Nicaragua
The bishops’ document: A road map?
The most visible result of the bishops’ dialogue
with President Ortega is an extensive document
that could become a road map for both
the government and the population.
But do the conditions exist for that to happen?
Envío team
When Archbishop of Managua Leopoldo Brenes returned to Nicaragua on March 4 after having been invested cardinal in Vatican City, we learned that, after years of discord between Nicaragua’s bishops and President Daniel Ortega and his repeated failure to respond to their requests for a dialogue, he had finally agreed to meet with the members of the Episcopal Conference.
Various reasons led Ortega to change his mind, not least among them Cardinal Brenes’ well-known personal relationship with Pope Francis, who is winning increasing influence in the world. The President couldn’t put off some kind of rapprochement with the bishops much longer.
Expectation and skepticismWith every passing day, the importance of the encounter grew increasingly out of whack among certain leaders of the organized opposition. Some magnified its political importance while others predicted it would be a mere protocol meeting. The most skeptical warned that it would jeopardize the bishops’ credibility because Ortega was only interested in a “photo op.”
For its part, the government remained silent on the issue. In her extensive messages each noon, First Lady Rosario Murillo, the government’s communication and citizenship coordinator, continued detailing all the government’s activities, from the delivery of bags of food to poor families, to meetings with mayors or ministries and trips abroad by government officials. But despite its indisputable importance, she never once mentioned this upcoming activity.
The country’s traditional religiosity made itself felt. Both political and grassroots leaders expressed positive expectations based on the power the Holy Spirit deploys in difficult situations such as they predicted for this meeting. The bishops themselves “sacralized” it to an excess, calling on the Catholic faithful for “personal and community prayers” as well as Masses, and asking for the Holy Sacrament to be present in the churches all day on May 21, the date of the meeting they would attend as “prophets of God.” Meanwhile, most people simply got on with their lives, absorbed in the daily struggle to survive.
Expectations grew as the date of the appointment approached in a society with zero secular consciousness.
What would be
the bishops’ agenda? More concrete details emerged as the days passed. The meeting would be held in the afternoon in the nunciature, seat of the Vatican’s diplomatic mission in Nicaragua, which is currently headed by Nigerian Bishop Fortunatus Nwachukwu. It was originally said he would be a “mediator,” although he later clarified that he would act as “host and facilitator.” Since his arrival in the country in 2012, named by Pope Benedict XVI, the nuncio has been a factor of rapprochement between the government and the bishops.
It was also learned that Ortega had invited Cardinal Miguel Obando to be part of the government delegation. Obando has been a retired archbishop since 2005 due to age and has been working very close to the Ortega government since 2007.
The issue of greatest interest was what exactly would be discussed during meeting: there was no end of conjectures, hopes and urgings about what topics the bishops would raise with the President. Pastoral ones? Anything could fit in such a broad and diffuse concept. Institutional ones? Many felt that would just be a waste of time. “Why bother,” they argued, since Ortega controls everything, the Constitution is already reformed to his liking and he just hand-picked all the pending top government posts.
Amid all the calculations, FSLN-appointed Supreme Court Justice Rafael Sólis said that while social issues would be discussed, “I don’t think they’re going to suggest any concrete political aspects; that’s not the role of the Catholic Church.” Almost all other government officials either avoided talking about the issue with journalists or limited themselves to “safe” declarations: our President is always willing to dialogue; we’re sure it will be successful; let’s wait until the day arrives…
Information only afterwardSome political leaders sent the bishops suggested issues they might take up with the government and media speculation grew about the role the bishops would end up playing: delegates of the political parties; representatives of the population; spokes¬people for civil society; legitimizers of the government; defenders of traditional morality... or just useful fools?
Some 15 days before the meeting, Archbishop Brenes and the Episcopal Conference president, René Sándigo, announced that the dialogue’s priority issue would be the family. That caused both concern and disappointment in some sectors, given traditional Catholic morality’s “pre-Franciscan” views on that particular issue, although Pope Francis is beginning to show more flexibility on it with common sense and compassion.
