Nicaragua Network

1. Three presidents cancel meeting on Gulf of Fonseca
2. Unionists denounce Solidarity Center
3. Progress on obtaining US “property waiver” for 2013
4. Cardinal Obando greets Pope Francis; Ortega and bishops send letters
5. Decree to strengthen Caribbean autonomy
6. Illegal shark fishing thrives with lack of enforcement
7. Miners reach agreement with B2Gold
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1. Three presidents cancel meeting on Gulf of Fonseca

A meeting between Presidents Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Porfirio Lobo of Honduras and Mauricio Funes of El Salvador scheduled for Mar. 19 was cancelled last week when tensions rose between the three nations over the waters of the Gulf of Fonseca, a body of water on which each nation has coast line.  On Mar. 12, Lobo said that the other two presidents insisted in ignoring Honduras’ rights in the Gulf.  He said El Salvador “did not have the will” to discuss the management of the Gulf and that Nicaragua had sent an armed vessel to patrol the zone and prevent Honduran vessels from gaining access to the Pacific. He added that he hoped he wouldn’t have to use Honduran F-5 aircraft to open passage for Honduran vessels. The head of the Nicaraguan armed forces, Gen. Julio Cesar Aviles, said that Nicaragua was performing ordinary exercises in Nicaraguan territorial waters.  President Funes reiterated his desire to convert the Gulf of Fonseca into a zone of peace and development. 

Then, on Mar. 17, Lobo said that Nicaragua had destroyed the fishing boat of two Honduran fishermen and that his country would take a complaint to the United Nations to demand that Nicaragua and El Salvador be required to comply with a 1992 ruling by the International Court of Justice at The Hague on the subject of the waters of the Gulf of Fonseca.  The presidents were scheduled to meet on Tigre Island which, in spite of the World Court ruling, is still in dispute between El Salvador and Honduras.

Admiral Marvin Elias Corrales, head of Nicaragua’s naval forces, said that the Honduran fishing boat turned over and sank when a Nicaraguan naval vessel pursued it upon finding it in Nicaraguan waters.  The crew was rescued and turned over to Honduran authorities.  Corrales said, “We are doing normal patrolling; we have not increased our troops.  When they come into our waters to fish illegally, that’s when the captures happen.”  President Lobo promised Honduran fishermen some financial help because of the difficult situation that they are confronting with an exhaustion of the fisheries in zones that are open to them.

By the weekend, President Funes noted that tensions had lowered and Lobo said that the last thing he wanted was a conflict in the Gulf because in the Central American region “what we would be dividing up would be poverty.” Honduran Foreign Minister Arturo Corrales said that the six working round tables on the Gulf should get back to work to discuss fishing, tourism, the environment, port infrastructure and the other subjects of interest to the three countries.  But he said Honduras would still pursue its legal claim to waters in the Gulf at the United Nations.  (Informe Pastran, Mar. 13, 18; El Nuevo Diario, Mar. 16, 18; Radio La Primerisima, Mar. 14; La Prensa, Mar. 17)

2. Unionists denounce Solidarity Center

At a press conference on Mar. 13, leaders of three trade union confederations (both Sandinista and non-Sandinista) denounced what they called “a boycott” of Nicaragua’s free trade zone factories promoted by the Solidarity Center of the AFL-CIO of the United States.  General Secretaries Roberto Gonzalez of the Sandinista Workers’ Central (CST), Roberto Moreno of the United Confederation of Workers (CUT), and Jose Espinoza of the Confederation of Union Unity (CUS) said that US citizens Jack Mahoney, Jeff Hermanson, and Steve Wishart were inciting actions in the free trade zones, including the formation of new unions that were being used to create instability in at least ten factories and causing incidents which they said resulted in injuries to several workers at SAE-Tecnotex and EINS-Nicaragua, both factories in Tipitapa.  

Gonzalez said that they were also promoting la Liga Contra las Marcas (in English, the International League for Brand Responsibility) which he said was “trying to get brands such as Nike, Adidas, and Levi’s to cease contracting work to Nicaraguan factories and return the jobs to the United States.” He added that the groups are orchestrating a campaign “to destabilize the tripartite agreements that were recently signed to guarantee investment and employment in this country.” [The tripartite agreement on wages in the FTZ factories was signed in December of last year.]  Then he said, “We ask the government of Nicaragua, President Ortega, the Foreign Affairs Ministry, the National Police, the Labor Ministry and all other related institutions to open investigations and take appropriate measures.  And we ask that these destabilizing operations be neutralized and that [the instigators] be made to leave the country,” Gonzalez stated.  The three Nicaraguan union leaders said that they were prepared to do what was necessary to preserve the 105,000 jobs in the nation’s free trade zone factories and that they hoped to be able to count on the government’s support.

