua’s pathetically underpaid public school teachers, tired of asking for justifiable raises without...

Daniel Ortega's Fear Of the Winds He Sowed
2005 Febrero Nicaragua
Used to giving orders and having them carried out, FSLN general secretary Daniel Ortega is facing the biggest challenge to his absolute power in the...

Today's Political Crisis Is Good for Pushing Social Demands
2005 Febrero Nicaragua
The culture of cutting political deals, making pacts and then re-tooling them is now so much a part of Nicaraguan political life that we could be forgiven...

Hundreds of Thousands of Migrants ...But No Migration Policies
2005 Febrero Nicaragua
Nicaragua is very lazy about ratifying international agreements. If it were just a matter of signing, our Presidents would spring forward, pen at the...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2005 Febrero Nicaragua
BOLAÑOS ON THE ASIAN TSUNAMI: AN INSPIRING FUNDRAISEROn January 10, while presenting his annual report to the National Assembly, President...

A Free-Wheeling Tragicomedy
2005 Febrero Nicaragua
The events of November, December and well into January of this year were called many things. Some branded them an “institutional catastrophe,” others...

Year-end Fireworks in the Legal Country and the Real One
2005 Enero Nicaragua
While Nicaraguans always celebrate the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, Christmas and the New Year with deafening firecrackers, the joint pyrotechnics...

Bureaucrats for Hire: The Profitable Consultancy Industry
2005 Enero Nicaragua
The consultancy industry in Nicaragua is worth millions a year. The money spent on salaries and other remunerations for the studies and technical advice...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2005 Enero Nicaragua
POLITICAL DIPS IN TISCAPAOn December 1, as he had earlier promised, outgoing mayor of Managua Herty Lewites went for a dip in Laguna Tiscapa,...

2004 Municipal elections: FSLN-Convergence Victory in Numbers
2004 Noviembre Nicaragua
The polls predicted a Sandinista victory, but not such a huge one. Before the day was over on Sunday, November 7, the FSLN-Convergence had run away...

The Electoral Test: A Ray of Hope on a Dark Horizon
2004 Noviembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s November 7 municipal elections gave the FSLN and its ally the National Convergence a major victory and the PLC a serious defeat, while relegating...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2004 Noviembre Nicaragua
LA PRENSA JOURNALIST KILLEDOn November 9, two days after the elections, local La Prensa correspondent María José Bravo was murdered in Santo...

2004: Municipal Elections: Connecting Dots for the Bigger Picture
2004 Noviembre Nicaragua
It’s still too soon to draw definitive conclusions about the causes and consequences of the electoral results. Nonetheless, some common elements have...

An Urban Gang Moves from Social to Economic Violence
2004 Noviembre Nicaragua
In 1996-97, I lived in a poor neighborhood, or barrio, in eastern Managua to study the life and activities of its youth gang, which I even became part...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2004 Octubre Nicaragua
CAFTA DECREE DRAWS SMALL AUDIENCEOn October 5, ten months after the fact, President Bolaños presented to the National Assembly the presidential...

They Overturned the Table With the Dice Still in the Air
2004 Octubre Nicaragua
President Bolaños’ conflicts with the judicial and legislative branches—both of which are split almost evenly between his adversaries, the FSLN and...

These Elections Will Test the Convergence’s Validity and Future
2004 Octubre Nicaragua
The National Convergence is an alliance of political parties, groups and individual personalities. The parties include the FSLN and the MRS, both...

The 2004 Municipal Elections: Final Forecasts
2004 Octubre Nicaragua
Less than a month away from the November 7 municipal elections, there appears to be little enthusiasm among potential voters. The positions of the different...

Cup of Excellence, Fair Trade, Organic Coffee
2004 Septiembre Nicaragua
When coffee prices plunged in 2001, the crisis generated widespread panic: two banks went under, others teetered on the brink, farms were embargoed left,...

The Fight against Corruption: Sowing Now to Harvest Later
2004 Septiembre Nicaragua
Let’s briefly outline why we are where we are today and why, as soon as possible, we have to come up with our own regulatory and juridical framework...

Alone and Weak, But Oh So Sure of His Shaky Ground
2004 Septiembre Nicaragua
This last month the country found itself again “overlook-ing the abyss,” facing a “monstrous political crisis” and “institutional chaos.” Is it just...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2004 Septiembre Nicaragua
EASY FOR BOLAÑOS TO SAY September 6 completed the 20-day deadline set by Islamic groups supposedly linked to the Al Qaeda network for the government...

The Way Out of the Labyrinth Is Long, but Possible
2004 Agosto Nicaragua
With half his term now behind him, President Bolaños is “already history” in the opinion of some analysts. Although he still appears to see his glass...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2004 Agosto Nicaragua
OF DRUGS AND MISSILESDespite constant news reports of international drug trafficking in Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast, neither the military, police...

Transforming the Idea of God Is an Urgent Task in Nicaragua
2004 Agosto Nicaragua
A Canadian sociologist has said that when he’s faced with a question that’s weighing him down and for which he can find no satisfactory answers, he...

The Corruption of Words
2004 Julio Nicaragua
The mood in the run-up to the celebrations of the 111th anniversary of the Liberal revolution (July 11) and the 25th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution...

25 Years After July 19: What Has Happened to the FSLN?
2004 Julio Nicaragua
In Nicaragua, the collapse of socialism in the Soviet bloc did more than shake up the world of ideas, leading to what some have called the end of ideology....

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2004 Julio Nicaragua
TRAGEDY IN RÍO BLANCO Torrential rains that began falling in northern Nicaragua on June 24 produced a series of landslides on the Cerro Musún...

Passionate Memories From Times of Solidarity
2004 Julio Nicaragua
Much has been written about the heroic feats of the young Nicaraguans who brought down the Somoza dictatorship, but relatively little has been said...

Municipal Decentralization Meets the Forests
2004 Junio Nicaragua
Decentralization took a very important step forward in Nicaragua last year with the passage of a law guaranteeing central government budget transfers...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2004 Junio Nicaragua
THE UNIVERSITY STRUGGLE FOR 6%As has happened every year for over a decade, university students took to the streets for more than a week starting...

A Loaded Social Agenda and A Hemmed-in Government
2004 Junio Nicaragua
Social conflicts intensified last month, leaving most of Nicaragua’s population increasingly frustrated. There aren’t enough resources, institutional...

Migrants: Prejudice, Myopic Vision and Apathetic Policies
2004 Mayo Nicaragua
A large number of sources feed and reproduce the collective view of migration, and particularly of migrants. Researchers, politicians, international...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2004 Mayo Nicaragua
UNILATERAL MISSILE DEMOLITIONOn April 24, the two Liberal benches in the National Assembly combined their 48 votes to approve a resolution supporting...

How Solid is the Tripod Supporting Bolaños’ Economic Strategy?
2004 Mayo Nicaragua
The latest series of political tensions, which at their peak sparked dramatic speculation about the “abyss” to which the two political caudillos...

“There’s no short-term solution”
2004 Mayo Nicaragua
No matter who you meet on the street these days, the inevitable question is, “When is all this going to be resolved?” I reply, “What do you mean by...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2004 Abril Nicaragua
ALEMÁN HITS THE TOP TENAccording to the 2004 World Corruption Report, prepared by Transparency International and released in March, former Nicaraguan...

More Pacts or a Real National Dialogue?
2004 Abril Nicaragua
A series of crises—or, to be more exact, successive symptoms of the same crisis, which has no short-term solution—still dominate the national stage....

Sébaco’s Sweatshop: Dreams, Realities and Frustrations
2004 Abril Nicaragua
The only thing that makes maquilas different than the sweatshops producing for their home market in any country is that maquilas are offshore....

Through the Looking Glass: Images of the Agricultural Frontier
2004 Abril Nicaragua
Most of us tend to understand the agricultural frontier as that none-too-thin “red line” separating forest from crops. And we understand its advance...

Globalization and Development Seen from Below
2004 Marzo Nicaragua
Nicaragua cambia—Nicaragua’s changing—was President Arnoldo Alemán’s slogan during his five-year administration (January 1997-January 2002), and...

The Killing of Carlos Guadamuz: Who Stands to Benefit?
2004 Marzo Nicaragua
It has been many years since Nicaraguan society experienced political terror. But those years are a relatively short amount of time in the national...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2004 Marzo Nicaragua
JUDICIAL CAREER BILLPresident Bolaños presented his judicial career bill on February 3. Its primary aim is to professionalize and eliminate...

Blood, Amnesty and a Paradox
2004 Marzo Nicaragua
When last December’s 12-day crisis “ended” with the sentencing of ex-President Arnoldo Alemán to 20 years imprisonment on money laundering charges,...

A Farewell to Pigs…Changes in the National Diet
2004 Enero Nicaragua
One thing’s for sure, there’s a big difference between eating well and not eating well. Tell me what you eat and I’ll tell you who you are… not to mention...

The 2004 Municipal Elections: Is the Die Almost Cast?
2004 Enero Nicaragua
It was no sudden attack of “democratitis” that made Arnoldo Alemán, Daniel Ortega and Enrique Bolaños back down from their attempts to strip the 2004...

The Face of Nicaragua in 2004: Obvious Forecasts
2004 Enero Nicaragua
Self-satisfied and complacent rhetoric was the daily bread from the government in December and January, once it had weathered the new Ortega-Alemán deals...

There’s No Quick Way Out of This Crisis
2003 Diciembre Nicaragua
It is very hard to fully characterize the crisis Nicaragua is going through right now, because it’s extremely complex. Many interlacing factors have...

Why Two Petty Peddlers Wanted to Buy Electoral Time
2003 Diciembre Nicaragua
The recent attempt by Daniel Ortega and Arnoldo Alemán to reactivate the pact they originally hammered out to manipulate the 2001 elections demonstrated...

The Twelve Days that Shook Nicaragua
2003 Diciembre Nicaragua
For 12 long and tense days, from November 26 to December 7, Nicaragua’s seemingly interminable political crisis spiraled to spectacular heights. Complex...

The FACS: A Microcosm of National Ills
2003 Diciembre Nicaragua
On November 28, the Nicaraguan public was just recovering from the shock of Arnoldo Alemán being transferred from his jail cell to a novel form of “house”...

Sorry, Uncle Powell, The Sams Are Ours
2003 Noviembre Nicaragua
According to Carlos Gardel’s song, “20 years are nothing.” But despite the considerable efforts the Nicaraguan Army has made to win at least the empathy,...

The “Powell Effect” on the Three Political Forces
2003 Noviembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua had to take two important “exams” in recent weeks, administered first by the donor community in late October and then by the US government...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2003 Noviembre Nicaragua
RICH STATE EMPLOYEES VS. POOR When President Bolaños presented next year’s national budget bill, he also proposed cutting 10% of the salaries...

Nestor Avendaño: Where Is the State’s Role in the National Development Plan?
2003 Noviembre Nicaragua
It is now being announced that in December Nicaragua will finally reach that elusive culmination point in the initiative for highly indebted poor countries...

CAFTA: “We’re Defining Whether We’ll Commit Suicide or Die a Natural Death”
2003 Octubre Nicaragua
The Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) is testing our economic organizations’ capacity to make technical and political proposals that can...

The Caribbean Coast’s Traditional Leaders: An Endangered Species?
2003 Octubre Nicaragua
In contemporary times, with the market replacing society and its laws supplanting values, the traditional populations of Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast...

Nicaragua’s “New Era” Does an About-Face
2003 Octubre Nicaragua
Throughout 2002, the first year of his five-year term as President, Enrique Bolaños dedicated most of his efforts to “cleaning house” in the executive...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2003 Octubre Nicaragua
PERCEPTION OF CORRUPTION Nicaragua obtained only a 2.6 rating in Transparency International’s 2003 Corruption Perception Index. Nicaragua is...

"We're Saying No to CAFTA With Arguments and Conditions"
2003 Octubre Nicaragua
In UNAG we have analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) with the United States—which we’re already...

“We Urgently Need a Secular State For the Sake of Women’s Health”
2003 Septiembre Nicaragua
What has happened to Nicaragua’s public policy related to quality of life, health and education, particularly for women, in recent years? To answer...

Caribbean Coast: Multiethnic, Multilingual ...and Finally Autonomous?
2003 Septiembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s Caribbean populations are not so different from other Latin American indigenous peoples. But they are exceptional in that after eleven wars...

The Compass Needle Points North
2003 Septiembre Nicaragua
The word guaca is a hidden treasure, a stash. But it also means the burial ground of our pre-Colombian ancestors. Over a year ago, the enormous...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2003 Septiembre Nicaragua
CONTINUING CONTROVERSY OVER NICAS IN IRAQ A task force of 115 Nicaraguan army personnel (sappers, doctors and their defense support) left Nicaragua...

Youth Gang Members and Tattoos: Stigma, Identity and Art
2003 Septiembre Nicaragua
Now more than ever, our appearance, our “look,” signals what kind of person we are. Young Nicaraguans labeled as “hippies” use their wardrobe as a form...

Central American-US Free Trade Agreement: Opportunity or Nightmare for Nicaragua?
2003 Septiembre Nicaragua
Kenneth Hoadley, a professional with no leftist leanings, is the rector of the El Zamorano Pan-American Agricultural School, a prestigious agronomy and...

Three Celebrations and a Host of Scenarios
2003 Agosto Nicaragua
July’s three political anniversary celebrations—by the pro-Alemán Liberals on July 11, the pro-Bolaños Liberals on July 13 and the FSLN on July 19—offered...

The National Police under Attack: The Clues Behind the Crisis
2003 Agosto Nicaragua
The National Police, née Sandinista Police, a once in corruptible and proud institution born of the guerrilla force that took power 24 years ago,...

“We Live Alongside Drugs in Bluefields”
2003 Agosto Nicaragua
The municipality of Bluefields covers 5,000 square kilometers and has over 50,000 inhabitants. Six different ethnic groups coexist there, which enriches...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2003 Agosto Nicaragua
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...