On May 12 the bishops held an all-day meeting to hammer out the agenda they would take to the dialogue, although they refused to release it. They only promised to report “fully” on everything addressed at the end of the meeting.
The date of the appointment approached in this confusing environment in a society with a very weakened political class.
“Those elected
are elected!” The announcement of the bishops’ meeting with Ortega was made while dozens of top officials with long-expired terms were still illegally in their posts, neither reaffirmed nor replaced. When it was later reported that the selection was imminent, some sectors spent days arguing that the core point of the bishops’ agenda should be a proposal of proven people for those posts. But Ortega, not surprisingly, dispatched the issue before the meeting date. The governing party bench in the National Assembly wrapped up its ratification of his choices on April 10, only hours before the first of a series of earthquakes and aftershocks shook Managua and neighboring municipalities, the opening volley of an unusually prolonged seismic crisis that kept people on edge for two weeks.
On May 18, at the celebration of the 119th anniversary of General Augusto César Sandino’s birth in Niquinohomo, President Ortega laid to rest any lingering hope that his decisions were negotiable, labeling them “untouchable” and advising with unusual energy: “Those named to the posts are named! Those elected are elected!”
We will govern for “decades” Ortega spoke with irony about Roberto Rivas, the most questioned of those reelected: “It’s funny how they’re so strongly questioning the Supreme Electoral Council president. When he gave them the victory he was a saint, but when we won, now he’s no good!” That night Ortega warned the opposition parties that if they want to change Rivas or any other official they’ll have to “win the elections and get a majority in the Assembly.” But he warned them not to hold their breath because the FSLN will continue governing “for decades.”
It’s impossible not to see those words as a message to the bishops should they be thinking of touching the untouchable topic… Yet after the meeting, during which the bishops indeed did touch precisely on the posts in the electoral branch, Ortega’s vehement words were eliminated from his speech in all official government pages. Were they inconvenient improvisations or is Ortega preparing to make some change in the electoral branch as a “generous” sign of having heard the bishops’ message?
The date of the appointment arrived in this environment of distrust and suspicion.
The photo op didn’t happenWe only began to learn the following day how the meeting of Wednesday May 21 had gone. The government media didn’t deal with it that night and the gaggle of journalists who showed up at the nunciature weren’t allowed past the gardens, so there wasn’t even an opportunity for the legitimizing photo that so many feared and Ortega expected to be able to reap from the encounter.
All 10 bishops of the Episcopal Conference (CEN) attended the meeting, which began just after 4 pm. President Ortega was accompanied, as always, by his wife and in this case also by their youngest daughter, Camila. And as announced, Cardinal Obando was also part of the government delegation.
We eventually learned that the 4 hours and 20 minutes of the meeting were spent as follows: after the salutations, CEN President Sándigo, bishop of Chontales and Río San Juan, read the bishop’s 14-page text. That took nearly an hour.
President Ortega then spoke for a little over an hour. As Abelardo Mata, the bishop of Estelí, described it, Ortega spent his time recalling his childhood and his education with the Salesians and explaining his vision of Nicaragua and the world, recognizing today’s crisis of values and the need for Christian values…
That was followed by an exchange in which various bishops insisted on some points of their document, variously eliciting comments and silences from Ortega. Nobody mentioned whether Murillo or Obando said anything.
At the end, Ortega and his family left the nunciature avoiding the journalists. Bishop Sándigo, in contrast, offered brief formal declarations. The bishops did what they promised: they gave the media a copy of the document they had read and presented to the President: it contains 6 themes, 46 points and 2 proposals.
In writing and in unityThe bishops’ complete document was published in La Prensa the next day and the Episcopal Conference and other sources circulated it widely via Internet. It was also read in some parishes the following Sunday. To our knowledge the English version in these pages is the first time it has been fully translated.
The text’s prime value is that it provides a written record of what was said, because spoken words are often a case of “gone with the wind.” Also valuable is the unity of criteria achieved by the bishops, expressed both in the careful language they used and the topics they selected… and omitted. For example, they did not refer to the controversial issue of the rearmed people in the northern part of the country, even though some bishops have repeatedly urged that the government dialogue with them rather than dismissing them as mere delinquents. Knowing the differences that exist among the bishops, it was an important achievement that they spoke in consensus, or, as they themselves put it, “as a single voice.”
