NICARAGUA BRIEFS

Envío team

NICARAGUA’S RESPONSE TO THE
DEATH OF PRESIDENT CHÁVEZThe evening of March 4, hours after Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s death was announced, the Nicaraguan government organized a brief event attended by a crowd of supporters in Managua’s Plaza of the Revolution. It included a prayer by Cardinal Obando, who enthused that “Comandante Hugo Chávez leaves a luminous trail behind him. He was a man who had three stars in his soul: work, energy and vision.” President Ortega, who spoke for just 10 minutes, said that Chávez, like Bolívar, “raised his sword for peace, justice, freedom and the unity of peoples.” Announcing the news on radio earlier, First Lady Rosario Murillo lauded the late Venezuelan President with these words, “Beloved Comandante President Hugo Chávez, you are here with us, as always, as in so many battles, so many struggles, so many victories. Your immense spirit, dear Comandante, your constant inspiration, your firm, happy, strong, loving, caring, respectful manner, that admirable frame of mind….” Chávez visited Nicaragua 11 times between his first in November 2000 and his last in January 2012, by which time he was already suffering from cancer. Nine of those visits were during Daniel Ortega’s government. Nicaragua decreed seven days of mourning in Chávez’s memory.

REACTIONS TO THE
PAPAL RESIGNATION

On February 11, only hours after learning of Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation, First Lady Rosario Murillo was among the first public figures to issue a reaction. She called the resignation an “unprecedented act of humility in this contemporary world,” adding that “in these times of accumulation of power, it seems to me that divesting oneself of such a high investiture, recognizing human frailty, recognizing that the body sometimes lacks the vitality, the vigor that the Spirit has and that age imposes limits all respond to a profound manifestation of humanity and at the same time of authority.” The next day, the Bishop’s Conference of Nicaragua held a press conference in which the bishops called the resignation a “gesture of humility, inner freedom and courage,” and referred to “anomalies in the internal administration of some sectors of the Vatican Curia,” which while perhaps “excessively expanded and dramatized by the media,” were an “expression of certain less-than-evangelical sentiments.” The bishops called on the Catholic faithful to pray for 40 hours as an act of gratitude for the eight years of the Pope’s government and to ask for a suitable successor. In response to fears people had expressed about other meanings behind the resignation, they reaffirmed that “any other apocalyptic and diabolical explanation must be rejected.” The country’s new Vatican nuncio, Nigeria’s Fortunatus Nwachukwu, arrived in Nicaragua on February 18.

THE COSTA RICA-NICARAGUA
BORDER DISPUTE GOES ON... AND ON

In November 2010 President Ortega announced that he would ask the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to rule in favor of Nicaragua being able to navigate Costa Rica’s Colorado River under the same terms and conditions it authorized for Costa Rica’s navigation of the San Juan River: i.e. that Nicaragua needs access to the Colorado as an exit route to the Caribbean Sea. Early last month, upon learning that Nicaragua had indeed filed this request with the Court in August 2012, the Costa Rican government accused Nicaragua of an “expansionist policy” and called the request an “abusive pretension.” Nicaragua argues that 90% of the Colorado’s waters come from the San Juan, of which it is an affluent, and ultimately from Lake Cocibolca, both of which belong to Nicaragua. This new chapter in the ongoing tensions between the two countries is a continuation of Costa Rica’s claims against the circumstances in which Nicaragua began to dredge the San Juan, to which Costa Rica responded with the construction of a 160-kilometer road right alongside that river that is destroying the area’s environment. A binational dialogue between the two countries and among groups representing the societies of both countries is increasingly urgent, although there are no signs of this occurring any time soon.

POETRY FESTIVALThe ninth week-long International Poetry Festival held every year in the colonial city of Granada was dedicated this year to Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal. In a brief speech during the festival’s inauguration on February 17, Spain’s ambassador to Nicaragua, León de la Torre Krais, said: “I regret that, for reasons that escape me, the government has not wanted to support us in the organization of this festival.” Spain is one of the countries that have collaborated most, year after year, in organizing these festivals and the Spanish Embassy in Nicaragua has been promoting the candidacy of Nicaragua’s Poetry Festival for this year’s Prince of Asturias Prize in two categories: Concord and Letters. It was later learned that the National Assembly had collaborated in the festival but not the presidency. Poets from more than 60 countries who attended again urged UNESCO to designate Granada and Lake Cocibolca as a mixed World Heritage of Humanity site. The city “and its natural environment” has been on UNESCO’s Tentative List for Nicaragua since 2003, but so far only the cathedral in Léon, Nicaragua’s other major colonial city, and the ruins of Old León have been officially selected. Granada was founded in 1524 and is the only city in all of Latin America founded by the Spanish whose original layout is still preserved.