The Challenges of Bioethics: What the Different Religions Have to Say
2003 Agosto Nicaragua
We are increasingly accustomed to ethical questions related to issues such as in-vitro fertilization, clon ing or euthanasia, which can trigger passionate...

How Do We Dig Ourselves Out of the Hole?
2003 Julio Nicaragua
In early July, President Bolaños called on the other branches of state not to make war with him but to help him dig Nicaragua out of the “hole” it is...

Nicaragua’s Future: Hooking Children on Books
2003 Julio Nicaragua
Libros para Niños is a nongovernmental organization that promotes reading with a very specific objective: we want children and the adults in...

The Bankruptcy of Municipal Governments and the Swindle of Municipal Autonomy
2003 Julio Nicaragua
The municipal elections are still 16 months away, and already the pre-electoral winds are whipping through the country’s main political forces, sometimes...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2003 Julio Nicaragua
ALEMÁN PROPERTIES EMBARGOED On June 20, the Attorney General’s Office ordered the state to seize La Chinampa, a 1,700-acre farm belonging to...

Maquilas Are Like Aspirin: Temporary Pain Relief but No Cure
2003 Junio Nicaragua
Although it is generally thought that Nicaragua’s maquila sector started up under Violeta Chamorro’s government, these sweatshops, which essentially...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2003 Junio Nicaragua
THE DRUG WORLD OF THE CARIBBEAN COAST Throughout the month of May, the public was treated to increasingly precise and serious news reports about...

She Said, He Said: A Survey on Sex and Gender
2003 Junio Nicaragua
To say that young men and young women think and act differently is so obvious that it is a cliché. To what point and in what way is this cliché crystallized...

The Alemán-Ortega Pact Has Bolaños on a Short Leash
2003 Junio Nicaragua
The spurious deals that are so much a part of Nicaragua’s political life, absorbing the energies and sacrificing the autonomy of so many decision-makers,...

Our Place in the World
2003 Mayo Nicaragua
As the planet’s military superpower, the United States has used the war against Iraq to show humanity the direction it wants to impose on all of the...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2003 Mayo Nicaragua
THE DATA TRADE News that a Guatemalan business in Nicaragua called Infor.net plus two other companies had for months been gathering personal...

We Don’t Ask for Favors, We We Don’t Ask for Favors, We
2003 Mayo Nicaragua
In the midst of the confusion of the first traumatic days following the FSLN’s electoral defeat on February 25, 1990, the distinguished jurist Boris...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2003 Abril Nicaragua
CLEANING UP THE JUDICIAL BRANCH The judicial branch has been in an upheaval since February, with dismissals, removals and controversial declarations...

Thrown into a Worldwide Consciousness-Building Workshop
2003 Abril Nicaragua
By so arrogantly closing the option of peace and international legality and instead waging a “preemptive” war against Iraq, which is really a war against...

The Experiences and Achievements of the Women’s Network against Violence
2003 Abril Nicaragua
The Women’s Network against Violence was created in 1992 during the national meeting of “Women United in Diversity.” Between the FSLN’s electoral defeat...

The Chronicle of a Reform Foretold
2003 Abril Nicaragua
The Technical Committee consisted of José Luis Medal, Sergio Santamaría, Róger Cerda, Néstor Avendaño, Ricardo Zambrana and me. Our group decided to...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2003 Marzo Nicaragua
NICARAGUA AGAINST IRAQ In the February 19 UN debate on the Iraq issue, the Latin American countries did not present a united front. Nicaragua...

Municipal Governments and Natural Resources: Swimming Upstream?
2003 Marzo Nicaragua
San Francisco Libre’s municipal government is tired of trying to stop the logging that’s impoverishing the municipality’s forests. The people who gather...

Six Realistic Theories About the Mythical 6%
2003 Marzo Nicaragua
Between February 19 and 21, university students again took to the streets to demand 6% of the national bud get for the ten universities that make up...

The Names of the Rose
2003 Marzo Nicaragua
For an entire month, a different theme vied successfully for space with all the political and economic issues that usually dominate Nicaragua’s headlines....

Will Clusters Bring Development?
2003 Enero Nicaragua
Is the year-long political cataclysm that culminated with Alemán being stripped of his immunity and sentenced in court really coming to an end, freeing...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2003 Enero Nicaragua
ARMS TRAFFIC SCANDAL The controversial results of an investigation conducted by the Organization of American States at the request of the Nicaraguan,...

From One Crossroads to Another
2003 Enero Nicaragua
Though Nicaragua’s grave structural problems have not shifted one iota, and its leadership class has offered no new faces or speeches, much less ideas,...

The Scars of War: De-mining Fields and Minds
2003 Enero Nicaragua
Journalistically speaking, peace is not selling well at this moment in history when everything appears to be subject to its market value. The roar of...

A Country Lost in Its Labyrinth One Year into the “New Era”
2002 Diciembre Nicaragua
The first year of what victorious presidential candidate Enrique Bolaños had promised would be a “New Era” is drawing to an end. With the firecrackers...

Recession in 2002, Growth in 2003?
2002 Diciembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s economic performance fell in the third quarter of 2002 for the third successive period in the year. Although the figures for the final quarter...

Living and Surviving In a Multiply Wounded Country
2002 Diciembre Nicaragua
When we began working from the Valdivieso Center in 1997, one year before Hurricane Mitch, virtually no one was looking at the issues we wanted to deal...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2002 Noviembre Nicaragua
NEXT YEAR’S BUDGET TOUCHING THE BOTTOM OF THE BARREL On October 15, the executive branch submitted its 2003 budget bill to the National Assembly...

Perverse Political Ambitions Behind Institutional Masks
2002 Noviembre Nicaragua
If there is a positive side to the crisis Nicaragua has been slogging through since the change of government and launching of the anti-corruption struggle,...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2002 Octubre Nicaragua
NICARAGUA-COSTA RICA AGREEMENT During an extraordinary summit meeting of Central American Presidents held in Alajuela, Costa Rica, on September...

Twelve Days In a Concentration Camp
2002 Octubre Nicaragua
Is pent 12 days working in one of the export assembly plants—known as maquiladoras or maquilas—in Managua’s Las Mercedes industrial park....

Part 2: The Economic Scene: The Unpayable Internal Debt Is the Budget’s "Black Hole"
2002 Octubre Nicaragua
The National Assembly debate on the bill for the 2003 budget sent by the executive is scheduled to get underway in mid-October. This budget reflects...

Part 1: The Political Scene: One Step Forward, How Many Back?
2002 Octubre Nicaragua
The zigzags in the fight against corruption are proving that corruption and impunity are the most solid underpinnings of national political culture,...

Alemán’s Choice for Now: Between Jail and Political Asylum
2002 Septiembre Nicaragua
I’m not a political analyst; I’m just a lawyer specializing in stock-market-related commercial law. When I talk to someone about the national political...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2002 Septiembre Nicaragua
PRIVATIZATION OF WATER SERVICE FRAUGHT WITH CONFLICTS It is common knowledge that both Liberal and Sandinista leaders and the big business that...

Alemán Is Losing Half the Country
2002 Septiembre Nicaragua
The reports reaching us on the Caribbean side of Nicaragua are dripping with details of corruption, money laundering, hidden treasures, unpredictable...

A Prolonged Duel Between Legitimacy and Legality
2002 Septiembre Nicaragua
By accepting the challenge of an historically unprecedented political conflict—the war against corruption—Nicaragua’s new President let himself in for...

Local Government and Micro-business: A Possible Marriage?
2002 Septiembre Nicaragua
Although decentralization and the potential of micro businesses appear to be two essential pivots of local and national development, they have surprisingly...

We Were Sold (and Bought) A Health System That Doesn’t Work
2002 Agosto Nicaragua
Although reflecting on health is a political and not just a technical activity in any country in the world, this is particularly true of today’s Nicaragua....

La Guaca: Treasure, Burial and Maturing
2002 Agosto Nicaragua
On August 7, after the media had spent four days whipping up expectations over the discovery of what President Enrique Bolaños had enticingly dubbed...

Nicaragua’s Youth Today: Fresas, Revolutionaries, Revelers, Hippies
2002 Agosto Nicaragua
That bipolarity of the eighties, linked to the great ideologies that triggered dichotomous, Manichean confrontations, are gone, replaced with fragmented...

Corruption and Party Polarization: The Cancer in our Justice System
2002 Julio Nicaragua
On February 21, a symbolic date for Nicaragua as it commemorates the assassination of General Sandino, President Bolaños set up a legal commission consisting...

A Government in the Opposition and A Pair of Caudillos Who Won’t Step Down
2002 Julio Nicaragua
The test of strength between Bolaños and Alemán—both have called it war—is occupying the entire political stage. Bolaños has decided to make the fight...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2002 Julio Nicaragua
IDESO-UCA POLL ON CORRUPTION On June 14-15, the Central American University’s Institute of Surveys and Opinion Polls (IDESO) measured the perceptions...

Will the Fight against Corruption Bring a Lasting Climatic Change?
2002 Junio Nicaragua
Artists sometimes find the best description of reality in metaphors. Writer Sergio Ramírez recently described what Nicaragua has been experiencing since...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2002 Junio Nicaragua
FLOOD DISASTER The rains that fell across the country, especially the Pacific, between May 27 and 29 obliged the government to decree a state...

Digital Time in the National Culture: Underdevelopment.com.ni
2002 Junio Nicaragua
The first computers—enormous machines programmed by a series of perforated cards—arrived in Nicaragua at the end of the 1960s. Internet followed at the...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2002 Mayo Nicaragua
VIOLENCE IN THE ATLANTIC COAST May 4 was the date scheduled for the inaugural session of the new Regional Councils elected in March in the North...

Our Weak Civil Society Has Been Weakened Further
2002 Mayo Nicaragua
To understand the present, as we all know, it is necessary to understand the past, especially the recent past. Unless we are clear about what has happened...

The Fight Against Corruption Is a Learning Experience
2002 Mayo Nicaragua
March 21: Judge Gertrudis Arias charges former President Arnoldo Alemán with fraud against the state related to the Channel 6 case. April 23: The National...

The Autonomous Women’s Movement Makes 10 Demands on the Government
2002 Abril Nicaragua
Over five decades have passed since the Nicaraguan autonomous women’s movement started building to fight for political and social democracy without...

There’s Only One Valid Way Out of the War in Colombia
2002 Abril Nicaragua
Declaring a war and winning it are two different things, just as winning it is not the same as obtaining peace. Our collective memory is so short that...

A Hundred Days into the New Government, There are a Hundred Questions
2002 Abril Nicaragua
On April 10, the government of Enrique Bolaños completed its 100th day, a time period that has become politically fashionable to evaluate. Albeit a relatively...

Between Paralysis And Passive Revolution
2002 Abril Nicaragua
Why have social lethargy, political apathy and conformism possessed the Nicaraguan population? This apparently simple question in fact implies at least...

Micro-salaries and Mega-salaries: Mega-inequality and Micro-development
2002 Marzo Nicaragua
Nicaragua is a country of brutal contrasts. To measure the income of Nicaraguans, we have to shift from the electron microscope to the sidereal telescope,...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2002 Marzo Nicaragua
CENTRAL AMERICAN SUMMIT PREPARES FOR BUSH AND FTA Central America’s Presidents held a special meeting in Managua on February 28 to hammer out...

Dilemmas in the Fight against the Cancer of Corruption
2002 Marzo Nicaragua
The initial expectations of economic improvement and political peace sparked by last November’s electoral results are being hit daily by intense bursts...

Case 12,230: Zoilamérica Narváez vs. the Nicaraguan State
2002 Marzo Nicaragua
I decided to make my public denunciation only five days before I did so on March 2, 1998. I was a prisoner of desperation and anguish at the time, but...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2002 Enero Nicaragua
ELECTIONS IN NICARAGUA The campaign for the elections in the North and South Atlantic Autonomous Regions kicked off on January 17 and will...

New Government, New Economy?
2002 Enero Nicaragua
The most defined feature of the new government’s economic design is that the motor force of economic growth during its five-year term will be large-scale...

The "New Era" Begins Amid Check Scams and Blank Checks
2002 Enero Nicaragua
President Bolaños is fond of repeating that Nicaragua has entered a "new era," and every day he and his ministers try to offer some sign to that effect....

Rural Women in Nicaragua: "Anything is possible..."
2002 Enero Nicaragua
“My name is María Epifania López, and I’m a 21 year-old single mother with a son. I work as a Peasant University (UNICAM) promoter and sit on the Buena...

The Political Culture of the Three Nicaraguas
2001 Noviembre Nicaragua
The image of Nicaragua as a single country is a fiction built by a patriotic school curriculum. Marked contrasts separate what is administratively and...

General Elections 2001: The Predicted, The Unpredicted, The Uncertain
2001 Noviembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s general elections were held on Sunday, November 4. For months, polls had shown Enrique Bolaños and Daniel Ortega neck-and-neck in a race...

The Road to the Elections Was Paved with Fraud
2001 Noviembre Nicaragua
Towards the end of 1997, Nicaraguans began to hear the first rumors and fragmentary bits of news about a pact being forged by Arnoldo Alemán and Daniel...

PLC: The Resounding Winner
2001 Noviembre Nicaragua
The politics of Alcolea perfectly reflected its people’s inertia and distrust. It was a politics defined by its two strong leaders, a fight between...

A Project Offering a Future to the Nation and Sandinisimo
2001 Noviembre Nicaragua
The National Convergence emerged during an electoral campaign period, in alliance with the FSLN, but the idea from the start was to create and consolidate...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2001 Noviembre Nicaragua
CIDH UPHOLDS ZOILAMÉRICA CASE Exactly two years ago, Daniel Ortega’s stepdaughter Zoilamérica Narváez filed a suit with the Inter-American Human...

