Hopefully waiting to find a way out
2021 Abril Nicaragua
Three years have passed since the spontaneous uprising against the authoritari-an regime of Daniel Ortega in April 2018 that many see as a watershed...

“We can beat Ortega if we vote en masse and united”
2021 Abril Nicaragua
French writer Victor Hugo said there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. The time for electoral reforms has finally come. We...

The pieces are starting to fall into place for the election race
2021 Marzo Nicaragua
We are fast approaching the crucial month of May, set in a resolution by the Organization of American States (OAS) last October as the deadline by which...

Year one of the pandemic
2021 Marzo Nicaragua
March 18 marked one year since the first COVID-19 case was detected in Nicaragua. In that time, officialdom irresponsibly and persistently concealed...

Alea iacta est?
2021 Enero Nicaragua
Nicaragua is beginning the new year clueless about the evolution and possible mutations of the coronavirus in our country as it waits for at least one...

After the hurricanes, someone has to speak for the Caribbean Coast
2021 Enero Nicaragua
As envío described in its last issue of 2020, Eta, the first of two powerful hurricanes that tore through northeastern Nicaragua this year, made landfall...

Two hurricanes and a financial deluge were game changers
2020 Diciembre Nicaragua
Both the dictatorship and the blue and white opposition were clearer about the steps to take—or avoid—as long as President Trump and his ever-changing...

The Indio Maíz Biological Reserve: We’re losing this national treasure
2020 Diciembre Nicaragua
In late September, in the community of Nueva Quezada in the department of Río San Juan, the Nicaraguan Army detained 18 members of the Rama Kriol Territorial...

“After the OAS resolution, pressuring Ortega daily is our job”
2020 Noviembre Nicaragua
In 1979 I was a priest and a member of what was called the Group of Twelve, made up of intellectuals, profe¬ssionals, and business and religious leaders...

The OAS sets a deadline: Is this the regime’s last opportunity?
2020 Noviembre Nicaragua
T here have been numerous OAS General Assembly and Permanent Council meetings, reports and resolutions about Nica¬ragua’s crisis over the past two years....

Before night sets in
2020 Octubre Nicaragua
September, the month of Nicaragua’s Independence celebrations, showed us a regime determined to let nothing stand in the way of it remaining in power...

“Changing Nicaragua is about becoming aware of the environmental emergency”
2020 Septiembre Nicaragua
Will the pandemic have positive or negative environmental effects in Nicaragua? Before addressing this urgent question, it’s necessary to understand...

“Until the storm clouds pass”
2020 Septiembre Nicaragua
The National Coalition’s prospects of being a strong and united force against the autho¬ritarian regime of Daniel Ortega and his wife are increasingly...

External resources give the regime economic breathing room
2020 Septiembre Nicaragua
Just as Fox News portrays a “parallel universe” much more favorable to President Trump than the other media outlets in the United States report on,...

Angels and demons
2020 Agosto Nicaragua
In the weeks before this year’s July 19th anniversary of the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship, the question of how the regime would celebrate...

Can the social majority turn itself into the political majority?
2020 Julio Nicaragua
CID-Gallup used three words to sum up the findings of its latest poll, presented on June 17: “Nicaraguans want change.” That same day, seeing that the...

“Our health system responds to political orders, not to the public”
2020 Junio Nicaragua
After 44 years working in this profession, I am now, for the first time in my life, seeing Nicaraguans asking—crying out for—us to guide them about what...

The regime’s worst hours... to date
2020 Junio Nicaragua
For three months President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, consistently denied the pandemic, ignoring the World Health Organization’s...

“We’re getting better organized to engage the dictatorship”
2020 Abril Nicaragua
The National Coalition, presented to the Nicaraguan public on February 25, was convened by the Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy and the National...

The virus changed everything …
2020 Abril Nicaragua
The COVID-19 virus has drastically changed personal, famlily, national and global plans everywhere, and those of the Ortega regime have been no exception....

The marathon has begun …
2020 Marzo Nicaragua
With more than 60 political prisoners still behind bars, the entire country under official control, paramilitaries flaunting their repressive viciousness...

Continued social polarization or cohesion? A particular look at Masaya
2020 Marzo Nicaragua
What is social polarization? According to the well-known social psychologist Ignacio Martín-Baró, who analyzed the conflicts in the Central American...

2020 will be a year of birth pains
2020 Febrero Nicaragua
Nicaragua is trying to break through the shell of its old political and social history to make way for a new one, but such a birth necessarily involves...

Land takeovers in the 2018 crisis and Nicaragua’s housing deficit
2019 Diciembre Nicaragua
When I woke up in the morning, I heard that everyone was going house to house advising us to go out and see because outsiders and people from around...

“We journalists have taken sides”
2019 Diciembre Nicaragua
Neither as citizens nor as journalists were we prepared for what we have gone through in Nicaragua since April 2018. The Nicaraguan media have developed...

The effects of the unexpected Evo factor
2019 Diciembre Nicaragua
Evo Morales’ government, which enjoyed the best international media image of any in the ALBA group, came to an end following the loss of army and police...

“We already won the elections; now we need to organize to make it real”
2019 Noviembre Nicaragua
The Electoral Reform Promotion Group has been working in Nicaragua since 2002, and has made a very important contribution to this institutional challenge....

Reflections of Nicaragua’s crisis in Latin America’s new social uprisings
2019 Noviembre Nicaragua
Before comparing and contrasting what has been happening the past couple of months in countries as near as Honduras and as far away as Chile with what...

From the UN to a regime that denies its human rights violations
2019 Octubre Nicaragua
A t the onset of Nicaragua’s socio-political and human rights crisis in April 2018, the Of¬fice of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)...

The players move to their own beat as real time advances relentlessly
2019 Septiembre Nicaragua
In this year’s second national survey by the Borge y Asociados polling firm, conducted in mid-July, 63% of those surveyed said the country has not “returned...

The six phases of state repression against the civic uprising
2019 Agosto Nicaragua
Ever since the civic insurrection kicked off in April 2018, the government of Daniel Ortega has responded to the massive peaceful protests with repressive...

Here until 2021… and even beyond?
2019 Agosto Nicaragua
On July 25, Nicaragua’s Student Day, representatives of the different university coalitions formed around the April 2018 rebellion against the Ortega...

Has there ever been rural development in Nicaragua?
2019 Agosto Nicaragua
When we were nomads, our entire lives were in contact with nature. We human beings would interact permanently with the earth, waters, trees, their fruits…...

The beginning of the April uprising…
2019 Agosto Nicaragua
Regardless of the specific nature of all the events examined by the GIEI, the protests were at first peaceful. Use of mortars The marches,...

An ultimatum to the dictatorship?
2019 Julio Nicaragua
Fifteen months after the civic rebellion sparked in April 2018, some analysts say the regime now has some serious dilemmas. It’s clear that “el...

The Ortega–Murillo partnership’s perverse repression and betrayal
2019 Julio Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s history is piled high with battles in defense of its identity. Like the rest of Latin America, the country fought for its political, cultural...

Repression in the prisons and abuse in the courts
2019 Julio Nicaragua
This report examines what happened, after the crackdown in the streets, to many of the hundreds of people arrested by police or abducted by armed pro-government...

The Caribbean Coast’s voice in the Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy
2019 Junio Nicaragua
I still remember when Monsignor David Zywiec, the Catholic bishop of Siuna, up until a few months ago Auxiliary Bishop of Bluefields, called me on...

Will the transition speed up or will Ortega kill the negotiations?
2019 Junio Nicaragua
Although the way out of the national crisis is clear—a serious negotiation that returns civil liberties, guarantees justice to the victims and establishes...

Where’s the way out…?
2019 Mayo Nicaragua
Nicaragua has not had a single day of “normality” since April 2018. The economy is paralyzed, and with no hint of recovery it looks worse every day:...

Today’s challenge for the Blue and White opposition
2019 Mayo Nicaragua
In January 2018, just three months before the April uprising, I wrote in envío that “I refuse to believe today’s youth, despite the heavy dose of entertainment...

“Even with the best agreements, the economy won’t recover until 2023
2019 Abril Nicaragua
I don’t bring good news and probably with what I’ll share I’ll add to the perception that things are much worse than we imagine in Nicaragua. I’ll...

The lasting imprint of pain and indignation
2019 Abril Nicaragua
There are many cases of family members of April’s victims being subjected to revictimization. One exam¬ple of revictimization in found in the consequences...

A year after the April rebellion: Still resisting and searching for resolution
2019 Abril Nicaragua
Way back in May-June 2018, a first round of talks was held to resolve the national political crisis that had been simmering silently for years but boiled...

Negotiation time again: For real or another stall?
2019 Marzo Nicaragua
“We can no longer talk about how we’re going to return to the situation before April. No longer! That has now passed! .... We need to have a table,...

What happened in the Police under Aminta Granera’s command?
2018 Noviembre Nicaragua
The departure of First Commissioner Aminta Granera as chief of the National Police wasn’t a dignified event, quite the contrary. After almost 13 years...

Pressing questions at the end of this year of rebellion
2018 Noviembre Nicaragua
This was a year of economic belt-tightening, largely but not only as a result of the political crisis. If that crisis continues unresolved, the coming...

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...

“We must avoid a civil war at all cost”
2018 Noviembre Nicaragua
There’s nothing good about war. I experienced it for years and I’m increasingly convinced that nothing good comes of it. Now, thanks to what we’ve...

“The regime is using the judicial system as a repressive political weapon”
2018 Octubre Nicaragua
The political crisis we’re going through caught us all by surprise. We were an apathetic society, with even the energy of our youth, which is so fundamental...

A time of uncertainty, a time of hope
2018 Septiembre Nicaragua
Five months into the insurrection of civic consciousness that hit the country in April, President Ortega is now proclaiming that the country is “normalized.”...

Resisting the strategy of terror
2018 Julio Nicaragua
On May 30, when the regime’s police and parapolice—a.k.a. irregular paramilitary groups, thugs, mobs, shock troops—fired on the mammoth Mothers’ Day...

“I’m certain we’ll bring down this dictatorship”
2018 Julio Nicaragua
I’ve known Daniel since we were both young. I was president of the Ramírez Goyena Institute’s student center and leader of the Maestro Gabriel High...

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...

April 2018: An insurrection of the nation’s consciousness
2018 Mayo Nicaragua
Nicaragua hasn’t been front-page news in the international media for years, but we returned to the headlines this historic April and the media will surely...

With the international siege closing in, the social networks are now a target
2018 Abril Nicaragua
The executive branch’s spokeswoman announced on March 12 that the legislative branch would be asked to conduct a “grand national debate” on “issues we...

The dilemmas of this “other time”
2018 Marzo Nicaragua
U S Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s visit to five allied Latin American counties between February 2 and 7 just weeks before his inexplicable firing,...

“We need a strategy for transitioning to democracy”
2018 Marzo Nicaragua
It was anticipated in early 2016, the year of Nicaragua’s latest presidential elections, that Nicaragua’s relations with the United States might take...

“We need a proposal that inspires hope”
2018 Febrero Nicaragua
The results of last November’s municipal elections showed us once again that, aside from independent voters, the majority of whom didn’t vote, Nicaragua’s...

The government and its allies are calling Washington’s cards
2018 Febrero Nicaragua
Never in Daniel Ortega’s presidency these past 11 years has his government experienced the level of tension with Washington it has in the last year or...

Three electoral scenarios in three Nicaraguas
2017 Diciembre Nicaragua
The government’s elite business allies and their lobbyists in Washington, hired to halt approval of the Nica Act designed to sanction the government...

The curtain’s up, the stage set and the script written
2017 Octubre Nicaragua
By unanimous voice vote, the US House of Representatives definitively approved the revised Nica Act on October 3, after Cuban-American Representatives...

Observers of the institutional eclipse
2017 Septiembre Nicaragua
With a month and a half to go before the November 5 municipal elections, historical militants of the once-revolutionary Sandinista National Liberation...

The specter of the Nica Act is hovering over our already endangered economy
2017 Septiembre Nicaragua
I f you were to ask me how Nicaragua’s economy is doing today, I wouldn’t hesitate to say it’s in very good shape, with strong growth. But while economic...

The “buds” are pinning their hopes on the OAS electoral observation
2017 Agosto Nicaragua
On the afternoon of July 19, at the celebration of the 38th anniversary of Nicaragua’s revolution, an already overcast and increasingly angry-looking...

Three economic storm clouds looming in Nicaragua’s skies
2017 Junio Nicaragua
Fernando Delgado, the International Monetary Fund’s mission chief in Nicaragua, presented the IMF’s periodic evaluation of the country’s economy to President...

How can we free ourselves from something this serious?
2017 Mayo Nicaragua
Various analysts who know what goes on behind the scenes in Washington have been telling Nicaragua’s government advisers they’re making a big mistake...

To participate or not to participate: Is that the question?
2017 Abril Nicaragua
Three months into his adminis tration, President Trump has yet to define his policy toward Latin America. The members of Congress who sponsored the...

What can we expect fromthe agreements with the OAS?
2017 Abril Nicaragua
How does one classify Daniel Ortega’s government? The term “electoral authoritarian regime” is being used with increasing frequency to define a particular...

Stripped of its own nature, the Police is a satellite of the regime
2017 Abril Nicaragua
Since 2007 the refrain “Nicaragua, the safest country in Central America” has been promoted both nationally and internationally. Police Director General...

Criminal indifference to the violence on the Caribbean Coast
2017 Marzo Nicaragua
The law defining the communal property regime for the Caribbean Coast’s indigenous peoples and ethnic communities and for the Bocay, Coco, Indio and...

Under pressure, the government is buying time
2017 Marzo Nicaragua
The Ortega-Murillo government is under political pressure on at least two counts: the weight Daniel Ortega’s illegitimate reelection last November 6...

A presidential inauguration under clouding skies
2017 Febrero Nicaragua
President Ortega began his fourth term in office in conditions bearing little resemblance to those that ushered in his second and third terms in 2007...

We’re overwhelmed by an enormous educational backwardness
2017 Febrero Nicaragua
In 2006 a group of education professionals formulated a public proposal we called “Seven priorities of Nicaraguan education.” The objective was to...

“This time they committed the perfect fraud”
2016 Noviembre Nicaragua
Between Daniel Ortega’s first consecutive reelection on November 6, 2011, and his re-inauguration on January 10, 2012, a group of Nicaraguan statis¬ticians...

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...

A new move on the game board: The voters’ massive “NO!”
2016 Noviembre Nicaragua
The governing party was guaranteed a massive victory with no need for ballot fraud this time after having prohibited both national and international...

“We need new, authentic elections and a government of national unity”
2016 Noviembre Nicaragua
So, what now, after the consummated electoral farce of November 6? Answering this question requires us to look further into the future. Discussing...

Armed to the teeth:Nicaragua’s remilitarization
2016 Octubre Nicaragua
In April of this year, the Russian media confirmed that Nicaragua is obtaining lethal materiel via bilateral agreements with Russia. The April 25 Spanish...

At a critical juncture without knowing where we’re bound
2016 Octubre Nicaragua
In response to all the moves by President Ortega to render Nicaragua’s November 6 general elections both a fraud and a farce, the opposition has been...

The Nica Act puts us at high risk but must we repeat the Myth of Sisyphus?
2016 Octubre Nicaragua
The Nicaraguan government’s urgent need to replace Venezuela’s collapsed cooperation with more fiscal resources for its social spending and public investment...

The task right now is to avoid the consolidation of a family dictatorship
2016 Septiembre Nicaragua
How did we get to where we are today? And I’m not talking about how the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) got us here… because it no longer...

To vote or not to vote? That is the question
2016 Septiembre Nicaragua
Vote, abstain, annul one’s vote by damaging the ballot… these choices are causing anguishing discussions among Nicaraguans. The dilemma of whether to...

Not a stone will be left standing…
2016 Agosto Nicaragua
On July 28, Daniel Ortega made one of the most defining decisions of the single-party model he seems bent on imposing on this country: having already...

Nicaragua’s electoral farce augurs a conflict with whoever wins in the US
2016 Agosto Nicaragua
Deputy foreign minister during the revolutionary years, the author recalls the general lines of US-Nicaraguan relations then and analyzes the possible...

Armed and politically motivated: A repeating tragedy
2016 Agosto Nicaragua
Since 1990, the inability, insensitivity and lack of political will of Nicaragua’s successive governments to acknowledge and deal withthe civil war’s...

Though Ortega holds a stacked deck, the opposition played its first cards
2016 Junio Nicaragua
On May 6, at the last possible legal minute, the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) finally issued the official call for this year’s general elections....

Municipal autonomy isn’t a concession, but a right the government has undermined
2016 Junio Nicaragua
Local government autonomy isn’t a gracious concession by central governments. It’s a right all peoples have to govern themselves. Municipal autonomy...

Has the government’s communication strategy worked?
2016 Marzo Nicaragua
I’d like to start by commenting on the findings of some recent surveys in Nicaragua. While I’m quite skeptical of surveys, they are tools to be considered...

Unifying of the dispersed forces and reckless signs of power
2016 Marzo Nicaragua
Raúl Obregón, general manager of the polling firm M&R Consultores, said again in February that President Daniel Ortega is “unbeatable” and that this...

A preliminary sketch of this year’s electoral scenario
2016 Febrero Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the only Latin American country today in which confidence in elections as a civic mechanism for changing government has taken a major dive....

Words for changing course
2015 Julio Nicaragua
Social justice and national sovereignty were General Sandino’s rallying cries. Fifty years later, the Sandinista revolution added three more—political...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2015 Julio Nicaragua
CONFIDENCIAL INVESTIGATES ALBANISA For three months a joint team of journalists from the Nicaraguan weekly bulletin Confidencial...

A country’s foreign policy must defend national interests
2015 Abril Nicaragua
Before commenting on the state of the Ortega government’s international relations it’s useful to establish the conceptual framework on which the essential...

Is Ortega’s project sinking in the quicksand?
2015 Abril Nicaragua
To identify the changes that have taken place in Nicaragua and beyond that don’t favor President Ortega, it’s worth recalling the advice a crony gave...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2015 Abril Nicaragua
IMF MISSION VISITAn International Monetary Fund mission visited Nicaragua for a week between March 4 and 11. Even though Nicaragua has not...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2015 Marzo Nicaragua
TIME PERIODS AND LAND LIMITS TO THE CANAL CONCESSIONEnvironmental lawyer Mónica López Baltodano provided more precise data this month about...

A correct energy strategy must be aimed at Nicaragua’s development
2015 Marzo Nicaragua
Acountry’s total energy demand includes the needs related to transport, light, making machines run, cooking, etc., and is supplied by a variety of sources....

Insecurities in the region’ssafest country
2015 Marzo Nicaragua
THE MONTH Two current realities are causing major insecurity among the peasant populations of various rural areas. In the north, it’s the government’s...

Clouds in the government’s statistical heaven
2014 Septiembre Nicaragua
Extended drought, hunger, thirst, skyrocketing prices for beans and other staples, repercussions from the coffee fungus plague, economic downturn, budget...

The politicizing of the institutions is the greatest risk to our security
2014 Septiembre Nicaragua
It goes without saying that we must condemn the shooting at the convoys of buses taking people back to northern municipalities after celebrating the...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2014 Septiembre Nicaragua
A BIRD? A FISH? A METEORITE?At roughly 11:30 the night of September 6, a huge explosion in a wooded area perilously near Managua’s international...

NICARAGUA BREVES
2014 Agosto Nicaragua
EXPLOSIVES FOR THE CANALTiang Je, an executive of the HKND Group, the Chinese company granted the interoceanic canal construction concession,...

Will we always use violence to deal with our problems?
2014 Agosto Nicaragua
Chinese businessman Wang Jing arrived in Nicaragua on July 5, accompanied by a retinue of functionaries from HKND, the company he says will make the...

What influence will Pope Francis have on the Nicaraguan Church?
2014 Julio Nicaragua
Pope Francis is exercising a notable degree of leadership in global society. The influence he could have on the Catholic Church depends on a number...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2014 Julio Nicaragua
INTEROCEANIC CANALOn June 5, the web page of HKND, the company of Wang Jing, the businessman whom President Ortega granted the right to construct...

Signs of climate change North and South
2014 Julio Nicaragua
After Nicaragua’s bishops presented their 14-page list of Social, institutional and environmental problems and challenges to President Ortega on May...

The bishops’ document: A road map?
2014 Junio Nicaragua
When Archbishop of Managua Leopoldo Brenes returned to Nicaragua on March 4 after having been invested cardinal in Vatican City, we learned that, after...

In search of new horizons for a better Nicaragua
2014 Junio Nicaragua
Mr. President and Madam First Lady, on behalf of all my brother bishops of the Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua, I thank you for the kindness you have...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2014 Junio Nicaragua
POST-EARTHQUAKE After April’s earthquake crisis, described as a “complex event not easy to understand” by Wilfried Strauch, a German scientist...

