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,” […]
Imperialism & hybrid warfare
With Camila Escalante, a journalist with Kawsachun News, I gave a presentation to a webinar for the Friends of ATC, a support group for the Nicaraguan agricultural workers union, about the violent coup attempt in Nicaragua in 2018. You can watch it on youtube.
How “virtual crime scenes” became a propaganda tool in Nicaragua, Ukraine and Syria
Written jointly with Rick Sterling This article shows how media uses computer modeling and “virtual crime scenes” to assign blame for some extremely important international events. In these examples from Nicaragua, Ukraine and Syria, many people died in complex circumstances. The deaths at the “Mother’s March” in Managua, Nicaragua precipitated an attempted coup. The Maidan […]
‘We’ll kill him and burn him alive’
Frances Haugen’s cutting accusations against her former employers, Facebook, on October 5 included references to how social media are used to provoke and coordinate violence. This happened in Nicaragua too. It’s June 2018 on a backstreet somewhere in Nicaragua. Filmed by an adult, a boy holds a toy gun to the head of his friend, […]
Women’s rights in Nicaragua under attack from an unlikely source
Gioconda Belli, the Nicaraguan writer perhaps best known for her autobiography The Country Under My Skin, has been described as ‘an icon of Latin American feminist literature’. She spoke recently of the ‘extraordinary power’ of being a woman, and that despite this power ‘women have often been relegated to a second place, one where they […]
Nicaragua, attacked for following the same US policies against foreign meddling
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo launched another attack on Nicaragua’s Sandinista government last month, accusing President Daniel Ortega of being a “dictator” who is “doubling down on repression and refusing to honor the democratic aspirations of the Nicaraguan people.” The State Department openly supports what it calls “a return to democracy in Nicaragua”, saying […]
Coronavirus is being tackled by Nicaragua’s community-based health system
by Kevin Zeese and John Perry Sadly, only a month after contributing to this article, Kevin Zeese died suddenly. He will be sorely missed. Nicaragua’s Sandinista government is – like every other government – engaged in a struggle to limit the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on its people. But Nicaragua suffers two additional handicaps. […]
The US contracts out its regime change operation in Nicaragua
An extraordinary leaked document gives a glimpse of the breadth and complexity of the US government’s plan to interfere in Nicaragua’s internal affairs up to and after its presidential election in 2021.
Nicaragua and the media in 2019: A polarised picture
A new book, The Revolution Won’t Be Stopped: Nicaragua Advances Despite US Unconventional Warfare, is published this month to celebrate the 41st anniversary of the Sandinista revolution. An extract below deals with how the media have treated Nicaragua in 2019 and the first part of 2020. Look at the media in 2019 and the first […]
Nicaragua and the OAS Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts
A briefing prepared for the Alliance for Global Justice and The Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign Action Group by Stephen Sefton, John Perry and Jorge Capélan
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on