The Armageddon Effect: The Final Test
2001 Octubre Nicaragua
As Nicaragua’s electoral campaign was plodding through its interminable final weeks with only the usual ephemeral surprises provided by the national...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2001 Octubre Nicaragua
MANAGUA HOSTS ANTI-MINES CONFERENCE With the world immersed in crisis following the attack on the United States, Managua hosted the III Conference...

Fundamentalism, Exclusion, Identity and Annihilation
2001 Octubre Nicaragua
Fundamentalism has existed in all parts of the world throughout humanity’s long and stormy history. It is not the exclusive patrimony of any religious,...

Who Are the Undecided and the Abstainers?
2001 Octubre Nicaragua
Despite the fact that polls are demonstrating abstention and indecision rates a third lower right now than at this time prior to last year’s municipal...

CRY FOR PEACE
2001 Octubre Nicaragua
Those of us in the region who have long struggled for peace would like to add our voices to the almost inaudible but growing desire to: o Cry for the...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2001 Septiembre Nicaragua
PRIVATIZATION OF ENITEL On August 30, after several failed tries, the government finally closed a deal to sell off 40% of the shares of Nicaragua’s...

Which Party Has the Best Agricultural Development Plan?
2001 Septiembre Nicaragua
Will the next government be able to propose and implement an agrarian policy that really responds to the sector’s problems, in particular one that favors...

Abstention in 2001? The Messages of 2000
2001 Septiembre Nicaragua
It was a given before the municipal elections of November 2000: Nicaraguans vote, come what may. The population turned out en masse for the presidential...

Between Two Evils and Many Dreams
2001 Septiembre Nicaragua
The official kick-off date for this year’s electoral campaign was August 18. Despite the fact that two of the three political parties running this time...

The Wounds of Sexual Abuse
2001 Septiembre Nicaragua
On the periphery of the globalized world, Nicaragua struggles as best it can for democracy and development, longing to reach these two closely-linked...

Protected Areas and Natural Resources: With or Without People?
2001 Septiembre Nicaragua
In 1983, the Sandinista government decreed the creation of a natural reserve in the San Cristóbal-Casitas volcanic complex to protect what was left of...

A Predictable Disaster Competes with A Predicted Electoral Process
2001 Agosto Nicaragua
The moving news of rampant hunger in the country’s rural areas began to compete with the discouraging news from the electoral process. A critical food...

The Chronicle of Coffee: History, Responsibility and Questions
2001 Agosto Nicaragua
In the early morning of August 18, 1881, exactly 120 years ago, nearly three thousands indigenous people armed with bow and arrows and shotguns and calling...

"These Elections Are Devoid of Ideology"
2001 Agosto Nicaragua
What is the fundamental problem with November’s elections? That most voters are negatively motivated. The Liberal Party is encouraging a ‘vote of fear,’...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2001 Agosto Nicaragua
POLITICIZATION OF CSE GOES ALL THE WAY Intensifying to the nth degree the two-party politicization of the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE), the...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2001 Julio Nicaragua
PRESIDENT ALEMÁN HITS THE ROAD…Amid all the tension in Managua in mid- June generated by a two-week-long bus strike and two weeks of paralysis...

The Electoral Film Rolls On
2001 Julio Nicaragua
With the elections only four months away, polls still show Daniel Ortega in the lead, though the latest one, done by CID-Gallup at the end of June, indicates...

Nicaragua’s Sexual Culture: A Loveless Legacy
2001 Julio Nicaragua
What should men be like, and what should women be like? The socially constructed notion of what men and women should be like includes permissible...

FUAC: Milestones on the Road
2001 Julio Nicaragua
1982After taking part in the struggle against Somoza, Edmundo Eugenio Olivas Córdoba, who was born in Quilalí, Nicaragua, became a column leader...

The Brief, Necessary and Stormy History of the FUAC
2001 Julio Nicaragua
In The March of Folly, From Troy to Vietnam, one of her most famous books, US historian Barbara W. Tuchman describes various well-known events...

Roots and Patterns of our Political Culture
2001 Julio Nicaragua
Countries don’t have one single culture. We in Nicaragua live with several cultures. We have the Mayangna culture, the Miskito culture, the Creole culture,...

Ways Out of the Rural Crisis: Reforest, Educate and Don’t Steal
2001 Junio Nicaragua
Almost two years ago, having analyzed my economic situation as a producer, I decided to give up agriculture. I was deeply in debt and couldn’t find a...

The Economy in the Electoral Film: Strong Scenes, Uncertain Script
2001 Junio Nicaragua
Five new national polls by different firms and institutions, done over a range of dates from the end of April to the end of May, all confirmed Daniel...

Siuna: A Hundred Years of Abandonment
2001 Junio Nicaragua
Siuna is rife with neglect and terror. Development program promoters have indefinitely called off their field visits and merchants bite their nails as...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2001 Junio Nicaragua
PUBLIC TRANSPORT CRISIS A decision in mid-May by around 40 Managua bus cooperatives to raise the fare from two to three córdobas without any...

An Election Script with Heavy-handed Special Effects
2001 Mayo Nicaragua
These days, when a movie has a lousy script, an unsubstantial plot and second-rate actors, glitzy special effects are often used—or abused, depending...

The Women of Malpaisillo: "Our Lives Have Changed"
2001 Mayo Nicaragua
Malpaisillo, a municipality in the department of Leon, is a lively center with a population of approximately 3,200. Set down in the middle of 888 square...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2001 Mayo Nicaragua
PLC CAMPAIGN: WINNING "FRIENDS" AND SELLING INFLUENCE The group of Conservatives who have decided to ally with the PLC as Friends of Enrique...

Education Is Not School And School Is Not Business
2001 Abril Nicaragua
Millions of dollars. Billions. Economists, sociologists, business administrators, psychologists and more "economists." Consultants, advisers, counselors,...

The Election Flick: Sets and Scenes
2001 Abril Nicaragua
With the beating sun soon to give way to the pelting rains of Nicaragua’s tropical "winter," several different scenarios are still being scripted for...

The Matrixes, Traps and Tricks of the Development Discourse
2001 Abril Nicaragua
For some months now a document known as the "Estrategia Reforzada de Reducción de la Pobreza" (Reinforced Poverty Reduction Strategy) has been...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2001 Abril Nicaragua
CAROUSING CORRUPTION, CGR RESIGNATION In mid-March, the Office of Comptroller General (CGR) issued a resolution establishing that a 1979 decree...

Solidarity in Times of Internet
2001 Abril Nicaragua
When retired US nurse Dorothy Granada went into hiding late last year upon learning that the Nicaraguan government planned to deport her on fabricated...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2001 Marzo Nicaragua
TAKING FROM THE POOR The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) pressured President Alemán into issuing an order that would stop his Constitutionalist...

The Agricultural Sector: Dominated by the QWERTY Economy
2001 Marzo Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s agricultural sector is having to fight in very adverse conditions today, not just because of everything going on in the country, but also...

If the Elections Were Held Today…
2001 Marzo Nicaragua
Enrique Bolaños and Daniel Ortega, two polarizing figures from a past that needs to be put behind us, threaten to monopolize the upcoming presidential...

Casting Nicaragua’s Electoral Flick
2001 Marzo Nicaragua
After a first draft of the electoral film’s script was hammered out between December and January, these past two months have been dedicated to signing...

Dollarization: El Salvador’s Third Earthquake
2001 Marzo Nicaragua
Only mischief is planned in secret," charged Bishop Gregorio Rosa Chávez when the government unveiled its plan to dollarize the national economy. The...

Economic Forecasting in an Election Year
2001 Marzo Nicaragua
What will the next government inherit?What economic panorama do we foresee for 2001? It’s a predictable picture, but not a very pretty one....

Agriculture to the Emergency Ward: Intensive Care Required
2001 Enero Nicaragua
As the year 2000 ended, spokespeople for Nicaragua’s Central Bank presented their figures on national economic growth with the usual hurrahs that only...

Writing the Script for Nicaragua’s Election Drama
2001 Enero Nicaragua
Political protagonists from a past we have yet to put behind us are again dominating Nicaragua’s silver screen as if history wanted to repeat itself....

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2001 Enero Nicaragua
ENTRY INTO THE HIPC After two attempts to get into the Initiative for Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC), which failed because the Alemán...

Who Abstained and Why?
2000 Noviembre Nicaragua
Right after election day, the media reported that some40% of Nicaragua’s eligible voters had abstained. When the Supreme Electoral Council’s official...

Did Managua’s Gang Members Vote?
2000 Noviembre Nicaragua
A large number of the voters who gave the FSLN its victory in the municipality of Managua were young, but how many of those youths are from the capital’s...

YATAMA: Rebellion with a Cause?
2000 Noviembre Nicaragua
Violent street demonstrations led by the indigenous group YATAMA in the Caribbean town of Puerto Cabezas began on October 29 and lasted nearly a week,...

The Electorate: Continuing Trends and Transition
2000 Noviembre Nicaragua
The Nicaraguan electorate is young and still going through a transition, so it is not easy to characterize. Nonetheless, 16 years after the country’s...

A Country Divided: Relative Defeats and Victories
2000 Noviembre Nicaragua
The biggest success was the FSLN’s victory in Managua but the hands-down winner, even in Managua, was abstention. All other wins, both Liberal and Sandinista,...

The Banco de Café Scandal: A Cure that Nearly Killed the Patient
2000 Noviembre Nicaragua
Until late in the afternoon, November 17 seemed like any other day in the imposing new Managua headquarters of the Banco de Café (Bancafé). There was...

Jinotepe and Diriamba: Two Case Studies of a Defeat
2000 Noviembre Nicaragua
Jinotepe: The PLC’s big plumThe surprising victory of the Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC) in the municipality of Jinotepe stunned people...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2000 Noviembre Nicaragua
BUDGET GAMES: 2001 President Alemán sent the National Assembly the budget bill for his last year in office on October 31. The following are...

Disrespect for Political Pluralism Tainted the Elections
2000 Noviembre Nicaragua
Ever since the first elections following the July 1979 revolution were held in 1984, the electoral process has been repeated periodically, always with...

Juigalpa: A Vote to Punish the PLC
2000 Noviembre Nicaragua
This year’s municipal elections have turned Juigalpa into a Sandinista island in the middle of a hostile Liberal sea. During the campaign in the department...

Nicaragua’s Municipal Elections: The Good, the Bad and the Uncertain
2000 Noviembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s November 5 municipal elections came to a lamentable finish, with the governing Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC) leaders putting off...

A Serpent’s Egg: The New Electoral Law
2000 Octubre Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s last two election years, 1990 and 1996, were both accompanied by new electoral legislation, and 2000 has followed in their footsteps. The...

The Clouds in the Electoral Skies
2000 Octubre Nicaragua
With less than a month to go before the elections, ominous clouds have gathered in Nicaragua’s skies. Snapshots of this densely overcast horizon give...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2000 Octubre Nicaragua
GAMES BANKERS AND POLITICIANS PLAY On September 7, producers from various parts of the country together with employees of the Centeno brothers...

Another Serpent’s Egg: Political Apathy
2000 Octubre Nicaragua
On September 28, the Central Bank tried to auction off 600 million córdobas worth of investment certificates to raise funds to compensate for the fall...

The Interbank Bankruptcy Opens a Pandora’s Box
2000 Septiembre Nicaragua
A good many people believe that, at this time in history, when the avalanche of globalization is sweeping away the very idea of nations, Nicaragua has...

A Passionate Memory in Times of Disillusion
2000 Septiembre Nicaragua
In 1980, we Nicaraguans were better than the people we have become after so many ups and downs. In two decades our dignity has been mortgaged off, our...

The Silence about Incest Needs to Be Broken
2000 Septiembre Nicaragua
Incest is an immensely serious problem in Nicaragua, as it is in the rest of Central America and in fact in the world as a whole. Although the available...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2000 Septiembre Nicaragua
THE FATE OF NEW PARTIES On August 14, former Liberal Minister of Government José Antonio Alvarado and retired army chief Joaquín Cuadra submitted...

The Air is Thick With Electoral Fraud
2000 Agosto Nicaragua
In Managua and the other municipalities on the Pacific side of the country, voters who turn out on Sunday, November 5, will be given two ballots, one...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2000 Agosto Nicaragua
ANOTHER ANNIVERSARY OF THE REVOLUTION Some fifty thousand people gathered across the street from the Plaza of the Revolution on July 19 to honor...

Masaya Trembles: The Lessons of a Disaster
2000 Agosto Nicaragua
At midday on July 6, an earthquake whose epicenter was located in the volcanic lake known as Apoyo, just 6 km from the city of Masaya, registered 5.9...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2000 Julio Nicaragua
THE CHECK SCAM: DISMISSALS… Fallout from the June 7 resolution of the Office of Comptroller General (CGR) on the "check scam" corruption case...

The Road to Elections Is Paved With the Pains of the Pact
2000 Julio Nicaragua
Day emerges out of the shadows of the night. In these long nights before November’s municipal elections, the rigid new Electoral Law is demonstrating...

Youth Gangs: A Cultural Prison
2000 Junio Nicaragua
I loved myself as traitor, thief, stick-up man, informer, detestable, destructive, despicable, coward. With axe blows and shouts I severed the bonds...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2000 Junio Nicaragua
POVERTY IN COLD NUMBERS According to the figures of a household survey done recently by the United Nations Development Program UNDP), only 50%...

A Society Scandalized
2000 Junio Nicaragua
The word "scandal" comes from the Greek word for stumbling block. To scandalize is literally to trip up, obstruct, hold back, although in more common...

Destination: Washington Baggage: Overweight
2000 Mayo Nicaragua
Arnoldo Alemán’s government was looking to buy political and economic time when it decided both to postpone its scheduled annual meeting with the international...