Many people’s voicesThe six major themes covered in the text are the family, the major social problems, human rights, the relationship between the Church’s work and certain governmental policies, some problematic aspects of the Caribbean Coast and, finally, the country’s institutionality. They appear in that order, although none seems to be a priority.
Within those six general categories the bishops included a broad array of problems, posing questions, making suggestions and offering ideas. They were less conceptual than usual, less theoretical, describing very concrete, specific problems. Various authors can be sensed in the text and their words express the voices of many people, because many of these things are what people are commenting on today in markets, streets, buses and homes.
The problems of
the Caribbean CoastEverything said about the dramatic situation affecting the indigenous populations in the Caribbean Coast, the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Bluefields vicariate, is notable because it is so specific. The bishops pointed out the need for the government to undertake, in a fair way, the “legal sanitation” established in Law 445 as a solution to the territorial tensions between indigenous peoples and mestizos (for more information see the article in envío’s May 2012 issue).
The most significant paragraphs are those denouncing the environmental deterioration in the Caribbean and other parts of the country where “individuals and organizations are oper¬ating… under the corrupt protection of municipal and national authorities, continuing their predatory work without any kind of restriction, ignoring the many existing laws protecting the environment.” They clearly denounce “the existence of a lumber mafia that has been preying on the few green reserves we still have.”
No to mining
Also with respect to the environmental destruction, they mention the seriousness of open-pit mining, an issue envío has also given priority to the past year in solidarity with the struggles being waged by social movements all over the continent against this pillaging of resources with its irreversible environmental disasters.
Days before the meeting, Rolando Álvarez, bishop of Matagalpa, had been categorical about the voracious mining company B2Gold, given that Rancho Grande’s Cerro Pavón Reserve is in his diocese: “We have already said it and continue to repeat it: no to mining.” The inclusion of mining in the bishops’ text touches the interests of big national capital, allied to both trans-national capital and the government.
It is also important that the bishops have now spoken out about the interoceanic canal megaproject for the first time. “It is vital and urgent,” they insist, “that the project be discussed in greater depth, listening to the opinion of national and foreign scientists who are experts in this field.” Giving a voice to experts from the Nicaraguan Academy of Sciences has been one of envío’s objectives since the onerous canal concession was announced in June 2013.
What they say
about the family... Unlike the environmentalists, who applauded the bishops for denouncing the ravages and declaring their concern about the effects of the interoceanic canal, Nicaragua’s numerous active women’s organizations haven’t stopped expressing, albeit more in private than in public, their discomfort with the vision of the family described by some paragraphs of the bishops’ presentation. They condemn what they call the “ideology of gender” and demonstrate no secular sensitivity, even though secularity is an indispensable condition of a democratic institutionality.
But it is worth noting that this is the first time the bishops as a whole, and in a document of this weight, have referred to “chauvinist mindset” and to violence against women as a “shameful social phenomenon.”
...health... What the bishops say about the public health system is pertinent, referring to a “lack of quality medical care in hospitals and health centers and an absence of sufficient medicines for many illnesses.”
They ask “What would happen if the aid provided with so much difficulty by organizations such as the Church and the NGOs were to stop attending to these vulnerable sectors of the population?” concluding that “more effective and coordinated public health policies are urgently needed to help solve so serious a problem.” (See our December 2009, December 2011 and March 2014 editions.
...education... In a similar vein, the bishops refer to concrete problems in the public education system, including what they see as the ideological indoctrination of students and their automatic promotion even when they haven’t assimilated the knowledge… The bishops’ starting point is that “without excellence in education there is no democracy” and that “Nicaragua’s future largely depends on the educational quality and the rational and ethical horizons it creates in young people,” an idea shared by a large part of society.
The commitment to quality education has been a message reiterated for many years by both the government and diverse Nicaraguan civil society organizations. But what is “quality”? (Experts in pedagogy have explained in detail the current system’s obstacles to achieving that “quality” in our May 2008, June 2010, September 2011, March 2012 and June 2013 issues.)
