Nicaragua Briefs

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NICARAGUA VS.
STANDARD FRUIT

Nicaragua is bringing a $35 million lawsuit against Standard Fruit Company. This unprecedented move is based on 1981 agreements regarding the sale of Nicaraguan bananas that were unilaterally broken by Standard Fruit in late 1982.

Standard Fruit, which sells its bananas under the "Dole" label, had 16 banana plantations in Nicaragua in 1970. In 1980, a year after the Sandinistas came to power, it terminated its operations in Nicaragua. A Nicaraguan delegation, including Minister of Agriculture Jaime Wheelock, went to San Francisco in 1981 and negotiated the company's return to Nicaragua. Standard agreed to buy Nicaraguan bananas for five more years, during which time its assets would be transferred to Nicaragua through a reduced price on each box of bananas purchased.

Standard Fruit, however, stopped buying Nicaraguan bananas in October 1982, saying that the international price of the fruit had dropped sharply and thus its Nicaraguan operations were too small to be profitable. Standard then brought a complaint to the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), claiming that it left Nicaragua because its property had been "expropriated." The claim, filed three years ago, has yet to be settled.

The Nicaraguan suit, which names parent company Castle and Cooke as well as Standard Fruit and two other subsidiaries, will be argued by a team of US and Nicaraguan lawyers in the US District Court of San Francisco. The legal team includes the US firm of Reichler and Applebaum, which helped argue Nicaragua's case before the World Court, and Dr. Rodrigo Reyes, Nicaragua's minister of justice.

Announcing the suit in an October 21 press conference, Wheelock said banana companies have traditionally been very exploitative of workers and the countries they operate in, adding that in 1979, ceased being a banana republic."

SOY SAUCE, ANYONE?

Soy has never been part of the staple Nicaraguan diet, but a small cooperative l3 km north of Managua is growing the crop, hoping to introduce it into the Nicaraguan cuisine. The Rubén Duarte Reyna coop has been aided by the government's National Food Program (PAN), which recognizes soy as a cheap and substantial source of protein and substitute for meat and eggs, which are subject to cycles of scarcity here. Cooking oil can also be extracted from the seeds. PAN director Julio López praised the cooperative's work and said that PAN's ultimate goal is to raise the country’s nutritional standards.

The cooperative, which also cultivates peppers, plantains and other vegetables, recently held a mini-fair in which they offered up meals using soy. Their initial crop yielded 35 hundredweight per manzana (1.7 acres), and expectations are that future crops will be greater once several technical problems are resolved.

COFFEE PRICES UP

There is promise of a good harvest for Nicaragua's chief export crop, coffee, at a time when international prices have risen. In a national assembly of coffee producers and workers held in Managua on October 19, Agriculture Minister Jaime Wheelock said that the international market will probably bring $200 per hundredweight). This year's export goal is 800,000 hundredweight. The minister also said that several socialist countries will buy Nicaraguan coffee at preferential prices.

The income earned from the coffee harvest will be used to buy vehicles (transportation is a continual problem in the coffee-growing regions) and improve the workers’ living conditions. The Nicaraguan government plans to buy the coffee from growers at 40,000 córdobas per hundredweight, plus a $10 incentive. Each hundred pounts costs $20 to produce.

In previous years, the coffee harvest was severely affected by contra activity and some areas were not harvested. Last year, most of the coffee was picked but the harvest was smaller and part was contracted at lower prices. Wheelock gave special recognition to those who kept producing even during the dangerous years and called this year's harvest a strategic complement to the military victory Sandinista forces carried out against the contras in 1985-86.

US AID AND ECONOMIC
CRISIS IN HONDURAS

In its Fifth National Congress held in mid-October, the Honduran College of Economists warned that the grave economic crisis facing that country may result in serious political and social instability. Of Honduras' economically active population, 40% is unemployed, a situation they characterized as a "time bomb" threatening social peace. Information recently released by government officials in the southern provinces of Choluteca and Valle indicates that 100,000 peasants are suffering from hunger and 8 have died to date. Small and medium farmers in Honduras only own l8% of the arable land; the rest is in the hands of large “latifundistas.” The economists thus recommend a sweeping agrarian reform benefiting 300,000 peasants as the best way to "fight unemployment and reactivate the rural economy." They also propose employing 125,000 peasants in forestry work to alleviate the critical situation in the southern provinces.

At the close of their Congress, the economists also warned that Honduras' increasing foreign debt, endangers the country’s sovereignty and dignity. In recent months, Hondurans have expressed great concern about the increasing US role in their internal affairs and its political and economic consequences. The president of Honduras' Central Bank, Gonzalo Carías, pointed out earlier this year that the US is not giving Honduras anything for nothing and will expect support for its policies in exchange for aid. Honduran Vice President Jaime Rosenthal recently called his country a US “pawn.”

SWEDISH SUPPORT STRONG

“We've seen the reality of life in the countryside here and we know that aid is one effective way to increase the production of basic grains,” said Sweden’s Vice Minister for Foreign Aid, Lena Hjlen Wallen, on her recent visit to Nicaragua, as she announced that Sweden will increase its help to the rural sector. Wallen met with the national executive council of the National Union of Farmers and Ranchers (UNAG), which has received Swedish aid in the past. Daniel Núñez, national UNAG president, emphasized the importance of the “peasant stores” set up by UNAG so small producers can get basic goods directly, without going through intermediaries.