SOLAR ENERGY

On February 21, a solar electricity generating plant was inaugurated in La Trinidad, Diriamba, that consists of 5,880 photovoltaic solar panels with the capacity to provide 1.38 megawatts to the national electricity distribution grid. It is the largest of its kind in Central America and was constructed with US$11 million in aid from the Japanese government and a US$530,000 counterpart from Nicaragua. According to Nicaragua’s minister of energy and mines, 47% of the country’s energy now comes from renewable sources (hydro, geothermal and wind energy). The national goal is to have 90% coming from these sources by 2018, thus transforming the country’s energy matrix.

FREE TRADE ZONES

Generating jobs by attracting free trade zone businesses is one of the priorities of the Nicaraguan government. Last year 162 maquilas (assembly plants) were functioning, 67% of which work in textiles and apparel. Of those companies, 50 are US capital and 20 are from South Korea, putting those two countries in the lead in number of companies. Álvaro Baltodano, President Ortega’s investments delegate and technical secretary of the National Free Trade Zones Commission, expects more maquilas to come in 2013, estimating that the number of direct jobs will increase from the current 103,000 to 115,000.

Nicaragua’s recently reformed tax law retains the kind of privileges these companies usually enjoy anywhere they operate, including no taxes or import-export duty on the raw materials they bring in and finished goods they send back out to sell abroad, typically to the US market. Nor do they pay for the water and electricity services they use. “We have to be realistic,” explains Baltodano. “The economy is employment. It’s true that [tax exemption] is a privilege, but they generate over 100,000 jobs in the country and it’s that benefit that attracts them here. If they didn’t get it, they’d be in Asia.”

When governments attempt to get them to leave behind something other than salaries and rent for government-built installations, given that they invest in nothing fixed and repatriate all their profits, their classic response is to simply pick up their sewing machines and find a more maquila-friendly country to alight in, earning them the nickname golondrinas (swallows). An investment promotion study conducted at the start of the Bolaños government, when Nicaragua first began to attract maquilas and was about to negotiate the Central America Free Trade agreement with the United States, compared the costs of setting up such a plant in the different Central American countries and in China. The document praised the fact that Nicaragua’s costs, especially labor, were lower than any other country in the region and pointed out that while its wages were a bit higher than those of China, China’s transport costs to the coveted US market more than offset that difference.

POLICE SIDE WITH MINING COMPANY
IN CHONTALES CONFLICT

A contingent of hundreds of riot police sent to the municipality of Santo Domingo, Chontales, on February 9 broke up a protest by small-scale gold panners and environmentalists against the Canadian mining company B2Gold for failing to comply with agreements and for the environmental disaster it is causing in the area through an intensive open-pit extraction project that is removing enormous volumes of land. As a result of the violent operation by the National Police, a number of protesters were seriously injured and 12 of those detained were brought to Managua, where they were held in maximum security jails. Residents of Santo Domingo claimed that the presidential couple has shares in the mining company, which would explain both the degree of violence against the protestors and the anomalous judicial process. The Nicaraguan Human Rights Center (CENIDH) presented the case before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on March 6. The Canadian transnational is exploiting gold in other regions of the country as well as Chontales. Earlier this year it was announced that gold will be Nicaragua’s main export product this year, ahead of coffee, the traditional first-place export.

CUBAN EDUCATION SPECIALISTS
ARE COMING TO NICARAGUA

In her role as head of the executive branch’s Council of Communication and Citizenship, Rosario Murillo announced in late February that Cuban education specialists would be coming to Nicaragua to help improve the quality of the country’s education. On March 2, Lisardo García, director of Cuba’s Central Institute of Pedagogical Sciences, and Elmis Escribano, vice rector of Research and Graduate Studies of the University of Matanzas, began an assessment of the educational quality in the departments of Estelí, Madriz and Nueva Segovia. Next they were to visit Jinotega and Matagalpa and, at the end of the week, the schools of the northern and southern Caribbean region. Nicaraguan Education Vice Minister José Treminio explained that “it’s not about copying or adapting the Cuban model, but being able to develop our own quality model, based on our own human and material realities, but enriched by the potentialities and undisputable development our Cuban brothers have reached, with their advice and accompaniment.” The Cuban specialists consider that the criteria they will contribute will produce very evident results in five years and that the teachers’ qualifications will show some improvement in two years. There has been no mention of any link between this effort by Cuba and the “Grand National Campaign of Affection” being launched via Nicaragua’s schools, which will already involve teachers dedicating every Saturday to “Workshops of Continual Training in Values” as well as a monthly meeting, also presumably not during school hours, to evaluate how the campaign is progressing.

CHILDREN AND YOUTH

According to a study by the Nicaraguan Foundation for Economic and Social Development (FUNIDES) presented at the end of last year, 42.8% of Nicaragua’s 14-15 year olds and 4.6% of its 6-14 year olds work and do not go to school. The study indicates that 58.2% of the national population is economically active, but that only 68% of that percentage is employed. Furthermore, 35.8% of the employed population receives wages that keep it below the poverty line.

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