Remembering for History: Memories of “El Cap”
2020 Diciembre Nicaragua
“When I got to my house, I saw a large poster with my picture on the wall. I went in and gave my mom a hug. ‘The poster was the one we took to the...
Central American-US migration in times of COVID-19
2020 Septiembre Centroamérica
The coronavirus pandemic has turned the planet up-side down and disrupted all our lives. The globalizing of social and economic dynamics screeched to...
Utopias in Central America (part 3): From disillusion to April in Nicaragua
2019 Noviembre Centroamérica
Throughout his life and work German philosopher Immanuel Kant attempted to answer three major questions: What can I learn? What must I do? And what...
Utopias in Central America (part 2): The dreams and nightmares in literature
2019 Octubre Nicaragua
Central America had more than its share of writers in the 1980s who dreamed about living in a country without injustices. A sacrificial war was the...
Utopias in Central America (part 1): Dreams of war and postwar nightmares
2019 Septiembre Centroamérica
The Cntral America that rounded the corner of the 20th century entered the 21st on the boulevar of broken dreams. French sociologist Yvon Le Bot refers...
Undocumented emigrants’ civil disobedience: Self-employment and informality
2019 Junio Centroamérica
Central American migrant caravans have become the media darling of population mobility. They showcase acts of defiance against an exclusionary system...
The Left’s human sacrifices and its war on peoples
2019 Mayo América Latina
During the Cold War, Latin American dictators murdered, disappeared and imprisoned the citizens oppressed under their jackboots in the name of anti-communism....
How did adults view April’s rebellious youth?
2019 Marzo Nicaragua
Five university youth organizations made up the heart and muscle of last April’s revolt. Their debut on the nation’s political stage took analysts by...
Thoughts and emotions behind the April insurrection
2018 Noviembre Nicaragua
The April 2018 uprising was not, as has been said about the fall of the Bastille, “a clap of thunder in a serene sky.” The political protests against...
University struggles in Nicaragua (part 2) The April students: More challenges and new possibilities
2018 Octubre Nicaragua
British historian Christopher Hill firmly believed that “Hhstory has to be rewritten in every generation, because although the past does not change,...
University struggles in Nicaragua (part 1) How we got to the 1959 student massacre
2018 Septiembre Nicaragua
British historian Christopher Hill firmly believed that “history had to be rewritten in every generation because, although the past doesn’t change, the...
Musings on the April rebellion from a historical perspective
2018 Agosto Nicaragua
In one of his controversial books, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek recalls an old Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times!” The social...
Are April and May’s “vandals” Reparto Schick gang members?
2018 Junio Nicaragua
Gangs have been the bête noir politicians and social analysts alike use to explain Central America’s excessive brutality. In the Northern Triangle countries...
The Nicaraguan tiger and the April rebellion
2018 Mayo Nicaragua
They say that on May 31, 1911, when Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz was about to board the ship that would take him from Veracruz to exile in Paris, after...
How the “Dreamers” turned into a movement with power
2017 Diciembre Centroamérica
On September 5, Donald Trump canceled the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. In the blink of an eye, the word DACA, until then used...
Undocumented immigrants in the Trump era: Fears, resistance, strategies....and more
2017 Septiembre Centroamérica
Avianca announces its first call to board flight 582 to Dulles Airport in Washington. A legion of elderly Salvadoran, Honduran and Guatemalan women...
Fear is the message of the first 100 days of Trump’s migration policies
2017 Junio Nicaragua
During his election campaign, Donald Trump said he would expel millions of undocumented immigrants and would complete the wall along the US-Mexican...
The words of an indigenous authority: “This is how we apply Maya justice”
2017 Mayo Guatemala
Last August I travelled to Tunijá, a village in Guatemala’s western highlands, some 190 km from the capital city and ten minutes by bus from the urban...
The ghost of Maya justice is haunting the country
2017 Abril Guatemala
The ghost of Maya justice is haunting Guatemala. Self-righteous talk show guests, guardian angels of positive law, omnipresent pens in opinion pages,...
Four keys to the volatile success of the Ortega-Murillo project
2016 Noviembre Nicaragua
The regime built by the late President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela is breaking up over a stormy sea of oil, Honduran President Mel Zelaya was deposed in...
“We live in politically democratic but socially fascist societies”
2016 Octubre Centroamérica
Boaventura de Sousa Santos has a doctorate in Sociology of Law from Yale University and is a sociology professor at Portugal’s University of Coimbra...