...and jails and migrationThe bishops are also very concrete about what’s happening in the penitentiary system, listing serious human and institutional problems affecting those incarcerated. They also refer to labor rights and to some of the dramas experienced by migrants, an expanding sector in Nicaragua the government barely talks about because doing so would be implicitly admitting the crisis of a country with ever fewer opportunities for a decent job.
The bishops stated that “we are convinced that the Government could do much more in terms of protecting migrants, creating partnerships with the Church and other institutions, attending to migrants on the borders, supporting the shelters.” (The emigration of Nicaraguans and other Central Americans has been one of envío’s priorities for years).
More poverty and
more nouveaux richesIt is to the bishops’ credit that they didn’t resort to the oft-repeated discourse of government officials and allies, praising the economy, the macroeconomic stability and economic growth we’re enjoying and our country’s attractiveness to foreign investment. Instead, faithful to the thinking of Pope Francis, they refer, albeit only briefly, to the gulf of inequality in Nicaragua: “In spite of the Government’s efforts to surmount the problem of poverty… the cost of living and poverty are continually growing while at the same time, as has always happened in the history of this country, a few individuals and power groups continue to excessively enrich themselves.” In this section the bishops leave unstated a pressing problem: the peasant popula¬tion’s impoverishment due to the growing concentration of land and “return of the large hacienda” (envío September 2013).
Nor do they refer to one of the tools most needed to address the inequality they denounce: a just tax system—which has never existed in Nicaragua—that would make those “few individuals and groups of power” pay the taxes they should pay and not continue being favored by exonerations. It is an age-old problem that no government, including this one, has had the will or perhaps the nerve to address (envío December 1999, April 2010, October 2012 and December 2012).
“Syncretic policies” The bishops dedicate several paragraphs to their “concern” about the government’s manipulation of religious terms and symbols of popular Catholic piety for political and party purposes, alluding to the unmistakable seal stamped on all the current govern¬ment’s propaganda and projections. The bishops call it “syncretic state policies,” warning that they “impede a respectful relationship between Church and State.”
Regretting that “arenas of evangelization are gradually being closed to us” and “invoking the religious freedom established in our Constitution and appealing to the goodwill of the Government,” the bishops “urgently ask that it facilitate our access to evangelize in such areas as schools, prisons, hospitals and any other place that requires the Church’s presence and action.”
While the bishops couldn’t cover everything in their already extensive document, that particular section needed some ecumenical nuance, some recognition of the work of the other evangelical Christian churches to which 40% of the Nicaraguan population now belongs.
Why speak of political institutionality? When the bishops speak about institutionality in the last section of the document, they lift entire paragraphs from some of their previous messages and pastoral letters referring to problems directly related to political power. The bishops again note the “alarming concentration of power,” transgressions of the Constitution, use of the law to “make something illegal pass for legal,” the subjugating of other branches of State to the executive branch…
In describing the importance of the issue of institutionality, it was wise to do so looking back at Nicaragua’s history and political culture: “In a country like Nicaragua, respect for and the strength of the institutional framework are not only indispensable but become a political imperative, because we have a relatively recent memory of anti-dictatorial struggle motivated by the closure of democratic spaces; and at the same time we unfortunately have a political culture marked by ambitions for power, the myth of messianic leaders and electoral fraud. We must not forget history.”
They also highlight the issue of institutionality with a view toward the future: “We do not believe the current institutional and political structure of the country will bring any benefit to the current rulers, members of the ruling party, or any Nicaraguan in either the medium or long term.”
“No one lives forever”At the end of the text, the bishops offer the President two proposals after reminding him that “the years pass and no one lives forever” but he still has the chance to “leave the nation a historical legacy worthy of being remembered by future generations.”
The first proposal is to hold “a ‘Great National Dialogue’ in which all sectors of the country will participate” and the second is to “begin a profound political reform of the country’s whole electoral system.” With respect to the latter, they ask for Ortega’s “word of honor” to guarantee a transparent electoral process in 2016 with national and international observers in which all citizens will have received their ID-voter cards.