Would a truth commission be possible here?
2014 Junio Nicaragua
What is transitional justice? What does it mean? It’s a relatively new concept in human rights doctrine that refers to the justice that should be fostered...

Seismic red alert on the Ides of April
2014 Mayo Nicaragua
In ancient Rome, the middle day of each calendar month was called the ides, and was considered to bring good omens. The ides of March went down in history...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2014 Abril Nicaragua
TUMARÍN HIDROELECTRIC PLANTAn agreement of understanding between the Brazilian consortium Electrobras – Queiroz Galvao and CHN of Nicaragua...

Less and less institutionality; more and more inequality
2014 Abril Nicaragua
The New Year kicked off with a surprise for Nicaragua when Pope Francis announced that one of his new cardinals would be Leopoldo Brenes, archbishop...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2014 Marzo Nicaragua
WASHINGTON ON NICARAGUA’S HUMAN RIGHTSThe 2013 US State Department report on the world’s human rights situation, released in February, contained...

Three mirrors to see ourselves in
2014 Marzo Nicaragua
In this globalized and hyper-informed planet on which more than seven billion human beings currently coexist, it’s almost impossible to avoid comparisons...

The Army is the final piece in Ortega’s political Project
2014 Enero Nicaragua
The changes to the Military Code were pushed through with an urgency very similar to what we saw with the constitutional reforms. After extremely limited...

What mutations have turned the FSLN into what it is today?
2014 Enero Nicaragua
What are the essential, most distinctive features of Daniel Ortega’s regime? What ruptures, involutions or mutations can we see in these features and...

Truths about the canal concession all Nicaraguans should know
2014 Enero Nicaragua
My name is Mónica López Baltodano. I am 29 years old. I am a lawyer and notary public with a master’s degree in political studies and am an expert on...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2014 Enero Nicaragua
DECREE ON SOCIAL SECURITY An administrative reform to the social security pension system went into effect on January 1. It was instituted by...

Chronicle of a reform foretold
2013 Diciembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua will have a new Constitution in 2014, imposed by Daniel Ortega through the parliamentary majority he has enjoyed since the 2011 electoral fraud...

The constitutional reforms will institutionalize Ortega’s total control
2013 Diciembre Nicaragua
With the Purísima (Immaculate Conception) festivities nearly upon us and a Christmas mood growing by the day as Managua is lit up by the thousands...

“The reforms favor the long-term absolute power of a person or party”
2013 Diciembre Nicaragua
Honorable members of the National Assembly Special Constitutional Committee to study, consult and issue its findings on constitutional aspects of the...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2013 Diciembre Nicaragua
INTEROCEANIC CANALIn the 19th Climate Change Conference, held in Poland in mid-November, Nicaragua was represented by President Ortega’s public...

Rearming in the north and reforming the Constitution
2013 Noviembre Nicaragua
Right before the Day of the Dead, we learned that the FSLN National Assembly bench had been given a sneak preview of a bill reforming 39 articles of...

NICARAGUA BREVES
2013 Noviembre Nicaragua
HEALTH RED ALERTCentral America is grappling with the most serious dengue epidemic of the past five years. The Pan American Health Organization...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2013 Octubre Nicaragua
NICARAGUA’S CANAL PROJECT: THE UN SPEECH…September 30 was the date of Nicaragua’s turn at the United Nations General Assembly podium. With...

The corporative government’s “miracle”
2013 Octubre Nicaragua
After a 10-month silence, on September 9 Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos finally announced his official response to the International Court of...

Two political initiatives and a canal in times of moral crisis
2013 Septiembre Nicaragua
Meeting in a Managua hotel, representatives from 14 expressions of political and social opposition to the “dictatorial Ortega government” who had come...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2013 Septiembre Nicaragua
NEVER-ENDING TERRITORIAL SQUABBLES WITH COSTA RICA…In a speech on August 13, President Ortega obliquely responded to Costa Rica’s insistence...

The canal and the illusion of development
2013 Agosto Nicaragua
Ongoing dynamic change in the productive and employment structures is crucial to a country’s development. In this process, the productive factors, including...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2013 Agosto Nicaragua
OIL EXPLORATION: WHO OWNS SEAFLOWER?Minister of Energy and Mines Emilio Rappaccioli confirmed the existence of a presidential decree granting...

Notes written beneath the trees of life
2013 Agosto Nicaragua
Is Nicaragua emerging from poverty? Will the interoceanic canal be built or is that megaproject only a fortune cookie prediction? Is the government...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2013 Julio Nicaragua
PETROCARIBE SUMMIT The eighth Petrocaribe Summit was held in Managua between June 27 and 29, and was attended by top officials and Heads of...

The canal will irreversibly damage Lake Cocibolca
2013 Julio Nicaragua
We in the environmentalist organizations were just as surprised as almost all other national sectors by the haste with which the concession to businessman...

The challenge of the others
2013 Julio Nicaragua
It’s been a good while since Nicaragua was the focus of international news. This month two issues caught media attention abroad. One is a macro-project—the...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2013 Junio Nicaragua
FOREIGN MINISTER’S EUROPEAN TOURNicaragua’s Foreign Minister Samuel Santos visited several European Union countries in the third week of May,...

The Grand Canal: Dreams and smokescreens
2013 Junio Nicaragua
In his speech commemorating the birth of General César Augusto Sandino on May 18, President Daniel Ortega reported that during the Central American Presidents’...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2013 Mayo Nicaragua
OPPOSITION TO LAW 779Barely 10 months after the Comprehensive Law against Violence toward Women, an important victory of Nicaragua’s women’s...

Obama, Ortega and “meanwhile” in Venezuela
2013 Mayo Nicaragua
At just before midnight on Sunday, April 14, after Venezuela’s National Electoral Council announced the unexpectedly tight results that gave Nicolás...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2013 Abril Nicaragua
VICE PRESIDENT ATTENDS POPE FRANCIS’ INVESTITURENeither Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega nor First Lady Rosario Murillo went to the investiture...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2013 Marzo Nicaragua
NICARAGUA’S RESPONSE TO THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT CHÁVEZThe evening of March 4, hours after Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s death was announced,...

Is it a bird? A plane? A cultural revolution…?
2013 Marzo Nicaragua
What’s the government’s new ambitious and wide-reaching step all about? Is it a cultural revolution, inserted into what is officially called “the second...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2013 Enero Nicaragua
THE TELEVISA TRIALThe 17 men and 1 woman disguised as journalists for Mexico’s Televisa media network who were captured in August 2012 transporting...

The FSLN is now one family’s political machinery
2013 Enero Nicaragua
I’m often asked how Daniel Ortega got where he is, and how the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) ended up as it has. It’s not a question with...

Uncertainty is in the air
2013 Enero Nicaragua
On December 8, the national celebration of the Immaculate Conception in Nicaragua, things took a dramatic turn in Venezuela. The gravity of President...

Spaces are opening and closing
2012 Diciembre Nicaragua
The November 19 decision by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague overjoyed Nicaragua and deeply upset Colombia. It came only two days...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2012 Diciembre Nicaragua
NICARAGUAN JOYPart of the November 26 message from the Communication and Citizenship coordinator reverberates with celebrations of The Hague...

2012 municipal elections: Chronicle of an outcome foretold
2012 Noviembre Nicaragua
According to the official data of the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE), the FSLN won 134 of the country’s 153 mayoral seats with 67.9% of the total votes....

How we got to these “low intensity” elections
2012 Noviembre Nicaragua
If you were to ask me how reliable I think the upcoming municipal elections will be, I’d have to say hardly. And I’m referring to the technical point...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2012 Noviembre Nicaragua
CONTROVERSIAL PURÍSIMA PUBLICITYAt the initiative of President Ortega and his wife, the government of Nicaragua took steps to get UNESCO to...

The path to the polls
2012 Octubre Nicaragua
As we approach the municipal elections on Sunday, November 4, two of the country’s de facto powers, the business elite and the Catholic hierarchy, took...

“We could have a better country”
2012 Octubre Nicaragua
Mindful of having been called upon to be “co-workers in God’s service” (1 Corinthians 3:9) and “servants of Christ” (1 Corinthians 4:1) in proclaiming...

We’re threatened by a tax reform from the catacombs
2012 Octubre Nicaragua
Ever since President Ortega took office in 2007, he’s been promising a profound change in the country’s tax structure. But he ended his first five-year...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2012 Octubre Nicaragua
MAJOR ENVIRONMENTAL DANGERThe Humboldt Center, a Nicaraguan environmental NGO, unveiled a study in September warning of the environmental dangers...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2012 Septiembre Nicaragua
BOSAWAS IN DANGER OF EXTINCTIONA study financed by the German cooperation agency GTZ on deforestation and the agricultural frontier’s advance...

Silver bullets 25 years after Esquipulas
2012 Septiembre Nicaragua
The silver bullet is laden with symbolism due to the extraordinarily destructive power attributed to it over history. Balas de plata [Silver...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2012 Agosto Nicaragua
TAX REFORM DEBATEThe debate between the government and the business elite over the tax reform the International Monetary Fund (IMF) requires...

Pragmatism and shortsightedness rule the day
2012 Agosto Nicaragua
The Obama government’s decision on granting the Nicaraguan government the property waiver wasn’t expected until the July 31 deadline. But in the end...

The dilemmas of these rainy months
2012 Julio Nicaragua
The dilemmas currently facing virtually all stakeholders—both Nicaraguan and US—aren’t totally new; they’ve been building for months. So perhaps no...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2012 Julio Nicaragua
COSTA RICA REJECTS RULING AGAINST IT ON HIGHWAY ISSUEOn July 2 the six justices of the Central American Court of Justice (CCJ) issued a unanimous...

Trembles, shudders, waivers and narcs
2012 Junio Nicaragua
On May 11, during the American-Nicaraguan Chamber of Commerce lunch to welcome her, Phyllis Powers, the new US ambassador to Nicaragua warned that it...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2012 Junio Nicaragua
NEW DISCOVERIES ABOUT THE RÍO SAN JUAN DISASTERAt the end of May, Costa Rica’s National Roadways Council admitted to the Costa Rican newspaper...

Has municipal autonomy been damaged? And what have we women gained?
2012 Abril Nicaragua
I wasn’t a municipality advocate when we began the “Onda Local” (Local Wave) radio program some 12 years ago. But over the years I realized that...

Talks? Horse-trading? A shady deal? A pact? A national dialogue?
2012 Abril Nicaragua
After the initial indignation of anti-Sandinista voters, the organized opposition and even many Sandinistas following the alleged electoral fraud last...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2012 Abril Nicaragua
MURDER OF FACUNDO CABRALAlejandro Jiménez, a Costa Rican known as “El Palidejo” (paleface), accused of murdering Argentine singer Facundo Cabral...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2012 Marzo Nicaragua
SEXUAL ABUSE IN THE CHURCHRome’s Pontifical Gregorian University held a symposium titled “Towards healing and renewal” in the Vatican during...

Days of ash
2012 Marzo Nicaragua
The fraud so carefully organized by the electoral branch was designed to allow the governing Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) to go less heavy-handedly...

After this fraud, the future will be written with an R
2011 Diciembre Nicaragua
On November 15, the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) proclaimed Daniel Ortega reelected as President of Nicaragua until 2016 and allotted his party 62...

The government must take Gadea’s 800,000 voters into account
2011 Diciembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s history has been plagued by ongoing political conflicts. Even though all have had economic and social causal factors, they were all struggles...

Elections 2011: Nicaragua lost again
2011 Noviembre Nicaragua
Two and a half weeks after election day, Nicaragua remains trapped between two utterly contradictory versions of what happened on November 6 and what...

Disquieting forecasts in the run-up to November 6
2011 Noviembre Nicaragua
Fifteen years ago, Ethics and Transparency (E&T), the Nicaraguan chapter of Transparency International, was only the second or third national electoral...

European Union: A lack of neutrality and transparency
2011 Noviembre Nicaragua
The European Union (EU) Electoral Observation Mission arrived in Nicaragua on October 12 and soon spread out across the country. Led by socialist European...

Ethics and Transparency: The published results don’t merit credibility
2011 Noviembre Nicaragua
Working under a concept of sovereignty and basic rights, the Ethics and Transparency Civic Group did not request authorization from the Supreme Electoral...

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...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2011 Octubre Nicaragua
A TABOO TOPIC GETS AIRED“A taboo topic in the Nicaraguan elections” written by Esteban Beltrán, director of Amnesty International Spain, for...

Last-minute pre-election fears, questions and warning signs
2011 Octubre Nicaragua
Following the fraudulent 2008 municipal elections, the specter of abstention began haunting many of the analyses of what could happen in the presidential...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2011 Septiembre Nicaragua
ORTEGA – GHADDAFIOn September 2, after having delivered four speeches without mentioning what was happening in Libya, President Daniel Ortega...

A civic fiesta, less than healthy competition or utter chaos?
2011 Septiembre Nicaragua
Politicians and journalists have typically trumpeted electoral periods in Nicaragua as a “civic fiesta.” With less than two months to go before election...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2011 Agosto Nicaragua
FACUNDO CABRAL’S MURDERER HAS NICARAGUAN LINKSCentral Americans were deeply moved by the killing on July 9 in Guatemala of Argentine singer-songwriter...

What can and should a new government do about the economy?
2011 Agosto Nicaragua
Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC) candidate Arnoldo Alemán is going around promising to create a million jobs in five years if elected. Edmundo...

Another five years with more of the same?
2011 Agosto Nicaragua
It was assumed that at this year’s costly and colorful July 19 celebration President Ortega would announce some important aspects of the government...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2011 Julio Nicaragua
LEÓN’S COLONIAL CATHEDRAL DECLARED WORLD HERITAGEOn June 28, UNESCO unanimously added León’s Cathedral to its World Heritage list as an expression...

Mysteries, times, fears and challenges
2011 Julio Nicaragua
According to the governing party’s official electoral campaign document, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) believes it is reaching the...

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...

The end of a cycle or another FSLN mutation?
2011 Junio Nicaragua
The 17th Sao Paulo Forum was held in Managua in May. The forum began as an initiative of the Brazilian Workers’ Party in 1990 to discuss with other...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2011 Junio Nicaragua
THE CRISIS IN EL NUEVO DIARIOIn early May El Nuevo Diario’s journalists and public readers spend days of tense concern following an announcement...

All governments have used the police for their own interests
2011 Junio Nicaragua
First of all, we have to look at the historical role played by the police force we founded when we brought downthe Somocista dictatorship, analyzing...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2011 Mayo Nicaragua
CARDINAL OBANDO ATTENDS BEATIFICATIONCardinal Miguel Obando attended the beatification of Pope John Paul II in Rome on May 1 at the invitation...

A storm hit when the sky seemed calm
2011 Mayo Nicaragua
In the second week of April, Walter Porras, general director of Nicaragua’s internal revenue service, the DGI, was suddenly fired. Two months earlier,...

The Five Slots on November’s Ballot
2011 Abril Nicaragua
Meeting the deadline of the electoral calendar prepared by the Supreme Electoral Council, which continues to be headed by magistrates occupying their...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2011 Abril Nicaragua
ORTEGA’S INAUGURAL LESSONThe news in March that the FSLN’s electoral campaign chief in León would be Róger Gurdián, rector of León’s National...

The Libyan Connection
2011 Marzo Nicaragua
Although Libya is over 10,000 kilometers from Nicaragua, a good part of the Nicaraguan population has heard more references to this North African country...

The FSLN Will Surely Win the Presidency But Also Wants a Qualified Majority in Parliament
2011 Marzo Nicaragua
During the Sandinista National Liberation Front’s four years in power, it has primarily concerned itself with reconstructing the country’s economic and...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2011 Marzo Nicaragua
CORRUPTION IN THE ELECTORAL BRANCHFor several days in the last week of February, El Nuevo Diario ran a powerful investigative series...

The Electoral Script
2011 Enero Nicaragua
One of the first campaign documents of the governing Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) makes clear that “2011 isn’t just another presidential...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2011 Enero Nicaragua
THE COSTA RICA-NICARAGUA BORDER DISPUTE GOES ONOn January 11, Nicaragua and Costa Rica appeared before the International Court of Justice (ICJ)...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2010 Diciembre Nicaragua
THE BISHOPS’ LETTEROn November 17, the nine bishops on Nicaragua’s Bishop’s Council released a message which stated, among other things, that...

Knee Deep in the Big Muddy at Year's End
2010 Diciembre Nicaragua
Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary-General José Miguel Insulza described the geography of the Costa Rica-Nicaragua controversy as follows:...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2010 Noviembre Nicaragua
EXCESSIVE RAINS PRODUCED EPIDEMICS AND CROP LOSSESAs a consequence of the copious rains this winter, an outbreak of leptospirosis was detected...

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...

Maktub?
2010 Noviembre Nicaragua
Roberto Rivas—who still illegally occupies the presidency of the Supreme Electoral Council months after his term ended—announced on October 28 that the...

We Don’t Want Fear to Rob Us of Hope
2010 Octubre Nicaragua
We in the We’re Going with Eduardo Movement (VCE) recently decided that Eduardo Montealegre should resign his candidacy in the 2011 presidential elections,...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2010 Octubre Nicaragua
HYDROELECTRIC MEGA-PROJECT In late September, El Nuevo Diario published the details of a mega-project that experts say will cause a mega-environmental...

On Red Alert
2010 Octubre Nicaragua
The intensity and persistence of the rains that have fallen almost daily since mid-May have produced human, social and material disasters in nearly all...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2010 Septiembre Nicaragua
ENDLESS RAINS CAUSE WIDESPREAD DISASTERAfter the climatic phenomenon called El Niño caused severe droughts last year, its sister phenomenon,...

The Sacarrín Effect
2010 Septiembre Nicaragua
There was nothing new about the political environment when the “sacarrín” was suddenly played. The executive branch was consummating its control over...

Municipal Autonomy Is More Threatened than Ever
2010 Agosto Nicaragua
My point of departure—and my arrival point—consist of two key ideas. The first is that municipal autonomy in Nicaragua is facing the greatest risk ever...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2010 Agosto Nicaragua
A MEGA PORT PROJECT IN MONKEY POINTIn the first week of July, it was reported that a memorandum of understanding had been signed between...

Living with Ghosts
2010 Agosto Nicaragua
The huge plaza opposite Lake Xolotlán’s boardwalk was filled to overflowing with hundreds of thousands of people, as usual. And as usual, the multitude...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2010 Julio Nicaragua
MINE-FREE NICARAGUAThe Army of Nicaragua announced on June 18 that the National Humanitarian De-mining Program begun 21 years ago has finally...

The Games We Played During the Soccer World Cup
2010 Julio Nicaragua
As the World Cup knockout stage approached, Nicaragua’s institutional crisis was still where we’d left it before the sound of vuvuzelas started trumpeting...

They Sow Promises, We Harvest Disillusion
2010 Mayo Nicaragua
Nicaragua was affected yet again last year by that recurring climatic phenomenon known as El Niño, an ocean current that causes drought across Central...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2010 Mayo Nicaragua
MANAGUA COULD DISAPPEARIn an event held in Managua on April 13, Argentine geologist José Viramonte was awarded honorary membership by Nicaragua’s...

Broad Brushstrokes and Fine Touches
2010 Mayo Nicaragua
Reelecting Daniel Ortega in 2011 is the Sandinista National Liberation Front’s absolute priority. But given that the Constitution prohibits him running...

Mirages
2010 Abril Nicaragua
March revealed desperation among the actors dominating the nation’s political stage. Hovering over their heads is the National Assembly’s still pending...

The Incredible and Sad Story of The Tax Reform in Three Acts
2010 Abril Nicaragua
When we talk about tax reform in our country, we’re talking about an event that has happened every seven years for the past two decades: episodic changes...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2010 Abril Nicaragua
UNITED STATES AND ARNOLDO ALEMÁN Two US congressional aides, one from the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the other from the House...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2010 Marzo Nicaragua
PLAN TO COMBAT THE DROUGHT’S EFFECTS “WORKED OUT IN SILENCE”In mid-February President Ortega, who appeared concerned about forecasts that the...

The Economy Will Be Austere And Uncertain in 2010 and 2011
2010 Marzo Nicaragua
Unemployment is perhaps the main social and economic problem facing President Daniel Ortega as he enters the fourth of his five-year term and contemplates...

Chaos All Around
2010 Marzo Nicaragua
This year began with a legal urgency that has set time limits. The constitutional terms of 25 officials heading the electoral branch, the Supreme Court...

Chilling Similarities Between Ortega and the Somozas
2010 Enero Nicaragua
In the old days, all armies in Nicaragua bore the seal of the caudillo or party that formed them. That explains why our history is saturated with civil...

A Decision of Principles and a Challenge to Ortega
2010 Enero Nicaragua
We have received a veritable avalanche of opinions in the great public debate unleashed by the dilemma facing the journalists of “Esta Semana” and “Esta...

Nicaragua Briefs
2010 Enero Nicaragua
DROUGHT AND HUNGEROn January 22, the agriculture and forestry minister announced that the government would create technical teams, including...