Thousands of African migrants on our borders
2016 Septiembre Nicaragua
Globalization is shaking up Central America. One evidence of that can be seen when we trace the spatial-temporal starting points of the growing numbers...
A book bathed in tears
2016 Agosto Guatemala
I first learned about Ixcan: Masacres y sobrevivencia (Ixcan: Massacres and survival) by Ricardo Falla in 1989. It was hidden in the catacombs...
Donald Trump wants to destroy the heterogeneous State
2016 Junio Centroamérica
Waving the banner of xenophobia and stirring up hatred against Latino and other immigrants, Donald Trump has turned himself into a vote-harvesting machine...
Migrants: Disobedient in the market and citizens in consumption
2016 Febrero Centroamérica
The world of consumption has been assailed for both intellectual and moral reasons. It’s associated with a lack of wisdom and an abundance of vices....
Challenging mental barriers and physical boundaries
2015 Diciembre Centroamérica
In his interesting review of new forms of social change and political struggle, the Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells argues that “power relationships...
The political clout of immigrant organizations, et al
2015 Noviembre Centroamérica
Organizations providing undocumented immigrants with real, ongoing support have been recognized—and rightly so—as areas that resist exclusion and smooth...
The power of theater on the Mexican-US border: Solid and liquid border vigilance (Part 4)
2015 Agosto Centroamérica
In last month’s installment I considered various premises to explain the decline in migrant apprehensions on the US-Mexican border, an issue that has...
The Mexico-US border: A very lucrative, inefficient business. Solid and liquid border vigilance (part 3)
2015 Julio Centroamérica
To enter the United States, Central American migrants must pass through one of the most patrolled regions on Earth. They’re confronted by an armed legion...
The Mexico-US border: The Border Patrol’s empire: Solid and liquid border vigilance, part 2
2015 Junio Centroamérica
The over 2,000 miles that divide Mexico and the United States make up the most extensive binational border and have the greatest movement in the world....
The American Dream’s anteroom is Mexico’s nightmare, Solid and liquid border vigilance, part 1
2015 Abril Centroamérica
The surveillance operations of the policies designed to repel immigrants have both “solid” and “liquid” expressions, often more theatrical than effective,...
Migrants on the road, churches in civil disobedience
2015 Febrero Centroamérica
Undocumented migrants aren’t alone. They wouldn’t be able to enter and stay in the United States without sustained daily support. Who are the “criminals”...
Who’s afraid of the Latino vote?
2014 Diciembre Centroamérica
The US midterm elections were held on November 4. Their bureaucratic goal was to reelect the 435 members of the House of Representatives, who serve a...
A day in the life of three Central American migrants
2014 Noviembre Centroamérica
During a visit to Maryland and Virginia, three Central Americans talked to me about the often tightly interwoven areas that burn their souls: work, documents,...
To seek asylum or to go without papers? That is the question
2014 Septiembre Centroamérica
Many Central American migrants who recently crossed the Mexican-US border as well as those who have lived in the United States for months or even years...
Does the US bear responsibility for the violence they’re fleeing?
2014 Agosto Centroamérica
There have been Central American refugees in the United States for a long time. The large numbers of children currently crossing the Mexico-US border...
Big and small fleeing from the geography of fear
2014 Julio Centroamérica
Central Americans in search of asylum: it sounds like a front-page newspaper headline from the eighties. The peace accords that the conflicting forces...
“Illegal” migration of Central Americans and Chinandegans
2014 Enero Centroamérica
Nicaraguans are the Latin Americans with the 12th greatest presence in the United States. They total 395,000, according to the latest Pew Hispanic Center...
34 years of blameful forgetfulness, 23 of interested memory (part 2)
2013 Agosto Nicaragua
In an insightful paper delivered to circumspect lawyers, German historian Reinhart Koselleck took a look at various historiographical tendencies, distinguishing...
34 years of blameful forgetfulness, 23 of interested memory
2013 Julio Nicaragua
In crossing out February 25, 1990, the day the FSLN lost its first elections, with a red pen, viewing it as a historic watershed, those with Sandinista...
In migration’s “science kitchens”
2013 Mayo Centroamérica
Knowledge isn’t produced in the aseptic test tubes hawked by the torchbearers of scientific neutrality. The process is both burdened and enriched by...
