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| Central American University - UCA |
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Number 383 | Junio 2013 |
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Nicaragua
NICARAGUA BRIEFS
Envío team
FOREIGN MINISTER’S EUROPEAN TOURNicaragua’s Foreign Minister Samuel Santos visited several European Union countries in the third week of May, presumably to mend fences. Meeting in Brussels with Catherine Ashton, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Santos underscored Nicaragua’s progress in economic and social issues and reminded her that Nicaragua is “the safest country in Central America.” He also talked to her about the project to build an interoceanic canal through the country. The EU will invest some 214 million euros in projects in Nicaragua between 2014 and 2020, with disbursements following approval of each project. The EU went back to financing specific projects after suspending direct budgetary aid worth US$31.7 million to Nicaragua in December 2008 due to deficiencies in governance, transparency and respect for human rights linked to the previous month’s allegedly fraudulent municipal elections. During Santos’ visit, Ashton’s spokesperson recalled that the EU sent an electoral observation mission to the November 2011 presidential elections and offered Nicaragua cooperation to improve an electoral system identified as “hardly transparent” and responsible for the “backpedaling of democratic quality.” The Ortega government has made no changes whatever in the electoral system.
TRI-NATIONAL ADMINISTRATION FOR THE GULF OF FONSECA?The governments of Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador met in Managua on May 8 to appraise the creation of a tri-national administration of the Gulf of Fonseca with a single authority to ensure peace, security and sustainable environmental and economic development. All three countries have coasts on the gulf, which is now a strategic zone for the Pacific Alliance, made up of Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico. The gulf is a natural harbor of 3,200 square kilometers and has been the object of conflicts among the three countries for years. A 1992 decision by the International Court of Justice at The Hague tried to put an end to those conflicts by ruling that the three countries should share control of the gulf and assigning Salvador two and Honduras one of the small islands inside the gulf. But it didn’t work, and Honduras continues to demand an exit to the Pacific Ocean, which it doesn’t have today because of the border delimitation El Salvador insists on. According to President Ortega, the “heart” of the current agreement among the three nations is to “turn the Gulf of Fonseca into a tri-national development zone, studying successful models of shared administration in similar situations, including the possible creation of a tri-national authority.” For his part, El Salvador’s President Funes stated that “only by making the gulf a zone of peace and stability can we attract investments there.”
FINLAND’S BILATERAL COOPERATION WITH NICARAGUA HAS ENDEDAfter 30 years of bilateral cooperation with Nicaragua, the government of Finland terminated its bilateral cooperation with the Nicaraguan government on May 15. The Finnish Embassy’s business attaché, Eeva Liisa Myllymäki, announced that the cooperation will now be limited to regional programs by private entities and nongovernmental organizations on issues related to renewable energy, forestry, food security and citizen security, and will be run from the new regional headquarters in Mexico.
THE DISASTER IN BOSAWÁSUNESCO director general Irina Bokova visited Nicaragua on May 6-7 to learn more about the disaster and environmental emergency affecting the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve, which at 20,000 square kilometers is the largest forestry and biodiversity reserve in Central America. UNESCO declared it a Natural Heritage of Humanity in 1997. Bokova came at President Ortega’s request, although her visit was no more than a media formality as UNESCO can do nothing the government isn’t already doing to stop the deforestation destroying the reserve. The main parties responsible are lumber mafias and the mestizo settlers who are invading the territory, which mainly consists of indigenous lands, clearing trees so they can plant basic grains and pasture for cattle. All this is allegedly happening in complicity with military and civilian authorities who are trafficking in lands and lumber licenses in the zone. The roughly 12,000 Mayangna indigenous people who own these ancestral lands were upset to discover that Bokova only flew over the reserve, without landing to directly observe the problem. Nor did she meet with any environmental organization in the country. Over half a million hectares of forest in what is now Bosawás were lost between 1987 and 2010 and it is calculated that at the current deforestation rate the precious Bosawás forests will disappear by 2034 if no effective measures are taken. But such measures would mean affecting big businesses and politicians, as well as mestizo settlers who demonstrate none of the Mayangnas’ ecological consciousness.