Stones in Their Shoes
2010 Enero Nicaragua
One of the Ortega government’s various colorful TV propaganda spots tells us that 2010 is a year of “sowing” and 2011 will be one of “reaping.” It’s...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2009 Diciembre Nicaragua
ERNESTO CARDENAL EVICTED FROM HIS OWN HOTELOn orders “from above” and using procedures riddled with irregularities, a group of police officers...

What to Add, What to Subtract, How to Multiply, Who to Divide?
2009 Diciembre Nicaragua
In August 2008 Ortega government sympathizers made such an aggressive attack on opposition members arriving for a demonstration in León that the demonstration...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2009 Noviembre Nicaragua
HURRICANE IDA: THE COAST LASHED AGAINOn November 4, Hurricane Ida hit the tourist centers of Corn Island and Little Corn Island with 75 mph...

Riding the Wind with the Sails Full
2009 Noviembre Nicaragua
Two months ago we analyzed the government’s running of the ship of state and speculated that Daniel Ortega and his team could veer off course and even...

An Urgent Call to Use the Demographic Dividend
2009 Septiembre Nicaragua
On August 8, the Civil Coordinator, a Nicaraguan civil society umbrella organization made up of some 600 nongovernmental organizations, networks and...

Corruption Is the Most Serious Aspect of The Ortega-Chávez Relationship
2009 Septiembre Nicaragua
Daniel Ortega began governing before Obama was elected, when the US government was dominated by the most rightwing conservatives. He also began when...

The Wind in Its Sails, Adrift or About to Run Aground?
2009 Septiembre Nicaragua
From the outset, Daniel Ortega’s new government charted its course according to economic and political coordinates. Economically, it concentrated on...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2009 Agosto Nicaragua
WORLD COURT DECIDES RÍO SAN JUAN CASEAlter disputes that have dragged on for 11 years, the 15 justices of the International Court of Justice...

With Major New Structural Reforms, The Ball’s Now in Our Court
2009 Agosto Nicaragua
To assess what Daniel Ortega’s government has done after 30 months in office, the halfway mark, it seems to me that the first starting point should be...

Major Signs of Crisis, Minor Signs of Flexibility
2009 Agosto Nicaragua
The 30th anniversary of the in-surrection that ended half a century of Somoza family dictatorship found the FSLN government limited by an escalating...

Explaining the FSLN’s Constitutional Reform Proposal
2009 Julio Nicaragua
Before analyzing the constitutional reform project the FSLN hopes to push through the National Asasembly this year, it would be useful to recall some...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2009 Julio Nicaragua
INFLUENZA A (H1N1) HITS NICARAGUAAfter several weeks in which the Ministry of Health attributed the new pandemic’s absence in Nicaragua to the...

Thirty Years Seen Through the Time Tunnel
2009 Julio Nicaragua
Managua became a continental political epicenter again on June 29. In three successive summits—the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), the...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2009 Junio Nicaragua
MISKITU INDEPENDENCE SUPPORTED IN SOUTHIn an act held in Bluefields in May, representatives of the Miskitu population in Nicaragua’s southern...

El Salvador and Nicaragua: So Near and Yet So Far
2009 Junio Nicaragua
President Daniel Ortega made a last-minute decision not to show up at President Mauricio Funes’ inauguration the morning of June 1, despite his announced...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2009 Mayo Nicaragua
ANOTHER CHÁVEZ PROMISEAt the Seventh Summit of Latin American Bolivarian Alternative (ALBA) countries, held just before the Summit of the Americas...

Politics in the Time of Virus
2009 Mayo Nicaragua
Human influenza, nee swine flu, has not yet invaded Nicaragua. A presidential decree of two months of emergency, widespread publicizing of preventive...

The Crisis Cries for Dialogue but the Government Polarized the Country
2009 Abril Nicaragua
The economic crisis and how to deal with it is the main concern uniting all of humanity today. It’s already affecting everyone, including us in Nicaragua....

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2009 Abril Nicaragua
JOE BIDEN MEETS WITH THE REGION’S PRESIDENTSIn mid-March a Summit of Progressive Governments was held in which US Vice President Joe Biden...

Vulnerable to the Bottom-feeding Suckermouth
2009 Abril Nicaragua
The first Panama Suckermouth was accidentally caught a year ago in the Nacarime Lagoon, in Rivas. After 10 hours out of water the fish was still moving,...

Looking at the Ruins of a Defiled Electoral Process
2009 Marzo Nicaragua
Since its founding in 1996, the Ethics and Transparency Civic Group (E&T) has observed 9 electoral processes in Nicaragua and accompanied them in over...

Blow by Blow, Step by Step, The Global Crisis Is Hitting Us Hard
2009 Marzo Nicaragua
The main characteristic of this new world economic crisis is that it started in the North, in the developed world. Unlike the most recent important...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2009 Marzo Nicaragua
A LITTLE TRANSPARENCY PROBLEM The director of the government’s Zero Hunger program, Gustavo Moreno, resigned his post on February 10, after...

Before the Night Gets Much Darker…
2009 Marzo Nicaragua
On Saturday, February 28, a dozen civic organizations organized street demonstrations in eight Nicaraguan cities “against the electoral fraud, the dictatorship...

Public Finances, and Thus the Common Good, Are Being Abused
2009 Enero Nicaragua
We’re going through an exceptional situation in Nicaragua right now. Eight new factors have appeared, or at least they’re happening for the first time...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2009 Enero Nicaragua
FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE?Following the Latin American presidential summit in Brazil in mid-December, where he failed to get a word of support...

Abuse as Usual Means Many Accounts to Settle
2009 Enero Nicaragua
The crisis triggered by last November’s fraudulent municipal elections monopolized the political scene in Nicaragua for over two months. Then on January...

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....

Three New Year Scenarios
2008 Diciembre Nicaragua
In another week or two we will have reached the New Year and the halfway mark of President Daniel Ortega’s term in office. The structural problems dragging...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2008 Diciembre Nicaragua
OFFICIAL ELECTION RESULTSThe Supreme Electoral Council’s highly challenged results gave the Liberal Alliance 37 mayoral seats, four of which...

These Elections Were Won by Both Fraud and Theft
2008 Diciembre Nicaragua
We’re wondering whether we committed the sin of ingenuousness by agreeing to participate in elections so plagued with anomalies, because throughout this...

Brief Notes on Foreign Cooperation At This Time of Uncertainty
2008 Diciembre Nicaragua
* According to the projections of the Medium-term Budget Framework attached to the 2008 Budget bill, the foreign cooperation resources to be disbursed...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2008 Noviembre Nicaragua
EDGAR TIJERINO’S VOW OF SILENCEOn October 15, the influential Nicaraguan sports journalist Edgard Tijerino announced he would no longer be making...

International NGOs Won’t Give Up Our Work or Reason for Being Here
2008 Noviembre Nicaragua
Mundubat is part of the Secretariat of International nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working in Nicaragua, an umbrella organization that represents...

Nicaragua Is the Municipal Elections’ Big Loser
2008 Noviembre Nicaragua
Nicaraguans voted for new municipal authorities in the middle of a planetary economic crisis. Although it has hit this fragile country hard, President...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2008 Octubre Nicaragua
ZOILAMÉRICA CLOSES HER CASEOn September 26, Attorney General Hernán Estrada presented a letter sent by Zoilamérica Narváez—who charged her stepfather...

We Allied with the PLC Hoping to Transform Liberalism
2008 Octubre Nicaragua
If Nicaragua has suffered from something in the last five years, it’s a marked lowering of the tolerance leyels in our political class and our population....

The Rules of the Game
2008 Octubre Nicaragua
We’re heading toward an electoral November. On Tuesday, November 4, US voters will choose between Obama and McCain, with the entire planet watching....

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2008 Septiembre Nicaragua
ORTEGA DIDN’T GO TO PARAGUAY…Although President Ortega was among those invited to the ceremony at which former Catholic Bishop Fernando Lugo...

I Know the FSLN’s History Well, But I Can’t Envision Its Future
2008 Septiembre Nicaragua
I’ve never been a theoretician of anything; I’m not an intellectual. What I am is a practical man; an operator, a “shoemaker,” as they once called me....

Criticism Isn’t Synonymous with Hatred
2008 Septiembre Nicaragua
It’s not pure speculation to assume that Daniel Ortega views this five-year term of government (2007-2011) as a “transition” to the next one. By that...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2008 Agosto Nicaragua
JULY 19 CELEBRATION OF THE SANDINISTA REVOLUTIONThe government celebrated the 29th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution with at least 300,000...

The Path Taking Us “There”
2008 Agosto Nicaragua
Many have already qualified the upcoming municipal elections as a referendum on the first two years of Daniel Ortega’s second shot at governing the country,...

Rescuing and Renovating Sandinismo: A Critique of Nicaraguan Heroic Culture
2008 Julio Nicaragua
While it presents itself as a leftist option, the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) Alliance hasn’t succeeded in putting together a body of thought...

Nicaragua’s Drastic Situation Obliged Me to Go on a Hunger Strike
2008 Julio Nicaragua
The Supreme Electoral Council took away the legal status of the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) to prevent us from participating in November’s municipal...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2008 Julio Nicaragua
NICHO MARENCOIn the first days of Dora María Téllez’s hunger strike, Dionisio Marenco, longtime FSLN luminary and currently mayor of Managua,...

Where Are We After 29 Years, And After 290 Hours?
2008 Julio Nicaragua
When the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) magistrates announced on May 23 that they were canceling the legal status of the Sandinista Renovation Movement...

We Need More Action and Less Talk About the Food Crisis
2008 Junio Nicaragua
We hear about the food crisis around the world every day. We in the cooperative movement are working to educate our associates to understand this problem...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2008 Junio Nicaragua
ABNORMAL CLIMATIC ACTIVITYTropical storm Alma hit Nicaragua’s Pacific zone with unexpected force on May 29. The damage caused by its 60-mile-an-hour...

Nicaraguans Squeezed on All Sides
2008 Junio Nicaragua
There are moments when every thing just seems to hit at the same time. Last month was like that. The global energy crisis, one of the roots of the...

Reflections on the Daily Violation Of the Secular State
2008 Mayo Nicaragua
Secularism is one of the main conquests in the fight for freedom of conscience, human rights, tolerance and democracy. Anywhere religious fundamentalism...

We Have More Important Rights Pending Than Just the Vote
2008 Mayo Nicaragua
The Caribbean Coast hit the national headlines again on April 4 due to a violent confrontation in the streets of Bilwi between different factions of...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2008 Mayo Nicaragua
THE CENI CONFLICT RAGES ONContinuing the confusing and contradictory way the government has been treating the controversial case of the bank...

The Sea, the Ship And the Uncertain Course
2008 Mayo Nicaragua
The relentless rise in international oil and food prices is a constant item in the agitated sea of international news. Many people around the world...

Sixteen Years Lost in Five Agreements with the IMF
2008 Abril Nicaragua
In September 1991, Nicaragua signed an 18-month “stand-by” program with the IMF in its first agreement with that institution after the FSLN’s 1990 electoral...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2008 Abril Nicaragua
THE VIOLENCE JUST KEEPS ON GROWINGThe director of the National Police’s Women’s Police Stations, Commissioner Mercedes Ampié, revealed that...

La Chureca and the North Caribbean: Two Man-Made Crises
2008 Abril Nicaragua
Managua spent the whole of March grappling with a “garbage crisis.” In part it was a battle of poor against poor, the kind nobody wins. But insofar...

Indignant (and Substantiated) Clues To the CENI Fraud and Renegotiation
2008 Marzo Nicaragua
The Ortega government is accusing Liberal opposition leader Eduardo Montealegre of responsibility for the whole fraud related to the Central Bank’s Negotiable...

CPCs Around the Country Are Waiting For ‘Guidance’ from Higher Up
2008 Marzo Nicaragua
The Local Democracy and Development Network is a collection of civil society organizations and individuals that works on three main themes: civic participation,...

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,...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2008 Marzo Nicaragua
ANICARAGUA’S STARVED FUTURE Research by the Nutrition Unit of the Education Ministry’s Comprehensive School Nutrition Program (PINE) has revealed...

Lots of Clashes, Little Light And Still No Way Forward
2008 Marzo Nicaragua
The Ortega-Murillo government has definitely reorganized the set on the country’s political and economic stage, transforming whole areas and redecorating...

Storm Clouds of Ambiguous Days (Or the Ambiguities of Stormy Days)
2008 Enero Nicaragua
The end of 2007 was especially tense, both economically and politically. And because the calendar’s imaginary cutoff date does nothing to dissipate...

Ten Reflections in Defense of Freedom of Expresión
2008 Enero Nicaragua
Quoting his father, Carlos Fernando began, “As long as there is a typewriter, a sheet of paper, a microphone, a public square, a balcony or any space...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2007 Diciembre Nicaragua
IBERO-AMERICAN SUMMITAlthough playing a seconding role, Nicaragua’s President took part in the incident between the King of Spain and the President...

How Many Conflicts Will the New “Direct Democracy” Trigger?
2007 Diciembre Nicaragua
President Daniel Ortega had begun to talk of setting up “direct democracy” in Nicaragua even before winning the elections and continued to insist on...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2007 Noviembre Nicaragua
HURRICANE FELIX: HELP AND HUNGERA month and a half after Hurricane Felix ravaged the North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN), Laura De Clementi,...

Gambling Away Our Future with Decisions We’re Making Today
2007 Noviembre Nicaragua
A little over a month ago macro-economy specialists were expressing their satisfaction in the media: we had finally come to an agreement with the International...

With Water, Water Everywhere, Who’s on the President’s Ark?
2007 Noviembre Nicaragua
One year after the FSLN’s squeaky victory in the presidential elections, there is still a generalized feeling of uncertainty in the country. Many of...

Notes on a Scandal Of Historic Proportions
2007 Octubre Nicaragua
2006, October: A number of Sandinista women with the ear of FSLN National Assembly representatives tell them they have committed a gross human...

Nicaragua Briefs
2007 Octubre Nicaragua
MONEY LAUNDERINGWhile inaugurating a seminar on research techniques for financial crimes for officials of Nicaragua’s police department, attorney...

Nicaragua’s Justice System: A Portrait in Grays
2007 Octubre Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s judicial branch is always on the spot. The country has never had an authentic judicial system where that old principle of “give each one...

Ba’ra sma ki? The Caribbean’s Challenge
2007 Octubre Nicaragua
All witnesses of the now devastated communities in the North Caribbean, including two people who lived through the experience and write about it in these...

You Can’t Organize People and Raise Consciousness by Decree
2007 Septiembre Nicaragua
The first question we need to clear up if we’re going to analyze this Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) government is whether or not we’re...

Seven Messages from Power and One from the Left
2007 Septiembre Nicaragua
Beyond the judicial aberration, the disregard of a branch of state, the abuse committed by the caudillos’s “yes men” on the Supreme Court, the...

The FSLN Government Pieces Together Its New International Policy Puzzle
2007 Septiembre Nicaragua
In the early morning of September 4, Hurricane Felix passed directly over the Miskito Keys off Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast then made landfall at the...

It’s Up to Us to Curtail the Government’s Authoritarianism
2007 Agosto Nicaragua
There’s a saying that “a leopard is known by its spots.” Seven months into the government of Daniel Ortega we have enough spots to get a pretty good...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2007 Agosto Nicaragua
ALEMÁN’S TRIAL SET IN PANAMAOn July 20, Panamanian criminal judge Adolfo Mejía subpoenaed former Nicaraguan President Arnoldo Alemán, his wife,...

The Cards Are on the Table
2007 Agosto Nicaragua
July is always a month of political happenings, and this year was no exception. In fact it produced even more novelties than in recent years. The...

“We’re Still Concerned about the Human Rights Situation”
2007 Julio Nicaragua
When Daniel Ortega was elected President, his sym-pathizers said to us in the Nicaraguan Human Rights Center (CENIDH), “You’re going to have no reason...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2007 Julio Nicaragua
DRUG TRAFFICKING AND THE JUDICIAL SYSTEMAs the National Police (PN) continued hammering away at the logistics of the international drug trade...

The Ortega-Murillo Project: Personal, Family, National or International?
2007 Julio Nicaragua
The leitmotifs of the preparations for the 28th anniversary of the revolution are established in a series of gigantic billboards that appeared all over...

In Defense of the Existing Civic Participation
2007 Junio Nicaragua
The Civil Coordinator is an autonomous coordinating body of Nicaragua’s civil society sectors, made up of unions, federations, associations, foundations,...

“Gerardo Miranda And We the Thieves”
2007 Junio Nicaragua
Carlos Fernando Chamorro and the team of the Esta Semana current affairs television program have earned a place in the history of the fight against...

The Sound of Silence and The Noise of Tola
2007 Junio Nicaragua
The political and economic project of the government of “unity and reconciliation,” as the Ortega-Murillo government has labeled itself, has been taking...

Rural Development Can’t Be Resolved in Secret
2007 Mayo Nicaragua
I’m talking as a farmer and a representative of a good part of Nicaragua’s rural cooperatives. We’re active farmers, convinced that our heads aren’t...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2007 Mayo Nicaragua
THREE MINISTERS FIRED ALREADYIn the first hundred days of his new government, President Ortega fired three Cabinet ministers, all of them women....

Where Are We Heading?
2007 Mayo Nicaragua
The new government’s first hundred days sparked a plethora of analyses, most of which considered that it lacked a defined program. Almost certainly...

Navigating the Contradiction Between democracy and Social Justice
2007 Abril Nicaragua
I’ve observed that in the last 16 years of neoliberal ad-ministrations, the Nicaraguan state has used a government plus transnational corporations formula....

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2007 Abril Nicaragua
THE DEBATE OVER ETHANOL HEATS UPAfter George W. Bush’s trip through Latin America in March, the issue of producing bio-fuels to replace the...

A Hundred Days in Babel
2007 Abril Nicaragua
In the biblical Babel—the Hebrew name for the city of Babylon located in what was then Mesopo- tamia and is now occupied and bloodied Iraq—there was...

Needed Reflections on the New Government’s Communication Policy
2007 Marzo Nicaragua
The government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has a golden opportunity in the communications field, as it does in so many other areas, to lay the...

The Government Wasn’t Able to Change the Budgetary Policy
2007 Marzo Nicaragua
Although the national budget bill for 2007 was only sent to the National Assembly a few days ago and has still been seen only by the country’s legislators,...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2007 Marzo Nicaragua
ARNOLDO ALEMÁN MEDDLES IN LIBERAL UNITY TALKSIn an interview for the Univision TV network, broadcast on February 15 in Miami and repeated...

Sixty Days On: Signals, Seals and Superficiality
2007 Marzo Nicaragua
Two months into its term, the new government presided over by Daniel Ortega and his ever-present wife, Rosario Murillo, is still touting the slogan of...

The Hopes, Dreams and Fears Are Already Starting to Unfold
2007 Febrero Nicaragua
Each step in the ceremony marking Daniel Ortega’s return to the presidential office on Jan- uary 10 sent out signals that delighted some and worried...

What Must We Defend in Negotiations with the IMF?
2007 Febrero Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s three-year program with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the framework of the agreement on Financial Service for Poverty Reduction...

“The Mettle of Our Civil Society Is Going to Be Put to the Test”
2007 Febrero Nicaragua
The official publication of Decree 03-2007, the third one Daniel Ortega issued the day he was sworn into office on January 10, has triggered serious...

Who’s Who in the New Cabinet
2007 Febrero Nicaragua
Following the FSLN’s electoral victory, the greatest speculation revolved around the makeup of the new government Cabinet. Despite the best efforts...

Nicaragua Briefs
2007 Febrero Nicaragua
MRS ALLIANCE BETRAYED BY TWO OF ITS LEGISLATORSThe MRS Alliance, which won five legislative seats in the elections last November 5, ended...

From “Governing from Below” To Governing Right Up at the Top
2006 Noviembre Nicaragua
After 16 years making good on his promise to “govern from below” following his defeat in the 1990 elections, Daniel Ortega finally re-won the presidency...

A Respectful Message to The Sandinista Movement
2006 Noviembre Nicaragua
I think the vote for the MRS Alliance was considered and rational. It was a difficult vote for a part of the elector-ate because it required a psychological...

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,...

The FSLN in the National Assembly: Pact with the PLC or Ally with the ALN?
2006 Noviembre Nicaragua
Although the Sandinista National Liberation Front’s electoral victory can be qualified in different ways, the fact that its candidates and propaganda...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2006 Noviembre Nicaragua
CONSTITUTIONAL REFORMSThe constitutional reforms pushed through in 2005 by the FSLN and PLC benches in accord with the pact between their leaders...

In Tight Elections, Annulling Votes Can Change the Results
2006 Octubre Nicaragua
Citizens who participate in elections normally judge them as good or bad based on whether their favored candidates won or lost. For electoral observers,...