Detainees and deportees: Xenophobia and dollars
2013 Enero Centroamérica
Undocumented migrants detained in the Lasalle Detention Facility in Jena, Louisiana, wear uniforms of three different colors, constituting a warning...
The Third Horseman of Neoliberalism: The Neo-Pentecostals (part 5)
2012 Noviembre Centroamérica
The worship of managerialism and positive thinking and the consecration of the neoliberal postulates as a canon of common sense have not been the fruit...
The third horseman of neoliberalism: The Neo-Pentecostals (part 4)
2012 Octubre Centroamérica
Half a century ago, Antonio Gramsci wrote that “religion must be approached not in the confessional sense but in the secular sense of a unity of faith...
The third horseman of neoliberalism: The Neo-Pentecostals (part 3)
2012 Septiembre Centroamérica
The last five decades have borne witness to how and how much the Catholic Church has lost its monopoly
in the Latin American religious market. In...
Rhetoric, slogans and metaphors of the revolutionary years
2012 Julio Nicaragua
No memoirs of the Sandinista revolution record any sudden attack led by Tomás Borge in the guerrilla campaign that brought down Somoza. And although...
The third horseman of neoliberalism: The Neo-Pentecostals (part 2)
2012 Junio Centroamérica
The Neo-Pentecostals, the most inexperienced of the four neoliberal horsemen galloping over Central America, have the greatest worldly success, contrary...
The third horseman of neoliberalism: The Neo-Pentecostals (Part 1)
2012 Mayo Centroamérica
The radio announcer’s persuasive voice seductively whispers, “Need a miracle? Come and ask Jesus for
your miracle.” An energetic masculine voice...
Immigration policies during the Obama administration
2012 Abril América Latina
The only point of consensus regarding the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 S 1348), a federal compromise bill touted as both smoothing the...
FSLN wins by hook and by crook
2011 Noviembre Nicaragua
The FSLN painstakingly planned to win these elections by hook or by crook. And it won them by both… We’ll never know how many votes the FSLN won fairly...
The second horseman of neoliberalism: Nongovernmental organizations
2011 Octubre Centroamérica
Two decades ago Argentine journalist Gino Lofredo wrote an explosive article titled “How to get rich in the 90s.” Its opening volley was: “You still...
The first horseman of neoliberalism: Drug traffickers
2011 Agosto Centroamérica
Political scientists identify three major political programs in Latin America: authoritarian, neoliberal and participatory. Authoritarian is the standard...
The four horsemen of neoliberalismo in the vacuum left by waged work
2011 Junio Centroamérica
Remember the 1970s and 80s? The military in Honduras, the death squads in El Salvador, the bloody death rattles of the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua...
Tell me the house you live in, and I’ll tell you if you receive remittances
2011 Mayo Nicaragua
The prudish reaction to consumption—which has its origins in Roman stoicism, hermit-like asceticism and even, paradoxically, the accumulating desire...
Chinandega’s Navigation In the Sea of Globalization
2011 Abril Nicaragua
Chinandega used to be the City of Oranges. The expression has survived what turned out to be an ephemeral reality. Chinandega’s orange groves have...
A Pre-electoral Reflection from the Liberal Window and the Emancipator Window
2010 Diciembre Nicaragua
Digging into all the political analyses of the Central American region, two paradigms can be identified that crystallize into two visions—the Liberal...
The Latest Border Crisis: Bi-national Citizenship Revisited
2010 Noviembre Nicaragua
The Río San Juan is the sinuous strait discovered with premeditation and treachery by Spanish conquerors dreaming of a broad turquoise band of water...
When the Youngest Emigrate
2010 Octubre Nicaragua
Nicaraguan emigration also has the face of adolescents and children: 24% of our total emigrants are under 18, according to the country’s 2005 Living...
Migrants: Submissive Victims or Engaging in Civil Disobedience?
2010 Septiembre Nicaragua
Imagine a starch-collared World Bank official stroking his brush moustache and adjusting his Gucci tie while introducing a panel on export incentives...
The Contradictory Legacy of the Sandinista Agrarian Reform
2010 Julio Nicaragua
Nicaragua embarked on an agrarian reform adventure during the 1980s, inspired by a revolutionary government longing to lead great transformations. The...
Arizona and Its Cruel Discontents
2010 Junio Centroamérica
Once upon a time there was a superlative and pluperfect country. Not only was it spacious and well cared for, but everything in it was super-sized and...