Henry Ruiz: The FSLN Has Lost the Strong Ethical Basis that Motivated Us
2000 Mayo Nicaragua
Politics without ethics is neither valid nor right. When politics is ethical, it can reach many people’s hearts. But when politics becomes a process...

Pensions System Reforms: Three in One
2000 Mayo Nicaragua
The complete replacement of Nicaragua’s state pension scheme with a private one has caused a huge commotion in the country from the moment the reforms...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2000 Mayo Nicaragua
US EMBASSY USES CARROT ON CORRUPTION… After very specific criticisms of the government’s laxity in dealing with corruption, US Ambassador Oliver...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2000 Abril Nicaragua
VETERANS PROTEST On April 6, hundreds of veterans from the Nicaraguan Resistance set up barricades at various strategic points along major highways....

William Grigsby: "Refounding" the Sandinista movement
2000 Abril Nicaragua
In Nicaragua, Sandinismo is a formidable universe that we can be proud of and that must be taken into account. Six hundred thousand Nicaraguans think...

Do They Want the Elections or Don’t They?
2000 Abril Nicaragua
The election countdown has begun, and the political runners are warming up for the race. But are they in shape, and do they have their strategies clear?...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2000 Marzo Nicaragua
NINTH SAO PAULO FORUM MEETS IN MANAGUA The Sao Paulo Forum held its IX Meeting in Managua on February 19-21, with delegates, mainly Latin Americans,...

Youth Gang Members: The Hand that Rocks the Mortar Launcher
2000 Marzo Nicaragua
Tom said, "Now we’ll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer’s Gang. Anybody that wants to join has to take an oath, and write his name...

The Pact’s First Offspring
2000 Marzo Nicaragua
The consummation of the pact between Arnoldo Alemán and Daniel Ortega has created a new dynamic and a new correlation of forces in the country, although...

Dora María Téllez: A New Option for the Left
2000 Marzo Nicaragua
One of Arnoldo Alemán’s major objectives in the pact with the FSLN was to buy off the organized opposition. He correctly calculated that only the FSLN...

Rethinking Power from a Feminist Vision
2000 Enero Nicaragua
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a renewed feminist consciousness began to smolder among activists and academicians alike. Quickly it exploded—first...

After the Pact: The Die Is Cast
2000 Enero Nicaragua
For Nicaragua, 1999 not only marked the end of the twentieth century and the second millennium. It also marked the end of the "transition" initiated...

"The FSLN Leadership’s Disintegration Goes Way Back"
2000 Enero Nicaragua
The struggle we waged from the Sandinista Front to overthrow the Somoza dictatorship and bring about a revolution was also a struggle for human rights....

Governance in Nicaragua
1999 Diciembre Nicaragua
The United Nations Development Program in Nicaragua (UNDP) has insisted in recent years that governance and the fight against poverty are central elements...

Summing Up Hurricane Mitch: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
1999 Diciembre Nicaragua
One year after Mitch, that mega-hurricane that changed the lives of so many thousands of Central Americans, the activities to rehabilitate what it destroyed...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1999 Diciembre Nicaragua
JARQUÍN WARNS OF A RETURN TO THE PAST From his jail cell, Comptroller General Agustín Jarquín sent a letter to the members of the Inter-American...

Crossroads at the Century’s End
1999 Diciembre Nicaragua
The recent events that closed the century and the millennium for Nicaragua have the quality of historic crossroads. The President of the Republic successfully...

What’s Behind the IMF Pressure?
1999 Noviembre Nicaragua
When Hurricane Mitch's winds and rain lashed through Central America last year, they whipped away the veil of invisibility that had obscured the poverty...

NGOS and Natural Disasters: Gaps and Opportunities
1999 Noviembre Nicaragua
For several years now the international community has been paying increasing attention to the impact and recurrence of natural disasters in different...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1999 Noviembre Nicaragua
MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS AT RISK Next year's municipal elections, scheduled for November 5, are at risk of being postponed due to a lack of funds....

"Our Tax Policy is Regressive, Terrorist and Unimaginative"
1999 Noviembre Nicaragua
By looking at fiscal policy, one can understand, analyze and interpret a country's socioeconomic life. A brief look at the past 30 years of Nicaraguan...

So Poor, So Indebted, So Vulnerable
1999 Octubre Nicaragua
With a year now passed since hurricane Mitch tore through Central America leaving its wake of devastation, ample parts of Nicaragua and the rest of the...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1999 Octubre Nicaragua
A PARDON IN ONE HAND, A WARNING IN THE OTHER During the Annual IMF-World Bank Assembly on September 29, President Bill Clinton pledged to get...

Ciudad Darío: Home of a Poet And Thousands of “Linieros”
1999 Octubre Nicaragua
During the six days of Mitch's heaviest rain, when most other municipal mayors were out directing rescue missions and setting up shelters, Mario Quijano,...

Is the Game All Sewn Up? Questions and Contradictions
1999 Septiembre Nicaragua
The game board on which Daniel Ortega and Arnoldo Alemán traded pawns for the past year has been folded up and the players are now counting their pieces....

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1999 Septiembre Nicaragua
LEGISLATOR MURDERED BY A MINOR Rancher José Cuadra, the Conservative Party of Nicaragua's representative in the National Assembly, was shot...

Ocotal: Urban Planning for People
1999 Septiembre Nicaragua
It's not easy to find a municipality in Nicaragua with a central park that is taken care of as well as the one in Ocotal. Flowers and greenery flourish...

Terrabona Wants Land With Titles and Fences
1999 Agosto Nicaragua
The municipality of Terrabona is a mere 70 kilometers East-Northeast of Managua but, in the words of its inhabitants, “Too much neglect and all this...

First Impacts of a Devil’s Pact
1999 Agosto Nicaragua
The time has come to sign, seal, sell and deliver the pact forged over the past year by the Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC) and the FSLN. And delivering...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1999 Agosto Nicaragua
ALEMÁN FIDDLES WHILE VOLCANOS BURN A string of some 200 tremors, the strongest reaching 4.7 degrees on the Richter Scale, was recorded in northwest...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1999 Julio Nicaragua
COSTA RICAN-NICARAGUAN ENMITY MOUNTS Early on the morning of June 30, Costa Rican armed forces violently evicted 150 Nicaraguan families (1,500...

The Pact’s Roots Go Deep And its Fruits are Rotten
1999 Julio Nicaragua
July 19: twenty years have passed since the Somoza dictatorship was over-thrown and a revolution triumphed that would change Nicaraguan and Central American...

Posoltega: Unresolved Property Problems And Continuing Vulnerability
1999 Julio Nicaragua
Posoltega was the main focus of national and international attention after Hurricane Mitch's devastating passage through Central America; it is estimated...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1999 Junio Nicaragua
MOURNING IN POSOLTEGA On May 20, a group of Posoltega survivors consigned to a common grave more than 35 bags of unidentifiable skeletal parts...

After Stockholm and Before the Pact
1999 Junio Nicaragua
The meeting in Stockholm between delegations of the Central American countries' governments and civil societies and representatives of the donor countries...

Posoltega: Where the Land Burns
1999 Junio Nicaragua
On the road from Stockholm to Posoltega—passing through Washington, where the multilateral organizations design plans to "save" the countries of the...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1999 Mayo Nicaragua
envío POLL RILES PRESIDENT The reaction of Nicaraguan President Arnoldo Alemán to the IDESO-envío survey on corruption that appeared...

Youth Gangs: Armed Rebels Without A Cause
1999 Mayo Nicaragua
Historians, sociologists, anthropologists and other social scientists frequently point out that violence has been omnipresent in Nicaragua since the...

Is the Cycle of Violence Interminable?
1999 Mayo Nicaragua
While around the world people of good will were following the perplexing Kosovo tragedy and the contribution by the United States and NATO to the violence...

Cayanlipe: Six Months of Solitude
1999 Abril Nicaragua
Five months after Mitch, activities directed at the country's reconstruction are not exactly advancing at the pace that the ongoing propaganda leads...

The Comptroller’s Office and Corruption: What does Managua Think?
1999 Abril Nicaragua
On March 27-28, IDESO, envío's institute of surveys and opinion samplings set out to gather these opinions, which are so frequently neglected...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1999 Abril Nicaragua
1999 BUDGET APPROVED WITH GLITCHES The approval of the 1999 General Budget of the Republic was for months a centerpiece of the institutional...

The Long March against Corruption
1999 Abril Nicaragua
In the donor countries' consultative group meeting to be held in late may in Stockholm, Sweden, the international community will firm up its financial...

In the Vortex of Hurricane "Corruption"
1999 Marzo Nicaragua
While Managua is beginning to forget the gaping wounds that hurricane Mitch's rushing waters opened in other parts of the country, the nation as a whole...

Puerto Morazán: Problems in an Ill-Fated Land
1999 Marzo Nicaragua
Puerto Morazán was originally known as the port that catapulted national production to northern Central America. In the municipality by the same name,...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1999 Marzo Nicaragua
CLINTON'S VISIT President Clinton's March 8 visit to Nicaragua lasted seven hours. The central act took place at the base of the Casita volcano...

A Plea from Prinzapolka
1999 Marzo Nicaragua
Prinzapolka is the name of many things in the North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN): a major river, the municipality through which that river cuts,...

A Necessary Turnaround: Betting on Cities and Towns
1999 Marzo Nicaragua
Hurricane Mitch dramatically laid bare the weaknesses in Nicaragua's development model. It also revealed, as natural disasters always do, the countryside's...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1999 Enero Nicaragua
US ARMY TO THE RESCUE The first 380 members of a total US Army contingent of 1,700 arrived in Nicaragua on December 9. They make up a Joint...

San Francisco Libre: Giving It One More Try
1999 Enero Nicaragua
Even though hurricane-swollen lake Managua—now again commonly referred to by its original name, Xolotlán—is still well over a kilometer inland of its...

100 Days after Mitch: Any Sign of a Change of Attitude?
1999 Enero Nicaragua
It has become a tradition among political journalists to evaluate recently elected governments a hundred days into their administration. Can this same...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1998 Diciembre Nicaragua
POST-HURRICANE WATCH Posoltega: An Immodest Proposal On November 30, following the one-month outdoor mass held for the nearly two thousand people...

A Time for Opportunities and Opportunists
1998 Diciembre Nicaragua
The government officially concluded the national emergency committee's activities on the night of November 24, three weeks after it began to function...

How Managua Saw the Passage of Hurricane Mitch
1998 Diciembre Nicaragua
How have people in Managua perceived and experienced the catastrophe brought by Mitch? Have the actions of the government and other sectors corresponded...

Wiwilí With or Without Mitch: An X-Ray of Underdevelopment
1998 Diciembre Nicaragua
Wiwilí, in Northern Nicaragua, was not in the eye of the storm. It didn't experience the brutal punishment meted out on many other northern communities....

Sketches of an Unexpected Tragedy
1998 Noviembre Nicaragua
With so little time before going to press, and with so much information still unreported or incomplete, we could not hope to adequately analyze this...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1998 Noviembre Nicaragua
1999 BUDGET GLITCHES With no way of predicting the emergency situation that Hurricane Mitch would trigger over the next several weeks, the President's...

A Country Still in the Making
1998 Octubre Nicaragua
The phrase "on the threshold of the new century and a new millennium" is showing up with increasing frequency in the speeches of public figures around...

The Paths to Corruption
1998 Octubre Nicaragua
Accusations of acts of corruption committed by officials in Violeta Chamorro's government made the front pages of the national papers both during and...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1998 Octubre Nicaragua
WHITHER THE ZOILÁMERICA CASE? On September 19, the National Assembly's executive board, dominated by the Liberals, announced that it would form...

The Cattle Business: We Must Risk Another Model
1998 Octubre Nicaragua
Cattle ranching came to Nicaragua four hundred years ago, with the Spanish conquerors, and quickly penetrated the Nicaraguan culture and economy. In...

Government-FSLN Pact: Where Are the People?
1998 Septiembre Nicaragua
IDESO surveyed 950 inhabitants of Managua on September 5-7. Of those, 40.9% were willing to state their political sympathies. The objective was to...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1998 Septiembre Nicaragua
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENTS WRUNG DRY More than 40 of the country's 147 municipal governments run the risk of coming to a total halt due to their...

Stormy Weather... Can't Get Our Poor Selves Together
1998 Septiembre Nicaragua
In the past few weeks Nicaragua’s political reality has been undergoing a realignment based on political calculations, the enticing deals and economic...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1998 Agosto Nicaragua
CONTROVERSIAL PRESIDENTIAL TRIP In early August President Arnoldo Alemán made an eight-day official trip to Argentina and Uruguay. As has already...

Re-election: Centerpiece of the Pact
1998 Agosto Nicaragua
Nationalism unites, mobilizes and motivates peoples, even those who have not yet forged true nations. This happened in Nicaragua in recent weeks to such...

Time for a Pact Or Time for Reflection?
1998 Julio Nicaragua
The deterioration of both the projected image and the real project of Arnoldo Alemán's government is obvious to all. And it is very worrying. In turn,...

What Is the Obscure Object of The Bank Superintendency Fight?
1998 Julio Nicaragua
BANKERS TEND TO BE SEEN AS GRAY, CIRCUMSPECT PEOPLE WHO ONLY COME TO PUBLIC attention in exceptional cases. For the past two months, Nicaragua has seen...

Immunity and Impunity: De Facto or Legal?
1998 Julio Nicaragua
IN THE ABSOLUTIST MONARCHICAL SYSTEMS THE KING WAS THE ONLY PERSON who did not have to answer to his subjects for his actions. The king responded only...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1998 Julio Nicaragua
LIBERAL CONVENTION: NO SURPRISES The incumbent Constitutionalist Liberal Party celebrated its annual convention on July 11. Many of the party's...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1998 Junio Nicaragua
ELECTION IRREGULARITIES INVESTIGATED The Interamerican Human Rights Commission (CIDH), a Washington-based agency of the Organization of American...

