Nicaraguan migrants at the U.S. border – are they being “pushed” or “pulled”?
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,” […]
The UN Refugee Agency is exaggerating the number of Nicaraguan refugees
Two years ago, COHA reported on the manufactured “refugee” crisis around Nicaraguans living in Costa Rica. Now the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) is saying that “102,000 people fled Nicaragua and sought asylum in Costa Rica” in 2021. As this article shows, this statement is inaccurate, adding further to the myth that Nicaragua is suffering […]
Are Nicaraguan Migrants Escaping ‘Repression’-or Economic Downturn?
“Record numbers” of migrants are coming into the United States from Nicaragua, according to Newsweek, which blames the increase on “arbitrary arrests and human rights abuses” by the Nicaraguan government. Former Sandinista leader Sergio Ramírez, writing for El Salvador’s El Faro, claims that “repression” by President Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista government is causing a “dramatic growth” […]
COVID-19 as a pretext for repression
“He’s not a doctor, I don’t think.” Trump had just finished a phone call with Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), the de facto president of Honduras who runs a narco-state. On April 30, JOH was indirectly implicated in drug and murder charges by the US Justice Department in a case against a former chief police officer. This […]
As the coronavirus strikes, Nicaraguans in Costa Rica are urged to stay
The coronavirus epidemic is still in its early stages in Central America but it has already put a focus on Costa Rica’s dependency on workers from Nicaragua. At any one time there are around 400,000 Nicaraguans working in the neighbouring country, especially doing building work, domestic work, as security guards or in agriculture. Given that […]
‘Human rights’ propaganda against Nicaragua comes from Costa Rica
Some of the local ‘human rights’ organisations in Nicaragua, which received foreign funding and operated as propaganda vehicles against the government, lost their legal status earlier this year. One of the these was CENIDH, run by Vilma Nuñez. Several of the staff, including a director, Gonzalo Carrión, left in February to set up a new […]
El Dorado
Last June the G8 agreed a new plan called the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, which is supposed to ensure poor countries receive the full benefit of their natural resources. Canada is one of EITI’s stakeholder countries; 60 per cent of the world’s mining companies are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. One of them, Pacific […]
Extracting the truth about mining
Plans by the G8 to make international mining operations more transparent are to be welcomed. But the agreement is limited in scope and the extractive industries still have a long way to go to clean up their act.
Costa Rica puts its eco-reputation at risk
Known as one of the originators of eco-tourism, and appearing a very creditable third in a world index of sustainability, Costa Rica has a reputation to maintain. Its tourism industry, based around the country’s slogan ‘No artificial ingredients’, is worth over £2bn annually, more than its coffee and banana exports combined. Though the smallest country […]
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on