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| Central American University - UCA |
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Number 238 | Mayo 2001 |
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Nicaragua
NICARAGUA BRIEFS
PLC CAMPAIGN: WINNING "FRIENDS" AND SELLING INFLUENCE
The group of Conservatives who have decided to ally with the PLC as Friends of Enrique Bolaños officially presented itself in the city of Granada, historic home of their former party, on May 6. Making a surprise appearance among them was Sandinista renegade Carlos Guadamuz, ousted by the FSLN from his post as director of Radio YA in December 1999. A few days after this appearance with his former sworn enemy, Guadamuz was "rewarded" with an Appeals Court decision that the embargo of his station’s equipment was illegal. In those same days, President Alemán announced to the media that the popular former Conservative leader Pedro Solórzano had also joined the PLC. Solórzano himself had not yet been able to bring himself to make the news public. Earlier, the PLC had signed an alliance with the leaders of eight parties that were part of the victorious Opposition National Union (UNO) in 1990 but lost their legal status when they decided not to run in last year’s municipal elections. These are the same ones that President Alemán had disparaged on several previous occasions as "microbe parties."
PC CAMPAIGN: PREPARING ITS PLATFORM
The Conservative Party (PC) announced that it is preparing its government program with a multidisciplinary and politically pluralist team of professionals. Considering the country’s bankruptcy, the PC is proposing both emergency and ordinary programs in four areas: economic, social, legal security, and infrastructure and public investment.
FSLN CAMPAIGN: SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC NOW?
On a campaign swing through Costa Rica, FSLN vice presidential candidate Agustín Jarquín, a Social Christian, declared this to the newspaper La Nación: "Given this period my country is going through and the challenges we face to improve institutions, fight against poverty and attract investments, the FSLN, with its recent evolution, appears to be the best alternative for Nicaragua. The FSLN has abandoned its Leninist posture and assumed a Social Democratic identity; it is undergoing a transformation, and is a political organization with a great social sensitivity. That is why I have joined this effort."
MANAGUA MAYOR LEWITES: FIRST 100 DAYS
After Herty Lewites’ first 100 days as mayor of Managua, the M&R polling firm conducted a survey of the capital’s residents, 52% of whom defined the new Sandinista mayor’s management as "very good" or "good," 25% as "average" and 23% as "bad" or "very bad." Lewites not only emerged from the poll in a good light, but was given good marks for his efforts to resolve the garbage collection problems and clean up the capital, and above all for his conciliatory, flexible and pluralist style.
SOUTHERN BORDER MINE FREE
At the end of April, military authorities officially declared that Nicaragua’s southern border zone is now "free of explosive mines." The Second Operational Front of the Nicaraguan Army’s Engineering Corps spent 40 months removing 5,604 mines placed on the Nicaragua-Costa Rica border by Army and Resistance troops during the war in the eighties.
APPARITIONS
The national media has given massive coverage to devotees of the Virgin Mary who believe that she has been appearing regularly for several years in the small northern town of Cacaulí, a couple of miles outside the impoverished city of Somoto. People of all ages and social classes say that a 20-year-old named Panchito has been seeing visions of the Virgin since he was 12. On the 8th of every month, first dozens, then hundreds and now perhaps thousands of people visit Cacaulí from Managua, León, Las Segovias, even across the border in Honduras, to see the spinning sun, a miracle that the Virgin performs for the pilgrims. They also see the Virgin herself for four minutes, according to Panchito and the people. This apparition of the Virgin brings no specific message, but gives blessings and cures illnesses.
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a monthly magazine of analysis on Central America