Days of Smoke and Tears
1998 Junio Nicaragua
MAY 1998 WILL NOT FADE UNREMEMBERED FROM RECENT NATIONAL HISTORY. THE month was filled with days of thick smoke, an asphyxiating atmosphere caused by...

"We Need a National Accord to Control Corruption"
1998 Junio Nicaragua
IN NICARAGUA, THE GUIDE WIRE OF THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY RUNS PARALLEL TO EFFORTS TO ERADICATE CORRUPTION. THOUGH THE many scandals we are observing...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1998 Mayo Nicaragua
BIG DRUG BUST On a lonely Pacific Coast beach of the department of Rivas in mid-April, a little before the "presidential drug jet" scandal...

We are Hitting Bottom: Where is the Way Up and Out?
1998 Mayo Nicaragua
Nicaragua is being buried beneath an avalanche of crises of all kinds. One convulsion comes on top of another and each new crisis forces our attention...

Who is Who: A Key to Understanding
1998 Abril Nicaragua
THE GOVERNMENT OF ARNOLDO ALEMÁN HAS NOW FULLY DEFINED THE MACROECONOMIC framework for its administration. After a year of resistance first and then...

Morals and Power
1998 Abril Nicaragua
Morals, in the sense of norms or duties that govern individual conduct in accord with socially shared principles, are seemingly opposed to power, understood...

Is Being the Granary of Central America a Good Thing?
1998 Abril Nicaragua
IN HIS PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, ARNOLDO ALEMÁN REPEATEDLY PROMISED THAT HE would make Nicaragua "Central America's granary" again. Nicaragua's return to...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1998 Abril Nicaragua
BANK SECRECY OVERTURNED The managers of various private banks have expressed concern about reforms passed by Nicaragua's National Assembly...

A Test in Ethics For a Society in Crisis
1998 Marzo Nicaragua
AFTER A VERY LONG DRY SPELL, NICARAGUA, A COUNTRY IN A MULTI-FACETED CRISIS, made the world news several times in February. First was the extended strike...

The Zoilamérica Case: Some Protagonists Speak
1998 Marzo Nicaragua
Zoilamérica: "A prolonged aggression"My very dear friends: I'm writing this letter for those of you whose company, esteem and solidarity are...

On the Death of BANADES (r.i.p.)
1998 Marzo Nicaragua
The poor person is despicable because of his poverty. If a poor person is seen sitting around they say he's lazy. If he takes a drink, he is...

Financial Crisis in Asia: What It Can Teach Us
1998 Marzo Nicaragua
THE ASIAN FINANCIAL CRISIS REFERRED TO AS "YELLOW FEVER," WHICH IS SPREADING throughout the world, forces us to ask ourselves what is causing the instability...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1998 Marzo Nicaragua
FSLN RE-ENTERS NATIONAL ASSEMBLY After having boycotted the National Assembly for several weeks due to what it called the illegal election of...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1998 Febrero Nicaragua
LEGISLATIVE CRISIS On January 10, during the installation of the XIV Legislature in the National Assembly, as President Alemán began to read...

New Twist with the IMF: The Winners and the Losers
1998 Febrero Nicaragua
AS 1997 DREW TO A CLOSE, THE ALEMÁN GOVERNMENT FINALLY, through paid publication in the daily newspapers, made known the contents of the Letter of Intent...

Why Did the Rearmed Rearm?
1998 Febrero Nicaragua
DESPITE THE MULTIPLE ACCORDS SIGNED BY THE CENTRAL AMERICAN PRESIDENTS AND by Nicaraguan Resistance (RN) and Sandinista government commissions, the RN...

Caribbean Voices: Coast Women Share their Agenda
1998 Febrero Nicaragua
1. Promote a Code of Ethics among women covering the following points:- recognize the importance of all women participating equally. - combat...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1998 Enero Nicaragua
NICA EMIGRANTS OFF THE HOOK A bill sponsored by Cuban-American Republicans Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Díaz Balart and voted into law under...

Banks, Mini-Banks and Rural Producers
1998 Enero Nicaragua
A NEW PRIVATE BANK OPENS YEARLY IN NICARAGUA, JUST LIKE IN OTHER COUNTRIES. Financing is a very lucrative sector for those with money to invest. Yet...

Uncertainty at Year's End
1998 Enero Nicaragua
By the Nitlapán-envío team.As 1997 ends, so virtually ends Arnoldo Alemán's first year of government. Almost all of the national problems that...

The United Nations Hits the Nail on the Head
1997 Diciembre Nicaragua
With only a couple of months to go before the end of the liberal government's first year in office, Nicaragua's population is still waiting for things...

An Accord Besieged by Discord
1997 Noviembre Nicaragua
National politics took a significant turn in early September, when the teams of government and FSLN jurists who had been meeting for months to forge...

The Problem of Property And Property Owners
1997 Noviembre Nicaragua
To speak of the property problem in Nicaragua, and of the problem of property owners, we are obliged to look to the immediate past. From that vantage...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1997 Noviembre Nicaragua
IMF VISIT Negotiations over the new structural adjustment agreement between the Nicaraguan government and the International Monetary Fund mission...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1997 Octubre Nicaragua
POVERTY KEEPS MOUNTING A study by the research institute Nitlapán-UCA, published in mid-August, shows that only 18.3% of the Nicaraguan population...

Does a Trap Lurk Behind the Struggle for 6%?
1997 Octubre Nicaragua
The struggle of Nicaragua’s universities to get the government to provide 6% of its ordinary and extraordinary income to the public universities, as...

The Dangers of a Democracy On Paper Only
1997 Octubre Nicaragua
The army of Nicaragua, born of the Sandinista guerrilla movement that routed Somoza's National Guard in 1979, then graduated with honors in the 80s when...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1997 Septiembre Nicaragua
6% STRUGGLE GOES ONThe conflict between the universities and the government over the total or partial provision of 6% of the national budget...

President Arnoldo Alemán Between the Fund and the Front
1997 Septiembre Nicaragua
The Nicaraguan saying, "between two steel prods, no bull is brave," pretty well sums up the Liberal government's first seven months in office. The two...

Forestry Plan Backfires
1997 Septiembre Nicaragua
When technicians from an NGO came to his community with a reforestation program, Pedro Ruiz, a small producer in the south of Masaya, told them, "You're...

National Dialogue or Liberal Monologue?
1997 Agosto Nicaragua
In June, the FSLN spoke of a latent possibility of "bringing down" the government, while other sectors sought only to curb the government's authoritarian...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1997 Agosto Nicaragua
COMPTROLLER GENERAL V. PRESIDENT: 2-0 At the end of June, Comptroller General of the Republic Agustín Jarquín ruled that the process by which...

An Anthropologist in a Managua Gang
1997 Agosto Nicaragua
In Central America, violence and insecurity mount with each passing day, and Nicaragua is no exception. One feature of this is the bands of teenagers...

Is There a Bridge Over These Troubled Waters?
1997 Julio Nicaragua
The liberal government continued to open more fronts of confrontation and add new names to its growing list of adversaries in May, disregarding the serious...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1997 Julio Nicaragua
TWO MINISTERS FIRED, ONE RESIGNS Francisco José Laínez, the prestigious Central Bank president in the 1960s who was named by Alemán as his Minister...

Coffe and Sesame: Mirrors on the Solution
1997 Julio Nicaragua
The new tax law and the debate it unleashed demonstrate once again how hard it is for Nicaragua to find agreement among all the socioeconomic actors...

The Crisis of the Barricades
1997 Junio Nicaragua
Evaluating new governments once they have completed the first 100 days of their administration is becoming a tradition. Even though it's understood that...

Is a Pro-Agriculture Policy Possible?
1997 Junio Nicaragua
On april 3, the liberal government presented a set of measures for the 1997-98 agricultural cycle that sought to lay the foundation for making agricultural...

The Urgent Need for A Social Contract
1997 Junio Nicaragua
It is hard to be constructive in evaluating the first 100 days of the new government; offering proposals seems an impossible task. We'll make the effort...

The Style of an Authoritarian Caudillo
1997 Junio Nicaragua
One hundred days is a very short time period to evaluate the actions of a government that has five years ahead of it, but it is enough to analyze the...

State Modernization: Dangerous Signs
1997 Junio Nicaragua
A legislative agenda has been lacking, local governments are waiting for decentralization, the Comptroller is a besieged institution, and so far there...

Conservatives Evaluate the Liberals
1997 Junio Nicaragua
I want to evaluate these first 100 days of the liberal government in the name of a Conservative Party that is, thankfully, no longer managed from a desk...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1997 Mayo Nicaragua
ALEMÁN AT THE IDB The most numerous Latin American delegation at the annual Assembly of the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB), held in Barcelona,...

Local Power: The Participation That Makes Miracles
1997 Mayo Nicaragua
Among Nicaragua's 145 municipalities, some local governments stand out because they've done a thousand and one things to benefit their people and because...

Alemán in a Race Against Time
1997 Mayo Nicaragua
In its first three months, the government of president Arnoldo Alemán has simultaneously -- and unnecessarily -- opened several fronts of confrontation:...

Peace on the Surface, Torment Underneath
1997 Mayo Nicaragua
The Liberal Party is an historic party rooted in national history. Independence was the product of illustrious men who carried our libertarian ideas:...

Municipalities: Where Democracy is Born
1997 Abril Nicaragua
Many models and paradigms have broken down in Latin America in recent years. At the same time, others are being built. Municipal autonomy, the strengthening...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1997 Abril Nicaragua
DEMOBILIZATION OF REARMED HITS SOME SNAGS A proposal by the new Ministry of Government to give amnesty to those in the rearmed groups who hand...

Whither US Solidarity with Nicaragua?
1997 Abril Nicaragua
The Sandinista revolution triggered a formidable social and political solidarity movement in the 1980s in many countries. One of the largest movements...

All Threads Lead to The Property Tangle
1997 Abril Nicaragua
Two months into president Arnoldo Alemán's term in office, he is still mainly posturing for a population that is showing signs of being tired, more mature,...

Elections on the Atlantic Coast: Where Politics Moves on Slippery Turf
1997 Febrero Nicaragua
Before 1979, not much happened politically on Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast; "the world was quiet." Rural costeños in particular lived a fairly bucolic...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1997 Febrero Nicaragua
MORE ON THE ELECTIONS The International Relations Secretary of Mexico's Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) sent a message to the FSLN...

Dora María Téllez Assesses the National Assembly
1997 Febrero Nicaragua
The first two years of the National Assembly that was elected in 1990, which I was part of first as a Sandinista representative for the FSLN and since...

President Alemán: First Moves, First Signals
1997 Febrero Nicaragua
Many people expected the national logic in Nicaragua following the Liberal victory to be crucial elections = crucial change. It's still soon to note...

Nicaragua Election Briefs
1996 Diciembre Nicaragua
History of Electoral Observation In 1984, the first free elections in Nicaragua's history were covered by some 460 observers from 24 countries....

How Nicaraguans Voted
1996 Diciembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua's elections finally came to an end on November 22 with a reading of the names of all new elected au thorities. This put a full stop to one...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1996 Diciembre Nicaragua
WHO'S TO BLAME? Humberto Doña, national director of the Liberal Alliance's poll watchers, strongly denied that the Alliance's leadership had...

A New Period For the Nation
1996 Diciembre Nicaragua
It's not easy to analyze all that has happened in nicaragua as a result of the both anticipated and feared elections of October 20, 1996. They have...

Observing The Observers
1996 Diciembre Nicaragua
It hasn't yet occurred to anyone to do a comparative study, but it's quite likely that Nicaragua had more people scrutinizing its October 20 elections...

The Roots of The Electoral Crisis
1996 Diciembre Nicaragua
In the last poll done by CID GALLUP before the elections, 61% of the Nicaraguans polled expressed confidence in the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) and...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1996 Noviembre Nicaragua
CAMPAIGN TIDBITS * The polling firm Borge & Associates analyzed the technical tie between the presidential candidates of the Liberal Alliance...

Relations with the United States: A Two-Way Street
1996 Noviembre Nicaragua
Ten years have passed since the international court of justice handed down its decision in the case of the "Military and Paramilitary Activities in...

Nicaragua's Elections: The Die Is Cast
1996 Noviembre Nicaragua
In Nicaraguan culture, everything is left to the last minute. Then, of course, it's improvised, with a heavy dose of ingenuity, and those making the...

Mariano Fiallos: I Accepted Because It's a Crucial Election
1996 Noviembre Nicaragua
Burdens on the CSEThe proximity of the elections is putting politicians, interested citizens and electoral officials in an increasingly tense...

A Nicaragua of the People and for the People Nicaragua's Commitment to a Minimum National Agenda Managua, 1996
1996 Octubre Nicaragua
Since 1995, as part of its program, the International Foundation for Global Economic Development (FIDEG) held a series of dialogues with diverse sectors...

FSLN-Liberal Alliance In a Technical Tie
1996 Octubre Nicaragua
With two months to go before Nicaragua's election, a cid gallup poll done in late August showed that 34% of those polled would vote for Liberal Alliance...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1996 Octubre Nicaragua
VOTER CONFUSION This year Nicaraguan voters are bewildered not only by the six ballots they must grapple with, but also by three different kinds...

From Penniless Plot Holders To Peasant Producers
1996 Septiembre Nicaragua
The idea isn't to sell the land, but to work it and bequeath it to our children," says 42 year old Juan Gómez, former hacienda worker, agrarian reform...

The Campaign Starting Gun Has Been Fired
1996 Septiembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua's official electoral campaign--at 75 days, one of latin ameri ca's longest--was officially kicked off on August 2. For the most important...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1996 Septiembre Nicaragua
HURRICANE CAESAR On July 27, Hurricane Caesar crossed laterally over Nicaragua with winds of 130 150 kilometers per hour, entering at the Bluff...