Surprises and Special Effects On the Way to Election Day
2006 Octubre Nicaragua
After a long hiatus in his public declarations about national politics and the electoral process, the US ambassador in Nicaragua, Paul Trivelli, announced...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2006 Octubre Nicaragua
MASSIVE METHANOL POISONINGIn early September, the hospital in León suddenly began to fill up with patients suffering from severe cardiac, renal...

Are We Ready to Leap Out of Poverty In a Single Bound?
2006 Septiembre Nicaragua
This year’s electoral campaign officially kicked off on August 19. Under the slogan “Nicaragua united will triumph,” the Sandinista National Liberation...

Nicaragua Briefs
2006 Septiembre Nicaragua
ABORTION CONTROVERSYOn August 10, the final day of festivities honoring Santo Domingo, Managua’s patron saint, the tiny statue was carried through...

How Things Stacks Up on the Official Campaign Starting Date
2006 Agosto Nicaragua
Saturday, August 19, was the official starting date for this year’s national elections, but it was pure formality. Most of the five parties running...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2006 Agosto Nicaragua
OAS ELECTORAL OBSERVERS CRITICAL OF PROCESSThe following obstacles to the country’s electoral process are underscored in a report submitted...

“Nicaragua Deserves a Decent Government”
2006 Agosto Nicaragua
We’re going into these elections with a seriously challenged electoral institutionality. Hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans still don’t have a voter...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2006 Julio Nicaragua
HOW MANY ARE WE?On June 29 the Nicaraguan Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INEC) presented the results of its eighth population census...

Has a Neoliberal Democracy Been Institutionalized in Nicaragua?
2006 Julio Nicaragua
One of the crucial questions we should ask ourselves in Nicaragua’s current political context is whether a neoliberal democracy has been institutionalized...

Herty Lewites: Now a “Spiritual Candidate”
2006 Julio Nicaragua
Just as the presidential candidates were moving into position for the official starting bell of this year’s electoral race, Herty Lewites’ heart stopped...

First Identikit of the Four Bands
2006 Junio Nicaragua
One definition of band is a musical group, with its repertoire, instruments, fans, managers and patrons. Another is a group organized to commit evil...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2006 Junio Nicaragua
CENI BOND INVESTIGATION SINGES SOME FEATHERSThe institutional investigation into the CENI bonds continued through May. The CENIs were issued...

Is Nicaragua’s Electoral Race Between Trivelli and Chávez?
2006 Mayo Nicaragua
Washington seems to have finally grasped that Arnoldo Alemán still controls the Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC), thanks to his skilled handling...

“We’re Independent Leftists”
2006 Mayo Nicaragua
Are you a leftist and is your alliance a leftist movement? The alliance we’re building is a modern Left, where we want things to function...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2006 Mayo Nicaragua
THE CENI BONDS: A MAMMOTH FRAUD?In early April, the Comptroller General’s Office (CGR) opened an investigation into the domestic debt dragging...

75 Days to Jockey for Position
2006 Abril Nicaragua
One major slot remained to be filled on the presidential ballot for the November 5 general elections. With the selection of José Rizo as the Constitutionalist...

Why We Joined the Movement to Rescue Sandinismo
2006 Abril Nicaragua
Our Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) was that of Carlos Fonseca and we first knew about it through the mysterious paintings that appeared...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2006 Marzo Nicaragua
POLITICAL WITCHCRAFTA hand-rolled cigar riddled with pins and dripping with sulfur appeared in the Supreme Court’s plenary hall on February...

Coast Elections: Whose Temperature Was Taken?
2006 Marzo Nicaragua
On March 5, voters on the Caribbean side of Nicaragua had their fifth opportunity to elect the 45 Regional Council members in what is officially called...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2006 Enero Nicaragua
INTERBANK CASE DISMISSEDOn December 14, with public opinion turned to festive matters, Sandinista judge David Rojas definitively dismissed all...

Eyes on November And the South
2006 Enero Nicaragua
For many reasons Nicaragua was at the center of world attention in the eighties. That’s how we felt, and that’s how we were seen. As of 1990, that...

While the Left Is Modernizing, The Right Is Stagnating
2005 Diciembre Nicaragua
While it is true that “Left” as a political concept has lost programmatic clarity, this should not push us into tossing out its ethical-political meaning,...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2005 Diciembre Nicaragua
ALEMÁN’S TRIAL IN PANAMA POSTPONEDThe great expectations created in the Nicaraguan media about former President Arnoldo Alemán’s trial in Panama...

New Times? Güegüense Times
2005 Diciembre Nicaragua
The Nicaraguan play El Güegüense o Macho-Ratón, written in Spanish and Nahuatl by an anonymous playwright, has been a cultural treasure of our...

“The Alliance Around Herty Lewites Is a Unique Opportunity We Mustn’t Waste”
2005 Diciembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua is going through extremely serious times right now, and the worst thing that could happen would be for things to remain exactly the same after...

Alemán Still Controls the PLC and Will Hand Ortega the Victory
2005 Noviembre Nicaragua
It’s possible to predict the passing of a comet three centuries before it arrives, and meteorologists can forecast the weather for the next four or five...

Nicaragua Briefs
2005 Noviembre Nicaragua
DRUG MONEY GOES MISSINGA huge scandal involving a Supreme Court justice, various judges and an unnamed notary public—all of them mutual friends...

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 Hands that Rock... Just About Everything
2005 Noviembre Nicaragua
On October 10, as the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States was being debated in the National Assembly, Daniel Ortega met privately...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2005 Octubre Nicaragua
CONFLICT HEATS UP AGAIN OVER THE RÍO SAN JUANNicaragua and Costa Rica rekindled their long-time conflict over the Río San Juan, which marks...

How Will This Interminable Conflict End?
2005 Octubre Nicaragua
One of the first missions of José Miguel Insulza, the new secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS), involved a brief trip to Nicaragua...

More of the Same? Or Have We Touched Bottom?
2005 Septiembre Nicaragua
The institutional war that has put President Bolaños between the rock of the bipartite pact and the legal hard place that the PLC-FSLN constructed piece...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2005 Septiembre Nicaragua
ELECTORAL BRANCH REELECTS LEADERSHIPAfter a month without holding its scheduled elections and 25 sessions scheduled then aborted because the...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2005 Agosto Nicaragua
BOLAÑOS’ SON DIES AT 50President Bolaños’ youngest son Jorge died at the age of 50 on July 27. He was rushed from Managua to a Miami hospital...

Garza Returns to Untie the Gordian Knot
2005 Agosto Nicaragua
Oliver Garza, US ambassador to Nicaragua during the government of Arnoldo Alemán, returned on July 22. His successor, Barbara Moore, has just completed...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2005 Julio Nicaragua
MEGA-SALARIES SLASHED... BRIEFLYThe National Assembly finally approved the salary regulation law in June. This law, so unpopular with all the...

“This Crisis Began in the FSLN, With an Unethical Pact”
2005 Julio Nicaragua
Nicaragua continues to suffer from an ongoing, chronic crisis, a crisis of poverty and backward-ness, of government incapacity, and of the incapacity...

Why So Little Social Mobilization?
2005 Julio Nicaragua
The Sandinista Revolution provided one of the greatest examples of grassroots participation, organization and decision making in the history of Latin...

Punches and Counterpunches; Proposals and Counterproposals
2005 Julio Nicaragua
The huge gap between the “real country” and the “legal country”—that brilliantly useful distinction invented by Octavio Paz, used by Carlos Fuentes and...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2005 Junio Nicaragua
CIVIL COORDINATOR GIVEN A RUN FOR ITS MONEYThe Civil Coordinator, an umbrella group of some 450 social organizations and NGOs formed originally...

The Energy Crisis Explained
2005 Junio Nicaragua
According to data of the United Nations’ Economic Commission on Latin America (ECLA), updated in 2003, 72% of Nicaragua’s electrical energy capacity...

A Divided, Divvied Up and Directionless Country
2005 Junio Nicaragua
Will Enrique Bolaños finish out his term? What side will the army take in the conflict between the branches of government? Is the country moving toward...

Quito Isn’t Managua, Ecuador Isn’t Nicaragua
2005 Mayo Internacional
In Ecuador, the people of Quito, indignant at judicial manipulation to grant impunity to a corrupt former ruler, took to the streets in mid-April...

The Fuel Crisis and The Sparks that Ignite It
2005 Mayo Nicaragua
Once again international news headlines announced “Violence in Nicaragua,” a replay right down to the images from a few years ago: flaming tires in Managua’s...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2005 Mayo Nicaragua
ROUGH JUSTICE FOR FUTURE POLICE CHIEF?On April 16, as the protests against the bus fare hike began to peak, President Bolaños surprisingly...

Vortexes in All Three Vertexes Of the Triangle
2005 Abril Nicaragua
Some months ago, historian, Conservative politician and former foreign minister Emilio Álvarez Montalván came up with a useful metaphor when he wrote...

Hawks, Missiles, Pressure, Reasons and Resistance
2005 Abril Nicaragua
In March, the US government stepped up its pressure on the Nicaraguan Army to destroy all of its shoulderheld surface-to-air missiles, which are the...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2005 Abril Nicaragua
NICARAGUA BRIEFS NEMAGON VICTIMS WIN A ROUNDDozens of impoverished peasant families, some of the men and women terminally ill from the direct...

Herty Lewites’ Movement Has a Sandinista Heart
2005 Abril Nicaragua
I bout five years ago now, I explained to envío why I withdrew from the FSLN, or more exactly, why I became inactive. I recall some of the things...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2005 Marzo Nicaragua
BLOODY EVICTION: WHO’S AT FAULT?A group of squatters took over about ten hectares of land on the outskirts of Chinandega on February 23, but...

Breaking Free of Fear To Defend Ideas and Rights
2005 Marzo Nicaragua
Herty Lewites’ rebellion has put Daniel Ortega in check, leading him to display the worst side of his personality. In just one week, Ortega’s measures...

“We Must All Demand the Restructuring of the Domestic Debt”
2005 Marzo Nicaragua
When we in the Civil Coordinator began to research and reflect on the national budget, some found such macroeconomic issues too complicated and...

Lessons from the Teachers …and the Former Mayor
2005 Marzo Nicaragua
The new school semester opened late this year. Nicaragua’s pathetically underpaid public school teachers, tired of asking for justifiable raises without...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2005 Febrero Nicaragua
BOLAÑOS ON THE ASIAN TSUNAMI: AN INSPIRING FUNDRAISEROn January 10, while presenting his annual report to the National Assembly, President...

A Free-Wheeling Tragicomedy
2005 Febrero Nicaragua
The events of November, December and well into January of this year were called many things. Some branded them an “institutional catastrophe,” others...

Daniel Ortega's Fear Of the Winds He Sowed
2005 Febrero Nicaragua
Used to giving orders and having them carried out, FSLN general secretary Daniel Ortega is facing the biggest challenge to his absolute power in the...

Today's Political Crisis Is Good for Pushing Social Demands
2005 Febrero Nicaragua
The culture of cutting political deals, making pacts and then re-tooling them is now so much a part of Nicaraguan political life that we could be forgiven...

Year-end Fireworks in the Legal Country and the Real One
2005 Enero Nicaragua
While Nicaraguans always celebrate the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, Christmas and the New Year with deafening firecrackers, the joint pyrotechnics...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2005 Enero Nicaragua
POLITICAL DIPS IN TISCAPAOn December 1, as he had earlier promised, outgoing mayor of Managua Herty Lewites went for a dip in Laguna Tiscapa,...

2004 Municipal elections: FSLN-Convergence Victory in Numbers
2004 Noviembre Nicaragua
The polls predicted a Sandinista victory, but not such a huge one. Before the day was over on Sunday, November 7, the FSLN-Convergence had run away...

The Electoral Test: A Ray of Hope on a Dark Horizon
2004 Noviembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s November 7 municipal elections gave the FSLN and its ally the National Convergence a major victory and the PLC a serious defeat, while relegating...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2004 Noviembre Nicaragua
LA PRENSA JOURNALIST KILLEDOn November 9, two days after the elections, local La Prensa correspondent María José Bravo was murdered in Santo...

2004: Municipal Elections: Connecting Dots for the Bigger Picture
2004 Noviembre Nicaragua
It’s still too soon to draw definitive conclusions about the causes and consequences of the electoral results. Nonetheless, some common elements have...

The 2004 Municipal Elections: Final Forecasts
2004 Octubre Nicaragua
Less than a month away from the November 7 municipal elections, there appears to be little enthusiasm among potential voters. The positions of the different...

They Overturned the Table With the Dice Still in the Air
2004 Octubre Nicaragua
President Bolaños’ conflicts with the judicial and legislative branches—both of which are split almost evenly between his adversaries, the FSLN and...

These Elections Will Test the Convergence’s Validity and Future
2004 Octubre Nicaragua
The National Convergence is an alliance of political parties, groups and individual personalities. The parties include the FSLN and the MRS, both...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2004 Octubre Nicaragua
CAFTA DECREE DRAWS SMALL AUDIENCEOn October 5, ten months after the fact, President Bolaños presented to the National Assembly the presidential...

Alone and Weak, But Oh So Sure of His Shaky Ground
2004 Septiembre Nicaragua
This last month the country found itself again “overlook-ing the abyss,” facing a “monstrous political crisis” and “institutional chaos.” Is it just...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2004 Septiembre Nicaragua
EASY FOR BOLAÑOS TO SAY September 6 completed the 20-day deadline set by Islamic groups supposedly linked to the Al Qaeda network for the government...

The Northwest, North and Center North: Electoral Analysis and Forecasts
2004 Septiembre Centroamérica
The elections to decide who will run Nicaragua’s 152 municipalities will be held on November 7. And while the politically important Managua municipal...

The Way Out of the Labyrinth Is Long, but Possible
2004 Agosto Nicaragua
With half his term now behind him, President Bolaños is “already history” in the opinion of some analysts. Although he still appears to see his glass...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2004 Agosto Nicaragua
OF DRUGS AND MISSILESDespite constant news reports of international drug trafficking in Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast, neither the military, police...

The Corruption of Words
2004 Julio Nicaragua
The mood in the run-up to the celebrations of the 111th anniversary of the Liberal revolution (July 11) and the 25th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2004 Julio Nicaragua
TRAGEDY IN RÍO BLANCO Torrential rains that began falling in northern Nicaragua on June 24 produced a series of landslides on the Cerro Musún...

Passionate Memories From Times of Solidarity
2004 Julio Nicaragua
Much has been written about the heroic feats of the young Nicaraguans who brought down the Somoza dictatorship, but relatively little has been said...

The Ever-Changing Face of Nongovernmental Cooperation
2004 Julio Centroamérica
There are three basic kinds of cooperation with the countries of the South. One is multilateral aid, which comes from the International Monetary Fund,...

A Loaded Social Agenda and A Hemmed-in Government
2004 Junio Nicaragua
Social conflicts intensified last month, leaving most of Nicaragua’s population increasingly frustrated. There aren’t enough resources, institutional...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2004 Junio Nicaragua
THE UNIVERSITY STRUGGLE FOR 6%As has happened every year for over a decade, university students took to the streets for more than a week starting...

“There’s no short-term solution”
2004 Mayo Nicaragua
No matter who you meet on the street these days, the inevitable question is, “When is all this going to be resolved?” I reply, “What do you mean by...

How Solid is the Tripod Supporting Bolaños’ Economic Strategy?
2004 Mayo Nicaragua
The latest series of political tensions, which at their peak sparked dramatic speculation about the “abyss” to which the two political caudillos...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2004 Mayo Nicaragua
UNILATERAL MISSILE DEMOLITIONOn April 24, the two Liberal benches in the National Assembly combined their 48 votes to approve a resolution supporting...

More Pacts or a Real National Dialogue?
2004 Abril Nicaragua
A series of crises—or, to be more exact, successive symptoms of the same crisis, which has no short-term solution—still dominate the national stage....

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2004 Abril Nicaragua
ALEMÁN HITS THE TOP TENAccording to the 2004 World Corruption Report, prepared by Transparency International and released in March, former Nicaraguan...

The Killing of Carlos Guadamuz: Who Stands to Benefit?
2004 Marzo Nicaragua
It has been many years since Nicaraguan society experienced political terror. But those years are a relatively short amount of time in the national...

Blood, Amnesty and a Paradox
2004 Marzo Nicaragua
When last December’s 12-day crisis “ended” with the sentencing of ex-President Arnoldo Alemán to 20 years imprisonment on money laundering charges,...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2004 Marzo Nicaragua
JUDICIAL CAREER BILLPresident Bolaños presented his judicial career bill on February 3. Its primary aim is to professionalize and eliminate...

The Face of Nicaragua in 2004: Obvious Forecasts
2004 Enero Nicaragua
Self-satisfied and complacent rhetoric was the daily bread from the government in December and January, once it had weathered the new Ortega-Alemán deals...

The 2004 Municipal Elections: Is the Die Almost Cast?
2004 Enero Nicaragua
It was no sudden attack of “democratitis” that made Arnoldo Alemán, Daniel Ortega and Enrique Bolaños back down from their attempts to strip the 2004...

There’s No Quick Way Out of This Crisis
2003 Diciembre Nicaragua
It is very hard to fully characterize the crisis Nicaragua is going through right now, because it’s extremely complex. Many interlacing factors have...

Why Two Petty Peddlers Wanted to Buy Electoral Time
2003 Diciembre Nicaragua
The recent attempt by Daniel Ortega and Arnoldo Alemán to reactivate the pact they originally hammered out to manipulate the 2001 elections demonstrated...

The Twelve Days that Shook Nicaragua
2003 Diciembre Nicaragua
For 12 long and tense days, from November 26 to December 7, Nicaragua’s seemingly interminable political crisis spiraled to spectacular heights. Complex...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2003 Noviembre Nicaragua
RICH STATE EMPLOYEES VS. POOR When President Bolaños presented next year’s national budget bill, he also proposed cutting 10% of the salaries...

Nestor Avendaño: Where Is the State’s Role in the National Development Plan?
2003 Noviembre Nicaragua
It is now being announced that in December Nicaragua will finally reach that elusive culmination point in the initiative for highly indebted poor countries...

The “Powell Effect” on the Three Political Forces
2003 Noviembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua had to take two important “exams” in recent weeks, administered first by the donor community in late October and then by the US government...

Sorry, Uncle Powell, The Sams Are Ours
2003 Noviembre Nicaragua
According to Carlos Gardel’s song, “20 years are nothing.” But despite the considerable efforts the Nicaraguan Army has made to win at least the empathy,...

Nicaragua’s “New Era” Does an About-Face
2003 Octubre Nicaragua
Throughout 2002, the first year of his five-year term as President, Enrique Bolaños dedicated most of his efforts to “cleaning house” in the executive...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2003 Octubre Nicaragua
PERCEPTION OF CORRUPTION Nicaragua obtained only a 2.6 rating in Transparency International’s 2003 Corruption Perception Index. Nicaragua is...

The Compass Needle Points North
2003 Septiembre Nicaragua
The word guaca is a hidden treasure, a stash. But it also means the burial ground of our pre-Colombian ancestors. Over a year ago, the enormous...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2003 Septiembre Nicaragua
CONTINUING CONTROVERSY OVER NICAS IN IRAQ A task force of 115 Nicaraguan army personnel (sappers, doctors and their defense support) left Nicaragua...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2003 Agosto Nicaragua
HIGH-FLYING US BIRD BROUGHT DOWN On July 11, the National Police captured a young US banker named Marc Harris and deported him in a matter...

Three Celebrations and a Host of Scenarios
2003 Agosto Nicaragua
July’s three political anniversary celebrations—by the pro-Alemán Liberals on July 11, the pro-Bolaños Liberals on July 13 and the FSLN on July 19—offered...

How Do We Dig Ourselves Out of the Hole?
2003 Julio Nicaragua
In early July, President Bolaños called on the other branches of state not to make war with him but to help him dig Nicaragua out of the “hole” it is...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2003 Julio Nicaragua
ALEMÁN PROPERTIES EMBARGOED On June 20, the Attorney General’s Office ordered the state to seize La Chinampa, a 1,700-acre farm belonging to...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2003 Junio Nicaragua
THE DRUG WORLD OF THE CARIBBEAN COAST Throughout the month of May, the public was treated to increasingly precise and serious news reports about...

The Alemán-Ortega Pact Has Bolaños on a Short Leash
2003 Junio Nicaragua
The spurious deals that are so much a part of Nicaragua’s political life, absorbing the energies and sacrificing the autonomy of so many decision-makers,...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2003 Mayo Nicaragua
THE DATA TRADE News that a Guatemalan business in Nicaragua called Infor.net plus two other companies had for months been gathering personal...

Our Place in the World
2003 Mayo Nicaragua
As the planet’s military superpower, the United States has used the war against Iraq to show humanity the direction it wants to impose on all of the...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2003 Abril Nicaragua
CLEANING UP THE JUDICIAL BRANCH The judicial branch has been in an upheaval since February, with dismissals, removals and controversial declarations...