A Look at the Gringo Wall
2010 Abril América Latina
In 1997, Tijuana artist Marcos Ramírez Erre placed a Trojan horse on the border between Tijuana and San Diego, just meters from the migration buildings....
Twelve Days on the Road to Rejection
2010 Marzo América Latina
On the run-up to Mardi Gras—the “Fat Tuesday” carnival the day before Lent—New Orleans Jesuit and lawyer Tom Greene organized an unusual workshop that...
The Ship-out Caribbeans Have Left the Coast on Cruise Ships
2009 Diciembre Nicaragua
My story isn’t nice or lovely at all, but it’s not horrible either. I left when I was 17 years old. I went with my sister and without knowing I would...
Seven Deadly Sins We’re Bequeathing Our Young People
2009 Octubre Nicaragua
Every new development guru swears they have diagnosed our deficiencies and have the remedy to rescue us from the sad shore of underdevelopment on which...
Don’t Deported Migrants Have Human Rights?
2009 Septiembre Centroamérica
Every Friday a load of migrants is brought to the Honduran-Nicaraguan border post of Guasaule. These are the migrants that Mexico’s migration system...
Ten Photos that Shook the Eighties
2009 Julio Nicaragua
Could any other historic event have divided Nicaraguan public opinion as much as the Sandinista revolution? The ideological and biographical bifurcations—which...
The Darker Sides of a “Country of Immigrants”
2009 Mayo Internacional
The famous Statue of Liberty rises up on the island next to Ellis Island, the famous Island of Tears that filtered immigrants coming to the United States....
A History of US Deportation: Will to Exclude, License to Marginalize
2009 Abril Internacional
When the first European colonists reached what is now the United States of America, Ellis Island was just a 3.3-acre island at the mouth of the Hudson...
The Lessons of Mitch: Learned, Not Learned and Unlearned
2009 Enero Nicaragua
To mark the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Mitch, the lucid and biting Nicaraguan caricaturist Pedro Molina drew two parallel sketches of the same family...
On the Track of Political Gangs: Has Mara 19 Been Born in Nicaragua?
2008 Diciembre Nicaragua
Martin Scorsese’s box office hit “Gangs of New York” shows a fierce confrontation between two gangs at the service of ethnic factions and political rivals....
Deportees Have no Papers or Rights, Only Borders
2008 Noviembre Centroamérica
When workers leave their municipality, departdepartment or province of birth for another in their same country where they have greater opportunities...
Posoltega Ten Years Later: Buried Then, Uprooted Now
2008 Octubre Nicaragua
Posoltega was emblematic of the effects of a natural disaster and of a decided and tenacious effort to rebuild. But it was also plagued by animosity...
The Splendor and Squalor of National Ecotourism
2008 Septiembre Nicaragua
The twin-volcano island of Ometepe, emerging out of the legendary Lake Cocibolca, also known as Lake Nicaragua, was nominated as Nicaragua’s candidate...
Strawberry Fields and Undocumented Workers Forever?
2008 Junio América Latina
Salinas Valley was catapulted to universal fame by Nobel Prize winner in literature John Steinbeck, admirer of the original Californians, those who conserved...
Youth Gangs and Religion: Links and Differences
2008 Mayo Nicaragua
Is there a relationship between youth gangs and religion? Between violence and religious experience? Between youth transgression of the established...
Whose Money Is It Anyway?
2008 Abril Centroamérica
Remittances donÂ’t come vacuum packed and canÂ’t be isolated in a test tube. They are conditioned by a socio-political environment and come with a cultural...
Remittances Are Far More Than A Development Panacea
2008 Marzo Centroamérica
Pisto, plata, lapas, tucanes, tejas, tostones, güevo, chichimosca, palos, tucos, fichas, hojas de repollo, barbas, luz verde, reales, búfalos, daimes,...
Who Gets a Key to the Doors on the Forest?
2007 Diciembre Nicaragua
On the boat trip from San Carlos to Boca de Sábalos along the Río San Juan I get an intensive course on the area’s metaphors: the Tarzans—or boatmen...
Ticaraguans: Bi-national Identities on the Liquid Border
2007 Noviembre Nicaragua
Feet run across the line. There’s no reason to feart heir murmur. What are they taking, what are they bringing? I don’t know. What’s important...
Posoltega Nine Years After the Tragedy
2007 Agosto Nicaragua
Posoltega means “town near the land that burns.” Ironically, this burning land was swamped during Hurricane Mitch by a giant torrent of mud, sulphur...