The Coffee that Comes Out on a Mule
1996 Septiembre Nicaragua
Traveling through the country, we find many areas with no bank branches or agencies. Small producers have nowhere to go to get credit. Even if they...

Badly Fed and Malnourished
1996 Agosto Nicaragua
The united nations food and agriculture organization (fao) defines food se?curity as guaranteeing that a country's population has stable access to its...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1996 Agosto Nicaragua
CHAMORRO VETOES 6% FOR UNIVERSITIES On May 10, President Chamorro vetoed the law, passed by the National Assembly on April 18, that affirms...

Promises Coming and Going
1996 Agosto Nicaragua
In mid june, seven months before turning over the presidential sash to her succesor, President Violeta Chamorro traveled to Washington to make her farewell...

Some Reflections On the Piñata
1996 Julio Nicaragua
Nicaragua, it cannot be repeated too often, always pays for corruption. Given the chamorro government's extensive official corruption, however, it is...

Peasant Farmers Must be Included
1996 Julio Nicaragua
Peasants make up the social force with the greatest economic and productive potential to energize Nicaragua's agricultural sector, but this force has...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1996 Julio Nicaragua
AD HOC VOTER REGISTRATION Meanwhile, one time voter registration got underway the weekend of June 1 2 in the 26 rural municipalities that...

All Electoral Horses Now at the Starting Gate
1996 Julio Nicaragua
The twice postponed deadline for registering parties, alliances and candi dates for the October electoral race has finally come and gone. At the close...

Election Polls: Will the Güegüense Return?
1996 Junio Nicaragua
After its independence in 1821, Nicaragua experienced a long series of dictatorships as two principal parties, the Liberals and Conservatives, vied for...

Honesty Doesn't Come Cheap
1996 Junio Nicaragua
The government has no time to govern and the state is falling to pieces, while society is divided between those who believe in everything and those who...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1996 Junio Nicaragua
FROM MILITARY BASTION TO NATIONAL PARK In an act to commemorate President Chamorro's sixth year in office, General Joaquín Cuadra, the head...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1996 Mayo Nicaragua
ANOTHER STAND OFF Yet another month has gone by in which executive legislative tensions and the relatively murky political interests of the...

Nicaragua's Two Options: Change or Stay the Same
1996 Mayo Nicaragua
Nicaragua's election panorama is getting more complex and incoherent by the day. With 35 registered parties and 5 more in the process of registering,...

The Election Labyrinth
1996 Abril Nicaragua
The path to the October 20 elections is getting more labyrinthian the fure ther both voters and candidates travel down it. "There is no government,"...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1996 Abril Nicaragua
Rural ViolenceReports of kidnappings, intimidation and atrocious killings around Waslala and other areas in northern Nicaragua continued to...

Bridging the Bridge: ESAF and the Future
1996 Abril Nicaragua
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) paid its ordinary semi annual visit to Nicaragua at the end of February, this time to evaluate the implementation...

The Features of Our Political Culture
1996 Febrero Nicaragua
There is general consensus that nicaragua, like the majority of countries, requires significant social, economic and political reform. State reform...

Nicaragua Needs a Miracle
1996 Febrero Nicaragua
Nicaragua received pope John Jaul II on February 7 in a mood of peak political and social tension, as well as of peak hope. Many summarized their expectations...

What Do Working Children Want?
1996 Febrero Nicaragua
Since 1994, a group of educators and sociologists, with the active participa tion of working children, has been studying the way these girls and boys...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1996 Febrero Nicaragua
A FEW TOO MANY? Nicaragua now has 34 legally registered parties, and the leaders of 15 of them have made public their aspiration to run for...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1996 Enero Nicaragua
CERRO NEGRO ERUPTS AGAIN The 700 meter high volcano called Cerro Negro, located some 20 kilometers outside of the city of León, began to erupt...

What Laws Protect The War Wounded?
1996 Enero Nicaragua
What is left of the war in Nicaragua? The mantra heard daily is that the war is behind us, that we've gotten over it, that we need to get over it...but...

When Democracy Becomes A Synonym for Anarchy
1996 Enero Nicaragua
With the Christmas season and the even more widely celebrated Feast of the Immaculate Conception upon us, government activity is winding down. A new...

Two Just Laws: 85 and 86
1995 Diciembre Nicaragua
Over the past five years, a small but powerful group of Nicaraguans has dedicated a considerable amount of energy to delegitimizing Laws 85 and 86, passed...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1995 Diciembre Nicaragua
ELECTORAL SKIRMISHES Antonio Lacayo inaugurated the Managua campaign headquarters of his National Project (PRONAL) in mid October, giving out...

Agrarian Property and Stability
1995 Diciembre Nicaragua
Agrarian property in Nicaragua has been subjected to numerous upheavals since 1979. By diverse methods, the Sandinista government came into possession...

Privatizing TELCOR: Not the Only or Best Solution
1995 Diciembre Nicaragua
Comments on the proposal by the TELCOR National Workers Federation, "Enrique Schmidt Cuadra," titled, "TELCOR: Supporting Stability and Development,"...

Poverty: An Incurable Epidemic?
1995 Diciembre Nicaragua
In early October, dozens of people were brought to the small health center in Achuapa, in the northeast corner of León, suffering symptoms of an unidentified...

Is ESAF's Career at an End?
1995 Noviembre Nicaragua
The International Monetary Fund mission that came to Nicaragua at the end of August, spending over two weeks here, was not on a routine visit. The results...

Nicaraguan Youth: What Do They Want and What Are They Like?
1995 Noviembre Nicaragua
Nicaraguan youth, "the muchachos," led the challenge to the Somocista dictatorship during the 1970s. They were at the forefront of the revolutionary...

Foreign Debt: A New Face
1995 Noviembre Nicaragua
In the past few months, Nicaragua's foreign debt has returned to the short list of national concerns. envío has already published two articles on this...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1995 Noviembre Nicaragua
HEAVY LEGISLATIVE DEBATES EXPECTED Three strategically important and arduously contested bills will be debated in Nicaragua's National Assembly...

Sustainable Agriculture: The Way Out?
1995 Octubre Nicaragua
The crop systems used by peasants in the community of Las Cañas, Matagalpa, are being transformed. The peasants are using neither neolithic agriculture...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1995 Octubre Nicaragua
THE DEA SETS UP SHOP The US Drug Enforcement Agency has decided to open a provisional office in Managua, assigned to the US Embassy, to "organize...

How Hummingbirds Are Raised
1995 Octubre Nicaragua
They say there are no savings in Nicaragua, and that this is why we are a poor country. Since there are no savings, we can't invest and thus can't grow...

Premature Election Campaigning Overshadows All
1995 Octubre Nicaragua
The joy of the August patron saint festivals mixed with the stupor due to the spectacular appearance of drug trafficking in the country, growing concern...

One Year into ESAF: What Must Still Be Adjusted?
1995 Septiembre Nicaragua
As much as we have criticized the content and implementation of the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF), we must accept it as necessary and...

Deactivating Mines: Pacifying Nature
1995 Septiembre Nicaragua
Mined territories are one of the scars of all violent conflicts, whatever their origin and duration. Mines have been used massively since World War...

The Electoral Process: For Elites Only?
1995 Septiembre Nicaragua
The political agreements that put an end to the crisis generated by the constitutional reforms also paved the way for defining electoral alliances. ...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1995 Septiembre Nicaragua
THE NEW LEGISLATIVE AGENDA The National Assembly has announced the tasks that will take priority now that the reformed Constitution has gone...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1995 Agosto Nicaragua
PROPERTY ISSUE STILL SPARKS MOBILIZATION On June 15, hours after the political agreement between the executive and legislative negotiators...

A Parade of Images in Paris
1995 Agosto Nicaragua
In June 1995, a high level Nicaraguan government delegation went to Paris for the second time this year to meet with representatives from the international...

Not Yet to the Root of the Crisis
1995 Agosto Nicaragua
The institutional crisis has finally been resolved through an agreement between the executive staff and the National Assembly board. Even if the results...

Government of the Absurd Plays Another Month
1995 Julio Nicaragua
Nicaragua has changed. In the 1980s this small country offered hope and inspiration to many, both at home and abroad. The vigorous enthusiasm of the...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1995 Julio Nicaragua
ANONYMOUS TERRORISM Several dynamite attacks were carried out against churches in León, Managua and Masaya during May. No organization or individual...

A Sandinista Commemoration Of the Sandino Centennial
1995 Julio Nicaragua
We must weigh carefully what a national commemoration for Sandino means. There's a lot for all Nicaraguans, regardless of political allegiance, to...

The Crisis Is Bordering On the Intolerable
1995 Junio Nicaragua
The institutional crisis that peaked with the National Assembly's defiant promulgation of the constitutional reforms has reached new limits: the state...

Hydroponic Farming: An Alternative For Everybody
1995 Junio Nicaragua
Felipa Rojas has become the owner of her own destiny. Although life has not been particularly generous to her as she grows older, she has found a stable...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1995 Junio Nicaragua
THE TEACHERS STRIKE: A VICTORY? After 43 days, the teachers' strike in Nicaragua ended April 10 with the help of a pluralist mediating commission....

The Chamorro Administration A Race to the Starting Line
1995 Mayo Nicaragua
On April 25, Violeta Chamorro began her sixth year as President of Nicaragua. As the countdown to the next elections begins, her presidential minister,...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1995 Mayo Nicaragua
THE TEACHERS' STRIKE HOLDS ON..AND ON The strike by some 60% of Nicaragua's schoolteachers continued during all of March and was still holding...

Faith, Hope and Mung Beans
1995 Mayo Nicaragua
The mung bean is small and round, with a striking green color, like hope. And, like everything having to do with hope, it hides within its small size...

The Foxes Are Infighting: But the Hens Aren't Laughing
1995 Abril Nicaragua
After the attempts to create a federated Central America failed early last century, 30 years would pass before Conservatives began to consolidate the...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1995 Abril Nicaragua
HUMBERTO RETIRED ON CUE On February 21, as he had promised, General Humberto Ortega, head of the Sandinista Popular Army since 1979, went into...

Banana Workers Put Shell on Trial
1995 Abril Nicaragua
In Galveston County, Texas' District Court 212, one case is astounding US justice because of the magnitude and seriousness of the accusations. Over...

Environmental Law: For the Future of All
1995 Febrero Nicaragua
When the Spanish conquerors reached what is today Nicaragua, they marveled at the opulence of life here: gigantic trees, unknown multicolored birds,...

The Constitutional Reforms: Another Opportunity
1995 Febrero Nicaragua
The world is going through a change of epochs that touches even the traditional industrialized countries, particularly those forged in heated struggles...

BT: Chronicle of an Opportunity Lost
1995 Enero Nicaragua
For more than 40 years now, we have known that insects take ill and die just like any other animal, and we are also aware that some microbes are capable...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1995 Enero Nicaragua
UN REPORT ON NICARAGUAIn mid November, the Secretary General of the United Nations presented his annual report on Nicaragua's current situation...

Will Economics and Politics Keep Playing at the Same Table?
1995 Enero Nicaragua
As 1994 rang in, Nicaragua's economy was bankrupt and its political forces were in the process of regrouping. The clearest sign of bankruptcy was seen...

Decollectivization: Agrarian Reform
1994 Diciembre Nicaragua
The Nicaraguan peasantry's permanent demand for property has meant that in the last 13 years more than 200,000 peasant families have obtained over 4...

Nicaragua: Through a Glass Darkly
1994 Diciembre Nicaragua
Just as the last issue of envío was about to go to press, Nicaragua's Supreme Court of Justice made known its finding that it would be unconstitutional...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1994 Diciembre Nicaragua
A STRIKE WARNING On October 25, 80% of the health workers throughout Nicaragua stopped their labors for a day, except for emergency care, to...

Eucalyptus: the Bessings of a Damned Tree
1994 Noviembre Nicaragua
Is it good to plant eucalyptus? Is it bad? Or does it depend on each specific case? Andrea Ortiz has a look not often seen among the Nicaraguan peasantry....

Time for Transparency
1994 Noviembre Nicaragua
We in Nicaragua are used to living with constant confrontation. The political parties, and their various factions and fractions, are at permanent verbal...

A Needed Renewal
1994 Noviembre Nicaragua
Most economic analyses of Latin America in the 1980s can be summed up in the famous phrase coined by the UN's Economic Commission on Latin America: "a...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1994 Noviembre Nicaragua
FSLN CRISIS On September 9, 76 of the Sandinista Assembly's 120 members voted to return FSLN general secretary Daniel Ortega to his seat in...

The Thousand and One Uses of Bamboo
1994 Octubre Nicaragua
The world demand for wood for both construction and the manufacture of cellulose, paper, resins, charcoal and a thousand other uses climbs daily. The...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1994 Octubre Nicaragua
INTERNAL FSLN ELECTIONS Well over 200,000 Sandinista sympathizers, affiliates and militants around the country went to designated centers in...

Political Ambition; Economic Negligence
1994 Octubre Nicaragua
While Nicaraguans with the money to do so prepare their children to live and compete abroad, those who cannot even dream of it, much less attempt it,...

SEVEN TREES FOR ANOTHER PARADISE
1994 Octubre Nicaragua
Ecological awareness is growing in Nicaragua and the rest of Central America. Nothing has such silent and profound influence in our lives as the...

"NIM": Nature's Own Insecticide
1994 Septiembre Nicaragua
When the Green Revolution, with its aggressive and short term agricultural production methods, spread throughout the world, it promoted a negative concept...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1994 Septiembre Nicaragua
NO LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL A month of drastic energy rationing throughout Nicaragua (cuts of eight hours a day at first, now reduced...

Crisis in the FSLN: Class Conflict
1994 Septiembre Nicaragua
After losing the 1990 elections to a heterogenous grouping of parties glued together only by their hostility to Sandinismo, the FSLN, now in the opposition,...