It wasn’t what was expectedIt was logical that Ortega would avoid the press when leaving the meeting given his limited eloquence, particularly when he doesn’t know what to say on issues he’s being questioned about and has to improvise. Accustomed to having the home advantage on all courts he deigns to play on, the bishops’ goal that afternoon must have caused him certain angst. It surely wasn’t what he had in mind.
“No one comes out of a meeting with Ortega unscathed, but the bishops managed it,” was how one journalist summarized the event. Beyond any future consequences it might have, the meeting was an image failure for Ortega by the mere fact that the bishops got out of it intact, left a written record that describes many of the government’s shadowy areas and avoided a photo.
The government’s own court offered proof of that: no official or pro-government medium published the text or read any of it on radio or television, not even paragraphs in which the bishops recognized the government’s positive achievements. That night the government media simply reported the encounter as another of the government’s daily meetings, making no reference to its contents.
“We listened to them
with great Humility”The day after the meeting it fell to Rosario Murillo to offer in her daily address the first official interpretation of what had happened although still without citing any of the bishops’ “concerns and positions on given issues of national life.”
It had been “an honor and a privilege” for both her and her husband to be in the meeting, she said, in a speech that included the long and customary religious preamble, and whose written version was, as always, sprinkled with inappropriate capital letters: “We listened with great Humility and great Respect to the Bishops’ presentation…
“Our President made an extensive Presentation on the prevailing values in this World; in this World where we are not only contaminating the air, not only contaminating the Environment, Nature, but also Families, Communities...”
“How we fill ourselves with anti-values in these Countries of ours! How much losing Faith is promoted! And how we have concerned ourselves in this Nicaragua, of Christianity, Socialism and Solidarity, with promoting Christian Values, Christian Practices, the Culture of Family, Love and Union from the Family….”
“We want to inform
them in more depth”The core of her message was to announce that ministers would meet with the bishops to make “presentations to inform in detail” and “in more depth” about the government’s health and education programs, the “Grand Canal” project, the situation in the penitentiary system… Announcing that they would provide the bishops with this information implicitly suggested they were uninformed. It was a form of disparagement.
A few days later Bishop Álvarez responded publicly to the offer of these meetings, which had also been made during the encounter itself. He said that while they had thanked him, “we made him see that neither we nor they have enough time to dedicate ourselves to a series of meetings. We again suggest that work commissions and our commissions would be the most appropriate, but we didn’t learn whether or not this seemed like a good idea to him.”
“They are joining the
unfair criticisms”Virtually all government officials avoided commenting much if at all on the meeting, particularly steering clear of the contents of the bishops’ text.
The first to react was electoral branch President Roberto Rivas, which was logical as he felt alluded to by the bishops proposal to change the electoral magistrates for “honorable” ones.
“It seems,” complained Rivas, “that the bishops have let themselves be led by the agenda of some media or some political tendencies that are affecting them, joining in with the unjust criticisms of institutionality and the electoral branch.”
“Deriding the government’s efforts” or “useful feedback”?On the pro-government web page, el 19 op-ed journalist Edwin Sánchez wrote two pieces telling the bishops something the government would surely like to say to them but can’t. Sánchez derisively referred to the representatives of the “Vatican monarchy” who claim there’s a “democratic deterioration” in Nicaragua. He belittled three of the ten bishops by name, calling them spokespeople of the “old school that preaches disagreement and derides the government’s efforts for the common good” and speculated that the delivery of that text seemed “the opening salvo by the conservative Right.”
The declarations of Jacinto Suárez, a governing party representative to the National Assembly who is very close to President Ortega and certainly not linked to the conservative Right, were particularly notable in this context. “The Catholic Church has an enormous amount of information,” he said; “it has a network of parishes all over the country and it would be very useful for the government to listen to it, because it is receiving feedback from a body that has very strong links with the population.”
With those declarations Suárez broke ranks with the official interpretation. The tensions and contradictions within the governing party are unhideable and there are surely more who share positions similar to his. The silent disputes currently running through the FSLN surely intensified following the meeting with the bishops because, despite everything, they are one of the few power groups with social influence that still have credibility and moral authority among significant segments of the population.