From Citizen-as-Ward to Citizen-as-Client With No Solutions in Sight
2007 Julio Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s four governments in the last 27 years have applied two openly contrasting economic models: one based loosely on a planned economy and the...
From Telescopic to Microscopic: Three Youth Gang Members Speak
2007 Junio Nicaragua
Thirty years ago, comedian and movie director Woody Allen predicted that in the near future rape and kid-napping would be predominant forms of human...
Knowledge in These Times Of a la Carte Research
2007 Mayo Centroamérica
In Senectud, Italo Svevo wrote, “That conceited sponsor had been on his back constantly, demanding he deliver a determined amount of work every day....
The Legacy of Mitch: Are We Ready for Another Disaster?
2007 Abril Nicaragua
Nine years have passed since Hurricane Match left Nicaragua prostrated. Since then, the international community collaborating with Central America has...
A Characterization of FSLN Voters And a Few Forecasts
2006 Noviembre Nicaragua
The FSLN’s uproarious rejoicing began before the first vote was counted. Comes the parade now with one accord / Marching comes the army and the clear,...
AIDS and Migrants: A Perverse Association
2006 Octubre América Latina
The acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) has earned a prominent place among the cruelest scourges to afflict humanity. The bottom line of its global...
Nicaraguan Youth Gangs: From Throwing Stones to Smoking Rocks
2006 Septiembre Nicaragua
The most distinguished mention of a 1970s youth gang member in Nicaragua is found in Ernesto Cardenal’s memoirs of the Sandinista revolution. Charrasca...
Why No Maras in Nicaragua?
2006 Agosto Centroamérica
The United States Army, that self-styled police force of humanity, has already started to turn its ominous periscope toward youth gangs. In March 2005,...
The Ideological Bricks of the Anti-Immigrant Wall
2006 Julio Centroamérica
On August 6, 1890, a German immigrant named William Kemmler was the first person to be executed in the electric chair in the United States, at New York’s...
Maquilas, Fast Food, Casinos, Cells: Serpents in Paradise
2006 Marzo Nicaragua
Over a century ago, in his novel Hard Times, Charles Dickens described the thoughts of the businessman Bounderby: “Now, you have heard a lot of...
The Río San Juan: Source of Conflicts and Nationalism
2005 Noviembre Nicaragua
A river, an abandoned territory and a biological reserve all add up to problems. The Río San Juan, the Nicaraguan-Costa Rican border zone and the Indio-Maíz...
The Traido: A Key to Youth Gang Continuity
2005 Julio Nicaragua
The main character in Anthony Burgess’ novel A Clockwork Orange, 15-year-old Alex, is the leader of a small group of kids who terrorize the streets...
Our Constructed Image Of Central American Migrants
2005 Junio Centroamérica
Central America is exporting increasing numbers of emigrants. The intellectual production related to these migration flows and the vicissitudes of both...
The Code of Children and Adolescents: Comments on a Misunderstood Law
2005 Mayo Nicaragua
The Office of Special Attorney for Children and Adolescents, which forms part of the Human Rights Defense Attorney’s Office, was created in 2000. In...
Intellectuals and Job Insecurity: I Don’t Think... Therefore I Am
2005 Marzo Nicaragua
Social scientists and other intellectuals have covered a lot of ground in studying the poor. We invade their homes without so much as a search warrant...
Hundreds of Thousands of Migrants ...But No Migration Policies
2005 Febrero Nicaragua
Nicaragua is very lazy about ratifying international agreements. If it were just a matter of signing, our Presidents would spring forward, pen at the...
Bureaucrats for Hire: The Profitable Consultancy Industry
2005 Enero Nicaragua
The consultancy industry in Nicaragua is worth millions a year. The money spent on salaries and other remunerations for the studies and technical advice...
Cup of Excellence, Fair Trade, Organic Coffee
2004 Septiembre Nicaragua
When coffee prices plunged in 2001, the crisis generated widespread panic: two banks went under, others teetered on the brink, farms were embargoed left,...
25 Years After July 19: What Has Happened to the FSLN?
2004 Julio Nicaragua
In Nicaragua, the collapse of socialism in the Soviet bloc did more than shake up the world of ideas, leading to what some have called the end of ideology....
