Archive Page 2
Nicaragua finalised their next agreement with the IMF earlier this month. According to the US Nicaragua Network, the IMF designated a total of US$90 million in loans for the next three years, U$30 million less than Nicaragua authorities were counting on. US$58 million will be loaned this year.
Daniel Ortega had earlier said this will be Nicaragua’s last agreement with the Fund. Nicaragua is looking seriously at alternatives to the IMF and World Bank, particularly the new Bank of the South. Launched in May by Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Ecuador and Venezuela, it is not being touted as an alternative to the IMF, but many will see it as that. In an anaysis by the IRC’s America’s Program (Bank of the South: Toward Financial Autonomy) it is seen as a way of financing some of the urgent social priorities in Latin America.
As Latin America grows increasingly confident in its rejection of the discredited International Financial Institutions, the World Bank has done nothing to increase its standing by the appointment of the replacement for disgraced Paul Wolfowitz. Robert Zoellick is cut from the same cloth as his predecessor, although perhaps a little more subtle. World Bank Gets Another U.S. Crusader details his contribution to Latin American understanding, including negotiating NAFTA with Mexico (which has seen poverty increase since the agreement was signed), the now dead in the water Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, and beginning the CAFTA negotiations. ALBA can expect a rush of new recruits in the not too distant future.
Filed under: politics | Leave a Comment
Nicaragua’s autonomy process, initiated by the Sandinistas in the mid 1980s, has won praise from a new report from Minority Rights Group International. Published this week, From Conflict to Autonomy in Nicaragua: Lessons Learnt, by Sandra Brunneger, is a potted history of the conflict between the Sandinistas and the Caribbean Coast’s indigenous people, and the subsequent negotiations and consultations which led to autonomy.
It also beings the story more up to date, with a description of such crucial legislation as Law 445 which deals with communal land demarcation and distribution of wealth earned from resources, and looks at cultural, political and economic developments.
Praising the consultation process, Chris Chapman of the MRG says, “The autonomy arrangement successfully ended violent ethnic conflict and the process is a source of good practice which should be considered in similar situations around the world today.”
The report ends with a list of recommendations, most to do with how the fine words of the autonomy law can be implemented. YATAMA, sworn enemies of the Sandinistas for many years, entered into coalition with the FSLN before last November’s elections, based on the assumption that the FSLN is the only party at a national level committed to autonomy. One omission from the report, which details many of the problems that autonomy faces, is the lack of registration of citizens on the Coast (also common on the Pacific). It is estimated that up to 200,000 could be missing from the official role on the Coast, effectively disenfranchising people from voting, and from their wider rights as citizens.
Filed under: politics | Leave a Comment
Biofuel disaster and more
The Wales Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign’s new newsletter is out. It includes articles on:
* the looming biofuel disaster in Central America * the successful campaign to stop water privatisation in Nicaragua * news of a Children’s project in Leon * the hell of living and working in Managua’s municipal dump, La Chureca * and a review of recent books.
Filed under: Campaigns, politics | Leave a Comment
Completely bananas
Nicaraguan banana workers have taken another step in their demand for justice over their pesticide poisoning. They have launched a class action in Los Angeles against the Dole company, but some are not happy.
The case concerns claims of sterility caused by the DBCP chemical, applied liberally in Nicaragua (and other countries) when banned in the US. The campaign has been running for years, and is high profile in Nicaragua, but only recently has attracted the attention of the world press. The Washington Post details the launch of the claim in Los Angeles earlier this week. By today, however, some workers were distancing themselves from the action, saying it would fail in the US courts.
The conditions of workers in fruit picking are generally appalling in most of Central America. Many Nicaraguans cross the border to Costa Rica and head for the Pineapple plantations. A British trade unionist described their fate in a recent Banana Link newsletter: “The plantations are so massive that they have to wake up about three am to walk to work for five or six am start. They get paid for an eight hour day, but usually have to work for more like eleven or twelve hours to meet targets….Many of the Nicaraguan workers are poorly educated and don’t know how to get the right work documents, so rather than get into trouble with the police, they say nothing.”
Campaigning food writer Joanna Blythman highlighted the conditions in the Pineapple industry in the Observer last year, when she asked: “Sweet, healthy and juicy….So why are pineapples leaving a bitter taste?”
Filed under: Campaigns, environment | Leave a Comment
The dire effect of climate change on Nicaragua’s indigenous people is outlined in a report into today’s Guardian. “Hope dries up for Nicaragua’s Miskito’ details the likely effects of a three degree rise in temperatures in Central America over the next couple of decades – Nicaragua has been recently experiencing baking temperatures.