The Names of the Rose
2003 Marzo Nicaragua
For an entire month, a different theme vied successfully for space with all the political and economic issues that usually dominate Nicaragua’s headlines....

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2003 Marzo Nicaragua
NICARAGUA AGAINST IRAQ In the February 19 UN debate on the Iraq issue, the Latin American countries did not present a united front. Nicaragua...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2003 Enero Nicaragua
ARMS TRAFFIC SCANDAL The controversial results of an investigation conducted by the Organization of American States at the request of the Nicaraguan,...

From One Crossroads to Another
2003 Enero Nicaragua
Though Nicaragua’s grave structural problems have not shifted one iota, and its leadership class has offered no new faces or speeches, much less ideas,...

Recession in 2002, Growth in 2003?
2002 Diciembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s economic performance fell in the third quarter of 2002 for the third successive period in the year. Although the figures for the final quarter...

A Country Lost in Its Labyrinth One Year into the “New Era”
2002 Diciembre Nicaragua
The first year of what victorious presidential candidate Enrique Bolaños had promised would be a “New Era” is drawing to an end. With the firecrackers...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2002 Noviembre Nicaragua
NEXT YEAR’S BUDGET TOUCHING THE BOTTOM OF THE BARREL On October 15, the executive branch submitted its 2003 budget bill to the National Assembly...

Perverse Political Ambitions Behind Institutional Masks
2002 Noviembre Nicaragua
If there is a positive side to the crisis Nicaragua has been slogging through since the change of government and launching of the anti-corruption struggle,...

Part 1: The Political Scene: One Step Forward, How Many Back?
2002 Octubre Nicaragua
The zigzags in the fight against corruption are proving that corruption and impunity are the most solid underpinnings of national political culture,...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2002 Octubre Nicaragua
NICARAGUA-COSTA RICA AGREEMENT During an extraordinary summit meeting of Central American Presidents held in Alajuela, Costa Rica, on September...

Alemán’s Choice for Now: Between Jail and Political Asylum
2002 Septiembre Nicaragua
I’m not a political analyst; I’m just a lawyer specializing in stock-market-related commercial law. When I talk to someone about the national political...

Alemán Is Losing Half the Country
2002 Septiembre Nicaragua
The reports reaching us on the Caribbean side of Nicaragua are dripping with details of corruption, money laundering, hidden treasures, unpredictable...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2002 Septiembre Nicaragua
PRIVATIZATION OF WATER SERVICE FRAUGHT WITH CONFLICTS It is common knowledge that both Liberal and Sandinista leaders and the big business that...

A Prolonged Duel Between Legitimacy and Legality
2002 Septiembre Nicaragua
By accepting the challenge of an historically unprecedented political conflict—the war against corruption—Nicaragua’s new President let himself in for...

La Guaca: Treasure, Burial and Maturing
2002 Agosto Nicaragua
On August 7, after the media had spent four days whipping up expectations over the discovery of what President Enrique Bolaños had enticingly dubbed...

A Government in the Opposition and A Pair of Caudillos Who Won’t Step Down
2002 Julio Nicaragua
The test of strength between Bolaños and Alemán—both have called it war—is occupying the entire political stage. Bolaños has decided to make the fight...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2002 Julio Nicaragua
IDESO-UCA POLL ON CORRUPTION On June 14-15, the Central American University’s Institute of Surveys and Opinion Polls (IDESO) measured the perceptions...

Will the Fight against Corruption Bring a Lasting Climatic Change?
2002 Junio Nicaragua
Artists sometimes find the best description of reality in metaphors. Writer Sergio Ramírez recently described what Nicaragua has been experiencing since...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2002 Junio Nicaragua
FLOOD DISASTER The rains that fell across the country, especially the Pacific, between May 27 and 29 obliged the government to decree a state...

The Fight Against Corruption Is a Learning Experience
2002 Mayo Nicaragua
March 21: Judge Gertrudis Arias charges former President Arnoldo Alemán with fraud against the state related to the Channel 6 case. April 23: The National...

A Hundred Days into the New Government, There are a Hundred Questions
2002 Abril Nicaragua
On April 10, the government of Enrique Bolaños completed its 100th day, a time period that has become politically fashionable to evaluate. Albeit a relatively...

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...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2002 Marzo Nicaragua
CENTRAL AMERICAN SUMMIT PREPARES FOR BUSH AND FTA Central America’s Presidents held a special meeting in Managua on February 28 to hammer out...

Dilemmas in the Fight against the Cancer of Corruption
2002 Marzo Nicaragua
The initial expectations of economic improvement and political peace sparked by last November’s electoral results are being hit daily by intense bursts...

New Government, New Economy?
2002 Enero Nicaragua
The most defined feature of the new government’s economic design is that the motor force of economic growth during its five-year term will be large-scale...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2002 Enero Nicaragua
ELECTIONS IN NICARAGUA The campaign for the elections in the North and South Atlantic Autonomous Regions kicked off on January 17 and will...

The "New Era" Begins Amid Check Scams and Blank Checks
2002 Enero Nicaragua
President Bolaños is fond of repeating that Nicaragua has entered a "new era," and every day he and his ministers try to offer some sign to that effect....

General Elections 2001: The Predicted, The Unpredicted, The Uncertain
2001 Noviembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s general elections were held on Sunday, November 4. For months, polls had shown Enrique Bolaños and Daniel Ortega neck-and-neck in a race...

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...

The Road to the Elections Was Paved with Fraud
2001 Noviembre Nicaragua
Towards the end of 1997, Nicaraguans began to hear the first rumors and fragmentary bits of news about a pact being forged by Arnoldo Alemán and Daniel...

A Project Offering a Future to the Nation and Sandinisimo
2001 Noviembre Nicaragua
The National Convergence emerged during an electoral campaign period, in alliance with the FSLN, but the idea from the start was to create and consolidate...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2001 Noviembre Nicaragua
CIDH UPHOLDS ZOILAMÉRICA CASE Exactly two years ago, Daniel Ortega’s stepdaughter Zoilamérica Narváez filed a suit with the Inter-American Human...

The Political Culture of the Three Nicaraguas
2001 Noviembre Nicaragua
The image of Nicaragua as a single country is a fiction built by a patriotic school curriculum. Marked contrasts separate what is administratively and...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2001 Octubre Nicaragua
MANAGUA HOSTS ANTI-MINES CONFERENCE With the world immersed in crisis following the attack on the United States, Managua hosted the III Conference...

The Armageddon Effect: The Final Test
2001 Octubre Nicaragua
As Nicaragua’s electoral campaign was plodding through its interminable final weeks with only the usual ephemeral surprises provided by the national...

Who Are the Undecided and the Abstainers?
2001 Octubre Nicaragua
Despite the fact that polls are demonstrating abstention and indecision rates a third lower right now than at this time prior to last year’s municipal...

Abstention in 2001? The Messages of 2000
2001 Septiembre Nicaragua
It was a given before the municipal elections of November 2000: Nicaraguans vote, come what may. The population turned out en masse for the presidential...

Between Two Evils and Many Dreams
2001 Septiembre Nicaragua
The official kick-off date for this year’s electoral campaign was August 18. Despite the fact that two of the three political parties running this time...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2001 Septiembre Nicaragua
PRIVATIZATION OF ENITEL On August 30, after several failed tries, the government finally closed a deal to sell off 40% of the shares of Nicaragua’s...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2001 Agosto Nicaragua
POLITICIZATION OF CSE GOES ALL THE WAY Intensifying to the nth degree the two-party politicization of the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE), the...

A Predictable Disaster Competes with A Predicted Electoral Process
2001 Agosto Nicaragua
The moving news of rampant hunger in the country’s rural areas began to compete with the discouraging news from the electoral process. A critical food...

"These Elections Are Devoid of Ideology"
2001 Agosto Nicaragua
What is the fundamental problem with November’s elections? That most voters are negatively motivated. The Liberal Party is encouraging a ‘vote of fear,’...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2001 Julio Nicaragua
PRESIDENT ALEMÁN HITS THE ROAD…Amid all the tension in Managua in mid- June generated by a two-week-long bus strike and two weeks of paralysis...

The Electoral Film Rolls On
2001 Julio Nicaragua
With the elections only four months away, polls still show Daniel Ortega in the lead, though the latest one, done by CID-Gallup at the end of June, indicates...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2001 Junio Nicaragua
PUBLIC TRANSPORT CRISIS A decision in mid-May by around 40 Managua bus cooperatives to raise the fare from two to three córdobas without any...

Ways Out of the Rural Crisis: Reforest, Educate and Don’t Steal
2001 Junio Nicaragua
Almost two years ago, having analyzed my economic situation as a producer, I decided to give up agriculture. I was deeply in debt and couldn’t find a...

The Economy in the Electoral Film: Strong Scenes, Uncertain Script
2001 Junio Nicaragua
Five new national polls by different firms and institutions, done over a range of dates from the end of April to the end of May, all confirmed Daniel...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2001 Mayo Nicaragua
PLC CAMPAIGN: WINNING "FRIENDS" AND SELLING INFLUENCE The group of Conservatives who have decided to ally with the PLC as Friends of Enrique...

An Election Script with Heavy-handed Special Effects
2001 Mayo Nicaragua
These days, when a movie has a lousy script, an unsubstantial plot and second-rate actors, glitzy special effects are often used—or abused, depending...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2001 Abril Nicaragua
CAROUSING CORRUPTION, CGR RESIGNATION In mid-March, the Office of Comptroller General (CGR) issued a resolution establishing that a 1979 decree...

The Election Flick: Sets and Scenes
2001 Abril Nicaragua
With the beating sun soon to give way to the pelting rains of Nicaragua’s tropical "winter," several different scenarios are still being scripted for...

Casting Nicaragua’s Electoral Flick
2001 Marzo Nicaragua
After a first draft of the electoral film’s script was hammered out between December and January, these past two months have been dedicated to signing...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2001 Marzo Nicaragua
TAKING FROM THE POOR The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) pressured President Alemán into issuing an order that would stop his Constitutionalist...

Economic Forecasting in an Election Year
2001 Marzo Nicaragua
What will the next government inherit?What economic panorama do we foresee for 2001? It’s a predictable picture, but not a very pretty one....

Writing the Script for Nicaragua’s Election Drama
2001 Enero Nicaragua
Political protagonists from a past we have yet to put behind us are again dominating Nicaragua’s silver screen as if history wanted to repeat itself....

A Country Divided: Relative Defeats and Victories
2000 Noviembre Nicaragua
The biggest success was the FSLN’s victory in Managua but the hands-down winner, even in Managua, was abstention. All other wins, both Liberal and Sandinista,...

Who Abstained and Why?
2000 Noviembre Nicaragua
Right after election day, the media reported that some40% of Nicaragua’s eligible voters had abstained. When the Supreme Electoral Council’s official...

The Electorate: Continuing Trends and Transition
2000 Noviembre Nicaragua
The Nicaraguan electorate is young and still going through a transition, so it is not easy to characterize. Nonetheless, 16 years after the country’s...

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...

Juigalpa: A Vote to Punish the PLC
2000 Noviembre Nicaragua
This year’s municipal elections have turned Juigalpa into a Sandinista island in the middle of a hostile Liberal sea. During the campaign in the department...

Did Managua’s Gang Members Vote?
2000 Noviembre Nicaragua
A large number of the voters who gave the FSLN its victory in the municipality of Managua were young, but how many of those youths are from the capital’s...

Disrespect for Political Pluralism Tainted the Elections
2000 Noviembre Nicaragua
Ever since the first elections following the July 1979 revolution were held in 1984, the electoral process has been repeated periodically, always with...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2000 Noviembre Nicaragua
BUDGET GAMES: 2001 President Alemán sent the National Assembly the budget bill for his last year in office on October 31. The following are...

Nicaragua’s Municipal Elections: The Good, the Bad and the Uncertain
2000 Noviembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s November 5 municipal elections came to a lamentable finish, with the governing Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC) leaders putting off...

The Clouds in the Electoral Skies
2000 Octubre Nicaragua
With less than a month to go before the elections, ominous clouds have gathered in Nicaragua’s skies. Snapshots of this densely overcast horizon give...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2000 Octubre Nicaragua
GAMES BANKERS AND POLITICIANS PLAY On September 7, producers from various parts of the country together with employees of the Centeno brothers...

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...

The Interbank Bankruptcy Opens a Pandora’s Box
2000 Septiembre Nicaragua
A good many people believe that, at this time in history, when the avalanche of globalization is sweeping away the very idea of nations, Nicaragua has...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2000 Septiembre Nicaragua
THE FATE OF NEW PARTIES On August 14, former Liberal Minister of Government José Antonio Alvarado and retired army chief Joaquín Cuadra submitted...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2000 Agosto Nicaragua
ANOTHER ANNIVERSARY OF THE REVOLUTION Some fifty thousand people gathered across the street from the Plaza of the Revolution on July 19 to honor...

The Air is Thick With Electoral Fraud
2000 Agosto Nicaragua
In Managua and the other municipalities on the Pacific side of the country, voters who turn out on Sunday, November 5, will be given two ballots, one...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2000 Julio Nicaragua
THE CHECK SCAM: DISMISSALS… Fallout from the June 7 resolution of the Office of Comptroller General (CGR) on the "check scam" corruption case...

Latin America and International Cooperation
2000 Julio América Latina
Latin America and the Caribbean—"Our America," as Cuban patriot José Martí called it — is a region of the world whose face is presented to you daily...

The Road to Elections Is Paved With the Pains of the Pact
2000 Julio Nicaragua
Day emerges out of the shadows of the night. In these long nights before November’s municipal elections, the rigid new Electoral Law is demonstrating...

A Society Scandalized
2000 Junio Nicaragua
The word "scandal" comes from the Greek word for stumbling block. To scandalize is literally to trip up, obstruct, hold back, although in more common...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2000 Junio Nicaragua
POVERTY IN COLD NUMBERS According to the figures of a household survey done recently by the United Nations Development Program UNDP), only 50%...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2000 Mayo Nicaragua
US EMBASSY USES CARROT ON CORRUPTION… After very specific criticisms of the government’s laxity in dealing with corruption, US Ambassador Oliver...

Destination: Washington Baggage: Overweight
2000 Mayo Nicaragua
Arnoldo Alemán’s government was looking to buy political and economic time when it decided both to postpone its scheduled annual meeting with the international...

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...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2000 Abril Nicaragua
VETERANS PROTEST On April 6, hundreds of veterans from the Nicaraguan Resistance set up barricades at various strategic points along major highways....

Do They Want the Elections or Don’t They?
2000 Abril Nicaragua
The election countdown has begun, and the political runners are warming up for the race. But are they in shape, and do they have their strategies clear?...

The Pact’s First Offspring
2000 Marzo Nicaragua
The consummation of the pact between Arnoldo Alemán and Daniel Ortega has created a new dynamic and a new correlation of forces in the country, although...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
2000 Marzo Nicaragua
NINTH SAO PAULO FORUM MEETS IN MANAGUA The Sao Paulo Forum held its IX Meeting in Managua on February 19-21, with delegates, mainly Latin Americans,...

After the Pact: The Die Is Cast
2000 Enero Nicaragua
For Nicaragua, 1999 not only marked the end of the twentieth century and the second millennium. It also marked the end of the "transition" initiated...

Governance in Nicaragua
1999 Diciembre Nicaragua
The United Nations Development Program in Nicaragua (UNDP) has insisted in recent years that governance and the fight against poverty are central elements...

Crossroads at the Century’s End
1999 Diciembre Nicaragua
The recent events that closed the century and the millennium for Nicaragua have the quality of historic crossroads. The President of the Republic successfully...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1999 Diciembre Nicaragua
JARQUÍN WARNS OF A RETURN TO THE PAST From his jail cell, Comptroller General Agustín Jarquín sent a letter to the members of the Inter-American...

What’s Behind the IMF Pressure?
1999 Noviembre Nicaragua
When Hurricane Mitch's winds and rain lashed through Central America last year, they whipped away the veil of invisibility that had obscured the poverty...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1999 Noviembre Nicaragua
MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS AT RISK Next year's municipal elections, scheduled for November 5, are at risk of being postponed due to a lack of funds....

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1999 Octubre Nicaragua
A PARDON IN ONE HAND, A WARNING IN THE OTHER During the Annual IMF-World Bank Assembly on September 29, President Bill Clinton pledged to get...

So Poor, So Indebted, So Vulnerable
1999 Octubre Nicaragua
With a year now passed since hurricane Mitch tore through Central America leaving its wake of devastation, ample parts of Nicaragua and the rest of the...

Is the Game All Sewn Up? Questions and Contradictions
1999 Septiembre Nicaragua
The game board on which Daniel Ortega and Arnoldo Alemán traded pawns for the past year has been folded up and the players are now counting their pieces....

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1999 Septiembre Nicaragua
LEGISLATOR MURDERED BY A MINOR Rancher José Cuadra, the Conservative Party of Nicaragua's representative in the National Assembly, was shot...

First Impacts of a Devil’s Pact
1999 Agosto Nicaragua
The time has come to sign, seal, sell and deliver the pact forged over the past year by the Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC) and the FSLN. And delivering...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1999 Agosto Nicaragua
ALEMÁN FIDDLES WHILE VOLCANOS BURN A string of some 200 tremors, the strongest reaching 4.7 degrees on the Richter Scale, was recorded in northwest...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1999 Julio Nicaragua
COSTA RICAN-NICARAGUAN ENMITY MOUNTS Early on the morning of June 30, Costa Rican armed forces violently evicted 150 Nicaraguan families (1,500...

The Pact’s Roots Go Deep And its Fruits are Rotten
1999 Julio Nicaragua
July 19: twenty years have passed since the Somoza dictatorship was over-thrown and a revolution triumphed that would change Nicaraguan and Central American...

After Stockholm and Before the Pact
1999 Junio Nicaragua
The meeting in Stockholm between delegations of the Central American countries' governments and civil societies and representatives of the donor countries...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1999 Junio Nicaragua
MOURNING IN POSOLTEGA On May 20, a group of Posoltega survivors consigned to a common grave more than 35 bags of unidentifiable skeletal parts...

Is the Cycle of Violence Interminable?
1999 Mayo Nicaragua
While around the world people of good will were following the perplexing Kosovo tragedy and the contribution by the United States and NATO to the violence...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1999 Mayo Nicaragua
envío POLL RILES PRESIDENT The reaction of Nicaraguan President Arnoldo Alemán to the IDESO-envío survey on corruption that appeared...

The Comptroller’s Office and Corruption: What does Managua Think?
1999 Abril Nicaragua
On March 27-28, IDESO, envío's institute of surveys and opinion samplings set out to gather these opinions, which are so frequently neglected...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1999 Abril Nicaragua
1999 BUDGET APPROVED WITH GLITCHES The approval of the 1999 General Budget of the Republic was for months a centerpiece of the institutional...

The Long March against Corruption
1999 Abril Nicaragua
In the donor countries' consultative group meeting to be held in late may in Stockholm, Sweden, the international community will firm up its financial...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1999 Marzo Nicaragua
CLINTON'S VISIT President Clinton's March 8 visit to Nicaragua lasted seven hours. The central act took place at the base of the Casita volcano...

In the Vortex of Hurricane "Corruption"
1999 Marzo Nicaragua
While Managua is beginning to forget the gaping wounds that hurricane Mitch's rushing waters opened in other parts of the country, the nation as a whole...

100 Days after Mitch: Any Sign of a Change of Attitude?
1999 Enero Nicaragua
It has become a tradition among political journalists to evaluate recently elected governments a hundred days into their administration. Can this same...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1999 Enero Nicaragua
US ARMY TO THE RESCUE The first 380 members of a total US Army contingent of 1,700 arrived in Nicaragua on December 9. They make up a Joint...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1998 Diciembre Nicaragua
POST-HURRICANE WATCH Posoltega: An Immodest Proposal On November 30, following the one-month outdoor mass held for the nearly two thousand people...

A Time for Opportunities and Opportunists
1998 Diciembre Nicaragua
The government officially concluded the national emergency committee's activities on the night of November 24, three weeks after it began to function...

How Managua Saw the Passage of Hurricane Mitch
1998 Diciembre Nicaragua
How have people in Managua perceived and experienced the catastrophe brought by Mitch? Have the actions of the government and other sectors corresponded...

Sketches of an Unexpected Tragedy
1998 Noviembre Nicaragua
With so little time before going to press, and with so much information still unreported or incomplete, we could not hope to adequately analyze this...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1998 Noviembre Nicaragua
1999 BUDGET GLITCHES With no way of predicting the emergency situation that Hurricane Mitch would trigger over the next several weeks, the President's...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1998 Octubre Nicaragua
WHITHER THE ZOILÁMERICA CASE? On September 19, the National Assembly's executive board, dominated by the Liberals, announced that it would form...

A Country Still in the Making
1998 Octubre Nicaragua
The phrase "on the threshold of the new century and a new millennium" is showing up with increasing frequency in the speeches of public figures around...

