March 18, 2018
Dozens of highly decorated ox carts are slowly making their way south from Masaya and two other cities in the central part of Nicaragua’s Pacific coastal regions. They are heading for a small place called Popoyuapa, in Rivas, Nicaragua’s southern-most department, bordering the frontier with Costa Rica. Their route south is along the pan-American highway, where police will slow down the normal traffic to give the ox carts safe passage. The journey there, which in a car would take little more than an hour, will require four days of travelling at less than walking pace, followed by four days for the journey back.
The pilgrimage is an annual event that takes place two weeks before Easter. The aim is religious – to honour the image of Nuestro Señor del Rescate, to whom is attributed various miracles. The dominant colour of the ox carts is purple, for Easter, but blue (for Nicaragua, the colour of its flag) and yellow (for Catholicism) also abound. On each cart is built a shelter of palm leaves in which the family – and often its dogs – travel, carrying food and water for the trip.
Continue reading “By ox cart to Popoyuapa”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, Spanish conquest |
March 1, 2018
US Ambassador to Nicaragua, Laura Dagu reportedly has said that the Senate could vote on the NICA Act “any day now”. The US Nicaragua Network is asking members to contact their Senators to tell them they oppose its passage and that the case for it is based on false premises. This article was prepared for NicaNotes as a counter-argument, especially directed at points made by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) in a response to a constituent.
The Nicaragua Investment Conditionality Act (NICA Act), was first introduced in the House of Representatives in July 2016 by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) where it passed by unanimous consent but died in the Senate without hearings or a vote. Reintroduced and passed by the House by unanimous consent in 2017, the NICA Act would require the US’s representatives on a range of international lending institutions to vote against loans and grants to Nicaragua, until Nicaragua takes “effective steps to hold free, fair, and transparent elections.” The US has effective veto power in most of the multilateral lending institutions. The NICA Act goes on to make Nicaragua’s access to the international banking system also contingent on Nicaragua showing that it will “promote democracy, as well as an independent judiciary system and electoral council,” “strengthen the rule of law” and “respect the right to freedom of association and expression.” It does not define any of these terms but requires that the Secretary of State “certifies and reports to the appropriate congressional committees” that the requirements are being met.
Continue reading “The NICA Act – What is it and why should it be opposed?”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, US intervention, interoceanic canal |
February 15, 2018
When the Ministry of Defence sold its armed forces housing in 1996, it already looked a bad deal: 57,000 houses were sold for £30,000 each, well under half the average house price at the time. Overnight, the sale created Britain’s biggest private landlord and gave it a blue chip tenant – the MoD. Yet the company that won the contract, Annington, had just been set up and had no experience of management on such a scale.
Soldiers and their families have to live close to their work, which usually means in houses built on or near military bases, often three-bed semis with ample gardens. For decades they were managed directly by the MoD. The task isn’t straightforward: soldiers may be away for months at a time, they can be moved around at short notice and the bases are often far from towns and public services. The MoD was also badly behind with repairs: by 1996, a backlog of over £400 million of work had accumulated.
Continue reading “Another housing privatisation disaster”
Category: Housing | Tags: private rented sector, housing policy, stock transfer |
February 1, 2018
Building of new homes for letting at social rents has fallen to a trickle – just 5,380 in the last financial year. The past five years have seen just 50,290 built altogether, most of these financed by social landlords without grant aid. Theresa May has promised to revive social renting “in those parts of the country where the need is greatest”, but will this be enough to reverse these losses, which get worse each year?
CIH has just updated its annual calculation of the loss of social rented homes since 2012, when the new policies of providing only homes at Affordable Rents began to kick in. Over the five years, despite the modest levels of new build just mentioned, the social rented stock has fallen by 151,000, or four per cent. Why is this happening?
