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| Central American University - UCA |
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Number 401 | Diciembre 2014 |
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Nicaragua
NICARAGUA BRIEFS
Envío team
OXFAM REPORT ON
WORLD INEQUALITYOxfam International’s extensively researched and powerfully written report, “Even it up: Time to end extreme inequality,” presented in October, specifically mentions Nicaragua in two paragraphs. One of them says: “Unfortunately, in many places, rather than putting citizens’ rights back at the heart of policy-making and curbing the influence of the few, many governments responded with legal and extra-legal restrictions on the rights of ordinary citizens to hold governments and institutions to account. Governments in countries as diverse as Russia, Nicaragua, Iran and Zimbabwe have launched concerted harrassment campaigns gainst civil society organizations in an effort to clamp down on citizens who seek to voice their outrage at the capture of political and economic power by the few.”
And this is the other: “All countries, whether rich or poor, are united in their need for tax revenue to fund the services, infrastructure and ‘public goods’ that benefit all of society. But tax systems in developing economies—where public spending and redistribution are particularly crucial to lift people out of poverty—tend to be the most regressive, often penalizing the poor. The poorest 20 percent of Nicaraguans pay 31 percent of their income in tax, while the richest 20 percent contribute less than 13 percent….”
To this tax inequality mentioned by Oxfam must be added the exonerations that favor Nicaragua’s wealthiest, ratified indefinitely in the reform to the Tax Concertation Law negotiated exclusively between the government and the business leaders of big Nicaraguan capital this year.
NICARAGUA’S ULTRA-WEALTHYThe Bloomberg economic news agency published a profile in November titled “Nicaragua’s First Billionaire Is Country’s Sugar King,” referring to Carlos Pellas. According to the article, the more than 20 companies controlled by the Pellas group bill US$1.5 billion in annual sales, equal to 13% of Nicaragua’s gross domestic product, and employ some 18,000 people. Meanwhile, the Wealth-X and UBS World Ultra Wealth Report for 2013 says the number of Nicaraguan ultra-wealthy—defined as those whose personal fortune is at least US$30 million—went up from 180 to 190 between 2012 and 2013. According to the firm’s calculations, the combined fortune of Nicaragua’s 190 multi-millionaires was US$26 billion, an average of just under $137 million each. That puts Nicaragua in third place among the Central American countries, with the report showing Guatemala at 235 multi-millionaires and Honduras at 205. And Forbes Magazine lists businessman Wang Jing, the proud owner of Nicaragua’s interoceanic canal concession, as the 12th wealthiest person in China.
EX-CUBAN FIVE PRISONER
VISITS NICARAGUAFernando Gonzalez, former Cuban Five political prisoner in Safford, Arizona, released in February after serving more than 15 years in prison, came to Nicaragua on Nov. 22 for a week’s visit. He had been arrested in 1998 together with Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labañino, and Rene Gonzalez. The five were intelligence officers convicted of spying on the US, although Cuba and the five insist they had infiltrated anti-Castro Cuban groups in Miami plotting to attack Cuba.. Rene González was released in 2013, but the other three remain incarcerated and Gonzalez dedicated much of his visit to promoting solidarity in Nicaragua with them. In an interview with teleSUR, Gonzáalez said that “new evidence has appeared that was not known at the time of the trial, and might have changed the result of the trial at that time.” While in Nicaragua he met with Cuban health and education brigadistas and Cuban diplomats serving in Nicaragua. and also also traveled to Granada, Masaya and Leon, and met with government authorities and members of the FSLN and Sandinista Youth.
CHRONIC RENAL INSUFFICIENCYDozens of San Antonio Sugar Refinery workers who suffer the deadly chronic renal sufficiency CRI), believed to be caused by the agrochemicals and contaminants used in the vast sugarcane fields owned by that company, a member of the Pellas group, began a walk on December 1 from Chichigalpa, the refinery’s location, to Managua. Accompanied by widows of workers who have already died, they were scheduled to arrive on December 8. They called their 75-mile walk “Pilgrimage for life and justice.” Demands include declaring the municipality of Chichigalpa an “emergency zone,” the urgent conducting of a scientific study by the health and labor ministries to identify the epidemic’s causes, a technical analysis by the government of the purification level of the water consumed by Chichigalpa’s population, specialized medical attention by the Ministry of Health for people already ill with IRC and the issuing of a Labor Ministry order that the company compensate all workers duly diagnosed with CRI. In recent years an estimated 3,000 people in the area, most of them men, have died from the epidemic.
DIABETESOn November 14, World Diabetes Day, Enrique Medina, president of Nicaragua’s Diabetes Foundation, calculated that there are probably a million diabetics in the country, and that one in every two who have it doesn’t know it. He based his figures on a 2006 study by the Pan-American Health Organization, which revealed that 13% of Nicaragua’s population had diabetes and 11% was pre-diabetic. León’s National University did another study of the same age group four years later and found that 18% were diabetic.
HIV-AIDS Matilde Román, coordinator of the Ministry of Health’s sexually transmitted illnesses and HIV-AIDS program reported on December 1, World AIDS Day, that 9,390 confirmed HIV cases and 1,078 AIDS deaths have been recorded between 1987 and the first half of 2014. The ministry is currently attending only 60% of those affected.
Nearly 500 people marched on Dec. 1 to mark World AIDS Day on a route that went from Plaza de las Victorias to the National Engineering University, where an AIDS awareness fair gave free tests for HIV and provided eductational information for students from Managua high schools and universities.
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a monthly magazine of analysis on Central America