Government-FSLN Pact: Where Are the People?
1998 Septiembre Nicaragua
IDESO surveyed 950 inhabitants of Managua on September 5-7. Of those, 40.9% were willing to state their political sympathies. The objective was to...

Stormy Weather... Can't Get Our Poor Selves Together
1998 Septiembre Nicaragua
In the past few weeks Nicaragua’s political reality has been undergoing a realignment based on political calculations, the enticing deals and economic...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1998 Agosto Nicaragua
CONTROVERSIAL PRESIDENTIAL TRIP In early August President Arnoldo Alemán made an eight-day official trip to Argentina and Uruguay. As has already...

Re-election: Centerpiece of the Pact
1998 Agosto Nicaragua
Nationalism unites, mobilizes and motivates peoples, even those who have not yet forged true nations. This happened in Nicaragua in recent weeks to such...

Time for a Pact Or Time for Reflection?
1998 Julio Nicaragua
The deterioration of both the projected image and the real project of Arnoldo Alemán's government is obvious to all. And it is very worrying. In turn,...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1998 Julio Nicaragua
LIBERAL CONVENTION: NO SURPRISES The incumbent Constitutionalist Liberal Party celebrated its annual convention on July 11. Many of the party's...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1998 Junio Nicaragua
ELECTION IRREGULARITIES INVESTIGATED The Interamerican Human Rights Commission (CIDH), a Washington-based agency of the Organization of American...

Days of Smoke and Tears
1998 Junio Nicaragua
MAY 1998 WILL NOT FADE UNREMEMBERED FROM RECENT NATIONAL HISTORY. THE month was filled with days of thick smoke, an asphyxiating atmosphere caused by...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1998 Mayo Nicaragua
BIG DRUG BUST On a lonely Pacific Coast beach of the department of Rivas in mid-April, a little before the "presidential drug jet" scandal...

We are Hitting Bottom: Where is the Way Up and Out?
1998 Mayo Nicaragua
Nicaragua is being buried beneath an avalanche of crises of all kinds. One convulsion comes on top of another and each new crisis forces our attention...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1998 Abril Nicaragua
BANK SECRECY OVERTURNED The managers of various private banks have expressed concern about reforms passed by Nicaragua's National Assembly...

Who is Who: A Key to Understanding
1998 Abril Nicaragua
THE GOVERNMENT OF ARNOLDO ALEMÁN HAS NOW FULLY DEFINED THE MACROECONOMIC framework for its administration. After a year of resistance first and then...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1998 Marzo Nicaragua
FSLN RE-ENTERS NATIONAL ASSEMBLY After having boycotted the National Assembly for several weeks due to what it called the illegal election of...

A Test in Ethics For a Society in Crisis
1998 Marzo Nicaragua
AFTER A VERY LONG DRY SPELL, NICARAGUA, A COUNTRY IN A MULTI-FACETED CRISIS, made the world news several times in February. First was the extended strike...

Why Did the Rearmed Rearm?
1998 Febrero Nicaragua
DESPITE THE MULTIPLE ACCORDS SIGNED BY THE CENTRAL AMERICAN PRESIDENTS AND by Nicaraguan Resistance (RN) and Sandinista government commissions, the RN...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1998 Febrero Nicaragua
LEGISLATIVE CRISIS On January 10, during the installation of the XIV Legislature in the National Assembly, as President Alemán began to read...

New Twist with the IMF: The Winners and the Losers
1998 Febrero Nicaragua
AS 1997 DREW TO A CLOSE, THE ALEMÁN GOVERNMENT FINALLY, through paid publication in the daily newspapers, made known the contents of the Letter of Intent...

Uncertainty at Year's End
1998 Enero Nicaragua
By the Nitlapán-envío team.As 1997 ends, so virtually ends Arnoldo Alemán's first year of government. Almost all of the national problems that...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1998 Enero Nicaragua
NICA EMIGRANTS OFF THE HOOK A bill sponsored by Cuban-American Republicans Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Díaz Balart and voted into law under...

The United Nations Hits the Nail on the Head
1997 Diciembre Nicaragua
With only a couple of months to go before the end of the liberal government's first year in office, Nicaragua's population is still waiting for things...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1997 Noviembre Nicaragua
IMF VISIT Negotiations over the new structural adjustment agreement between the Nicaraguan government and the International Monetary Fund mission...

An Accord Besieged by Discord
1997 Noviembre Nicaragua
National politics took a significant turn in early September, when the teams of government and FSLN jurists who had been meeting for months to forge...

The Dangers of a Democracy On Paper Only
1997 Octubre Nicaragua
The army of Nicaragua, born of the Sandinista guerrilla movement that routed Somoza's National Guard in 1979, then graduated with honors in the 80s when...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1997 Octubre Nicaragua
POVERTY KEEPS MOUNTING A study by the research institute Nitlapán-UCA, published in mid-August, shows that only 18.3% of the Nicaraguan population...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1997 Septiembre Nicaragua
6% STRUGGLE GOES ONThe conflict between the universities and the government over the total or partial provision of 6% of the national budget...

President Arnoldo Alemán Between the Fund and the Front
1997 Septiembre Nicaragua
The Nicaraguan saying, "between two steel prods, no bull is brave," pretty well sums up the Liberal government's first seven months in office. The two...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1997 Agosto Nicaragua
COMPTROLLER GENERAL V. PRESIDENT: 2-0 At the end of June, Comptroller General of the Republic Agustín Jarquín ruled that the process by which...

National Dialogue or Liberal Monologue?
1997 Agosto Nicaragua
In June, the FSLN spoke of a latent possibility of "bringing down" the government, while other sectors sought only to curb the government's authoritarian...

Is There a Bridge Over These Troubled Waters?
1997 Julio Nicaragua
The liberal government continued to open more fronts of confrontation and add new names to its growing list of adversaries in May, disregarding the serious...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1997 Julio Nicaragua
TWO MINISTERS FIRED, ONE RESIGNS Francisco José Laínez, the prestigious Central Bank president in the 1960s who was named by Alemán as his Minister...

The Style of an Authoritarian Caudillo
1997 Junio Nicaragua
One hundred days is a very short time period to evaluate the actions of a government that has five years ahead of it, but it is enough to analyze the...

The Crisis of the Barricades
1997 Junio Nicaragua
Evaluating new governments once they have completed the first 100 days of their administration is becoming a tradition. Even though it's understood that...

The Urgent Need for A Social Contract
1997 Junio Nicaragua
It is hard to be constructive in evaluating the first 100 days of the new government; offering proposals seems an impossible task. We'll make the effort...

State Modernization: Dangerous Signs
1997 Junio Nicaragua
A legislative agenda has been lacking, local governments are waiting for decentralization, the Comptroller is a besieged institution, and so far there...

Conservatives Evaluate the Liberals
1997 Junio Nicaragua
I want to evaluate these first 100 days of the liberal government in the name of a Conservative Party that is, thankfully, no longer managed from a desk...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1997 Mayo Nicaragua
ALEMÁN AT THE IDB The most numerous Latin American delegation at the annual Assembly of the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB), held in Barcelona,...

Alemán in a Race Against Time
1997 Mayo Nicaragua
In its first three months, the government of president Arnoldo Alemán has simultaneously -- and unnecessarily -- opened several fronts of confrontation:...

Peace on the Surface, Torment Underneath
1997 Mayo Nicaragua
The Liberal Party is an historic party rooted in national history. Independence was the product of illustrious men who carried our libertarian ideas:...

Whither US Solidarity with Nicaragua?
1997 Abril Nicaragua
The Sandinista revolution triggered a formidable social and political solidarity movement in the 1980s in many countries. One of the largest movements...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1997 Abril Nicaragua
DEMOBILIZATION OF REARMED HITS SOME SNAGS A proposal by the new Ministry of Government to give amnesty to those in the rearmed groups who hand...

All Threads Lead to The Property Tangle
1997 Abril Nicaragua
Two months into president Arnoldo Alemán's term in office, he is still mainly posturing for a population that is showing signs of being tired, more mature,...

Dora María Téllez Assesses the National Assembly
1997 Febrero Nicaragua
The first two years of the National Assembly that was elected in 1990, which I was part of first as a Sandinista representative for the FSLN and since...

President Alemán: First Moves, First Signals
1997 Febrero Nicaragua
Many people expected the national logic in Nicaragua following the Liberal victory to be crucial elections = crucial change. It's still soon to note...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1997 Febrero Nicaragua
MORE ON THE ELECTIONS The International Relations Secretary of Mexico's Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) sent a message to the FSLN...

Observing The Observers
1996 Diciembre Nicaragua
It hasn't yet occurred to anyone to do a comparative study, but it's quite likely that Nicaragua had more people scrutinizing its October 20 elections...

Nicaragua Election Briefs
1996 Diciembre Nicaragua
History of Electoral Observation In 1984, the first free elections in Nicaragua's history were covered by some 460 observers from 24 countries....

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1996 Diciembre Nicaragua
WHO'S TO BLAME? Humberto Doña, national director of the Liberal Alliance's poll watchers, strongly denied that the Alliance's leadership had...

A New Period For the Nation
1996 Diciembre Nicaragua
It's not easy to analyze all that has happened in nicaragua as a result of the both anticipated and feared elections of October 20, 1996. They have...

The Roots of The Electoral Crisis
1996 Diciembre Nicaragua
In the last poll done by CID GALLUP before the elections, 61% of the Nicaraguans polled expressed confidence in the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) and...

How Nicaraguans Voted
1996 Diciembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua's elections finally came to an end on November 22 with a reading of the names of all new elected au thorities. This put a full stop to one...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1996 Noviembre Nicaragua
CAMPAIGN TIDBITS * The polling firm Borge & Associates analyzed the technical tie between the presidential candidates of the Liberal Alliance...

Mariano Fiallos: I Accepted Because It's a Crucial Election
1996 Noviembre Nicaragua
Burdens on the CSEThe proximity of the elections is putting politicians, interested citizens and electoral officials in an increasingly tense...

Relations with the United States: A Two-Way Street
1996 Noviembre Nicaragua
Ten years have passed since the international court of justice handed down its decision in the case of the "Military and Paramilitary Activities in...

Nicaragua's Elections: The Die Is Cast
1996 Noviembre Nicaragua
In Nicaraguan culture, everything is left to the last minute. Then, of course, it's improvised, with a heavy dose of ingenuity, and those making the...

A Nicaragua of the People and for the People Nicaragua's Commitment to a Minimum National Agenda Managua, 1996
1996 Octubre Nicaragua
Since 1995, as part of its program, the International Foundation for Global Economic Development (FIDEG) held a series of dialogues with diverse sectors...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1996 Octubre Nicaragua
VOTER CONFUSION This year Nicaraguan voters are bewildered not only by the six ballots they must grapple with, but also by three different kinds...

FSLN-Liberal Alliance In a Technical Tie
1996 Octubre Nicaragua
With two months to go before Nicaragua's election, a cid gallup poll done in late August showed that 34% of those polled would vote for Liberal Alliance...

The Campaign Starting Gun Has Been Fired
1996 Septiembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua's official electoral campaign--at 75 days, one of latin ameri ca's longest--was officially kicked off on August 2. For the most important...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1996 Septiembre Nicaragua
HURRICANE CAESAR On July 27, Hurricane Caesar crossed laterally over Nicaragua with winds of 130 150 kilometers per hour, entering at the Bluff...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1996 Agosto Nicaragua
CHAMORRO VETOES 6% FOR UNIVERSITIES On May 10, President Chamorro vetoed the law, passed by the National Assembly on April 18, that affirms...

Promises Coming and Going
1996 Agosto Nicaragua
In mid june, seven months before turning over the presidential sash to her succesor, President Violeta Chamorro traveled to Washington to make her farewell...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1996 Julio Nicaragua
AD HOC VOTER REGISTRATION Meanwhile, one time voter registration got underway the weekend of June 1 2 in the 26 rural municipalities that...

All Electoral Horses Now at the Starting Gate
1996 Julio Nicaragua
The twice postponed deadline for registering parties, alliances and candi dates for the October electoral race has finally come and gone. At the close...

Honesty Doesn't Come Cheap
1996 Junio Nicaragua
The government has no time to govern and the state is falling to pieces, while society is divided between those who believe in everything and those who...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1996 Junio Nicaragua
FROM MILITARY BASTION TO NATIONAL PARK In an act to commemorate President Chamorro's sixth year in office, General Joaquín Cuadra, the head...

Election Polls: Will the Güegüense Return?
1996 Junio Nicaragua
After its independence in 1821, Nicaragua experienced a long series of dictatorships as two principal parties, the Liberals and Conservatives, vied for...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1996 Mayo Nicaragua
ANOTHER STAND OFF Yet another month has gone by in which executive legislative tensions and the relatively murky political interests of the...

Nicaragua's Two Options: Change or Stay the Same
1996 Mayo Nicaragua
Nicaragua's election panorama is getting more complex and incoherent by the day. With 35 registered parties and 5 more in the process of registering,...

The Election Labyrinth
1996 Abril Nicaragua
The path to the October 20 elections is getting more labyrinthian the fure ther both voters and candidates travel down it. "There is no government,"...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1996 Abril Nicaragua
Rural ViolenceReports of kidnappings, intimidation and atrocious killings around Waslala and other areas in northern Nicaragua continued to...

Nicaragua Needs a Miracle
1996 Febrero Nicaragua
Nicaragua received pope John Jaul II on February 7 in a mood of peak political and social tension, as well as of peak hope. Many summarized their expectations...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1996 Febrero Nicaragua
A FEW TOO MANY? Nicaragua now has 34 legally registered parties, and the leaders of 15 of them have made public their aspiration to run for...

When Democracy Becomes A Synonym for Anarchy
1996 Enero Nicaragua
With the Christmas season and the even more widely celebrated Feast of the Immaculate Conception upon us, government activity is winding down. A new...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1996 Enero Nicaragua
CERRO NEGRO ERUPTS AGAIN The 700 meter high volcano called Cerro Negro, located some 20 kilometers outside of the city of León, began to erupt...

Poverty: An Incurable Epidemic?
1995 Diciembre Nicaragua
In early October, dozens of people were brought to the small health center in Achuapa, in the northeast corner of León, suffering symptoms of an unidentified...

Privatizing TELCOR: Not the Only or Best Solution
1995 Diciembre Nicaragua
Comments on the proposal by the TELCOR National Workers Federation, "Enrique Schmidt Cuadra," titled, "TELCOR: Supporting Stability and Development,"...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1995 Diciembre Nicaragua
ELECTORAL SKIRMISHES Antonio Lacayo inaugurated the Managua campaign headquarters of his National Project (PRONAL) in mid October, giving out...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1995 Noviembre Nicaragua
HEAVY LEGISLATIVE DEBATES EXPECTED Three strategically important and arduously contested bills will be debated in Nicaragua's National Assembly...

Is ESAF's Career at an End?
1995 Noviembre Nicaragua
The International Monetary Fund mission that came to Nicaragua at the end of August, spending over two weeks here, was not on a routine visit. The results...

Premature Election Campaigning Overshadows All
1995 Octubre Nicaragua
The joy of the August patron saint festivals mixed with the stupor due to the spectacular appearance of drug trafficking in the country, growing concern...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1995 Octubre Nicaragua
THE DEA SETS UP SHOP The US Drug Enforcement Agency has decided to open a provisional office in Managua, assigned to the US Embassy, to "organize...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1995 Septiembre Nicaragua
THE NEW LEGISLATIVE AGENDA The National Assembly has announced the tasks that will take priority now that the reformed Constitution has gone...

The Electoral Process: For Elites Only?
1995 Septiembre Nicaragua
The political agreements that put an end to the crisis generated by the constitutional reforms also paved the way for defining electoral alliances. ...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1995 Agosto Nicaragua
PROPERTY ISSUE STILL SPARKS MOBILIZATION On June 15, hours after the political agreement between the executive and legislative negotiators...

Not Yet to the Root of the Crisis
1995 Agosto Nicaragua
The institutional crisis has finally been resolved through an agreement between the executive staff and the National Assembly board. Even if the results...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1995 Julio Nicaragua
ANONYMOUS TERRORISM Several dynamite attacks were carried out against churches in León, Managua and Masaya during May. No organization or individual...

Government of the Absurd Plays Another Month
1995 Julio Nicaragua
Nicaragua has changed. In the 1980s this small country offered hope and inspiration to many, both at home and abroad. The vigorous enthusiasm of the...

A Sandinista Commemoration Of the Sandino Centennial
1995 Julio Nicaragua
We must weigh carefully what a national commemoration for Sandino means. There's a lot for all Nicaraguans, regardless of political allegiance, to...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1995 Junio Nicaragua
THE TEACHERS STRIKE: A VICTORY? After 43 days, the teachers' strike in Nicaragua ended April 10 with the help of a pluralist mediating commission....

The Crisis Is Bordering On the Intolerable
1995 Junio Nicaragua
The institutional crisis that peaked with the National Assembly's defiant promulgation of the constitutional reforms has reached new limits: the state...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1995 Mayo Nicaragua
THE TEACHERS' STRIKE HOLDS ON..AND ON The strike by some 60% of Nicaragua's schoolteachers continued during all of March and was still holding...

The Chamorro Administration A Race to the Starting Line
1995 Mayo Nicaragua
On April 25, Violeta Chamorro began her sixth year as President of Nicaragua. As the countdown to the next elections begins, her presidential minister,...

The Foxes Are Infighting: But the Hens Aren't Laughing
1995 Abril Nicaragua
After the attempts to create a federated Central America failed early last century, 30 years would pass before Conservatives began to consolidate the...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1995 Abril Nicaragua
HUMBERTO RETIRED ON CUE On February 21, as he had promised, General Humberto Ortega, head of the Sandinista Popular Army since 1979, went into...

The Constitutional Reforms: Another Opportunity
1995 Febrero Nicaragua
The world is going through a change of epochs that touches even the traditional industrialized countries, particularly those forged in heated struggles...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1995 Enero Nicaragua
UN REPORT ON NICARAGUAIn mid November, the Secretary General of the United Nations presented his annual report on Nicaragua's current situation...

Will Economics and Politics Keep Playing at the Same Table?
1995 Enero Nicaragua
As 1994 rang in, Nicaragua's economy was bankrupt and its political forces were in the process of regrouping. The clearest sign of bankruptcy was seen...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1994 Diciembre Nicaragua
A STRIKE WARNING On October 25, 80% of the health workers throughout Nicaragua stopped their labors for a day, except for emergency care, to...

Nicaragua: Through a Glass Darkly
1994 Diciembre Nicaragua
Just as the last issue of envío was about to go to press, Nicaragua's Supreme Court of Justice made known its finding that it would be unconstitutional...

Time for Transparency
1994 Noviembre Nicaragua
We in Nicaragua are used to living with constant confrontation. The political parties, and their various factions and fractions, are at permanent verbal...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1994 Noviembre Nicaragua
FSLN CRISIS On September 9, 76 of the Sandinista Assembly's 120 members voted to return FSLN general secretary Daniel Ortega to his seat in...

Political Ambition; Economic Negligence
1994 Octubre Nicaragua
While Nicaraguans with the money to do so prepare their children to live and compete abroad, those who cannot even dream of it, much less attempt it,...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1994 Octubre Nicaragua
INTERNAL FSLN ELECTIONS Well over 200,000 Sandinista sympathizers, affiliates and militants around the country went to designated centers in...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1994 Septiembre Nicaragua
NO LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL A month of drastic energy rationing throughout Nicaragua (cuts of eight hours a day at first, now reduced...

Elites in Search of a National Project?
1994 Septiembre Nicaragua
These times we're living in are very strange. With more opportunities opening up for Nicaragua than in previous years, the country's leaders, politicians,...

The Future Beckons from the Whirlwind's Eye
1994 Agosto Nicaragua
June confirmed once again the preference of many Nicaraguan politicians and business leaders for froth over substance. They spent the month blowing...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1994 Agosto Nicaragua
CONSTITUTIONAL REFORMS SNAGGED Contrary to expectations, the National Assembly went the entire month of June without receiving the package of...

A Rather Extraordinary Congress
1994 Julio Nicaragua
On May 20-22, the FSLN celebrated an extraordinary session of its First Congress, called to debate and pass reforms to the FSLN statutes and program,...

Calm Before the Storm?
1994 Julio Nicaragua
The two most weighty items on Nicaragua's economic and political agendas over the past several months have been the government's signature on the Letter...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1994 Julio Nicaragua
TORRICELLI VISIT: AN UNVEILED THREAT At the beginning of June, US Congressman Robert Torricelli (D NJ) made a five day visit to "inspect" Nicaragua's...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1994 Junio Nicaragua
FSLN CONGRESS In the last half of April, Sandinistas held departmental congresses all over the country to discuss the preparatory documents...

The Economic Curtains UP: What's the Political Play?
1994 Junio Nicaragua
"Nicaragua's difficulties result from the government's poor economic policy," argue some media commentators. "The political instability is what keeps...

