July 23, 2021
Photo from the Sri Lanka Guardian
After the U.S.-Russian summit in June, there was no apparent irony in President Biden’s response to a question about electoral interference. “Let’s get this straight,” he said. “How would it be if the United States were viewed by the rest of the world as interfering with the elections directly of other countries, and everybody knew it?” But of course much of the world does take this view; by one count the United States has intervened in no fewer than 81 elections between 1946 and 2000, many of them in Latin America. Biden’s question reveals a fundamental gap in U.S. foreign policymaking: Why do its leaders appear unable to judge how U.S. actions are seen by ordinary people in the countries they affect?
Continue reading “Why U.S. Policy Toward Nicaragua Isn’t Working”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, US intervention, Nicaraguan elections |
July 4, 2021
This short video (in Spanish, with English subtitles) explains part of the legal basis for the actions being taken against people who have accepted $millions from the US to disrupt the coming elections, or are demanding tougher US sanctions against their own country, likely to be most damaging for the poorest sections of Nicaragua’s population.
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, US intervention, Nicaraguan elections |
June 8, 2021
The US base, Soto Cano, in Honduras
Both Honduras and Nicaragua hold presidential elections in November 2021 and the US government has a strong interest in both, although for rather different reasons. Both have incumbent presidents who will either stand again or, in the case of Honduras, more likely be replaced as candidate by a successor seen as reliably committed to the same style of government. Given that both countries are economically and militarily tiny, it might be thought that Washington would be unconcerned by their internal affairs, but in reality it sees much at stake.
Continue reading “The US stake in Nicaragua and Honduras’s 2021 elections”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Honduras, Nicaragua, US intervention, Nicaraguan elections
May 24, 2021
Cristiana Chamorro (from CNN)
This article, published in the United States, questions the stance on Nicaragua taken by the US National Public Radio (NPR), which is roughly equivalent to BBC Radio in the UK.
Imagine what would happen if the US media discovered that a candidate in the mid-term elections was under investigation by the FBI for receiving money from a foreign government. Then, suppose it was one that’s hostile to the US, perhaps Syria or Iran, and that the same government was also covertly funding election coverage in, say, Fox News. How would the rest of the media respond? By claiming that the candidate’s democratic rights were under threat from the FBI? Or by expressing shock and horror at foreign interference in US elections and urging the FBI to arrest the culprits?
Continue reading “They should ask where the money comes from”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, US intervention, Nicaraguan elections
May 1, 2021
Gioconda Belli at the Masaya Volcano
Gioconda Belli, the Nicaraguan writer perhaps best known for her autobiography The Country Under My Skin, has been described as ‘an icon of Latin American feminist literature’. She spoke recently of the ‘extraordinary power’ of being a woman, and that despite this power ‘women have often been relegated to a second place, one where they are only seen from the role of reproduction, pleasure and service.’ Nevertheless, she added, ‘there have been enough ground-breaking women who have been and are still breaking into lots of situations where we couldn’t have been found before.’
Continue reading “Women’s rights in Nicaragua under attack from an unlikely source”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, Nicaragua crisis |
April 3, 2021
The Washington Post’s article and false claim of nine Covid-19 related deaths
One year ago, as both the Trump administration in the US and the Johnson government in the UK responded fitfully to the growing pandemic, the international media were looking for whipping boys: other countries whose response to the virus was even worse.
Continue reading “With Nicaragua, Scary Covid Projections Are More Newsworthy Than Hopeful Results”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, media, coronavirus
March 25, 2021
From the new report “Nicaragua’s Indigenous Peoples – Neocolonial Lies, Autonomous Reality”
Nicaragua was one of the first countries in Latin America to give constitutional rights to its Indigenous peoples and its laws to protect their territories are justly famous (especially the Autonomy Law of 1986 and the Demarcation Law of 2003). Some 40,000 Indigenous families live in areas that are legally owned and administered by over 300 Indigenous communities, covering almost a third of the country. Governmental recognition of land rights was the first step in tackling incursions by non-Indigenous settlers from western Nicaragua and the violent conflicts they sometimes produce. But because colonization of Indigenous territories has been taking place for decades, taking the next steps – delineation of the territories, dealing with illegal titles (primarily given under previous governments) and potentially removing settlers – is a complex process that involves delicate negotiation and agreement at the local level.
Continue reading “Nicaragua rebuffs attacks at human rights hearing”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, environment, caribbean, human rights |
February 16, 2021
Honduran migrants halted in Guatemala (photo: Reuters)
On the day he was inaugurated, Joe Biden halted the construction of Trump’s Mexican border wall. A few days earlier, 1500 miles to the south, a new ‘caravan’ of at least eight thousand Honduran migrants had set off northwards, partly in the hope that by the time they tried to cross into Texas, Biden’s promised softening of immigration policy might have taken effect.
Obstacles left by Trump still stand in their way. Agreements he made with Honduras and Guatemala led to police attacking and dispersing the refugees. Scattered groups are still heading towards the Mexican frontier at Chiapas – according to one Trump-era official, ‘now our southern border’ – where they will face Mexican troops. If they eventually reach the Rio Grande, they’ll join 25,000 asylum seekers in camps, waiting to be processed by US border officials. Roberta Jacobson, Biden’s official charged with forming his new ‘secure, managed and humane’ migration policy, has asked them to be patient and pleaded for no new arrivals.
Continue reading “If it were a narco lab, it would be working”
Category: Migration, Latin America | Tags: Honduras, US intervention, migration, Guatemala
January 3, 2021
A health worker measures a woman’s temperature at the entrance of Managua Cathedral in Managua, Nicaragua. Photograph: Inti Ocón/AFP/Getty Images
A letter published in the Guardian, arguing that the UK should take the lead from Nicaragua, where early strict measures have kept the coronavirus death rate one of the lowest in the world.
Continue reading “Covid control lessons from Nicaragua”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, coronavirus
December 5, 2020
In October Two Worlds reported on news stories appearing in the US, calling for a boycott of meat imports from Nicaragua. Attempts were made to persuade Reveal News and PBS Newshour to correct their stories or provide a right of reply. They refused, hence the following article published by the website FAIR, which aims to correct false news coverage. On December 9, Reveal News published a new article, in which journalist Nate Halverson claims that the Nicaraguan government is now enforcing its controls on cattle movements: see the Afterword at the end of the article below for more details.
Reports by Reveal (10/21/20) and PBS NewsHour (10/20/21) called for a boycott of “conflict beef” from Nicaragua. The Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal claims to be “fair and comprehensive” and PBS to be “trusted,” but their misleading and inaccurate reports could have drastic consequences for Nicaragua, at a time when the country is already struggling to deal with US sanctions, the pandemic and the aftermath of two damaging hurricanes. Their argument is that cattle farmers who produce the beef that is exported have in many cases illegally settled territory in the rainforest that belongs to Indigenous communities, and that the government does little to resolve the violent conflict that results.
Continue reading “Progressive Media Promoted a False Story of ‘Conflict Beef’ From Nicaragua”
Category: Latin America, Energy and the environment | Tags: Nicaragua, environment, US intervention, media
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on