November 25, 2023
Is this the last of Theroux’s travel books? If it is, he has created an impressive cannon, and this is a fitting finale. In this book he joins the many writers who have travelled through Mexico, but his story is a refreshing one as many others have covered the violence of the cartels or the horrors faced by migrants travelling to the US border, while Theroux finds new angles from which to view a huge, complex country which has a capital city with (as he points out) a population far larger than that of any of the Central American countries to its south.
Continue reading “On the Plain of Snakes by Paul Theroux”
Category: Latin America, Book reviews | Tags: migration, Mexico, drugs |
November 24, 2023
Victorias de Noviembre co-op members at work
An article written by Winnie Narváez Herrera, Facilitator at ÁBACOenRed /FUPECG, and edited/translated by John Perry.
In Latin America, the problem of housing quality is even more serious than the problem of not having a home, and this is made worse by the increasing effects of climate change, violence in some parts of the region and migration.
Continue reading “Mission accomplished! Members of a cooperative in Nicaragua build their own homes”
Category: Housing, Latin America | Tags: housing, Nicaragua |
November 7, 2023
Meeting Ivan Acosta, Nicaragua’s finance minister
Which country spends nearly two-thirds of its budget on tackling poverty? When I met Nicaragua’s finance minister, Ivan Acosta, he had just presented his 2024 budget to its national assembly, and he made clear that a large part of it is aimed at doing just that.
Continue reading “US sanctions hit Nicaragua’s social investment programmes”
Category: Latin America | Tags: sanctions, US intervention, Nicaragua |
August 6, 2023
Three previous articles described the attempted coup in Nicaragua in 2018, and how public support grew initially but then waned. This final article, covering the period from mid-July to the present day, shows how the coup was defeated and what happened in the aftermath.
By July 2018, three months of violence – over 200 deaths on both sides, including 22 police officers, kidnappings, torture and destruction of property – had exhausted the Nicaraguan population, and they were desperate for the government to restore order. The calls for the government to clear the tranques (roadblocks) that had strangled the country became deafening. Daniel Ortega’s strategy had worked: had he removed the roadblocks too soon, the resistance might have been much more violent, and it would have left deeply divided communities. He had waited until he had the backing of most of the population.
Continue reading “The Nicaraguan Coup Attempt: How Peace Was Restored and What Has Happened Since”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua crisis, US intervention, Nicaragua
July 15, 2023
Sadrach and Yohaira with a crowd of supporters
Britain and the U.S. impose economic sanctions on dozens of governments they don’t like, write Erik Mar and John Perry. Some people in Nicaragua are being targeted on the basis of little or no evidence.
Continue reading “Inscrutable Sanctions”
Category: Latin America | Tags: US intervention, sanctions, human rights, Nicaragua |
July 9, 2023
Nicaragua: On the Fifth Anniversary of a Coup Attempt, Conflicting Accounts Persist
On the fifth anniversary of the 2018 coup attempt in Nicaragua, conflicting accounts of the violence and killings still persist. The mainstream media has characterized the opposition protests as generally peaceful and cases of opposition violence as counter violence against brutal repression of dissent by the government. John Perry has written a series of articles that call into question this one-sided narrative, and his appeal to empirical evidence and lived experience have broadened the parameters of debate. In this article, Perry revisits the case of the murder of police officer Faber López Vivas, a case that highlights the need for impartial investigation of the events of 2018.
Continue reading “Nicaragua: On the Fifth Anniversary of a Coup Attempt, Conflicting Accounts Persist”
Category: Latin America | Tags: human rights, Nicaragua crisis, Nicaragua
June 27, 2023
Dan Kovalik and John Perry
Two previous articles described the build up to the attempted coup in Nicaragua and how the media were crucial in convincing the public to support it. This article, covering the period from May 30 onwards, shows how the initial support peaked, then collapsed.
After more than a month of conflict, most Nicaraguans hoped that a “national dialogue” set up by the Catholic church would lead to peace, but in fact it led to renewed violence. During the hiatus before the dialogue began, and with the police now confined to their police stations on Daniel Ortega’s orders, roadblocks were set up on all the country’s arterial roads and throughout many key cities (see the map published by one of the coup leaders). Quickly dubbed los tranques de la muerte (“death roadblocks”), they not only strangled the country’s transport system but became the scene of intimidation, robberies, rape, kidnappings and murder.
Continue reading “The attempted 2018 coup in Nicaragua: why its support collapsed”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, Nicaragua crisis
June 24, 2023
Matagalpa, a commercial city in the mountainous north of Nicaragua, suffered many destructive attacks during the attempted coup in 2018. One of the worst occurred on June 25, when opposition vandals robbed and later set fire to the municipal depot, or plantel, where the vehicles and equipment are kept that maintain the city. The destruction is shown in the video below.
Continue reading “Matagalpa in flames, June 2018”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, Nicaragua crisis
June 17, 2023
Five years after the violent coup attempt in Nicaragua, the country is celebrating its recovery – peace has returned, the economy is growing, the Sandinista government re-elected in 2021 is investing strongly in public services. But it’s important to remember what happened in 2018 and the enormous, deliberate damage that was done to the country. Nicaragua’s opposition, pushing for support in Washington, expects its horrendous acts to be forgotten. This article describes in detail one of the many incidents of extreme violence. It occurred in Masaya, one of Nicaragua’s most important cities, the scene of many horrendous crimes when it was controlled by opposition thugs for several weeks in 2018.
Continue reading “Nicaragua rebuilds – five years after US-funded terror was defeated”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, Nicaragua crisis, human rights |
May 26, 2023
“Peaceful” protesters in Masaya on the first day of the coup attempt, April 18, 2018
An interview with Randall, a “historic fighter” from Nicaragua’s revolution against the Somoza dictatorship, about the attempted coup in 2018 and how the violence affected his neighbourhood.
During the attempted coup in Nicaragua in 2018, Masaya was one of the cities most affected by the violence and by the widespread use of roadblocks to control the streets, many manned by armed youths. The violence began on April 18 and lasted until July 17, when police and Sandinista volunteers moved in to clear the roadblocks. Overall, in Masaya some 36 people died during the coup attempt, including three police officers (and two more were trapped and murdered after the coup attempt ended). Randall, the subject of this article, lives in Monimbó, the neighborhood or “barrio” where the violence in the city began.
Continue reading “Masaya in flames – five years afterwards”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, Nicaragua crisis
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on