After government officials, particularly Attorney General Hernán Estrada, declared that the government would take “forceful actions” to save Bosawás, Army troops stopped dozens of enormous trucks carrying over half a million board feet of precious wood illegally extracted from the reserve. At least 20 bore the logo of ALBA Forestal and indeed belong to one of the companies in the Albanisa consortium, through which the Ortega government privately and discretionally administers Venezuela’s cooperation resources.
It was yet more proof that ALBA Forestal is dedicated to the lucrative lumber business and competing with unfair inside advantage over other businesses in this category, despite government moratoriums on felling trees of precious wood. The government’s involvement in the Bosawás environmental disaster was further demonstrated when Carlos Zarruk, the general director of mines for the Ministry of Energy and Mines, confirmed that the government has granted numerous exploration and exploitation concessions to transnational mining companies in the Bosawás area. According to the Humboldt Center, 50% of those concessions are in protected areas. The contradictions between the government’s irresponsible actions and its claims to defend Bosawás became even clearer when the Army of Nicaragua’s inspector general declared that saving Bosawás is a “national security challenge.”
TUMARÍN PROJECT TO GET UNDERWAY IN OCTOBERMarcelo Conde, a spokesperson for the two Brazilian companies implementing the controversial Tumarín hydroelectric project (see the “Speaking Out” section of last month’s envío issue) announced on May 8 that after months of conflict between the consortium and local farmers, residents and merchants, an agreement had finally been reached to indemnify 315 families who own 160 farms and 300 properties of between 14 and 350 hectares in the area where the dam will be built. Conde announced that construction of the megaproject, which will reportedly generate some 6,000 jobs, will get underway in October, with the dam functioning at maximum capacity by 2017.
EMIGRANT DATAAccording to calculations by the Migrants’ Network, 1.2-1.5 million Nicaraguans have emigrated in search of work, given that unemployment and underemployment are the most strongly felt and unresolved problems affecting Nicaragua. The favored countries for Nicaraguan migrants are the United States, Costa Rica and Spain, with men forming the majority working in the United States and women the majority in Spain. To round out that interesting symmetry, the number of women and men in Costa Rica is similar. The migrants in the United States find a wide variety of jobs, while the women in Costa Rica are typically employed as domestic workers in private homes.
MONEY LAUNDERING DATAA report by Global Financial Integrity shows Central America moving an annual US$14 billion in dirty money from illegal activities. Of that amount, just under $4.36 billion is reportedly laundered in Costa Rica, $3.94 billion in Panama, nearly $2.83 billion in Honduras, over $1.35 billion in Guatemala, $1.27 billion in El Salvador and $774 million in Nicaragua.
HIV DATAArelys Cano, president of the Association of People Living with HIV/AIDS, reported that three Nicaraguans are infected with this disease daily, with more than a thousand diagnosed last year. Between 1987, the year the epidemic was first detected in Nicaragua, and the end of 2012, 7,875 cases were reported, although this figure is assumed to be well below the real number.
SEXUAL ABUSE DATAThe Movement against Sexual Abuse reported that 934 charges of the rape of young and adolescent girls were filed with Nicaragua’s Police Stations for Women and Children between January and April, according to that institution’s own data. That amounts to an average of eight denunciations a day. But even that alarming figure falls short of this crime’s true pandemic dimensions in Nicaragua, given the important number of cases never reported. According to the federation of NGOs working with children, 61% of sexual crimes are committed at home, and even more distressing, many raped girls end up pregnant. In the past 10 years, 1,577 girls between the ages of 10 and 14 gave birth in Nicaragua.
INFANT MALNUTRITION DATAAccording to First Lady Rosario Murillo in her role as coordinator of the Communication and Citizenship Council, Nicaragua has almost halved the rate of chronic malnutrition in children between 0 and 12 years of age since 2009, lowering it from 20% to only 11.6% of this age group “thanks to God and the Virgin,” to use her words. Murillo took this information from what she described as an unpublished study in which Sandinista Youth brigades spent months weighing and measuring the height of boys and girls within those ages all over the country.