For housing associations, which have 47,000 fewer properties let at social rent, by far the biggest factor is conversions. This happens when properties are relet at a higher, Affordable Rent when a tenancy change takes place. 102,000 lettings have been converted so far. In fact, conversions have supplied more homes for letting at Affordable Rent by housing associations over the past five years than new build. The second most important factor is “preserved” right to buy – the right that a former council tenant who is transferred carries with them. This typically results in about 4,000 sales per year. New building for social rent continues, but it’s now down to only a few thousand homes per year and can no longer make good the losses in the rest of the stock.
Continue reading “Social rented housing is disappearing at a time we need it most”
Category: Housing | Tags: council housing, housing investment, housing associations |
January 18, 2018
Nicaragua’s President Ortega and OAS General Secretary Insulza in a 2012 summit, Managua. Photo: German Miranda/dpa/aa
In an extraordinary move on the day before the US Senate’s Christmas recess, two Democrats sided with right-wing Republicans to introduce the so-called NICA Act, which if passed would require the US government to veto loans from international financial institutions to Nicaragua. While it is still a long way from becoming law, the bill suddenly looks like a more serious threat to that country’s social progress.
Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, long hostile to progressive governments in Latin America, originally sponsored the bill. It wasn’t surprising when it got support from other right-wingers like Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. But now Senators Leahy (D-VT) and Durbin (D-IL), who have both been prominent in challenging US support for the right-wing government in neighbouring Honduras, have put their names to the NICA Act too.
Why is it being promoted? Ever since the former guerrilla leader Daniel Ortega won election for a new term as president of Nicaragua in 2006, he’s faced renewed hostility from the United States, even though of a much softer form than was the case during the Contra war of the 1980s. His opponents focus continually on his supposed grip on power, especially after the courts overturned a constitutional ban on presidents running for second and subsequent turns of office. Their frustration intensified when his wife Rosario Murillo became his vice-president after the last national elections, even though she has been a key figure in the government from the start. Most recently, his critics focussed their attention on the arrangements for last November’s municipal elections, in which Sandinista mayors were returned in most towns and cities. It was because of the supposed bias in the electoral process that the proposed NICA Act was conceived, and which it was intended to address.
Continue reading “US Senate launches attack on Nicaragua poverty programmes”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Honduras, Nicaragua, US intervention, interoceanic canal |
December 19, 2017
Twenty-four people have been killed by police in demonstrations since the presidential election in Honduras three weeks ago. The centre-left Alliance, headed by Salvador Nasralla, appeared to be the clear winner after 57 per cent of votes had been counted, but a suspiciously dramatic late swing towards the incumbent, Juan Orlando Hernández, gave him a lead of 1.5 per cent when the final count was in. Protests against election fraud sprang up nationwide. Some police units initially refused to take part in repressing them, but they were bought out with pay rises and, allegedly, bribes to top police officers.
The electoral tribunal (TSE) appeared willing to accept legal challenges to the electoral process, but a partial recount produced the same result and they ignored the Alliance’s demand for a full, public recount of votes with international observers and all parties present. Marco Ramiro Lobo, the electoral magistrate who had said that Nasralla’s lead in the early results was irreversible, told BBC World that a full recount was needed.
Continue reading “‘Low integrity’ election in Honduras”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Honduras, US intervention, dictators |
December 17, 2017
A review of Fidel & Gabo: A portrait of a legendary friendship, by Angel Esteban and Stephanie Panichelli
Two of the best-known Latin American figures of the twentieth century, Fidel Castro and Gabriel Garcia Márquez (Gabo) were close friends. This book claims to be the story of their relationship, but does it do it justice? It records many of the known (and some little known) facts, but what does it tell us about the nature of the friendship itself?
Of course, a book of this kind is hardly likely to be impartial – Fidel is both a hero and (it can be agreed) an authoritarian, whom his enemies would call a dictator. Gabo was fascinated by political power, and by Latin American dictators in particular. He had his own imperfections. But was it really to the dictatorial aspects of Castro’s personality to which he was drawn? This is the book’s thesis (‘the lure of power’), but to my mind the evidence presented is thin, and in pursuing this line so assiduously, the authors fail in what one assumes was their main task, to explore what these two men really thought about each other.