Elites in Search of a National Project?
1994 Septiembre Nicaragua
These times we're living in are very strange. With more opportunities opening up for Nicaragua than in previous years, the country's leaders, politicians,...

The Foreign Debt: Catastrophe or Oportunity?
1994 Agosto Nicaragua
Although both Nicaragua's government and its population is aware that the country is up to its eyebrows in debt, very few understand the true magnitude...

Mangrove Swamps: the Sea's Kindergarten
1994 Agosto Nicaragua
They get a lot of bad press they're not good for much except breeding mosquitoes and thus, malaria and other illnesses. But the truth is that mangrove...

The Future Beckons from the Whirlwind's Eye
1994 Agosto Nicaragua
June confirmed once again the preference of many Nicaraguan politicians and business leaders for froth over substance. They spent the month blowing...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1994 Agosto Nicaragua
CONSTITUTIONAL REFORMS SNAGGED Contrary to expectations, the National Assembly went the entire month of June without receiving the package of...

Calm Before the Storm?
1994 Julio Nicaragua
The two most weighty items on Nicaragua's economic and political agendas over the past several months have been the government's signature on the Letter...

Ben Linder's Dream: Electricity Comes to Bocay
1994 Julio Nicaragua
Just over seven years after US hydroelectric engineer, clown, unicyclist and political activist Benjamin Linder was killed by contras in Bocay, Jinotega,...

The New Sandinista Utopia
1994 Julio Nicaragua
Since the FSLN's electoral defeat in 1990, Nicaragua has been subjected to a liberal offensive wrapped in the banners of representative democracy and...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1994 Julio Nicaragua
TORRICELLI VISIT: AN UNVEILED THREAT At the beginning of June, US Congressman Robert Torricelli (D NJ) made a five day visit to "inspect" Nicaragua's...

The Marango Makes Magic in Water
1994 Julio Nicaragua
Current industry and technology would seem to have the conditions to confront all problems and satisfy all needs. But their responses and solutions...

A Rather Extraordinary Congress
1994 Julio Nicaragua
On May 20-22, the FSLN celebrated an extraordinary session of its First Congress, called to debate and pass reforms to the FSLN statutes and program,...

The FSLN Congress: What's at Stake
1994 Junio Nicaragua
Looking at the factors that are holding FSLN unity in check, two questions stand out. Is it possible to recover revolutionary identity while accepting...

Nicaragua's Caribbean Coast: New Government, Old Problems
1994 Junio Nicaragua
Exactly one century after the military occupation of Bluefields led by Gen. Rigoberto Cabezas a maneuver ordered by Liberal President Santos Zelaya...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1994 Junio Nicaragua
FSLN CONGRESS In the last half of April, Sandinistas held departmental congresses all over the country to discuss the preparatory documents...

The Economic Curtains UP: What's the Political Play?
1994 Junio Nicaragua
"Nicaragua's difficulties result from the government's poor economic policy," argue some media commentators. "The political instability is what keeps...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1994 Mayo Nicaragua
CONSTITUTIONAL REFORMS The reforms to the Constitution, which the new majority in Nicaragua's National Assembly announced would be ready for...

The Sacred Jicaro Tree: An Economic Solution
1994 Mayo Nicaragua
As the old Mayan codes tell it, the jícaro tree grew out of the liberation of the people. Recent scientific research is finding that this tree offers...

Worker-Owned Coffee Farms: The Bitter and the Sweet
1994 Mayo Nicaragua
The transformations the Sandinista revolution made in Nicaragua's property ownership structure have suffered major roll backs in the past four years....

Negotiating the Crisis: A Modest Proposal
1994 Mayo Nicaragua
Michel Camdessus, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, came to Nicaragua on March 12 to deliver the latest version of the IMF's highly...

Atlantic Coast: Another Disaster?
1994 Abril Nicaragua
No event in the Atlantic Coast has ever received such attention in the Pacific as the recent election of new governments in the North and South Atlantic...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1994 Abril Nicaragua
DRUGS IN NICARAGUA Operation Ocean, Nicaragua's most spectacular anti-drug operation ever, was carried out on January 12 on the beach at Popoyo,...

Organic Agriculture: A labor of Love
1994 Abril Nicaragua
The green revolution, begun in the 1950s, was marketed at the time as the solution to all problems of hunger and production. Despite its pretensions...

Time for the Horse to Pull the Cart
1994 Abril Nicaragua
Hours before the fourth anniversary of that night of February 25 that flipped Nicaragua's history on its head, the Northern Front 3-80, headed by José...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1994 Febrero Nicaragua
CONGRESS OF EX CONTRAS The First National Congress of former combatants in the Nicaraguan Resistance was held in Managua in the first week of...

New Political Setting, same Rotten Economy
1994 Febrero Nicaragua
As last year drew to a close, the political polarization that had kept Nicaragua's legislative branch virtually non functional since September 1992 finally...

Happy New Year From the IMF
1994 Enero Nicaragua
(Note to our readers: This month we are dedicating this space exclusively to the implications of a new agreement package brought to Nicaragua by the...

Welcome to the Free Trade Zone
1994 Enero Nicaragua
Leaving the Managua airport, visitors are immediately greeted by a huge sign in English declaring "Las Mercedes Industrial Free Zone Welcomes You to...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1994 Enero Nicaragua
IS THE POLITICAL DIALOGUE REALLY GOING SOMEWHERE? The on again off again political dialogue in Nicaragua is finally feeling the pinch of realism...

Selling Sewage Sludge: A Dirty Deal
1994 Enero Nicaragua
They tore away our fruits, they cut our branches, they burned our trunks, and now they want to dry out our roots filling up our soils with toxic...

León: Paralyzed Production, Paralyzed Imaginations
1993 Diciembre Nicaragua
For 40 years León lived for cotton. But cotton is no longer the solution. Its production is not profitable, it does not attract investment. It is...

Is It Time for Another Literacy Crusade?
1993 Diciembre Nicaragua
Thirteen years have passed since the National Literacy Crusade, one of the revolution's most beautiful undertakings. Today, illiteracy levels have...

Time to Talk to Each Other... Not at each Other
1993 Diciembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua's crisis is expressed two ways, both demonstrating how far it has gone: the country is politically ungovernable and economically non viable....

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1993 Diciembre Nicaragua
DISARM OR ELSE Hoping to avoid a military response, the government extended the date for rearmed groups to lay down their weapons one more time....

Biodiesel: The Miracle of a "Useless" Tree
1993 Diciembre Nicaragua
According to scientific data, "tempate" (Jatropha curcas L.) is an oleaginous bushy tree belonging to the Euforbiaceas family, which has more than 3,500...

Transport Workers V. The Whole Economic Plan
1993 Noviembre Nicaragua
The national transport strike in mid September may turn out to be the most important social event since the Chamorro government took office. For the...

Street Children--Mortgaging the Future
1993 Noviembre Nicaragua
At every traffic light, in the markets and shopping centers, wherever people gather together for religious processions, fairs, political demonstrations,...

What Happened in the Economist's Meeting?
1993 Noviembre Nicaragua
As rector of the Central American University (UCA) and president of the Regional Coordinating Body of Socioeconomic Research (CRIES), thus responsible...

Would the IMF Accept a More Productive Adjustment?
1993 Noviembre Nicaragua
It is very easy, and always fashionable, to criticize the policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The hard part is to respond to people's...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1993 Noviembre Nicaragua
HOSTAGE TO PAYMENTS ON A $1.5 BILLION DEBT Just after the transport strike, President Chamorro and finance minister Emilio Pereira went to Washington...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1993 Octubre Nicaragua
MORE ON THE EPS EXECUTIVE CRISIS In her remarks during the Army Day celebration President Chamorro also announced that she will promote a constitutional...

Nicaragua's Polarization is Reaching the Boiling Point
1993 Octubre Nicaragua
Nicaragua is demonstrating that the attempt to install a counterrevolution can be just as explosive as making a revolution. The following summary of...

Hope in Lechecuagos
1993 Octubre Nicaragua
Lechecuagos is a small and forgotten rural district located on the slopes of Nicaragua's Cerro Negro volcano, in the department of León. More than 7,000...

Why is not One Doing Anything About the Economy?
1993 Septiembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua is once again at a critical crossroads. Although the country seems to come up against a crisis every three or four years, this one differs...

The Armed Conflict in Estelí
1993 Septiembre Nicaragua
The events visited upon Estelí in late July are a tragic new milestone in Nicaragua's current crisis of violence. The description and assessment contained...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1993 Septiembre Nicaragua
POLITICAL SIDELIGHTS ON THE ESTELÍ EVENTS Two hours after the Revolutionary Front of Workers and Peasants (FROC) whose members are mainly "recompas,"...

Central America's Economic and Political Backdrop
1993 Agosto Nicaragua
Editor's note: The following is something of a departure from the usual article that fills this space. In anticipation of the election campaigns...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1993 Agosto Nicaragua
US REDUCES AID According to the foreign aid bill that President Clinton is sending to Congress, US aid to Nicaragua for FY 1994 will be $66...

The Walagallo: Heart of the Garifuna World
1993 Agosto Nicaragua
Religious ceremonies are one of Latin America's most visible and dramatic forms of grassroots expression. In many of these ceremonies, the various ethnic...

Indefinition in Washington, Intransigence in Nicaragua
1993 Julio Nicaragua
Within hours after a car full of explosives--which happened to be parked over a huge buried arms cache in the middle of a Managua neighborhood--blew...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1993 Julio Nicaragua
ARMY REPORT TO THE OAS General Humberto Ortega informed the secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS) in April that Nicaragua's...

New Times, New Role for Universities of the South
1993 Julio Nicaragua
Given the challenges we are facing at the end of this century, defining the role of the university is difficult and perplexing. This is especially true...

The Unending Calvary of Mothers of the Disappeared
1993 Julio Nicaragua
The war that devastated Nicaragua during the 1980s left more than 150,000 victims, including dead, disabled, widowed and orphaned. But there are still...

Reactivation: The Last Chance
1993 Junio Nicaragua
Except in a very small orthodox and officialist circle, all Nicaraguans speak today of the unbearable economic crisis and the need to find alternatives....

Foreign AID: Where have all the Dollars Gone?
1993 Junio Nicaragua
Shortly before Minister of the Presidency Antonio Lacayo's trip to the Paris Club meeting on April 2, everything seemed to be going against the Nicaraguan...

Introduction to this Edition
1993 Junio Nicaragua
A UNIQUE EDITION AT A UNIQUE TIMEAt the center of Nicaragua's attention is an economy at the edge of collapse. Three years have gone by, with...

The Farmer Program: an Alternative
1993 Junio Nicaragua
Nicaragua's economic growth depends on the reactivation of agricultural production. It also depends in great measure on an increase in export production. The...

The Far Right: 10 Months on the Offensive
1993 Mayo Nicaragua
On April 2, the US government informed President Chamorro that the $54 million in economic aid approved for 1992 withheld since May of that year for...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1993 Mayo Nicaragua
The Chamorro government won an important political and economic victory in the April meeting of the "Paris Club" donor countries in France. According...

USAID's Strategy in Nicaragua
1993 Mayo Nicaragua
With President Bill Clinton's arrival at the White House and the strengthening of the Democrats in Congress, information and speculation about changes...

The World of Imprisoned Women
1993 Mayo Nicaragua
One of the most notable aspects of the Nicaraguan penal system is the tremendous gender imbalance. Of a total population of nearly 3,000, it's rare...

Rural Violence and the Right Wing's Try for Chaos
1993 Abril Nicaragua
The war that the Reagan administration unleashed against the Nicaraguan revolution capitalized on the discontent of Nicaraguan peasants, especially those...

Measuring Municipal Power in Nicaragua
1993 Abril Nicaragua
In December 1992, the Institute for Nicaraguan Studies (IEN) did a study of "Decentralization and Local Democracy," with support from the United Nations...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1993 Abril Nicaragua
According to UNICEF, 165,580 children in Nicaragua live "in difficult circumstances." Of those, 107,000 "work" up to 12 hours a day in the streets ...

Nicaragua's New Economic Measures: Reactivation Solidarity?
1993 Enero Nicaragua
Again, the Chamorro government has asked Nicaragua's poor to make sacrifices in return for the promise of a better future, this time incorporating into...

Nicaragua's Real Property Debate
1993 Enero Nicaragua
In last year's final round of negotiations between the FSLN and the government, Sandinista leaders raised more objections than ever before about the...

Why Social Conflict?
1993 Enero Nicaragua
The growing conflict in November and December was directly attributable to the government's economic policies, whose negative impact on the popultion...

New Year, New US President, New Look in Nicaragua
1993 Enero Nicaragua
At first glance, the contrast in Nicaragua between the last two months of 1992 and the first one of 1993 could hardly be greater. Although more months...

A National Project: Necessary but Unattainable?
1992 Diciembre Nicaragua
The political and economic crisis Nicaragua is living through gives urgency to the search for a clearly democratic and economically just national project...

The Growth of Protestantism: From Religion to Politics?
1992 Diciembre Nicaragua
In Nicaragua, Protestantism, particularly in its Pentecostal forms, is a growing phenomenon. Its growth rate in the last decade means that it now encompasses...

A Brisk Trade in Illusions
1992 Diciembre Nicaragua
Among the many labor protests that shook Nicaragua in October, one of them particularly affected the populace: the lottery ticket sellers' strike to...

Battle for the Budget
1992 Noviembre Nicaragua
With the battle to assign 6% of the national budget to the universities entering into an uneasy truce after one of the most significant and decisive...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1992 Noviembre Nicaragua
TIDAL WAVE DATA The army Civil Defense Department's tally of human damage caused by the September 2 tidal wave is 118 dead, 89 injured, 63 disappeared...

Ethnic Communities of the Pacific and North-Central Nicaragua
1992 Noviembre Nicaragua
Denied Existence; Obstinate Persistence? In this essay by Marcos Membreño, sociology professor at the Central American University, Managua,...