Negotiating the Crisis: A Modest Proposal
1994 Mayo Nicaragua
Michel Camdessus, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, came to Nicaragua on March 12 to deliver the latest version of the IMF's highly...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1994 Mayo Nicaragua
CONSTITUTIONAL REFORMS The reforms to the Constitution, which the new majority in Nicaragua's National Assembly announced would be ready for...

Time for the Horse to Pull the Cart
1994 Abril Nicaragua
Hours before the fourth anniversary of that night of February 25 that flipped Nicaragua's history on its head, the Northern Front 3-80, headed by José...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1994 Abril Nicaragua
DRUGS IN NICARAGUA Operation Ocean, Nicaragua's most spectacular anti-drug operation ever, was carried out on January 12 on the beach at Popoyo,...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1994 Febrero Nicaragua
CONGRESS OF EX CONTRAS The First National Congress of former combatants in the Nicaraguan Resistance was held in Managua in the first week of...

New Political Setting, same Rotten Economy
1994 Febrero Nicaragua
As last year drew to a close, the political polarization that had kept Nicaragua's legislative branch virtually non functional since September 1992 finally...

Happy New Year From the IMF
1994 Enero Nicaragua
(Note to our readers: This month we are dedicating this space exclusively to the implications of a new agreement package brought to Nicaragua by the...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1994 Enero Nicaragua
IS THE POLITICAL DIALOGUE REALLY GOING SOMEWHERE? The on again off again political dialogue in Nicaragua is finally feeling the pinch of realism...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1993 Diciembre Nicaragua
DISARM OR ELSE Hoping to avoid a military response, the government extended the date for rearmed groups to lay down their weapons one more time....

Time to Talk to Each Other... Not at each Other
1993 Diciembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua's crisis is expressed two ways, both demonstrating how far it has gone: the country is politically ungovernable and economically non viable....

Transport Workers V. The Whole Economic Plan
1993 Noviembre Nicaragua
The national transport strike in mid September may turn out to be the most important social event since the Chamorro government took office. For the...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1993 Noviembre Nicaragua
HOSTAGE TO PAYMENTS ON A $1.5 BILLION DEBT Just after the transport strike, President Chamorro and finance minister Emilio Pereira went to Washington...

Nicaragua's Polarization is Reaching the Boiling Point
1993 Octubre Nicaragua
Nicaragua is demonstrating that the attempt to install a counterrevolution can be just as explosive as making a revolution. The following summary of...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1993 Octubre Nicaragua
MORE ON THE EPS EXECUTIVE CRISIS In her remarks during the Army Day celebration President Chamorro also announced that she will promote a constitutional...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1993 Septiembre Nicaragua
POLITICAL SIDELIGHTS ON THE ESTELÍ EVENTS Two hours after the Revolutionary Front of Workers and Peasants (FROC) whose members are mainly "recompas,"...

Why is not One Doing Anything About the Economy?
1993 Septiembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua is once again at a critical crossroads. Although the country seems to come up against a crisis every three or four years, this one differs...

The Armed Conflict in Estelí
1993 Septiembre Nicaragua
The events visited upon Estelí in late July are a tragic new milestone in Nicaragua's current crisis of violence. The description and assessment contained...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1993 Agosto Nicaragua
US REDUCES AID According to the foreign aid bill that President Clinton is sending to Congress, US aid to Nicaragua for FY 1994 will be $66...

Central America's Economic and Political Backdrop
1993 Agosto Nicaragua
Editor's note: The following is something of a departure from the usual article that fills this space. In anticipation of the election campaigns...

Indefinition in Washington, Intransigence in Nicaragua
1993 Julio Nicaragua
Within hours after a car full of explosives--which happened to be parked over a huge buried arms cache in the middle of a Managua neighborhood--blew...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1993 Julio Nicaragua
ARMY REPORT TO THE OAS General Humberto Ortega informed the secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS) in April that Nicaragua's...

The Farmer Program: an Alternative
1993 Junio Nicaragua
Nicaragua's economic growth depends on the reactivation of agricultural production. It also depends in great measure on an increase in export production. The...

Reactivation: The Last Chance
1993 Junio Nicaragua
Except in a very small orthodox and officialist circle, all Nicaraguans speak today of the unbearable economic crisis and the need to find alternatives....

Foreign AID: Where have all the Dollars Gone?
1993 Junio Nicaragua
Shortly before Minister of the Presidency Antonio Lacayo's trip to the Paris Club meeting on April 2, everything seemed to be going against the Nicaraguan...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1993 Mayo Nicaragua
The Chamorro government won an important political and economic victory in the April meeting of the "Paris Club" donor countries in France. According...

The Far Right: 10 Months on the Offensive
1993 Mayo Nicaragua
On April 2, the US government informed President Chamorro that the $54 million in economic aid approved for 1992 withheld since May of that year for...

USAID's Strategy in Nicaragua
1993 Mayo Nicaragua
With President Bill Clinton's arrival at the White House and the strengthening of the Democrats in Congress, information and speculation about changes...

Rural Violence and the Right Wing's Try for Chaos
1993 Abril Nicaragua
The war that the Reagan administration unleashed against the Nicaraguan revolution capitalized on the discontent of Nicaraguan peasants, especially those...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1993 Abril Nicaragua
According to UNICEF, 165,580 children in Nicaragua live "in difficult circumstances." Of those, 107,000 "work" up to 12 hours a day in the streets ...

Nicaragua's Real Property Debate
1993 Enero Nicaragua
In last year's final round of negotiations between the FSLN and the government, Sandinista leaders raised more objections than ever before about the...

New Year, New US President, New Look in Nicaragua
1993 Enero Nicaragua
At first glance, the contrast in Nicaragua between the last two months of 1992 and the first one of 1993 could hardly be greater. Although more months...

A National Project: Necessary but Unattainable?
1992 Diciembre Nicaragua
The political and economic crisis Nicaragua is living through gives urgency to the search for a clearly democratic and economically just national project...

A Brisk Trade in Illusions
1992 Diciembre Nicaragua
Among the many labor protests that shook Nicaragua in October, one of them particularly affected the populace: the lottery ticket sellers' strike to...

The Social Tidal Wave
1992 Noviembre Nicaragua
The international media seldom consider third world countries newsworthy, and then usually only if the item is a disaster, natural or otherwise, as occurred...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1992 Noviembre Nicaragua
TIDAL WAVE DATA The army Civil Defense Department's tally of human damage caused by the September 2 tidal wave is 118 dead, 89 injured, 63 disappeared...

People vs. Neoliberalism: Who Will Fold First?
1992 Octubre Nicaragua
The poker game whose pot is the release of $104 million in US aid is still being played, and the US and Nicaraguan ultra-Right continue to up the ante....

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1992 Septiembre Nicaragua
PROTESTS TURN VIOLENT Three separate protests in Managua by distinct sectors, each with their own demands and tactics, converged in a moment...

The US-Nicaraguan Honeymoon is Over
1992 Septiembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua, part of a region commonly used as a US foreign policy proving ground, is now part of a new test: following the disintegration of the Soviet...

Foreign Investment, Environment and Autonomy
1992 Septiembre Nicaragua
Many believe that foreign investment is the solution to all of Nicaragua's economic problems and, therefore, should be promoted at any cost. But there...

The $100 Million Poker Game
1992 Agosto Nicaragua
When the news broke in late May that powerful sectors in Congress were urging a freeze on the $100 million in aid scheduled for disbursement that month,...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1992 Agosto Nicaragua
NEW LEGISLATION: A CRIME TO BE GAY In mid-June, the National Assembly approved penal code reforms that, among other things, would make homosexuality...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1992 Julio Nicaragua
RAAN BLOCKS TOXIC RECYCLING PLANTS The Regional Council in the North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN), following multiple negotiations that...

Taking Sides in the Playoffs
1992 Julio Nicaragua
The generalized social outburst feared and predicted by the Sandinistas and pooh-poohed by the government finally happened in early May. It came in...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1992 Junio Nicaragua
NATIONAL ASSEMBLY "REVISITED" Last month we left Minister of the Presidency Antonio Lacayo sputtering with anger outside the National Assembly....

The FSLN-Government Balancing Act
1992 Junio Nicaragua
April, always one of Nicaragua's most sweltering months, had several unusual hot points this year. Just before Easter the health minister declared a...

A New National Accord: Another Pact Between Leaders?
1992 Mayo Nicaragua
After months of conflict between various popular organizations and the Nicaraguan government, there is talk, once again, of concertación and the need...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1992 Mayo Nicaragua
OFF WITH THE TRUCE! On March 10, Lucio Jiménez, secretary general of the Sandinista Workers' Confederation (CST), declared an end to last year's...

How Long Should the FSLN Shoulder the Government’s Burden?
1992 Mayo Nicaragua
For several weeks in March, all the media, as well as a vast number of private conversations, centered on the discovery of a young girl's body, raped...

Maze of the General; Maze of the Left
1992 Abril Nicaragua
In mid-January, the army awarded a medal to the military attaché of one of the many embassies in Managua upon terminating his tour of duty. This practice,...

The Economic Plan’s Feet of Clay
1992 Marzo Nicaragua
In our first analysis of the Lacayo Plan, the central issue was whether the Nicaraguan economy, both rural and urban, would find itself at a dead end...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1992 Enero Nicaragua
CONTRACEPTIVES IN SHORT SUPPLY Nicaraguan gynecologists and health educators recently sounded the alarm when the country's health centers suspended...

“Ours is a Civic Struggle, But...”
1992 Enero Nicaragua
In later retrospectives about the multiple changes Nicaragua is undergoing, November 9 will be remembered as one of the important reference points. ...

Immovable Object Meets Irresistible Force
1991 Diciembre Nicaragua
In a political variant of the old song recalled in the title, pressing immediate issues crossed paths with structural limitations in October to throw...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1991 Diciembre Nicaragua
DRUGS AND DOLLARS Since Violeta Chamorro's inauguration, the lifting of the US trade embargo and the freeing up of many import tariffs has brought...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1991 Noviembre Nicaragua
PROPERTY LAW COMPROMISE UNDER DEBATEPresident Chamorro surprised the National Assembly on October 1 by sending a message from Paris to withdraw...

US Aid: Not Even a Cheap Lunch
1991 Noviembre Nicaragua
Two interlinked events in September demonstrated in no uncertain terms the political price the Chamorro government has had to pay for US assistance in...

Reconciliation and Stability: Still an Unreachable Dream
1991 Octubre Nicaragua
Urban property fights, rural violence, an ever more painful economic pinch for the poor, internecine fights within UNO played out between the government...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1991 Octubre Nicaragua
ENERGY CRISIS HITS HARDA prolonged drought in northern Nicaragua, coupled with increasing demands for energy, have forced INE, Nicaragua's state-run...

The Last Word
1991 Septiembre Nicaragua
We reprint below the "last words" from the FSLN National Congress, that is, condensed extracts of the closing speeches by General Humberto Ortega, head...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1991 Septiembre Nicaragua
FLOODS DEVASTATE RAMALess than three years after Hurricane Joan devastated Bluefields and Rama, the population in Rama and nearby river communities...

The Sandinista Congress: Rich, Controversial, Inconclusive
1991 Septiembre Nicaragua
Over the July 19 weekend, the Sandinista National Liberation Front held its first national party congress in thirty years of existence. That alone made...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1991 Agosto Nicaragua
SANDINISTAS SWEEP STUDENT ELECTIONSContrary to rightwing hopes, university students across Nicaragua handed a decisive victory to the Sandinista...

The Right Wing's Third Try for Power
1991 Agosto Nicaragua
Carlos Salgado, a bright young analyst on the late-night radio news program "Sin Fronteras," mused one night toward the end of June that "the...

The FSLN's Dilemma--Stability at What Cost?
1991 Julio Nicaragua
May 22 marked the last day of the truce regarding strikes and salary demands that the National Workers' Federation (FNT) had agreed to in March. The...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1991 Julio Nicaragua
THE CONTRA WAR, PART IIOne year after the last of the US-backed contra forces were disarmed as part of the demobilization and repatriation...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1991 Junio Nicaragua
GUNFIRE SETS OFF MUD-SLINGINGJust after midnight on Saturday April 27, a gunman hidden in a moving Toyota Land Cruiser set off a round of automatic-rifle...

Daniel Ortega: "Everything Depends on Our Ability to Fight Back"
1991 Junio Nicaragua
envío: During the early months of 1991, there seemed to be great confusion among the Sandinista rank and file and a lack of guidance from the...

US Demands Devaluation--Of the FSLN
1991 Junio Nicaragua
Although Daniel Ortega visited Washington several times during the first months of the revolution, and was even received in the White House by President...

Bankers and Masses Square Off: Economic Overhaul, Social Breakdown?
1991 Mayo Nicaragua
Only a year after being elected, Violeta Chamorro's government is losing the confidence of Nicaragua's main political and social actors, rich as well...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1991 Mayo Nicaragua
FIRES RAVAGE NORTHERN FORESTSForest fires raging through Nicaragua's northern Atlantic Coast region have consumed more than 123,000 acres of...

Nicaragua: Political Maturity and Economic Immaturity
1991 Abril Centroamérica
Nicaragua is the only Central American country in which demilitarization and the democratization of society have advanced very far. In 1990, both grassroots...

Insurrection from the Right
1991 Marzo Nicaragua
With its November uprising in Region V, Nicaragua's right wing demonstrated its ability to unite forces and pressure the government to the point of virtual...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1991 Marzo Nicaragua
THE GULF WAR AND NICARAGUAThe day after the US began bombing Iraq, Minister of the Presidency Antonio Lacayo tried to calm an anxious population...

Daniel Núñez: The Farmers’ View
1991 Marzo Nicaragua
Founded in 1981, the National Union of Farmers and Ranchers (UNAG) is one of the most powerful pro-Sandinista mass organizations, representing the interests...

Rebellion in the Ranks: Challenge from the Right
1991 Enero Nicaragua
This month's analysis focuses on the conflict between two major sectors in the country: those interested in concertation and those who reject it. As...

Concertation and Counter-Concertation
1991 Enero Nicaragua
With the October 26 signing of the economic agreement or "concertation" between the Nicaraguan government and the country's various social sectors, Minister...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1991 Enero Nicaragua
MURAL MADNESSDuring ten years of revolution, Managua's bleak landscape was graced with colorful murals on walls and buildings. Latin American...

Nicaragua: Ten Years of Independent Foreign Policy
1991 Enero Nicaragua
Though the current Nicaraguan government is allied with the United States, it cannot, after 10 years of a nationalist and anti-imperialist revolution...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1990 Diciembre Nicaragua
REGION V CHALLENGES VIOLETAAs we go to press, former contras and UNO mayors in Region V (Boaco-Chontales) have taken over the road from...

The International Limits of Concertation
1990 Diciembre Nicaragua
While Nicaragua was engrossed in its highly charged and polarized electoral campaign, the rest of the world was undergoing a radical and rapid transformation....

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1990 Noviembre Nicaragua
ANOTHER ATTACK ON FREEDOM OF SPEECHOn the night of September 30, the two transmitters of one of Nicaragua's most popular radio stations were...

Who Will Conquer the Chaos?
1990 Noviembre Nicaragua
In the new phase ushered in with the February elections, the central question facing Nicaragua has been whether the bourgeoisie would be able to roll...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1990 Octubre Nicaragua
DISABLED DEMAND THEIR RIGHTS On the first of every month, bank lines extend for blocks as the elderly line up to receive their monthly pensions....

Polarization and Depolarization
1990 Octubre Nicaragua
“The Sandinistas are finished. There are tensions inside the army. The FSLN is divided between the hotheads who don’t understand the defeat, who...

After 100 Days: Same Economic Script, New Lead Actors
1990 Agosto Nicaragua
In its first hundred days, President Violeta Chamorro's administration racked up a major success and a major failure. Its success was to demobilize...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1990 Agosto Nicaragua
FROM A NATION OF POETS TO BOOK-BURNERSOn July 4, in what may or may not have been intended as a back-handed celebration of US Independence Day,...

Antonio Lacayo. Takes the Stand
1990 Agosto Nicaragua
The following are extracts of an interview with Minister of the Presidency Antonio Lacayo on the state television program “Democracia en Marcha,” July...

Land Conflicts: Godoy Backers Seize Cooperatives
1990 Agosto Nicaragua
A rutted dirt road leads to the farm, one of many in La Concha, an intensely cultivated area south of Managua. Several men watch suspiciously as newcomers...

After 100 Days: Still Three Roads Ahead
1990 Agosto Nicaragua
The Sandinista Front, in solidarity with the Nicaraguan people who are being victimized by neo-Somocismo, calls on all Sandinista party members, affiliates,...

Media: TV Tales
1990 Agosto Nicaragua
In less than three months of government, Violeta Chamorro's administration has already illegally closed a media outlet. “Extravisión,” a contracted...

Two Faces of UNO
1990 Julio Nicaragua
Since the UNO coalition came to power two event-packed months ago, views on what the new government actually represents have swung widely. During the...

From Military to Social Confrontation
1990 Julio Nicaragua
The UNO government is using its honeymoon period to try to confuse the opposition. First, it gives signs of peaceful coexistence, such as expediting...

Media Moves
1990 Julio Nicaragua
In the rocky transition from the Sandinista government to the new UNO one, the electronic media have been among the more visible arenas of struggle....

The New Players*
1990 Junio Nicaragua
The new government Cabinet members were not announced until April 24, one day before Violeta Chamorro took power, and two of those post changed hands...

The Last Word - Tomás Borge
1990 Junio Nicaragua
As a service to our readers, envío prints below excerpts from a speech given given on May 24 by Tomás Borge, Comandante of the Revolution,...

UNO's Balance of Power—On a Tight Rope
1990 Junio Nicaragua
The internal workings and struggles of UNO are a labyrinth of political interests, ideological differences and personal rivalries. At times, the different...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1990 Junio Nicaragua
VACCINATION CAMPAIGN DRAGGINGOne of the early marks of the Sandinista revolution was the successful distribution of vaccines throughout the...

Playing with Fire
1990 Junio Nicaragua
Note to our readers: The day this issue of envío went to press, the Chamorro government signed a sweeping agreement with the counterrevolutionary...

On the Verge of Peace, or Civil War?
1990 Mayo Nicaragua
President Daniel Ortega turned over the presidential sash to Nicaragua's new president, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, on April 25, 1990, as promised....

Low Intensity War and Revolutionary Maneuvering
1990 Mayo Nicaragua
The US “low-intensity war” and its disastrous economic results dominate as the root cause in interpretations of the Sandinista's electoral defeat in...

“Strengthening the Revolutionary Process”
1990 Marzo Nicaragua
Concession Statement by President Daniel Ortega Saavedra, February 26, 1990* ________________________________________________ *Original English...

A Vote for Peace—Will It Come?
1990 Marzo Nicaragua
As president of the Nicaraguan people and as a Sandinista leader, I take pride—and all Sandinista militants can take pride—in the greatest victory,...

Election Data
1990 Marzo Nicaragua
Total registered voters - 1,752,088 Abstention - 241,250 or 13.7%' President/Vice President Total valid ballots - 1,420,544 Total votes...

Grassroots Power: Defending the Revolution
1990 Marzo Nicaragua
Two days after the elections, Daniel Ortega told supporters that, though the FSLN would no longer hold the reins of government, his party would go on...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1990 Marzo Nicaragua
NATIONAL ASSEMBLY ACTIVE DURING TRANSITION PERIODWhile the FSLN and UNO transition teams are negotiating the crucial national issues of the...

After the Poll Wars—Explaining the Upset
1990 Marzo Nicaragua
Numerous theories are being tossed about among pollsters, political theoreticians and confounded laypeople alike in an attempt to explain the large discrepancy...

Governing From Below
1990 Marzo Nicaragua
Speech by President Daniel Ortega Saavedra, February 27,1990 Nonaligned Plaza, Managua* __________________________________________ *Original...

International Election Observers: Nicaragua Under a Microscope
1990 Febrero Nicaragua
Nicaraguans should trust themselves. No one should think that these elections are being supervised. That is part of Nicaragua's black history......

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1990 Febrero Nicaragua
THE WARThe threat of invasion following the US intervention in Panama struck hard at the Nicaraguans living in the populous Pacific coast of...

FSLN Scoreboard—Esquipulas 1:4, Elections 3:2
1990 Febrero Nicaragua
As the 1980s came to an end, the United States made clear that it has no intention of abandoning its option to use military force in the Central American...

Negotiations and Elections: The Only Road to Peace
1990 Enero Nicaragua
In October, the Bush Administration renewed the US embargo against Nicaragua and got congressional approval for $9 million to assist the most reactionary...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1990 Enero Nicaragua
CAMPAIGNING FOR UNO CONTRA-STYLEPresident Daniel Ortega caused an international stir when he announced in October that the government would...

Nicaragua's 1984 Elections—A History Worth the Retelling
1990 Enero Nicaragua
These elections have followed a liberal model, but within a revolutionary process. Perhaps the biggest success was the number of votes received by...