The piece co-incides with a report issued by Oxfam International on global warming. Unfortunately the Guardian article, as well as being a warning on climate change, is also a warning on sloppy journalism. Do the Miskito really live in Nicaragua’s Western territories? The last time we were there they lived on the Caribbean Coast, and along the Rio Coco, which forms much of the Northern border of Nicaragua with Honduras. And did the Miskito fight both the Sandinista ‘guerillas’ (which should be the Army), and the Contra? And there was us thinking that some of the Miskito were in the ranks of the Contra before the peace process on the Caribbean Coast. Maybe the Guardian should tell YATAMA.
Filed under: environment | Leave a Comment
Sandinista Redux
Whilst the Wales NSC blog has been taking a holiday, things continue to develop apace in Nicaragua. At the start of May Nicaragua entered into negotiations with the IMF about a new agreement, the last according to Daniel Ortega. Nearly a month later there is still no agreement on the table, as Nicaragua resists another set of impositions from the Fund.
The Fund’s waning influence is only outdone by the disintegration at it’s sister, the World Bank. Wolfowitz is to leave at the end of June, accompanied by a big suitcase of cash – his resignation timed to co-incide with two years in post, when he is thought to qualify for a big pay-off. Meanwhile Venezuela has announced it is leaving the IMF and World Bank, and it can only be a matter of time before others follow suit. In a recent article, the Panamanian activist Nadia Martinez says Adios, World Bank! in a piece for Countercurrents.
Also in the past couple of weeks Reuters have reported that Nicaragua announced what could be the beginning of the re-nationalisation of Union Fenosa, the Spanish company which has singularly failed to deliver electricity to many Nicaragua’s, and has rationed it to those lucky enough to be connected.
Developments in Nicaragua continue to attract comment, both favourable and more critical. The latest, from the World War 4 website (which we’ve highlighted before) includes an article by Bill Weinburg on why Nicaragua is crucial to the fate of the Plan Puebla Panama. It details proposals for ‘dry canals’ in Nicaragua, which could have devastating environmental consequences and undermine indigenous communities. Another on the site, by Michale Niman (Sandinista Redux)looks back at US interference in the country during the 1980s.
Filed under: politics | Leave a Comment
Hot and frothy coffee
The recent Wales Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign delegation once again visited Fairtrade coffee producers. We stayed on a fairtrade coffee farm, part of the CECOCAFEN group of co-ops around Matagalpa. We also met with representatives from SOPPEXCCA, the fairtrade co-op in Jinotega. Both the farmers and their organisations detailed the gains fairtrade has brought, outlined in interviews by Felicity Butler of CECOCAFEN in an NSC report on fairtrade. Felicity and Janixce Florian of SOPPEXCCA visited Wales in March 2006, during Fairtrade Fortnight.
Nicaragua has always been prominent in fairtrade – the solidarity coffees bought during the Revolution was the fore-runner of the fairtrade movement. Nicaraguan producers are still highly influential. A representative of another of the Nicaraguan co-ops, Merling Preza Ramos, has just joined the Fairtrade Foundation Board as rep for producer groups throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. “It is of great significance because it will allow us as small producers to tell the decision makers the importance that Fairtrade has in our lives.”
The difference is very real, and is best contrasted with the disaster many coffee producers outside of the fairtrade system have faced. Several years ago coffee workers in Nicaragua were literally starving to death, as thousands left the land as the world coffee price slumped. The share that fairtrade producers get of the final selling price, about 21 per cent, is similar to the share that all producers were getting before the abolition of the International Coffee Agreement in 1989 which set prices. The challenges that coffee producers face have been outlined in two recent works: the first, a book, the Coffee Paradox, analyses the failure of free trade in coffee markets, and the struggle over the value chain; the second, the film Black Gold, is opening this week in the UK, and has already received rave reviews.
Filed under: Campaigns | Leave a Comment
Land rights and wrongs
One of the issues that the Wales Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign has followed on the Caribbean Coast has been land rights. After highlighting individual abuses by foreigners buying up indigenous land, we have been focusing more on the demarcation of land. In 2003, after several years of campaigning and lobbying by organisations on the Coast, a Demarcation Law was passed. In theory this protected communal land, but communities still had to officially ‘title’ their land.