[The Solidarity Center lists its funding sources as “the U.S. Agency for International Development, the National Endowment for Democracy, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Labor, the AFL-CIO, private foundations, and national and international labor organizations” and so it is to be supposed that the activities of Solidarity Center representatives in Nicaragua answer to the wishes of one or more US government agencies.  The League for Brand Responsibility is a recently launched project headed by Hermanson and Evangelina Argueta of the Workers General Central (CGT) of Honduras to target Addidas and other major brands.  Coordinating Committee members hail from Bangladesh, Cambodia, El Salvador, Honduras, India, Indonesia, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua. Its partner union in Nicaragua is the Federation of Nicaraguan Maquila and Textile Workers (FESTMIT).  The Nicaragua Network will attempt to obtain more information about Solidarity Center activities in Nicaragua and about the goals of the League for Brand Responsibility.] (La Prensa, Mar. 14; El Nuevo Diario, Mar. 14; Trinchera de las Noticias, Mar. 14; La Voz del Sandinismo, Mar. 14; http://adidasworkers.org/ ; http://www.solidaritycenter.org/content.asp?contentid=409)

3. Progress on obtaining US “property waiver” for 2013

After last year's scare that the US would not approve the "property waiver", the main business group, the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (COSEP) has stepped in to urge the United States to approve this year's waiver. Under US law, the Secretary of State must, by July 31 each year, waive the requirement that all aid and votes for international loans must be cut off for any country that confiscates the property of US citizens without compensation. In the 1980s the revolutionary Sandinista government confiscated properties of the Somoza family and major functionaries of the dictatorship and National Guard. It also foreclosed on properties of people who mortgaged them and took the money to the US without ever making payments. Many mortgagees and criminals from the dictatorship later became naturalized US citizens and filed claims for the return of their properties under US law.

According to Jose Adan Aguerri, president of COSEP, the governments since 1990, including the present government of President Daniel Ortega, have paid out US$444 million to 1,888 "US citizen" claimants. [This amount does not include future payouts on the bonds that have been issued to claimants. That amount approaches US$2 billion or just about the total of US aid to Nicaragua since 1990.]

A US State Department delegation is currently in Nicaragua to discuss the disposition of remaining claims for return of or compensation for property. Aguerri called this "an important week for Nicaragua." He is optimistic that the 2013 waiver will be granted since 30 cases have been resolved this year with the prospect of 66 being resolved by the waiver deadline. He also believes that the remaining 292 cases brought by 161 US citizens will be reduced in number as a result of discussions between the State Department delegation and the Nicaraguan Attorney General's office. [Most of the remaining cases are from war criminals such as torturers and members of the air force who indiscriminately bombed civilian population centers. Other cases that have not been resolved are dormant awaiting additional information from claimants who have not responded in years.] 

Last year the Obama State Department refused to grant a "transparency waiver" for Nicaragua which resulted in the cut off US$3 million in aid. President Ortega characterized that aid cut-off as a suspension of reparation payments that the US owes Nicaragua based on a 1986 World Court decision that found the US liable to pay reparations for the mining of the harbor and bombing of the Port of Corinto as well as promotion of the Contra War. Failure by the US to grant the "property waiver" would have more far-reaching effects than the "transparency waiver" since it would cut off Nicaraguan access to World Bank, IMF, and Inter-American Development Bank loans in addition to cutting off US aid.(Informe Pastran, Mar. 13; El Nuevo Diario, Mar. 14)

4. Cardinal Obando greets Pope Francis; Ortega and bishops send letters

As certainly was true throughout Latin America, the election of Buenos Aires Archbishop Cardinal Jose Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis filled the Nicaraguan media last week and this.  There was much rejoicing with only an article or two in the left media about his lack of courage to oppose the military dictatorship in the late 1970s and early 1980s.  Nicaraguan Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, at 87 too old to vote in the conclave that elected Pope Francis, did travel to Rome and was able to greet the new pontiff on Mar. 15 in the Sistine Chapel.  He commented, “We are very proud to have a pope who is a Latin American, an Argentine.”  Vice-President Omar Halleslevens travelled to Rome on Mar. 17 to attend the pope’s inauguration on the 19^th in representation of the Nicaraguan government.  The Nicaraguan Catholic Bishops’ Conference sent a message to the new pope expressing the “profound happiness” they felt at the selection of a “brother in the Latin American church.”