Migrants: Prejudice, Myopic Vision and Apathetic Policies
2004 Mayo Nicaragua
A large number of sources feed and reproduce the collective view of migration, and particularly of migrants. Researchers, politicians, international...
A Farewell to Pigs…Changes in the National Diet
2004 Enero Nicaragua
One thing’s for sure, there’s a big difference between eating well and not eating well. Tell me what you eat and I’ll tell you who you are… not to mention...
Youth Gang Members and Tattoos: Stigma, Identity and Art
2003 Septiembre Nicaragua
Now more than ever, our appearance, our “look,” signals what kind of person we are. Young Nicaraguans labeled as “hippies” use their wardrobe as a form...
Why Do They Go? Theories on the Migration Trend
2003 Julio Internacional
Many research studies have sought to reveal the characteristics of those who emigrate: whether they are better or worse prepared than those who stay...
She Said, He Said: A Survey on Sex and Gender
2003 Junio Nicaragua
To say that young men and young women think and act differently is so obvious that it is a cliché. To what point and in what way is this cliché crystallized...
A Central American in the USA: Reflections on “The American Dream”
2003 Abril Internacional
Mark Twain traveled Nicaragua’s Río San Juan in 1886, when he was 51, 10 years after publishing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. All that remains...
Six Realistic Theories About the Mythical 6%
2003 Marzo Nicaragua
Between February 19 and 21, university students again took to the streets to demand 6% of the national bud get for the ten universities that make up...
Local Government and Micro-business: A Possible Marriage?
2002 Septiembre Nicaragua
Although decentralization and the potential of micro businesses appear to be two essential pivots of local and national development, they have surprisingly...
Nicaragua’s Youth Today: Fresas, Revolutionaries, Revelers, Hippies
2002 Agosto Nicaragua
That bipolarity of the eighties, linked to the great ideologies that triggered dichotomous, Manichean confrontations, are gone, replaced with fragmented...
Digital Time in the National Culture: Underdevelopment.com.ni
2002 Junio Nicaragua
The first computers—enormous machines programmed by a series of perforated cards—arrived in Nicaragua at the end of the 1960s. Internet followed at the...
Between Paralysis And Passive Revolution
2002 Abril Nicaragua
Why have social lethargy, political apathy and conformism possessed the Nicaraguan population? This apparently simple question in fact implies at least...
Micro-salaries and Mega-salaries: Mega-inequality and Micro-development
2002 Marzo Nicaragua
Nicaragua is a country of brutal contrasts. To measure the income of Nicaraguans, we have to shift from the electron microscope to the sidereal telescope,...
Rural Women in Nicaragua: "Anything is possible..."
2002 Enero Nicaragua
“My name is María Epifania López, and I’m a 21 year-old single mother with a son. I work as a Peasant University (UNICAM) promoter and sit on the Buena...
PLC: The Resounding Winner
2001 Noviembre Nicaragua
The politics of Alcolea perfectly reflected its people’s inertia and distrust. It was a politics defined by its two strong leaders, a fight between...
Fundamentalism, Exclusion, Identity and Annihilation
2001 Octubre Nicaragua
Fundamentalism has existed in all parts of the world throughout humanity’s long and stormy history. It is not the exclusive patrimony of any religious,...
The Chronicle of Coffee: History, Responsibility and Questions
2001 Agosto Nicaragua
In the early morning of August 18, 1881, exactly 120 years ago, nearly three thousands indigenous people armed with bow and arrows and shotguns and calling...
The Brief, Necessary and Stormy History of the FUAC
2001 Julio Nicaragua
In The March of Folly, From Troy to Vietnam, one of her most famous books, US historian Barbara W. Tuchman describes various well-known events...
FUAC: Milestones on the Road
2001 Julio Nicaragua
1982After taking part in the struggle against Somoza, Edmundo Eugenio Olivas Córdoba, who was born in Quilalí, Nicaragua, became a column leader...
Siuna: A Hundred Years of Abandonment
2001 Junio Nicaragua
Siuna is rife with neglect and terror. Development program promoters have indefinitely called off their field visits and merchants bite their nails as...
The Women of Malpaisillo: "Our Lives Have Changed"
2001 Mayo Nicaragua
Malpaisillo, a municipality in the department of Leon, is a lively center with a population of approximately 3,200. Set down in the middle of 888 square...
The Matrixes, Traps and Tricks of the Development Discourse
2001 Abril Nicaragua
For some months now a document known as the "Estrategia Reforzada de Reducción de la Pobreza" (Reinforced Poverty Reduction Strategy) has been...