Since then some have achieved this. For others it is a slow process, only possible with the support of lawyers and NGOs. Even here it is sometimes difficult, as there are disputes over what is ‘national land’ and what belongs to the communities. In February we met with Miriam Hooker of Coast human rights organisation CEDEHCA. She told us of the progress, but also the disputes, particularly where resources are concerned.
With the Autonomy Law looking to be strengthened under the new Sandinista Government, indigenous demands should make some headway. The situation over the border in Honduras is not so good. In the most recent issue of Teartimes (produced by Tearfund), ‘This Land is Our Land’ details the fight by Miskitos to prevent illegal logging and deforestation (something which also plagues the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua). And in the March newsletter of the Environmental Network for Central America (ENCA), Sarah Irving writes of the fight of the Garifuna people, also in Honduras (and one of the indigenous communities of Nicaragua as well).
Their community, Tela Bay, is the site of the Los Micos tourist complex. Despite legalising their ownership in 1992, the Garifuna were stripped of it in 1997, when the government ‘lost’ documents relating to the titling. According to Irving they have also faced an uphill struggle because organisations like the WWF have declared nearby islands a national park, which has prevented them reaching their traditional fishing grounds (for more information see Sandra Cuffe’s ‘Nature Conservation or Territorial Control and Profits?’ on the Upside Down World website).
Filed under: Campaigns, environment | Leave a Comment
The Sandinista government is celebrating 100 days in office, and its score-card is already being marked. In a review of its policies so far, the latest bulletin from the US Nicaragua Network gives a range of views, from those who are favourable to the advances made already in social policy, to those who are highly critical of what they see as authoritarian tendencies under Ortega.
Much of the criticism has been consistently outlined in the Nicaraguan magazine Envio, which included an analysis of what it saw as an attack on civil (The mettle of our civil society is going to be put to the test) with the setting up of Council’s of Citizens Power under government control. A refutation of this is outlined in the latest article by Toni Solo (Nicaragua – Class and Ethics of Vanity), who disparages FSLN critics.
Whilst the achievements so far have been necessarily limited by the short amount of time in power, glimpses of the FSLN’s broader vision are beginning to emerge. In a document leaked to La Prensa – “For a Project of Public Welfare, Reactivation of Production and Social Transformation”, which is being used by the FSLN’s Dept for Political Education with party members – five clear goals are outlined:
1. National and regional self-determination combined with Latin American integration
2. Strengthening and nationalising public services
3. Redistribution of wealth by means of a more progressive tax system
4. Combining representative democracy with direct democracy by means of councils of citizens and
5. Development based on small and medium farmers, workers and neighbourhoods by promoting associations, agro-industrial self management, energy development and construction.
(source: Nicaragua News)
Filed under: politics | Leave a Comment
Nicaragua has made it clear that the current negotiations with the IMF for a five year agreement over loans will be the last. “Within five years Nicaragua will be free from the Fund,” said President Ortega on Saturday. The rush for the door is part of Latin America’s divorce from the IMF. With Nicaragua, the marriage hasn’t been a happy one. On the plus side, IMF structural adjustment has brought inflation under control. On the minus side education spending has fallen from $40 to $9 per person; health spending down from $40 to $13 per person; electricity and telecommunications privatised; 140,000 government workers laid off; over 80 per cent of the population existing on less than $2 a day, and over 45 per cent on less than $1 a day. The divorce papers should have been filed long ago. “It is a blessing to be free of the fund, and for the fund it will be a relief to rid itself of a government that defends the interests of the poor,” Ortega said.
Before then comes the content of the agreement. It will be vital that as much of the logic of structural adjustment is removed from the agreement as possible. Nicaragua already faces an uphill task, as the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) is based on the framework set by the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO, and ultimately the US Government.
Negotiations with the IMF aren’t the only ones on the table. Soon Nicaragua, along with the rest of the region, will begin talks with the European Union on an Association Agreement. Some in Nicaragua see it as a counter-weight to CAFTA. However, many see it as another free trade agreement which will further impoverish the poorest. The latest edition of A-Genda, the Central America Women’s Network newsletter on gender and trade, has a detailed analysis of the upcoming negotiations. It also contains the Tegucigalpa declaration, a rallying call from the Central America-Europe International People’s Forum, which says talks should be based on justice and not free trade, and calls for “the strengthening….of every country’s right to define it’s own development policies and the pursuit of relations based on respect, co-operation and solidarity.”
Filed under: politics | Leave a Comment
-
Recent Comments
1jcintron on Garifuna Soul