In her week-long visit, Wallen also visited the gold mine at El Limón, which Sweden has assisted since 1981. Sweden currently supports the mine with $18 million a year, and has helped set up a health program and a new technical school. Wallen, who pledged continuing assistance to Nicaragua, said she was impressed by the progress Nicaragua has made despite the difficult circumstances imposed by the war.

MAKING DO IN MANAGUA

"Even if Reagan cuts off entry of all spare parts, we'll keep our factory going, whatever it costs us," commented one worker at a Sandinista Workers' Federation (CST) exhibition of “innovations” in early November. The exhibit displayed parts that workers had made, reworked or adapted from useless machinery in response to the scarcity of spare parts caused by the US war and economic embargo. Almost all the innovations displayed were parts for US machinery and equipment. Workers from the Ministries of Health (MINSA) and Construction (MICONS) participated in the exhibition as did those from MACEN (an industrial sack manufacturer), PROSAN (sanitary products) and ENABUS (Managua's bus company).

MINSA workers have adapted an obsolete dental sterilizer for use in purifying water in areas of the country without potable water. A MINSA X- ray technician said that, thanks to the “innovators,” the Ministry also saved $55,000 per X-ray unit in need of repair.

UP WITH PRODUCTION

“Production is Defense” has become more than a slogan in Nicaragua. “Economic brigades” have formed throughout Managua's factories (where 90% of Nicaragua's industrial production is concentrated). The brigades are composed of over 3,000 workers, most of them FSLN members, who volunteer extra night or Sunday hours.

In many factories, production suffers regularly due to lack of materials and spare parts as well as frequent electrical outages. The brigades were formed to raise production and increase efficiency, both key to Nicaragua's defense and survival.

One construction worker, Ismael Goodman, explained his participation this way: "The motivation for me to be here and meet the challenge of raising production isn't mine alone, it's a collective and revolutionary thing.”

PRO-SANDINISTAS HONORED

As part of the celebrations marking the 25th anniversary of the FSLN’s founding, the National Directorate held special recognition ceremonies in November for hundreds of Nicaraguans who had collaborated with the FSLN before 1979.

At the Managua ceremony, Interior Minister Tomás Borge told those assembled that “Carlos Fonseca would have given his life again to be here with this constellation of Sandinistas.” The “historic collaborators,” as the FSLN calls them, are people who housed and fed the FSLN militants and combatants, ran messages and weapons and did a whole variety of logistical tasks that ensured the FSLN's survival during the difficult years of the dictatorship.

Speaking on behalf of the collaborators, José Pérez said of the first FSLN militants, "We remember those humble 'muchachos' and their example and political force, which we have inside us today. We shouldn't think that we’ve completed our task. What we did yesterday, what we're doing today and what we'll do tomorrow is nothing more than a sum of all the tasks in all the areas we have ahead of us."

DESPITE ATTACKS,
MIRAFLOR FLOURISHES

They've survived three contra attacks to date, yet the work at Miraflor, in the department of Estelí, continues and is stronger than ever. Miraflor is a grouping of 19 cooperatives (including one made up entirely of demobilized young draftees who spent two years in active military service in the mountains of Las Segovias, Region I. They have a total of 13,600 acres, 800 head of cattle and recently added a new potato-seed project. The latter project is part of a national program and has incorporated people from Managua and the dry zones in Las Segovias. They get three annual harvests, with an average production of 50,000 hundredweight per 81 cultivated acres.

With the help of financing from Holland, 138 houses have been built. Future projects include 19 more houses, 2 schools, a childcare center and improvements on an existing health center. Because Miraflor has been attacked three times by the contra forces, the coops are organized as self-defense units, with the workers going into the fields armed to defend themselves against any possible attack. Fifteen people have been killed in the contra attacks, and a great deal of infrastructure necessary to the cooperatives' functioning destroyed. The last attack was May 20 and today, as one coop member said, “Every peasant is an armed militiaman in Miraflor.”

LITERACY EFFORTS CONTINUE:
EVEN THE PRISON IS A SCHOOL

As he watched a group of comrades receive basic military training in a clandestine FSLN camp in the 1960s, Carlos Fonseca is said to have advised the instructor, “and also teach them to read.” The phrase has become well known throughout Nicaragua as literacy programs continue in all parts of the country.

One such program has an unusual setting—the “Jorge Navarro” Penitentiary, which recently granted 77 prisoners (from a starting class of 80) their literacy certificates. The teachers were prisoners, too, working under the direction of a methodological adviser from the Ministry of Education. The prison also has a primary school where the prisoners can complete their elementary education in an accelerated program.

In other literacy efforts, the Sandinista Youth Organization has put together an educational brigade of 700 students who will begin teaching this December in prioritized areas of rural Managua. They plan to work in 40 small communities and 47 agricultural cooperatives to strengthen and reorganize existing adult education programs. The students are working alongside representatives from the ATC (the salaried farm workers' union) and UNAG (the union of farmers and ranchers) in this latest literacy campaign.

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