March 25, 2018
A review of Getting to Know the General: The Story of an Involvement by Graham Greene.
For anyone interested in the politics of Central America in the 1970s and 1980s, which of course also requires an interest in the US intervention in the isthmus that intensified during the later stages of the Cold War, this book provides fascinating insights into some of the key personalities involved. Of course, apart from Greene himself (whose knowledge of the region grows with his friendship with the general), we mainly find ourselves getting to know the Panamanian president, Omar Torrijos, and his political amanuensis and bodyguard, Chuchu. Simply as a travelogue the book works because of the personalities – the quirky and enigmatic Torrijos, the ever-willing and slightly crazy Chuchu, and the pliable, curious Graham Greene, happy to be pushed into various political roles and (literally) to enjoy the ride as he gets dispatched to various parts of Panama or the wider region, often in the presidential plane.
In those couple of decades Torrijos was an influential figure – not only in Panama, principally in steering the agreement on the future of the canal and its return to Panamanian control, but also in his involvement in regional politics. He often operated behind the scenes, giving support to the rebel armies challenging right-wing governments in various countries, providing refuge to people who needed a place of safety away from the different struggles (not only guerilla leaders but also ordinary campesinos), and publicly or clandestinely seeking solutions to the conflicts. Greene is fascinated by Torrijos’s self-adopted regional role and becomes a willing co-conspirator.
Continue reading “Getting to know the General”
Category: Latin America, Book reviews | Tags: US intervention, panama |
March 22, 2018
As the latest UK Housing Review is published, co-author John Perry describes how government priorities have shifted from direct investment in affordable housing to personal subsidy through housing benefit.
If asked about how the government spends money on housing, most people would probably say they build council houses – but of course they’d be wrong. However, if the same question had been asked in the 1970s the answer would have been a lot closer to the truth. Over the course of nearly four decades, there have been drastic shifts in how the government spends money on housing.
The latest UK Housing Review summarises them.
Category: Housing | Tags: housing finance, housing investment, housing benefit, housing policy |
March 22, 2018
The water tank for the Agrosolar project, young orange trees and (in the foreground) remains of a maize crop
ADIC is again working to deliver water to communities in the hot, arid zone to the north of Masaya, called El Timal. Today we paid a visit to an old project and a possible new one.
In 2014, with support from the British embassy, ADIC carried out its Agrosolar project in a small, remote community called Cuadrante 81, many kilometres from the nearest small town. The families there had been relocated when the Contra war ended in the early 1990s. They had land, but the water supply was a narrow well that could only be tapped using a small bucket. What they needed was a pump, but they had no electricity supply. However, they had plentiful sunshine, and the project installed solar panels to drive a pump inserted in the well, which supplied a new tank sufficiently big to give drinking water to all the 20 families (first photo).
Three years later, the project is still in full use and several houses now have piped drinking water. Orange trees planted to give a cash crop to the houses nearest the well are – in all but one case – regularly irrigated and are thriving, having just given their crop (the second photo shows the owner of some of the trees). They’ll survive the dry season which has just begun – with temperatures in the shade of at least 32c in this area – if the families water them every day as most of them are now doing (we had a quite word with the one that’s neglecting the task).
Continue reading “Old and new water projects”
Category: Latin America, Masaya project updates | Tags: Nicaragua, Masaya, solar energy |
March 19, 2018
Photograph: Andrew Matthews/PA
The government is so scared of antagonising developers that it is failing to insist on affordable homes being built.
The government has missed another opportunity to put the building of affordable housing where it belongs – at the heart of planning policy. Affordable homes that are built when developers get planning permission for a housing scheme make a vital contribution to meeting need. The government’s latest consultation on reforming the way developers work with local authorities shows the two existing schemes secured contributions from developers last year worth £4bn – and resulted in more than 43% of the affordable housing built in England in 2016/17: 18,000 homes of the total 41,530.
But its target of providing 50,000 affordable homes each year in England can be achieved only if developers continue to contribute at least the same number of affordable homes. That figure is based on the government’s commitment to provide 225,000 affordable homes during this parliament (2015-20). So it is extraordinary that when the government listed its objectives for a package of planning reforms, announced earlier this month, increasing the supply of affordable housing wasn’t one of them.
Continue reading “Developers are skimping on low-cost housing: time to get tough”
Category: Housing | Tags: housing investment, housing market, planning |
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 |
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on