COFFEE RUST DATA After touring Central America between April 18 and May 4, Robério Oliveira Silva, director of the International Coffee Organization, confirmed that over half of the 1 million plus hectares planted with coffee in the region are affected by coffee rust. The figure in Nicaragua was 37% of the nearly 126,000 hectares. The report indicates that losses caused by this fungus in Central America are approaching US$500 million, with the 2012-2013 harvest reduced by more than 2.7 million 60-kilo sacks and some 300,000 people now without work. In Nicaragua, the rust reduced the harvest by more than 306,000 sacks, a loss of US$60 million that left 32,000 of the 158,000 employees in the coffee sector without jobs. The most affected country is Honduras: US$230 million in losses and 100,000 jobs lost. The report reveals the fear that the rust could cause an even worse disaster in the next harvest. On May 28, the Sandinista Renovation Movement, whose figures are even more worrying, presented a proposal to support the affected growers (free supply of fungicides, low-interest credits, seeds and other inputs, and a job program for those who will end up unemployed due to the coffee disease). The party criticized the government’s indolence in the face of such a serious problem and reported that in some zones people linked to the presidential couple are trying to buy up the lands ruined by the pest.
NEW AMBASSADOR TO URUGUAYMaurizio Gelli, Nicaragua’s new ambassador to Uruguay, presented his credentials to that government on March 5 despite the fact that he is not Nicaraguan. This is not the first time President Ortega has named a foreigner as an ambassador, even though it is prohibited by Nicaragua’s Constitution. In 2007 he appointed Francesco Cardella Palumbo as his itinerant ambassador to Saudi Arabia, where Nicaragua has no embassy, then in 2009 named him special envoy to seek investments from Thai business tycoon and former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, brought down by a popular rebellion in 2006 and now a fugitive. Gelli’s father is Licio Gelli, a “venerable” member of Italy’s P2 Masonic Lodge, linked to the scandal and collapse of the Vatican’s Banco Ambrosiano in 1982. Licio Gelli’s participation in financial scandals during the military dictatorship in the same country his son is now serving as ambassador is documented. In 2007, the government of San Marino refused Maurizio Gelli’s credentials as Nicaragua’s ambassador in that tiny European country. In that case, it was outgoing President Bolaños who agreed to the appointment but the rejection came once Ortega was in office. On that occasion, Foreign Minister Samuel Santos defended Gelli by saying that “as far as I know, his father has the problem, not him.”
MRS FIGHTS TO REGAIN LEGAL STATUSOn May 7, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IAHCR) initiated a process with the State of Nicaragua to respond to the Sandinista Renovation Movement’s charge that the State’s Supreme Electoral Council had arbitrarily cancelled its legal status as a political party in 2008. Four years after the MRS filed its suit through the Nicaraguan Human Rights Center (CENIDH), the IAHCR has now requested the government of Nicaragua to present its observations in less than two months. The government is specifically being asked to explain the legal basis on which it took away the party’s legal status, thus preventing it from participating in the four electoral processes that have since taken place. The MRS’ suit argues that cancellation of its status violates its right to political organization, to elect and be elected and to participate in public administration, among other things. In reporting on the step taken by the IACHR, the MRS said that “we are sure we will recover the party’s legal status. Meanwhile, in full use of our political status, we will continue acting on behalf of the Nicaraguan people’s economic and social rights and demands, full respect for their human rights, the eradication of corruption and authoritarianism and the construction of a genuine democracy.”
ENERGY LAWSIn May the FSLN’s parliamentary majority approved a package of reforms to four laws sent by President Ortega with the request that it be fast-tracked. The reforms establish jail time and fines against electricity service users who “steal” energy—typically by directly hooking up to the electricity lines on the street. This will benefit two Spanish companies—TSK and Melfosur—that early this year paid US$57.8 million for 84% of the shares of Gas Natural-Fenosa, another Spanish company, which decided to sell off its electricity distribution business in the country. Nicaragua kept its 16% of the shares when the company changed hands. Given the murky and confusing process, it is widely believed that the two companies, neither of which reportedly has any experience in electricity distribution, are acting as fronts for Albanisa.
NICARAGUA OPPOSES THE LEGALIZATION OF DRUGSDuring the Organization of American States General Assembly held in Guatemala on June 4-6, Nicaragua’s representative Denis Moncada firmly stated that “there is no justification to decriminalize and legalize drugs. The citizens of the Americas must not be subjected to such ignominy.” Obviously speaking in the name of his government, he opposed replacing or eliminating the current repressive military strategies because that “would imply creating dangerous vacuums and putting the countries’ stability and our citizens’ security and wellbeing in a precarious situation.”
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a monthly magazine of analysis on Central America