Lifting the Cease-fire to End the War
1989 Diciembre Nicaragua
"If the United States would redirect the money currently going to finance the contra forces to the United Nations so it could be used for the...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1989 Diciembre Nicaragua
AIR TRAGEDY CUTS ACROSS POLITICAL LINESOn October 21, the worst air crash in Central American history occurred when a SAHSA plane crashed in...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1989 Noviembre Nicaragua
CATHOLIC CHURCH CALLS FOR VOTE In a pastoral letter dated September 24, the Nicaraguan Bishops' Conference made a clear call for Nicaraguans...

The Electoral Process Gears Up
1989 Noviembre Nicaragua
The electoral process currently underway in Nicaragua is the path that could well lead the country to the "firm and lasting peace" that first seemed...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1989 Octubre Nicaragua
LEARNING NEVER STOPSAugust 23 marked the ninth anniversary of the completion of Nicaragua's Literacy Crusade. The 1980 campaign taught 400,000...

Navigating the Electoral Map
1989 Octubre Nicaragua
The election of presidential and vice presidential candidates for the opposition parties—as much those in the center as on the far left and right—has...

After Esquipulas II and Sapoá: What Happens Next?
1989 Septiembre Nicaragua
Two events occurred in the first week of August that, without exaggeration, can be termed historical. They are easily as important as were Esquipulas...

Nicaragua: Four More Years of War?
1989 Agosto Nicaragua
As Nicaragua heads into its election period and moves to open real political space in the country, the Bush Administration has responded with full-scale...

The Last Word
1989 Agosto Nicaragua
Over these ten years I’ve seen that little by little Sandino’s ideals are being fulfilled, that the revolution is doing all it can to benefit the majority...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1989 Agosto Nicaragua
THE WAR THAT NEVER ENDSContra activity in the Nicaraguan countryside mounted as the Sandinista revolution celebrated its tenth anniversary....

Nicaragua or the United States—The Electoral Dilemma
1989 Julio Nicaragua
In early June, the Bush Administration announced that it intends to conduct secret intelligence operations aimed at influencing the Nicaraguan elections...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1989 Julio Nicaragua
HUMANITARIAN AID, INHUMAN RESULTSDespite the signing of Central American accords in February stipulating the demobilization of the US-funded...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1989 Junio Nicaragua
CASA BENJAMIN LINDERApril 28 marked the official opening of an "alternative US Embassy" in Managua, the Casa Benjamin Linder. The project is...

Just the Facts: 1989 The War Continues
1989 Junio Nicaragua
##1989-8-95-06-03-1-en## ##1989-8-95-06-03-2-en##...

Nicaragua's Electoral Process—The New Name for the War
1989 Junio Nicaragua
Since the Esquipulas IV accords were signed at the Central American summit meeting in El Salvador in mid-February, the Nicaraguan government has dedicated...

Conclusion Negotiations: A Revolutionary Tool
1989 Mayo Centroamérica
Why was 1988 a year of movement towards a negotiated end to the Central American conflicts? There are five key factors: 1) The growing Central American...

From a Mixed-up Economy Toward a Socialist Mixed Economy
1989 Mayo Nicaragua
Where is Nicaragua headed? The government's call early this year for concertation—forging a working national unity—in the economic arena has sparked...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1989 Mayo Nicaragua
MORE CONTRA AIDIn an unusual bipartisan move, President Bush reached an agreement with Congress to provide the contras with nonmilitary...

In the Negotiating Mode
1989 Mayo Centroamérica
As Soviet peace initiatives lead the way out of the cold war era, a series of regional conflicts are coming to a negotiated end. It is difficult to...

Peace Accords: On Track or Derailed?
1989 Abril Nicaragua
Just one month after the Esquipulas IV accords were signed at the recent presidential summit in San Salvador, Nicaragua has moved to fulfill its part...

US Policy: Economic Embargo: The War Goes On
1989 Abril Estados Unidos
US Secretary of State James Baker told congressional representatives on March 2 that the Bush Administration may offer to lift the nearly four-year-old...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1989 Abril Nicaragua
Nicaragua Briefs YOUR FILL OF FACTSWith the new economic measures in effect, many things in Nicaragua are in increasingly short supply—including...

Health: Taking AIDS Seriously
1989 Marzo Nicaragua
Located in the eastern half of the city, Bello Horizonte is one of Managua's traditional working-class neighborhoods, the site of frequent combats during...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1989 Marzo Nicaragua
CANAL THROUGH NICARAGUA: AN ANCIENT DREAM REVIVEDThe Nicaraguan government announced officially on February 10 that it was in communication...

Breakthrough For Peace
1989 Marzo Nicaragua
The five Central American Presidents signed an accord in an advance towards peace on February 14 that could prove as dramatic and significant as the...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1989 Febrero Nicaragua
OUR BODIES: WHOSE LAWS?Abortion, long a taboo subject in Nicaragua, has become the focus of an increasingly heated debate. In early January...

Bush and Latin America: The View from Nicaragua
1989 Enero Nicaragua
To roll back the Cuban revolution after Fidel's death, to wage a low-intensity war against Nicaragua to the bitter end, to consider backing a coup d’état...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1989 Enero Nicaragua
SUCCESSES IN SPUDSIf one goal of this year's economic measures was to make production more efficient and cut down on costly imports, peasant...

In the Hurricane’s Wake
1988 Diciembre Nicaragua
In the days after Hurricane Joan swept through Nicaragua, leaving an unprecedented trail of destruction, Nicaraguans began to pick up the pieces. "How...

Blown Away—Hurricane Joan Puts Nicaragua at Risk
1988 Diciembre Nicaragua
Hurricane Joan's passage westward across Nicaragua is a story of extremes. Joan built up strength as it moved across the Caribbean Sea until it came...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1988 Noviembre Nicaragua
ANOTHER INTERNATIONAL ROLE FOR NICARAGUAThe World Interparliamentary Union elected Nicaragua to its Executive Committee during its 80th conference...

Nicaragua Tries Peace Moves While Waiting for US Voters
1988 Noviembre Nicaragua
While the US Congress voted more contra aid, the contras continued attacking civilian and military targets and the Honduran army repeatedly...

On Hold for the US voter
1988 Septiembre Nicaragua
After the flurry of provocative events in Nicaragua in July, August was relatively uneventful. Only relatively, as there was significant movement in...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1988 Agosto Nicaragua
KENIA BACK ON HER FEETKenia Rodríguez is back on her feet, although they are her second pair. The 8-year-old lost both legs above the knees...

Nicaragua Draws the Line
1988 Agosto Nicaragua
Little time remains for the Reagan Administration to destroy the Nicaraguan revolution. While Esquipulas II and Sapoá have somewhat manacled the administration's...

Peace Recedes—Contra Militarists Dominate
1988 Julio Nicaragua
For the past seven years, the government of Nicaragua has sought a dialogue with the US government, convinced that if an accord could be reached with...

Peace Stalls in Managua—Goes Backward in Region
1988 Junio Nicaragua
In last month's analysis, we made some guesses about the options open to the Nicaraguan counterrevolution in light of the commitments they had made in...

Nicaragua Briefs
1988 Mayo Nicaragua
Say Water, Say Life!Redundancy may be in store for the most recent status symbol of Managua’s middle class—the concrete water tank on stilts....

Sapoá—A New Benchmark
1988 Mayo Nicaragua
With the signing of the Sapoá accords, peace in the near future seemed possible. But now, after several more rounds, the negotiations between the Nicaraguan...

Sapoá: Will Peace Last?
1988 Abril Nicaragua
Through a complex, speeded-up process initiated by the signing of the Central American peace accords in August 1987, possibilities have opened up for...

Steps on the Road to Peace
1988 Marzo Centroamérica
The unequal confrontation between the Sandinista revolution and the Reagan Administration has had two distinct periods. From 1981 to 1984, the US government...

Conclusions of the CIVS Report on Compliance
1988 Febrero Centroamérica
Documents (unofficial translations) (Conclusions) 1. The International Commission on Verification and Follow-up of the Guatemala Procedure has noted...

The War after Esquipulas III—In Check but not Checkmate
1988 Febrero Nicaragua
The confrontation between little Nicaragua and Ronald Reagan’s imperial policies is entering its eighth and final year. What Nicaragua has been defending...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1988 Febrero Nicaragua
ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT TAKES OFF IN NICARAGUAConcerned biologists and ecologists founded the National Environmentalist Movement on January 25,...

Revolutionizing Health- A study in Complexity
1988 Febrero Nicaragua
It is often said in Nicaragua that the revolution's health care system has not only fallen into crisis but that its model was unrealistic from the outset....

Joint Declaration By The Presidents Of Central America
1988 Febrero Centroamérica
The Presidents have received the conclusions of the report by the International Verification and Follow-up Commission, prepared according to Number 11...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1988 Enero Nicaragua
La Prensa Is Mot AmusedOn Nicaragua's equivalent of April Fools' Day, December 28, Nicaraguans opened the morning Barricada to find on the back...

Reagan & Co. Mine the Road to Peace
1988 Enero Nicaragua
With the deadline established in the Esquipulas II accords approaching and preparations for Esquipulas III—a meeting of the Central American Presidents...

Energy in Nicaragua: The Problems and the Prospects
1988 Enero Nicaragua
Frequent power outages, contra sabotage against electrical plants and towers, gas rationing and periodic long lines at gas stations, technical...

Cease – fire Talks Contras After Power Not Peace
1987 Diciembre Nicaragua
The Esquipulas II peace accords have been a profoundly important step along the road to peace in Nicaragua. Since they were signed, questions have arisen...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1987 Noviembre Nicaragua
CANADA AIDS WAR REFUGEESOn August 30, the Nicaraguan Red Cross and UNICEF signed an agreement to channel $650,000 from the Canadian government...

Contra Decline Continues: Will Peace Follow?
1987 Noviembre Nicaragua
Immediately following the August 6-7 Central American peace negotiations in Guatemala, the Nicaraguan government set forth on a program of strict compliance...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1987 Octubre Nicaragua
"MISSION OF PEACE"The 300-passenger boat "Mission of Peace" recently began transporting passengers between the coastal city of Bluefields and...

Esquipulas in Nicaragua Words Become Deeds
1987 Octubre Nicaragua
US pacifist Brian Willson, a Vietnam War veteran, sat down in the path of the train that transports US arms for the contras and the Salvadoran...

“De Cara al Pueblo”: Fourteen Questions for the Sandinistas
1987 Septiembre Nicaragua
"De Cara al Pueblo" (Face the People) has become one of the traditions of the Nicaraguan revolution. Every week since the very beginning of the...

Esquipulas II—Is Peace at Hand?
1987 Septiembre Nicaragua
The Central American Presidents were greeted with fanfare and a drum roll as they entered Guatemala's National Palace on August 7. The palace symbolizes...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1987 Septiembre Nicaragua
BRIAN WILLSON: SYMBOL OF STRENGTH FOR NICARAGUAN PEOPLENicaraguans reacted with shock and anguish upon hearing that US Vietnam War veteran...

Reagan vs. Nicaragua Beginning the Final Lap
1987 Agosto Nicaragua
This month the Nicaraguan revolution celebrated its eighth birthday in the city of Matagalpa, capital of one of the departments most affected by the...

Brother Tomas, Martyr of the Church of the Poor
1987 Agosto Nicaragua
Brother Tomás Zavaleta, a 40-year-old Franciscan friar from El Salvador, is the first member of the Catholic clergy to become a victim of the counterrevolutionary...

On the Nicaragua Solidarity Trail
1987 Agosto Nicaragua
Solidarity between the people of the United States and Nicaragua is an extremely important element in the war that the Sandinista revolutionary process...

The Contras: New Bottles, Old Wine
1987 Junio Nicaragua
On May 8, the United Nicaraguan Opposition (UNO), the contras' political/military umbrella organization, met in Miami and gave itself a new identity,...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS
1987 Junio Nicaragua
GREENPEACEThe first Central American conference on Environmental Action took place in Managua in mid-May, marking the first time that issues...

NICARAGUA BRIEFS: In Memory of Those Who Died So That the Bells No Longer Toll in Nicaragua
1987 Mayo Nicaragua
Text of remarks by President Daniel Ortega during the funeral service for Benjamin Ernest Linder in Matagalpa, Nicaragua on April 30, 1987. Elizabeth,...

Nicaragua Wages Peace, Reagan Steps Up War
1987 Mayo Nicaragua
The political trends discussed in March's envío were confirmed by April's events. Despite his increasing isolation, Ronald Reagan has not swayed...

Mental Health Care: Towards a New Vision
1987 Mayo Nicaragua
Lock up a normal and sane person (if you find one, please let me know! But anyway, let's just say a person who's within the range of what we call normal,...

Players Test New Positions in the Contragate Board Game
1987 Febrero Nicaragua
January was particularly rich in relevant events. It was like a board game in which all players involved in the scandal in any way had moved into position...

From Estelí to New York: A Call to Conscience
1986 Agosto Nicaragua
"...We would like to be speaking of the aggression in the past tense, dedicating this moment to speak of production, to speak of education, of health;...

Town Hall Forums: Another Step toward a Constitution
1986 Agosto Nicaragua
"My children shed their blood for the liberation of Nicaragua, and when they fell in battle there was a gaping hole inside me and the fire in my heart...

Congress Votes for War
1986 Julio Nicaragua
To any reasonable observer it appeared that the moment was ripe for a negotiated solution to the Nicaraguan situation. The military defeat of the counterrevolution...

A Disarming Proposal
1986 Junio Nicaragua
"We want to help Central America put an end to its costly arms race and will support any verifiable and reciprocal agreement regarding the non-importation...

Congress Is Forced to Recognize Contadora
1986 Mayo Nicaragua
Coordinates of the current situation Nicaragua's perplexing current situation continues to be characterized by three factors, analyzed in previous...

The Image War Gives Way to Real Defeat
1986 Abril Nicaragua
As this issue of envío went to press, the Contadora and Support Group countries were meeting in Panama both to reaffirm their basic points of...

New Initiatives in Contadora and the Economy
1986 Marzo Nicaragua
Toward the end of 1985, Nicaragua refused to go any further down the spiral leading to the failure of the Contadora initiative. It demanded that the...

The Sumu Indians of Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast—Defining Our Own Reality
1986 Marzo Nicaragua
“The rights of autonomy of the indigenous peoples and communities of the Atlantic Coast will be exercised in the geographic area that they have traditionally...

The Cultural-Ideological Factor
1986 Febrero Centroamérica
The Central American crisis comes at a moment in which there’s an effort to redefine the world from the perspective of US domination. The New Right...

The Economic Factor
1986 Febrero Centroamérica
Central America is going through an economic crisis of unprecedented dimensions. The real per-capita income has fallen to 1972 levels for Guatemala...

The International Factor: Coexistence or prolonged conflict?
1986 Febrero Centroamérica
The Sandinistas’ “Patria Libre o Morir” is none other than the famous cry, “Give me liberty or give me death,” from Patrick Henry’s March 23, 1775, speech...

The Military Factor
1986 Febrero Centroamérica
The military conflict has shown itself more and more to be a direct clash between the new historic subject and the United States. The push from armed...

The Political Factor
1986 Febrero Centroamérica
Central America today is characterized by the tension between the social forces that are willing to subordinate themselves to US policy, which defines...

SPECIAL ISSUE ON CENTRAL AMERICA – Preface
1986 Febrero Centroamérica
In terms of social theory, we have called the crucial concept used in this work the “new Central American historic subject.” We interpret this new collective...

Conclusion
1986 Febrero Centroamérica
Tendencies: 1) US intransigence will increase and the war will be prolonged. The defeats dealt to the contras by the Sandinista Popular...

An Inside View of the Elections
1984 Diciembre Nicaragua
In March of 1984, Nicaragua’s Government junta appointed the members of the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE), which became the fourth branch of government....

Approaching a New Stage of the War
1984 Diciembre Nicaragua
On November 4 and 6, the two primary antagonists in the Central American conflict, the FSLN and the Reagan Administration, were electorally certified...

From the Elections to the State of Alert
1984 Noviembre Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s long-awaited election day and the massive voter turnout were major domestic and international victories, preceded by difficult times and...

Approaching Elections: Successful Diplomacy and Continued Military Defense
1984 Octubre Nicaragua
In the last fifteen days, Nicaragua has achieved a series of victories on the political and diplomatic fronts. The most important of these, Nicaragua’s...

The Electoral Process Advances, But Abstention Encourages Intervention
1984 Agosto Nicaragua
The process leading to Nicaragua’s November 4 elections has picked up momentum in the last thirty days as the legal framework has been defined and the...

New Regional Question Marks, New Military Offensive, New push for Contadora
1984 Abril Nicaragua
In the last month Nicaragua experienced a new military aggression—one of the strongest to date. All things considered, this external offensive outweighed...

Electoral Process Moves Ahead Amid Difficulties
1984 Marzo Nicaragua
“The present law institutionalizes the right of the Nicaraguan people to elect their leaders in a free, secret, direct, and sovereign way. The Sandinista...

Sandino: The Chronology of our National Hero
1984 Marzo Nicaragua
Nicaragua's revolution took place, progresses and is understood not in terms of revolutionary theory, but rather from a historical perspective. This...

Between Kissinger and Contadora
1984 Febrero Nicaragua
News on Central America this month was dominated by two quite distinct efforts to deal with the regional situation. One was the Contadora process, which...

Moving Toward War
1983 Julio Nicaragua
The current situation can be best understood if this month's news analysis of the political situation is broadened to include the region and events in...

Political Parties In Nicaragua Today In Relation To Proposed Legislation
1981 Diciembre Nicaragua
I- INTRODUCTION:The introduction by the Frente Sandinista of a bill concerning political parties has created a new political situation in Nicaragua....

Dear Friends
1981 Diciembre Nicaragua
In this Christmas season, we hold a special feeling for all of you who have shared in Nicaragua’s struggle. Your continuing concern for the peoples...

The Inmunity Of Five Council Members Revoked
1981 Noviembre Nicaragua
On October 21, the Nicaraguan Council of State revoked the immunity of five of its members: Jaime Bengochea and Reynaldo Hernandez of COSEP, Allan Zambrana...

Dear Friends
1981 Noviembre Nicaragua
It has been an incredibly active month here in Nicaragua; one in which many of the events that have taken place give us serious cause for concern. There...

Halcón Vista And The Response Of The Nicaraguan People
1981 Noviembre Nicaragua
I. Immediate Precedents:The establishment of the State of Economic and Social Emergency. In the last envío we analyzed in detail the...

Dear Friends
1981 Octubre Nicaragua
Greetings from Nicaragua! Many thanks to those of you who have sent us news of the work you are doing on Central American issues, and copies of your...

Some Aspects Of Nicaragua’s Economy
1981 Octubre Nicaragua
I. To Satisfy Basic Needs.Our strategy differs from other models of economic development whose first priority is to establish a model of accumulation....

National State of Emergency
1981 Octubre Centroamérica
Causes of the Action (taken from the official communiqué of 9/9/81) 1)Crisis in the Third World “The countries of the Third World...

Dear Friends
1981 Septiembre Nicaragua
Greetings again from Nicaragua Libre! The past month has been a busy one here at the Instituto and we hope that our efforts result in providing you...

Problems Within The Church In Nicaragua
1981 Septiembre Nicaragua
“I don’t know what the bishops are thinking. First they ask the priests who work with the Government and for the people to resign, and now they want...

Principles and definitions of the JGRN and FSLN Regarding the coast
1981 Septiembre Nicaragua
On August 12, Comandante Daniel Ortega, on behalf of the Frente Sandinista of National Liberation (FSLN)and the Junta of the National Reconstruction...

Dear Friends
1981 Agosto Nicaragua
They began arriving before the sun had risen; campesinos from Nicaragua’s remotest corners, families from Managua’s neighborhoods, visitors from around...

They Continue Being Priests and they continue in Government Positions
1981 Agosto Nicaragua
The problem of the Catholic priests who hold Government positions, specifically Fr. Ernesto Cardenal (Minister of Culture), Fr. Miguel D’Escoto (Minister...

The Ideological Struggle within the Catholic Church In Nicaragua
1981 Agosto Nicaragua
In fact, many believe that at this time the ideological struggle is being waged most strenuously in the religious camp. With the measures enacted under...

Decapitalization
1981 Julio Nicaragua
Introduction:The Nicaraguan government, from its inception, has been described as pragmatic rather than ideological. Pragmatic is the word...

Dear Friends
1981 Julio Nicaragua
In these hectic, yet joyful days before July 19th, we wish to send you greetings and thank you once again for all the good work you are doing on Central...

The National Forum
1981 Julio Nicaragua
The National Forum, a dialogue between opposition and revolutionary political parties, is one of the principal political events which is currently taking...

Dear Friends
1981 Junio Nicaragua
Dear Friends: We appreciate greatly the good work you are doing in informing people of the situation in Nicaragua and Central America. As church...