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| Central American University - UCA |
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Number 80 | Febrero 1988 |
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Nicaragua
NICARAGUA BRIEFS
ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT TAKES OFF IN NICARAGUAConcerned biologists and ecologists founded the National Environmentalist Movement on January 25, 1988, as a way of exercising influence over state development projects and policies that affect the environment. The movement, informally active for some time, scored its first victory in convincing the government not to sell concessions of virgin rainforest in the Río San Juan Valley to a Costa Rican lumber company. The movement plans to tackle such thorny problems as saving severely polluted Lake Managua, limiting the use of toxic agrochemicals in Region II and promoting reforestation in Region I.
INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY ON THE UPSWINGThe number of international brigadistas visiting Nicaragua doubled in 1987, totaling more than 8,000 from Western Europe, Canada, Australia, Latin America, the United States and other parts of the world. Since 1983, according to the Nicaraguan Committee in Solidarity with the People (CNSP), more than 20,000
Brigadistas have given their services to Nicaragua, and many internationalists involved in solidarity, religious or NGO-sponsored social service and development projects have taken up residence here for longer periods. Some have given their lives, as well. Since 1983, the contras have killed 14 internationalists, raped 4 and kidnapped 59. But they have not managed to put a stop to this very personal way of showing international support for Nicaragua.
"NICARAGUA WAGES A WAR FOR ALL OF US"The Nicaraguan government recently honored Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes with the "Rubén Darío Order of Cultural Independence." Accepting the prize, Fuentes stressed the bonds between Mexico and Nicaragua and praised Nicaragua's courage in waging a war that really was on behalf of all Latin American nations. "If [the US] denies you, a country small in terms of population and territory, but culturally and politically immense, the right to exist, under ideological pretexts and a sense of imperial inferiority, then, sooner or later, the same policy will be applied against Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, no matter how large and populated these nations may be.... Thus the defense of Nicaragua is the defense of all Latin America." Fuentes continued, "We have known too many paper democracies in Latin America, where it was enough for them to declare themselves anticommunist to be lauded as democratic."
Referring to the counterrevolution, Fuentes asked his audience, "Are those who for a hundred and fifty years were only interested in consolidating their own privileges going to restore or create democracy in Nicaragua? What are they going to restore but those same privileges...?" Fuentes and US writer William Styron accompanied President Ortega to the Central American Presidents' summit in San José, Costa Rica.
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a monthly magazine of analysis on Central America