The country’s economic situation isn’t thriving: the rust fungus affecting coffee crops will only worsen the agricultural cycle in general, which is also being severely punished by climate change and by the lack of rain this year. Venezuelan cooperation is being reduced, although many people still expect to continue receiving the goodies paid for by it…
To better navigate the tides in the coming years, which are not easily predictable, the government will have to do something, perhaps identifying agreements with the bishops, taking advantage of them and showing some openness. There must be others in the circle of power who are now also saying that listening to the Church would be very useful. They must agree with Suárez that seeking agreement with the bishopos to make changes would be more effective than organizing “presentations” to them to try to convince them how well the country is doing.
For example, the government could tackle the “legal sanitation” the document proposes to resolve the territorial problems of the Caribbean coast, seeking support from the “network” the Catholic Church has in the area to do so. There are also other, less complex changes, such as providing a response to the bishops’ charge that women are being sterilized without their consent in public health centers.
As in Venezuela?After the dialogue that wasn’t really a dialogue, many in government still don’t see the need and many in political society still don’t see the conditions to expect significant changes from the it or to seek agreements for joint work with the bishops in the near future. Ortega’s strict control over the institutional fabric, all aspects of which are now legally consolidated (see Nicaragua Briefs in this issue for details of the latest example of this, the new Police Law), can’t hide the lack of governmental legitimacy.
Nonetheless, as the government well knows, the impact of that illegitimacy is reduced by the weakness and lack of solutions among both the right and left opposition parties and the generalized passivity of the majority of the population. People don’t yet feel that organizing, mobilizing or taking risks will provide a way out of their many daily problems.
Despite all the control it has acquired, the government will have to be a little more flexible if it wants to conserve power. Although the proposal to call a grand national dialogue looks impossible, accepting it would give Ortega a new card to play. And in a country as extremely polarized as ours is today, in which distance, mistrust and rivalries have grown so deep, it would also benefit society, even if nothing more comes out of that dialogue than one small agreement after so many disagreements.
We still have time. It would be regrettable if we were to have to sit down to a national dialogue in Nicaragua in a situation as critical as the one that has forced dialogue in Venezuela. And if we don’t yet see signs of a similar crisis in Nicaragua today, it could come about if the political scenario continues to get tenser.
The only one in ALBA?The government will also have to do something about the deteriorated electoral system. On this score the bishops asked for various things: “new and honorable members leading the CSE…; an identity card system independent of the CSE…; and an electoral process unreservedly open to observers from national and foreign institutions.”
The 2016 elections will not just be a “presidential electoral process.” In the future, all elections—those for legislative and municipal bodies, regional autonomous governments and the Central American Parliament—will be held on the same day and for the same term rather than staggered as they are now.
Will the government do nothing to restore the national and international credibility of Nicaragua’s electoral system? Will it accept the stain of being the only country in the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) in which frauds occur one after another?
A dead letter? Although history is full of correct documents crammed with good intentions and brilliant arguments, no document has changed history. But while many of them have remained a dead letter, a few have become a referent and an inspiration for people’s mobilization in certain historic moments.
It is people, their efforts, struggles and determination that change history. On this occasion as well, it is implacable time that will separate a dead letter from a living one, the lasting from the ephemeral, the essential from the merely passing.
A road map? Although this document says nothing new, nothing we didn’t already know, nothing the bishops themselves haven’t said one way or the other, the coherence between its content and the moment it appeared give it the characteristics of a road map, both for the government—if it has the political will—and for the opposition parties—if they have the ability. It would also serve for the population, if it finds good drivers.
This text could provide the basis for debate. It could guide the identifying of an agenda of facts in order to push for changes in different spheres of national life. It could be used to organize some goals for the social movements… In short it could serve for much of what our country needs today. With that intention the bishops titled it: “In search of new horizons for a better Nicaragua.”
For decades? Although the problems the bishops have put their finger on are undebatable, there is still sufficient governability for the government to think the current model has a long-term life insurance policy for the coming “decades,” as Daniel Ortega enthusiastically and challengingly declared. There are others who know that time is running against that conviction.
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