Drought hits Central America
The government is blaming it on the warming of the Pacific Ocean known as El Niño, while scientists are disputing how much warming has actually occurred. But whatever the cause the drought that has hit Central America and extends south into Colombia is very real. The rainy season should have begun in May, but three […]
A community with origins in the ‘contra’ war
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 […]
Happy views in Vista Alegre
Vista Alegre is a small community to the south-west of Masaya, a few kilometres out of town and built around the edge of the Masaya Lagoon. The views of the lake and the Masaya volcano give the place its name (‘Happy View’ in Spanish). But the community is poor and struggles to make a living […]
Link Group publishes review of its project work
The Leicester-Masaya Link Group has published a two-page review of its project work – with active projects both in Masaya and in Leicester itself. You can download the review as a pdf here. The link group’s AGM last week, attended by Leicester Mayor Peter Soulsby, had a report from Masaya by Skype which updated members both […]
Solar power arrives at Los Laureles and Palo Blanco
The latest small stage of our solar project (‘Proyecto Sol’) brings to just 202 the total of households where electricity has been installed in the rural parts of Masaya since 2005, for a total investment of just over $200,000. We’re still working in the isolated area between Nicaragua’s two big lakes, which ironically is less […]
El Pochote school gets a major facelift
Last week the local school celebrated completion of about $80,000 worth of work to totally refurbish its two buildings and provide a proper outside play and assembly area. The school, a basic structure originally built by local organisation MASINFA in 1993, with funding from Masaya’s twin city of Nijmegen in Holland, was badly in need […]
Solar power has role to play in energy revolution
In recent stories in the Nicaragua Dispatch, Nicaragua has been described as a renewable energy paradise and as ranking third in the Latin America renewables market. But neither story mentions what has become Nicaragua’s forgotten resource: solar energy. Perhaps this is not surprising as the government’s own assessments of its achievement in moving away from […]
The Village against the World
In the 1980s, perhaps in reaction against the suffocating atmosphere of Thatcher’s Britain, there was a tremendous appetite for knowledge about and if possible direct contact with inspiring political and social movements in other countries. Many seemed to offer hope for the kind of progressive change that no longer seemed possible in the UK. With […]
Communists, traitors, radicals
Bill de Blasio, the Democratic candidate in the New York City mayoral race, is way ahead in the polls, despite his allegedly radical credentials. Earlier this week, the New York Times ran a story on his support for the Sandinista revolution in the 1980s and a trip he made to Nicaragua in 1988.
Planning starts on new Masaya projects
Proyecto Sol (‘Project Sun’) has been installing solar panels in remote rural communities for nine years. It’s about to start a new phase in the community known simply as ‘Sector 80’, an isolated area to the north of Lake Nicaragua. This community, which had no electricity at all and still has no water supply, received […]
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on