Two Worlds

A blog about UK housing, Latin America, migration and the environment

  • Home
  • Housing
  • Migration
  • Housing and migration publications
  • About
  • Contact
You are here: Home > Latin America > A community with origins in the ‘contra’ war

A community with origins in the ‘contra’ war

June 17, 2014

A house in Cuadrante 84, El Timal

A house in Cuadrante 84, El Timal

A short time after the revolution brought the Sandinistas to power in 1979, Reagan’s US government illegally began to fund the armed resistance in the north of the country, who soon became known as the ‘contras’. The struggle against the well-armed contra and the simultaneous economic blockade severely tested the new government. Although it won the first democratic elections ever held in Nicaragua in 1984, it ceded power at the next elections in 1990. After a decade of war which cost 30,000 lives (including members of many Masaya families), people voted for a right-of-centre government which quickly reached an agreement to disband the contras and end the war.

Then the difficult process began of demobilising the armed groups. Most of their members had lived in isolated areas with no political involvement during a time when, under the revolution, community-based groups and co-ops had proliferated in most of the country. Many had joined the contras out of poverty and lack of land, and successive governments began to allocate land that had been abandoned by large landowners when the Sandinistas gained power, but which was often in parts of the country remote from where the contra families lived.

One such area was El Timal, 20 km to the north of Masaya, and one of the plots of land was an abandoned sugar farm that became Cuadrante 84, now occupied by 28 families, each with 3.5 hectares of land. We have just installed solar electricity in one house (first picture) where the family has lived since they were granted a plot only ten years ago, having moved from Wiwilí (in the north, almost on the frontier with Honduras).

In this phase of the project, supported by a donation from Southern Housing Group in London, we are putting solar kits into five houses in total. But in this Cuadrante none of the other houses yet has electricity (nor will they, because they are so remote from the grid). So there is some way to go before everyone gets electric light.

Another happy consumer of solar electricity in El Timal

Another happy consumer of solar electricity in El Timal

By chance we were stopped by a group of women drawing water from the well which had originally served the sugar farm. They asked about the possibility of a solar kit to drive a pump, to raise water from the well to irrigate the land – which has very fertile soil but which they can only use in the rainy season. They want to grow tomatoes and other vegetables to sell, but at ten metres deep (in a narrow well – see third photo) they can’t draw enough water by hand.

solar panels Masaya Nicaragua

A well in El Timal

Fortunately we have a project pending with the British Embassy that – if approved – will enable us to move into small-scale, solar-powered irrigation, so we hope to be able to meet their needs. If successful, we will post further news about the project here.

Category: Latin America, Masaya project updates | Tags: Nicaragua, Masaya, solar energy

« Previous Next »

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Subscribe to the Two Worlds blog and we'll send you an email alert when we publish a new post. Please review our Privacy Policy if you have any questions or concerns.

Check your inbox now to confirm your subscription.

Categories

  • Housing
  • Migration
  • Latin America
  • Masaya project updates
  • Energy and the environment
  • Central America wildlife
  • Book reviews
  • Obituaries
  • Uncategorized

Tags

allocations ALMOs Amazon river Argentina armadillos asylum beds in sheds Berta Cáceres birds Bolivar borrowing rules Bosawás Brazil budget butterflies caribbean census chile climate change Colombia community cohesion coronavirus Costa Rica council housing Covid-19 Cuba daily life destitution dictators drugs economics Ecuador El Salvador energy efficiency env environment Georgia Green Deal Guatemala Gypsies and Travellers Haiti homelessness homeownership hond Honduras housing housing associations housing benefit housing finance housing i housing investment housing market housing policy hum human rights iguanas immigration checks India Indigenous people inequality integration interoceanic canal investment Ireland Latin America Latin writers local authorities Malvinas Masaya media Mexico migration migration policy migration statistics mining model cities NGOs Nicaragua Nicaragua crisis Nicaraguan elections Northern Ireland outsourcing palestine panama Paraguay pension funds planning private rented sector public transport race refugees regeneration rents right to buy right to rent sanctions Scotland sloths slums solar energy Spain Spanish conquest stock transfer syria tenancy reform tenant involvement transport ukraine US intervention Venezuela Vista Alegre volcanoes welfare reform

Blogroll

  • Blogs for the London Review of Books
  • Articles for The Guardian
  • Blogs for Open Democracy
  • Blogs for Council on Hemispheric Affairs
  • Articles for Counterpunch
  • Articles for The Grayzone
  • Articles for NACLA
  • Posts for Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
  • Articles for Global Research
  • Articles for LA Progressive
  • Two Worlds on Substack
  • Articles for Covert Action Magazine
  • Articles for Black Agenda Report
  • Articles for Antiwar.com
  • Articles for Monthly Review online

Related websites

  • Chartered Institute of Housing
  • Housing Rights
  • Council on Hemispheric Affairs
  • UK Housing Review
  • Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition
Housing Guardian contributor
John Perry John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on
UK housing and migration issues and writes about those
and other topics covered in this blog.
Copyright © 2012- Two Worlds. Privacy & Cookie Policy. Powered by WordPress.