NICARAGUA BRIEFS

Envío team

DISASTERS CAUSED BY THE RAINS

After a severe drought in a good part of the country, October brought excessive rains, causing flooding and disasters in various places. According to official data as of October 30, 74 of the country’s 153 municipalities in 14 of its 15 departments and 2 Caribbean autonomous regions were “significantly” affected. The rains resulted in 32 deaths, 6,870 houses with flood damage or partially or totally destroyed and 12,728 families (63,640 people) evacuated. The most serious damage occurred in Managua the night of October 16, when a perimeter retaining wall separating the middle-class neighborhood of Lomas del Valle from a settlement of poor families called 18 de Mayo collapsed after hours of torrential rains, with nine people killed in the resulting mudslide. Neither the development company that built Lomas del Valle nor Managua’s mayoral offices provided a report on the causes of the disaster. A week later Techo Nicaragua and Managua’s Central American University released a study documenting 157 squatter settlements in Managua in which groups of people have built precarious houses on any land available, whether it offers secure conditions or not. These settlements lack anywhere from one to all of the city’s water, electricity and sewage services. Some 92% of them are located in high-risk areas vulnerable to flooding, landslides or other disasters.

TRIAL OF THOSE ACCUSED
OF THE JULY 19 BUS MASSACRE

On October 9, after a speedy six-day trial that was highly unusual for the type of witnesses and the evidence ruled inadmissible, the 12 people indicted for the July 19 bus massacre that caused 5 deaths and some 40 wounded were all found guilty. The 9 accused of being the intellectual or material authors of the crime were sentenced to 30 years in prison and the 3 FSLN peasants dubbed the “rock throwers” got 2 years. At the end of the trial, in which no motives were ever presented, insufficient evidence was provided to genuinely implicate the accused and evidence exempting several of them was thrown out, three of them declared that they were innocent and that they and their families had been tortured and threatened with death if they did not confess to the crime. On October 13 the Nicaraguan Human Rights Center (CENIDH) sent a letter to National Police Chief Aminta Granera asking her to order and ensure an “exhaustive investigation” into the torture charges. In the same letter CENIDH stated: “It is our conviction that what happened the night of July 19 has not been cleared up and that penal responsibilities have not been handed down to those who really deserve them.”

POLITICALLY REARMED
OR JUST POT GROWERS?

In early October, fighting was reported between members of the National Army and a rearmed group in the area of Ayapal, Jinotega. Days later, an Army spokesperson acknowledged that it had conducted “an operation” but said it was “against delinquents dedicated to growing marihuana and trafficking it to Honduras” and that it consisted of “detecting and destroying the marihuana plants.” Two priests from the Jinotega diocese, Ayapal’s parish priest Carlos Blandón and vicar Uriel Vallejos, talked about the terror prevailing in the communities. Blandón referred to the “militarization” of the zone while Vallejos told La Prensa that “they aren’t delinquents; they‘re people who have taken up arms because they don’t agree with the current political system.”

EXTREME INEQUALITY

In late October, Oxfam International released a report on inequality in the world titled “Even it Up: Time to End Extreme Inequality.” In presenting the Spanish version in Managua, Oxfam country director Ana María Martínez offered data about Nicaragua’s extreme inequality: 35.5% of the income the country produces is concentrated in the hands of the richest 10% of the people while the poorest 10% only receive 1.8% of that income. The report shows that Latin America and the Caribbean continues to be the planet’s most unequal region.

RAMA TERRITORY AND
THE INTEROCEANIC CANAL

According to information provided by HKND, one of the two deep-water ports related to the interoceanic canal will be constructed in Punta Águila in the South Caribbean, historically a settlement of Ramas, one of Caribbean Nicaragua’s three indigenous peoples. The Center of Legal Assistance for Indigenous Peoples of Nicaragua is alerting the world by Internet that this community will lose its way of life and that “a language and culture unique in the world will be extinguished.” (See ttps://secure.avaaz.org/es/ petition/Presidente_de_Nicaragua_Comandante_Daniel_Ortega_ Saavedra_Que_no_destruya_la_comunidad_ ndigena_de_Bangkukuk_TaikPunta_d). When the announcement of the canal route was first disclosed, the Rama-Kriol Territorial Government filed suit with the Nicaraguan Supreme Court on the grounds that it had never been consulted as the Autonomy Law requires, but the Court ruled it and all the other 30+ suits of unconstitutionality inadmissible.

WANG JING GRANTED
MORE LICENSES

In October, TELCOR, Nicaragua’s state telecommunications company, granted Chinese businessman Wang Jing six licenses to install national and international long distance cell and conventional phone coverage, public telephony, subscription television, data transmission and Internet connection all over the country. In addition to being the owner of HKND, the company granted the concession to construct the interoceanic canal, Wang Jing also owns a company called Xinwei Telecom. Just as happened with the government’s decision to grant the canal concession, TELCOR made its decision without conducting a bidding process, which violates government regulations for such sizable investments. With that Xinwei will now compete on very favorable terms with Claro and Movistar, the two companies currently providing those services in Nicaragua. Xinwei was awarded a concession to invest in rural telephony in January of last year, but never fulfilled the pledged investments, said at the time to amount to US$2 billion. This month a Beijing daily newspaper announced that Xinwei had sent a test satellite out into space, to be followed by a “constellation of telecommunication satellites” the company plans to develop in the next ten years.

EBOLA EPIDEMIC

Four Cuban specialists arrived in Nicaragua in mid-October to train 120 Nicaraguan doctors in prevention of the Ebola epidemic and treatment of individuals affected by that virus. The Nicaraguan government has provided training about the disease to 4,000 state employees working on the country’s air, land and maritime borders and to 600 health workers. On October 20, President Daniel Ortega participated in an extraordinary summit of the heads of State of the ALBA countries in Havana to discuss the virus emergency and three days later the government presented its anti-Ebola plan to the diplomatic corps accredited in the country, thus fulfilling the Pan American Health Organization’s recommendations. The plan includes the creation of a special field hospital in an “unpopulated zone” to treat and isolate those infected or suspected of being infected to avoid their being sent to the national public hospitals. Independent media reported that the site of the eventual quarantines will be a hotel seized from drug traffickers on the Pan American Highway in Rivas.

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