The latest book by labor and human rights attorney, Daniel Kovalik, Nicaragua: A History of US Intervention and Resistance (2023, Clarity Press, 292 pages), is a worthy addition to the author’s collection of works on countries targeted by US imperialism, such as Venezuela, Russia, and Iran. While giving readers a thoughtful and much fuller picture…
Five years ago, Nicaragua was subject to a violent attempted coup that lasted from April through July, 2018. In the first of four articles, Dan Kovalik and John Perry look at how it was planned and how it started. In the first few months of 2018, Nicaragua hardly appeared to be a strong candidate for…
While the United States pays little regard to the human rights of many of its own citizens, it manifests intense interest in those of countries that it regards as its enemies. Nicaragua, designated by both Trump and Biden as a “strategic threat,” is seen as one of those enemies. Of the countries selected for their…
Alfred de Zayas, former UN Independent Expert on International Order, has joined other human rights specialists in condemning an “expert” report on Nicaragua published on March 2nd as being unprofessional, biased, incomplete and concocted to justify further coercive sanctions that will damage Nicaragua’s economy. Such unilateral coercive measures have been condemned by the General Assembly…
“Nicaragua Frees Hundreds of Political Prisoners to the United States,” the New York Times reported. In an unexpected move on February 9, the Nicaraguan government deported to the United States 222 people who were in prison, and moved to strip them of their citizenship. The prisoners had been convicted of various crimes, including terrorism, conspiracy…
Why are more Nicaraguans heading north to the United States looking for jobs? Until July 2020, numbers were tiny. But in the last 1½ years numbers have increased sharply. Suddenly this has become a story, and government detractors argue, with little evidence, that people are fleeing political repression. “They’d rather die than return to Nicaragua,”…
In Nicaragua, Latin America’s third poorest country, people who don’t work don’t eat. Three-quarters of jobs are in small businesses or the informal economy. So when its first Covid case was diagnosed on 18 March 2020, Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega knew that shutting down the economy would be catastrophic.
The headline in the Washington Post ahead of Nicaragua’s local elections hinted at skepticism: “Nicaragua Ruling Party Seeks to Expand Hold in Local Votes” (11/6/22). The story itself, taken from an Associated Press report filed from Mexico City, was worse, framing the elections as a “farce” carried out “under the absolute control” of the governing…