The Social Tidal Wave
1992 Noviembre Nicaragua
The international media seldom consider third world countries newsworthy, and then usually only if the item is a disaster, natural or otherwise, as occurred...

Economic Takeoff: The Little Train that Couldn’t
1992 Octubre Nicaragua
The political paralysis caused by continuous disputes between the far right, the government and the FSLN has not interfered with the implementation of...

People vs. Neoliberalism: Who Will Fold First?
1992 Octubre Nicaragua
The poker game whose pot is the release of $104 million in US aid is still being played, and the US and Nicaraguan ultra-Right continue to up the ante....

Some Birds with Clipped Wings Still Fly
1992 Octubre Nicaragua
They're young, for the most part, like the others. But they're different. A war they didn't seek—none had ambitions to be a hero—ripped a piece out...

The US-Nicaraguan Honeymoon is Over
1992 Septiembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua, part of a region commonly used as a US foreign policy proving ground, is now part of a new test: following the disintegration of the Soviet...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1992 Septiembre Nicaragua
PROTESTS TURN VIOLENT Three separate protests in Managua by distinct sectors, each with their own demands and tactics, converged in a moment...

Foreign Investment, Environment and Autonomy
1992 Septiembre Nicaragua
Many believe that foreign investment is the solution to all of Nicaragua's economic problems and, therefore, should be promoted at any cost. But there...

The Labor Code: Workers’ Rights vs. Economic Recovery?
1992 Septiembre Nicaragua
Unemployment in Nicaragua has reached the highest levels ever registered. Estimates vary according to the source, but the government, business sector...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1992 Agosto Nicaragua
NEW LEGISLATION: A CRIME TO BE GAY In mid-June, the National Assembly approved penal code reforms that, among other things, would make homosexuality...

The $100 Million Poker Game
1992 Agosto Nicaragua
When the news broke in late May that powerful sectors in Congress were urging a freeze on the $100 million in aid scheduled for disbursement that month,...

Peasant and Worker Struggles at a Crossroads: 1. Omens of a Rural Blow-Up
1992 Julio Nicaragua
For the umpteenth time in the past two years, the country's stability and the government's capacity to exercise control over society without using repression...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1992 Julio Nicaragua
RAAN BLOCKS TOXIC RECYCLING PLANTS The Regional Council in the North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN), following multiple negotiations that...

Peasant and Worker Struggles at a Crossroads: 2. Talking with a Recompa
1992 Julio Nicaragua
Leonel Martínez (nom de guerre "William") shares the typical timidity and simplicity of Nicaragua's peasants. These qualities, combined with his young...

Peasant and Worker Struggles at a Crossroads: 3. The Urban Movement: Out from Under the FSLN’s Wing
1992 Julio Nicaragua
During the Sandinista administration, the union movement reached organizational levels previously unknown in Nicaragua. Nonetheless, the top-down relationship...

The Views of René Núñez
1992 Julio Nicaragua
For years, Rene Núñez was considered the unofficial tenth member of the FSLN's nine-man National Directorate. Brother of Carlos Núñez, who died in...

Taking Sides in the Playoffs
1992 Julio Nicaragua
The generalized social outburst feared and predicted by the Sandinistas and pooh-poohed by the government finally happened in early May. It came in...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1992 Junio Nicaragua
NATIONAL ASSEMBLY "REVISITED" Last month we left Minister of the Presidency Antonio Lacayo sputtering with anger outside the National Assembly....

The FSLN-Government Balancing Act
1992 Junio Nicaragua
April, always one of Nicaragua's most sweltering months, had several unusual hot points this year. Just before Easter the health minister declared a...

The “Revueltos”: Just the Tip of the Iceberg
1992 Junio Nicaragua
In recent weeks, thousands of "revueltos" have taken over farms, villages and cities and blocked roads and highways throughout the country. The...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1992 Mayo Nicaragua
OFF WITH THE TRUCE! On March 10, Lucio Jiménez, secretary general of the Sandinista Workers' Confederation (CST), declared an end to last year's...

How Sugar Workers Think
1992 Mayo Nicaragua
Numbering some 13,000 full-time and seasonal laborers, sugar workers are the single most important industrial work force in Nicaragua. In the last two...

A New National Accord: Another Pact Between Leaders?
1992 Mayo Nicaragua
After months of conflict between various popular organizations and the Nicaraguan government, there is talk, once again, of concertación and the need...

How Long Should the FSLN Shoulder the Government’s Burden?
1992 Mayo Nicaragua
For several weeks in March, all the media, as well as a vast number of private conversations, centered on the discovery of a young girl's body, raped...

The Foreign Debt: Lengthening the Chain?
1992 Abril Nicaragua
Late last year, the Nicaraguan government emerged from debt negotiations with 16 capitalist nations, known as the Paris Club, cheering victory and a...

Maze of the General; Maze of the Left
1992 Abril Nicaragua
In mid-January, the army awarded a medal to the military attaché of one of the many embassies in Managua upon terminating his tour of duty. This practice,...

The Economic Plan’s Feet of Clay
1992 Marzo Nicaragua
In our first analysis of the Lacayo Plan, the central issue was whether the Nicaraguan economy, both rural and urban, would find itself at a dead end...

César Jérez: “The Hope of the Poor Will Never Perish”
1992 Enero Nicaragua
My term as rector of the UCA ends on December 1st. I've always been opposed to reelections and if I've done my "patriotic military service" for six...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1992 Enero Nicaragua
CONTRACEPTIVES IN SHORT SUPPLY Nicaraguan gynecologists and health educators recently sounded the alarm when the country's health centers suspended...

“Ours is a Civic Struggle, But...”
1992 Enero Nicaragua
In later retrospectives about the multiple changes Nicaragua is undergoing, November 9 will be remembered as one of the important reference points. ...

Immovable Object Meets Irresistible Force
1991 Diciembre Nicaragua
In a political variant of the old song recalled in the title, pressing immediate issues crossed paths with structural limitations in October to throw...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1991 Diciembre Nicaragua
DRUGS AND DOLLARS Since Violeta Chamorro's inauguration, the lifting of the US trade embargo and the freeing up of many import tariffs has brought...

The Environment: Saving Nicaragua's Soils
1991 Diciembre Nicaragua
Due to deforestation and inappropriate agricultural practices, Nicaragua's best soils have been massively flushing into its two bordering oceans for...

Second Autonomy Symposium: A Big Push Forward
1991 Diciembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua's second international autonomy symposium, held November 4-7, was not a typical conference, drowning in academic papers, with insufficient...

The Economic Plan’s Feet of Clay
1991 Diciembre Nicaragua
In our first analysis of the Lacayo Plan, the central issue was whether the Nicaraguan economy, both rural and urban, would find itself at a dead end...

Privatization: Left, Right and Center
1991 Noviembre Nicaragua
Privatization has become a key element of the Chamorro government's economic program. In interviews with envío, Gilberto Cuadra, president of...

US Aid: Not Even a Cheap Lunch
1991 Noviembre Nicaragua
Two interlinked events in September demonstrated in no uncertain terms the political price the Chamorro government has had to pay for US assistance in...

Cubans Still Keep Bluefields Alive
1991 Noviembre Nicaragua
As Tomás Linton Barrera came up the steps of the two-story white house on Bluefields' main street, he was speaking Creole English to the pregnant woman...

Just the Facts A Poor Country, Part II*
1991 Noviembre Nicaragua
There are five indicators of unmet basic needs: inadequate housing, overcrowding, insufficient services, low education levels and high economic dependence....

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1991 Noviembre Nicaragua
PROPERTY LAW COMPROMISE UNDER DEBATEPresident Chamorro surprised the National Assembly on October 1 by sending a message from Paris to withdraw...

Behind the Birth of the Recontras
1991 Octubre Nicaragua
"It's not true that [the FSLN] lost the peasants; we never had them." —Daniel Ortega Saavedra to FSLN Departmental Congress, June 13, 1991,...

Just the Facts: A Poor Country, Part I*
1991 Octubre Nicaragua
In 1985, 63.5% of Nicaraguan households and 69.4% of its population were defined as poor, 22.7% of them living in a state of poverty and 16.1% in a state...

Scholarship Students Slip Through the Cracks
1991 Octubre Nicaragua
When Iván Hernández left Nicaragua in 1983 to study foreign relations in the Soviet Union, he was one of the country's best and brightest. A good student...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1991 Octubre Nicaragua
ENERGY CRISIS HITS HARDA prolonged drought in northern Nicaragua, coupled with increasing demands for energy, have forced INE, Nicaragua's state-run...

Reconciliation and Stability: Still an Unreachable Dream
1991 Octubre Nicaragua
Urban property fights, rural violence, an ever more painful economic pinch for the poor, internecine fights within UNO played out between the government...

The Transformation of Education: UNO's Political Project
1991 Septiembre Nicaragua
This article, written by Dr. Juan Bautista Arrién, won first prize in envío's fourth annual writer's contest. Dr. Arrién is currently the Ministry...

The Last Word
1991 Septiembre Nicaragua
We reprint below the "last words" from the FSLN National Congress, that is, condensed extracts of the closing speeches by General Humberto Ortega, head...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1991 Septiembre Nicaragua
FLOODS DEVASTATE RAMALess than three years after Hurricane Joan devastated Bluefields and Rama, the population in Rama and nearby river communities...

The Sandinista Congress: Rich, Controversial, Inconclusive
1991 Septiembre Nicaragua
Over the July 19 weekend, the Sandinista National Liberation Front held its first national party congress in thirty years of existence. That alone made...

The Revolution Is Not Lost
1991 Septiembre Nicaragua
In elections for FSLN departmental leadership in Managua last year, Dora María Téllez won an overwhelming majority of the vote. That confidence and...

The FSLN National Congress
1991 Septiembre Nicaragua
1. Statistics on the 501 Elected Delegates 2. Statistics on the 98 Elected Sandinista Assembly Members. 3. New Ethics and Honor Commission 4. International...

Inside the Property Debate
1991 Agosto Nicaragua
In a concerted effort to reverse the revolution's agrarian reform, rightwing sectors have managed to thoroughly confuse the real issues around Nicaragua's...

Economic Stabilization--Stop Inflation, and Then What?
1991 Agosto Nicaragua
Presidential Minister Antonio Lacayo announced the government's sweeping economic plan on March 3 as "monetary stabilization at any cost today, economic...

The Right Wing's Third Try for Power
1991 Agosto Nicaragua
Carlos Salgado, a bright young analyst on the late-night radio news program "Sin Fronteras," mused one night toward the end of June that "the...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1991 Agosto Nicaragua
SANDINISTAS SWEEP STUDENT ELECTIONSContrary to rightwing hopes, university students across Nicaragua handed a decisive victory to the Sandinista...

AID/FISE: Solving the Unemployment Problem?
1991 Julio Nicaragua
The Emergency Social Investment Fund (FISE) has been celebrated in the pro-government press as the solution to Nicaragua's unemployment problems. While...

The FSLN's Dilemma--Stability at What Cost?
1991 Julio Nicaragua
May 22 marked the last day of the truce regarding strikes and salary demands that the National Workers' Federation (FNT) had agreed to in March. The...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1991 Julio Nicaragua
THE CONTRA WAR, PART IIOne year after the last of the US-backed contra forces were disarmed as part of the demobilization and repatriation...

One Year of Coast Autonomy: Little to Celebrate
1991 Julio Nicaragua
May 4, 1991 should have been treated as an historic milestone in Nicaragua, deserving of fanfare and celebration. It even merited a foreign journalist...

AIDS in Nicaragua
1991 Julio Nicaragua
Ten years ago, on June 5, 1981, the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta published a short report on an unusual outbreak of a strain of pneumonia among...

US Demands Devaluation--Of the FSLN
1991 Junio Nicaragua
Although Daniel Ortega visited Washington several times during the first months of the revolution, and was even received in the White House by President...

Daniel Ortega: "Everything Depends on Our Ability to Fight Back"
1991 Junio Nicaragua
envío: During the early months of 1991, there seemed to be great confusion among the Sandinista rank and file and a lack of guidance from the...

Women in Nicaragua: The Revolution on Hold
1991 Junio Nicaragua
"It's a question of training woman to woman; understanding our bodies, knowing the laws that benefit us, understanding women's health... a whole number...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1991 Junio Nicaragua
GUNFIRE SETS OFF MUD-SLINGINGJust after midnight on Saturday April 27, a gunman hidden in a moving Toyota Land Cruiser set off a round of automatic-rifle...

Development that Destroys*
1991 Mayo Nicaragua
By the late 1980s, general concern over the future of the world's environment and natural resources had risen to such a degree that it entered the vocabulary...

Rural Workers Fight to Become Owners
1991 Mayo Nicaragua
Shortly before the UNO government moved to woo international lending agencies by implementing economic "shock" measures, it started making good on its...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1991 Mayo Nicaragua
FIRES RAVAGE NORTHERN FORESTSForest fires raging through Nicaragua's northern Atlantic Coast region have consumed more than 123,000 acres of...

Bankers and Masses Square Off: Economic Overhaul, Social Breakdown?
1991 Mayo Nicaragua
Only a year after being elected, Violeta Chamorro's government is losing the confidence of Nicaragua's main political and social actors, rich as well...

How to Get Foreign Aid: Making the Poor Pay Isn’t Enough
1991 Mayo Nicaragua
For the third time in nine months, the Chamorro government went before the international lending agencies—most importantly, the powerful International...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1991 Marzo Nicaragua
THE GULF WAR AND NICARAGUAThe day after the US began bombing Iraq, Minister of the Presidency Antonio Lacayo tried to calm an anxious population...

Privatization to the Workers— Issues and Actions
1991 Marzo Nicaragua
Privatization of state enterprises has been a cornerstone of UNO's economic program dating back to the pre-election period. It is also a key element...