The Agricultural Sector: Dominated by the QWERTY Economy
2001 Marzo Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s agricultural sector is having to fight in very adverse conditions today, not just because of everything going on in the country, but also...
Agriculture to the Emergency Ward: Intensive Care Required
2001 Enero Nicaragua
As the year 2000 ended, spokespeople for Nicaragua’s Central Bank presented their figures on national economic growth with the usual hurrahs that only...
Jinotepe and Diriamba: Two Case Studies of a Defeat
2000 Noviembre Nicaragua
Jinotepe: The PLC’s big plumThe surprising victory of the Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC) in the municipality of Jinotepe stunned people...
A Serpent’s Egg: The New Electoral Law
2000 Octubre Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s last two election years, 1990 and 1996, were both accompanied by new electoral legislation, and 2000 has followed in their footsteps. The...
A Passionate Memory in Times of Disillusion
2000 Septiembre Nicaragua
In 1980, we Nicaraguans were better than the people we have become after so many ups and downs. In two decades our dignity has been mortgaged off, our...
Masaya Trembles: The Lessons of a Disaster
2000 Agosto Nicaragua
At midday on July 6, an earthquake whose epicenter was located in the volcanic lake known as Apoyo, just 6 km from the city of Masaya, registered 5.9...
Youth Gangs: A Cultural Prison
2000 Junio Nicaragua
I loved myself as traitor, thief, stick-up man, informer, detestable, destructive, despicable, coward. With axe blows and shouts I severed the bonds...
Pensions System Reforms: Three in One
2000 Mayo Nicaragua
The complete replacement of Nicaragua’s state pension scheme with a private one has caused a huge commotion in the country from the moment the reforms...
Youth Gang Members: The Hand that Rocks the Mortar Launcher
2000 Marzo Nicaragua
Tom said, "Now we’ll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer’s Gang. Anybody that wants to join has to take an oath, and write his name...
Ciudad Darío: Home of a Poet And Thousands of “Linieros”
1999 Octubre Nicaragua
During the six days of Mitch's heaviest rain, when most other municipal mayors were out directing rescue missions and setting up shelters, Mario Quijano,...
Ocotal: Urban Planning for People
1999 Septiembre Nicaragua
It's not easy to find a municipality in Nicaragua with a central park that is taken care of as well as the one in Ocotal. Flowers and greenery flourish...
Posoltega: Unresolved Property Problems And Continuing Vulnerability
1999 Julio Nicaragua
Posoltega was the main focus of national and international attention after Hurricane Mitch's devastating passage through Central America; it is estimated...
Posoltega: Where the Land Burns
1999 Junio Nicaragua
On the road from Stockholm to Posoltega—passing through Washington, where the multilateral organizations design plans to "save" the countries of the...
Youth Gangs: Armed Rebels Without A Cause
1999 Mayo Nicaragua
Historians, sociologists, anthropologists and other social scientists frequently point out that violence has been omnipresent in Nicaragua since the...
Cayanlipe: Six Months of Solitude
1999 Abril Nicaragua
Five months after Mitch, activities directed at the country's reconstruction are not exactly advancing at the pace that the ongoing propaganda leads...
Puerto Morazán: Problems in an Ill-Fated Land
1999 Marzo Nicaragua
Puerto Morazán was originally known as the port that catapulted national production to northern Central America. In the municipality by the same name,...
San Francisco Libre: Giving It One More Try
1999 Enero Nicaragua
Even though hurricane-swollen lake Managua—now again commonly referred to by its original name, Xolotlán—is still well over a kilometer inland of its...
Wiwilí With or Without Mitch: An X-Ray of Underdevelopment
1998 Diciembre Nicaragua
Wiwilí, in Northern Nicaragua, was not in the eye of the storm. It didn't experience the brutal punishment meted out on many other northern communities....
What Is the Obscure Object of The Bank Superintendency Fight?
1998 Julio Nicaragua
BANKERS TEND TO BE SEEN AS GRAY, CIRCUMSPECT PEOPLE WHO ONLY COME TO PUBLIC attention in exceptional cases. For the past two months, Nicaragua has seen...
On the Death of BANADES (r.i.p.)
1998 Marzo Nicaragua
The poor person is despicable because of his poverty.
If a poor person is seen sitting around
they say he's lazy.
If he takes a drink, he is...