NICARAGUA BRIEFS

Envío team

OPPOSITION TO LAW 779

Barely 10 months after the Comprehensive Law against Violence toward Women, an important victory of Nicaragua’s women’s organizations, went into effect, it has come under strong criticism. Evangelical sectors, some Catholic hierarchs and even some jurists have presented three lawsuits against it on grounds of unconstitutionality, arguing that it goes against the equality between men and women guaranteed in the Constitution. In a document released on April 18, the Assemblies of God, the most numerous evangelical denomination in the country, asks for a “partial and urgent reform,” claiming that the law destroys marriage and the family. Among other things, they demand restitution of the right to mediation, excluded from the law, in order to conserve family unity. Nicaraguan women’s organizations demonstrated in defense of the law in Managua, Chinandega, Matagalpa and other cities.

The bishop of Estelí, Abelardo Mata, is the Catholic hierarch who has come out most vociverously against the law. Considering it not only “inquisitive, draconian and inhuman,” he has gone so far as to say, claiming he had heard Supreme Court justices utter the same words, that “the new number for the devil is no longer 666 but 779” the new law’s number, because it destroys families. In the midst of the fray, Justice Alba Luz Ramos, president of the Supreme Court and active defender of the law, announced that consensus exists in the Court to reinsert mediation in less serious cases of violence. The women’s organizations reject this, showing that 30% of the 85 femicides in 2012 were cases that first underwent mediation. An M&R poll conducted in early April showed 76.1% of the male population in agreement with the law and only 7.5% opposed, while 87% of the female population backs it.

INVITATION TO POPE FRANCIS

In a public audience with Pope Francis on April 24, Nicaragua’s Foreign Minister Samuel Santos delivered a letter from President Ortega. Read that same day in the government media by Rosario Murillo, the letter said: “Your Holiness, I have the honor of greeting you in the name of the Nicaraguan People and of this Government that defends and promotes Life, now that you have completed several weeks of your Pontificate during which your voice has been heard uninterruptedly in defense of the most impoverished and vulnerable. In the name of this People, which has gone down so many Routes, seeking to guarantee their Right to Justice, Self-determination, and Life in Human Values, we would like to invite you to visit these Christian, Socialist and Solidary Lands, where we are struggling from Faith, from our most Sacred Beliefs, to promote Harmony and Peace. We hope your Agenda, when you come to Our American Lands, will allow you to touch the sensitive and committed Heart of the Nicaraguan People, who identify fully with the Values delineated by your Pontificate. We again send the respect and full support of this People that from an already Better Present, is loving, building and consolidating a Future of Rights in Liberty, Dignity and Fraternity.” In the middle of the street on which Pope Francis received Santos, the latter also presented him with the gift of an enormous oil painting of the face of Nicaragua’s world-famous 19th-century poet Rubén Darío, saying: “From the poet of America to the pope of America.”

RUSSIA IN NICARAGUA

An official delegation of the Russian Federation came to Nicaragua on April 21. It was headed by the chief of staff and defense vice minister of the that country’s Armed Forces, General Valery Vasilevich Gerasimov, who told the government’s on-line news daily, 19 Digital, that they had come to discuss “issues of military cooperation” between the two countries. A month earlier the head of Russia’s Anti-Drugs Service, Victor Ivanov, had visited Nicaragua to inaugurate the construction in Managua of a training center for Central American agents working in the fight against drugs.

FINANCIAL ANALYSIS UNIT

According to the Army of Nicaragua’s Major General Denis Membreño, named by President Daniel Ortega to direct the new and very questioned Financial Analysis Unit, at least 500 Reports of Suspect Operations have been analyzed by that institution in the first months since its creation. To ensure the principle of confidentiality,Membreño gave no further details about those 500 cases.

OBESITY IN NICARAGUA

According to a World Bank report released in April, 30% of the Nicaraguan population is overweight and 12% is categorized as obese. The incidence is greatest among women from 15 to 49 years old. In 2011 Nicaragua’s health minister reported that 29.2% of women in that same age bracket was overweight and 18.4% presented obesity. The Central American Diabetes Initiative has calculated that between 34% and 67% of Central America’s populations engages in no physical activities, a major factor, together with food habits, leading to overweight, obesity and diabetes.

A MAJORITY OF NICAS
WANTS TO LEAVE

While President Ortega got extremely favorable approval ratings both personally and for his administration in April polls conducted by both Borge & Associates (see “The Month” in this issue), and M&R Consultants, the latter also found that 54.4% of Nicaraguans, in similar proportions across social strata, would leave Nicaragua if they could. A sizable number of Nicaraguans are already in their four countries of choice, with the United States leading the preferences with 39.3%, followed by Costa Rica with 20.6%, Spain with 17.1% and Panama with 11.7%.

CONFLICT IN THE BOSAWÁS RESERVE

The invasion of mestizo settlers who are cutting down the forests to use the land for cattle and the sowing of basic grains, together with illegal lumber and property trafficking, are rapidly destroying the 20,000 square kilometers of the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve, “Central America’s lung.” Calculations are that more than half a million hectares of these precious forests have disappeared in the past 17 years. Just since 2010 the settlers destroyed 150,000 hectares. To the environmental deterioration is added the social conflict between the Mayangna indigenous people who are the ancestral owners of the nine Bosawás territories and the mestizo settlers. On April 25 a Mayangna leader was shot to death in a confrontation with settlers. The 40,000 Mayangna people living in Bosawás demand fulfillment of the “cleaning” stage in the indigenous territories, all of which have now been demarcated and titled. This next stage, established in Law 445, involves the expulsion of the mestizo settlers from the territory. An Ecological Battalions project of the Army of Nicaragua in the zone, made up of 700 military personnel, was inaugurated on April 4. The Nicaraguan Human Rights Center (CENIDH) warned that this measure could bring even more violence because it is coercive. Aricio Genaro, president of the Mayangna Nation, charged that officials of state institutions are implicated in the trafficking of lands and lumber.

NICARAGUA – COSTA RICA
CONFLICT IN THE ICJ

On April 24, the International Court of Justice at the Hague (ICJ) reported that for reasons of “procedural economy” it will treat as a single case Costa Rica’s suit against Nicaragua for having “invaded” Harbour Head, causing environmental problems, and Nicaragua’s suit against Costa Rica for the delimitation of Harbour Head and construction of a highway right along its edge of Nicaragua’s San Juan River, causing an irreparable environmental disaster.

MORE NICARAGUA –
COSTA RICA CONFLICT

During the Central American Presidents’ dinner with US President Obama on May 4 in San José, Costa Rica’s National Theater, each had 10 minutes to present items of interest to them. René Castro, the host country’s minister of environment and energy used part of his country’s time to fire a rather undiplomatic shot across the bow of both Nicaragua and the United States. Referring to President Ortega’s announced plans to build an interoceanic canal with diverse capital, including from China and the United States, Castro warned that “we all know that project isn’t going anywhere without Costa Rica’s endorsement.”

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