Continue reading “Fidel and Gabo”
Category: Latin America, Book reviews | Tags: Cuba, Colombia, Latin writers |
December 5, 2017
A week after apparently losing an election in which he was constitutionally barred from standing, the president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, now seems to have carried out a coup (‘autogolpe’ in Spanish) to keep himself in power.
Hernández (known as JOH, pronounced ‘Ho’) went into the election last Sunday (26 November) promising to continue his firm-handed approach (‘la mano dura’) to violent crime. His opponent, Salvador Nasralla, led a centre-left alliance promising to end the ‘dictatorship’, tackle corruption and restore much-depleted public services. Despite growing support for the alliance, Nasralla’s supporters feared that Hernández’s control over the main branches of government, including the electoral tribunal (TSE), would allow him to keep power even if he lost the popular vote. The day before the poll, the Economist published evidence of the methods his party might use to fix the result.
In the last election, in 2013, the results were announced quickly as polling stations submitted them electronically. This time, the TSE didn’t publish provisional figures until the early hours of the 27th. Based on 57 per cent of the votes, Nasralla had a surprising 5 per cent lead. He duly declared himself the winner. One of the electoral magistrates said that the margin was too wide for JOH to close the gap. The third-placed candidate conceded defeat to Nasralla.
Continue reading “Hard times in Honduras”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Honduras, dictators |
December 3, 2017
Nicaragua is a small country that was praised for eventually signing the Paris climate agreement in October, but has since been criticised for pushing ahead with a planned interoceanic canal, with its uncertain environmental effects. So how does it reconcile these apparently conflicting positions?
Nicaragua and Syria were the only two countries not to sign in Paris last year; both have now done so. Nicaragua’s stance was that the agreement was too weak and didn’t give sufficient help to developing countries striving to transform their energy systems.
Of course, when U.S. President Donald Trump declared that he would pull out of the agreement, his complaint was the opposite – that it was too onerous for the United States. By chance, I met Nicaragua’s climate change negotiator, Paul Oquist, a few days after Trump’s announcement at the start of June.
I suggested it would be an excellent moment for Nicaragua to change its mind, though claim no credit for the subsequent decision – I can’t have been the only one to think so. By signing up, Nicaragua has now sent a signal that if small nations can take the climate crisis seriously then so should the big ones.
But the Nicaraguan government’s critics say it is hypocritical. It is partnering with China to build a huge interoceanic canal, a rival to Panama that will take even bigger ships and – if it goes ahead – could be the world’s biggest construction project. At over 270km, it is more than three times the length of Panama’s, will cut through environmentally sensitive areas, consume huge quantities of materials and – most importantly – cross the biggest body of fresh water in Central America.
Continue reading “Can a coast-to-coast canal solve Nicaragua’s poverty problem?”
Category: Latin America, Energy and the environment | Tags: Nicaragua, environment, climate change, interoceanic canal |
November 19, 2017
A protester holds up a picture of Berta Cáceres during a march in Tegucigalpa (Reuters / Jorge Cabrera)
Since the murder of Berta Cáceres in March 2016, several more community activists have been killed in Honduras. And little progress has been made in solving Cáceres’s murder. Eight people have been arrested, but court hearings have been postponed several times because of the prosecutors’ failure to produce evidence, ignoring the judge’s deadlines. Data collected from phones and computers and in police raids has not been presented in court. The government says the judicial process continues, but has admitted that the crime’s ‘masterminds’ remain untouched.
In 2013, as the leader of the local community organisation COPINH, Cáceres had written to the Dutch and Finnish development banks planning to fund the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam, with evidence that the company building it, DESA, was violently suppressing any opposition. Two of DESA’s former staff members are among those under arrest. In June this year, the two banks announced their intention to ‘exit as soon as possible’. They changed their minds in July, however, saying the decision would now be subject to ‘local consultation’, apparently to be led by DESA. Eighty international organisations wrote to the banks urging them to stick by their June decision.
Continue reading “New report sheds light on the murder of Berta Cáceres”
Category: Latin America, Energy and the environment | Tags: Honduras, Berta Cáceres |
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on