President Daniel Ortega sent Pope Francis a message in which he expressed the hope that “God will permit you to work in a great way toward a just world, a better world with the dignity, respect, and harmony that we all need so much.”  Monsignor Fortunatus Nwachukwu, the Papal Nuncio in Nicaragua, thanked Ortega for the greeting from one head of state to another, adding, “We are all invited to be bridges, bridges of love in our homes, and in our societies, above all with the poorest.” The Central American Bishops Conference decided to send a letter to the Vatican inviting Pope Francis to visit the countries of the region. (Informe Pastran , Mar. 13, 15, 18; Radio La Primerisima, Mar. 14, 15, 17; La Prensa, Mar. 17; El Nuevo Diario, Mar. 14,18)

5. Decree to strengthen Caribbean autonomy

President Daniel Ortega has created a permanent inter-institutional Commission for the Defense of Mother Earth in the Indigenous and Afro-descended Territories of the Caribbean. The presidential decree states that the commission’s goal is to "strengthen the regime of autonomy of the Caribbean Coast." The commission will include representatives of the Attorney General's office, the Supreme Court, the Ethnic Affairs Committee of the National Assembly, the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, Ministry of the Family, Adolescents and Children, the Council and Directorate of the Autonomous Governments, and officials of the police and army. A more specific goal of the commission will be to "secure and support the ancestral property rights in the indigenous territories and to protect measures agreed upon together with the communal and territorial authorities." The commission will assist the territorial governments in confronting the "threats to Mother Earth on the Caribbean Coast." It will also mediate and help find solutions to conflicts involving settler encroachment on indigenous lands.

The commission is directed to produce procedural rules, an operating plan and an action plan within 60 days to respond to the demands of the indigenous peoples of the region. Nicaragua's Autonomy Law and Constitution, both of which came out of the Sandinista Revolution of the 1980s, granted wide-ranging rights of autonomous governance to the indigenous and Afro-descended inhabitants of the Caribbean Coast and Law 445, which laid the basis for communal ownership of indigenous land, was passed by the National Assembly in 2003. (El Nuevo Diario, Mar. 12)

6. Illegal shark fishing thrives with lack of enforcement

Despite it being against the law to fish for shark, lack of enforcement makes shark fishing a booming business for artisanal fishermen in Bluefields during the month of March. Shark fin sells for US$40/lb. while shark meat sells for about US$0.30/lb. which often causes fishermen to toss the body of the fish back into the water after cutting off the fins and tail.  However, Pablo Marin defends the fishermen saying, "When there are no sea bass or lobsters, we fish for shark for the fin AND meat." He sees shark fishing as an "opportunity" to earn income and create new jobs.  "On a good night we can capture 80 sharks yielding about 2,000 pounds of meat."

Article 75 of the law of fisheries and aquaculture prohibit shark fishing in the inland waterways and coastal waters for "the sole purpose of cutting off any of their fins, including the tail, discarding the rest of the body of the species in the high seas." It also prohibits the transportation, storage and marketing of shark fins. Marin said the fins are transported to Managua "because there is no market in Bluefields." Nicaraguans do not generally view shark meat as a food source according to marine biologist Felipe Borge who is on the faculty of the Autonomous University of the Caribbean Coast. He said that this usually results in the fishermen discarding the fish’s body. Lack of money for enforcement allows the illegal shark fishing to continue. (El Nuevo Diario, Mar. 12)

7. Miners reach agreement with B2Gold

The last group of protesting small scale artisan miners in Santo Domingo, Department of Chontales, signed an agreement with the Canadian mining company B2Gold on Mar. 16.  The company and the government agreed to release without charge 12 detained miners and drop charges against 24 others in exchange for the end to the months long protest. The miners had been charged with causing grave injury to persons and damage to private property in a Feb.9 encounter with police in which 17 police officers and seven protestors were injured.

The company also promised to give 40 acres of land to the 1,200 miners and to process 100 ounces of gold for them per month.  Mauricio Martinez, secretary of the group which calls itself “El Cafetal,” said that many of the miners were not satisfied with the agreement but that it was the only way to gain the release of their arrested colleagues.  He said that new protests would start to gain their immediate release and to demand respect for the environment. (La Prensa, Mar. 17)