Nicaragua Network

1. Nicaraguans commemorate Holy Week and Easter
2. World Bank funds next phase of property titling
3. Law against Violence toward Women challenged and defended
4. Brownfield says “Welcome” to Russians, but…
5. Federal court in Florida rules against government of Nicaragua
6. Smithsonian to exhibit Central American ceramics
7. Dead fish and dolphins appear on beaches
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1. Nicaraguans commemorate Holy Week and Easter

Authorities estimated that Nicaraguans made over three million visits to vacation spots on the country’s ocean beaches, lake shores and river banks over Holy Week while the country welcomed over 50,000 foreign tourists.  With the temperature reaching 102° F and higher in the country’s lowlands during the week, the beaches were full of people trying to cool off.  Foreign visitors, which were up 9.4% from last year, included over 70% who entered the country by land, 24% by air with the remainder arriving aboard the 11 cruise ships that visited Nicaraguan ports during the week.  San Juan del Sur and Ometepe Island in Lake Cocibolca (Lake Nicaragua) were the most visited by foreigners, while Port Salvador Allende on Lake Xolotlan (Lake Managua), the thermal baths at Tipitapa, beaches near Granada on Cocibolca, crater lakes such as Xiloá, and the Pacific Ocean beaches of Pochomil and La Boquita, close to major cities, were among the favorites for locals.  On the Caribbean Coast, beaches at Bluefields, El Bluff, Laguna de Perlas, El Rama, Corn Island and other spots were among the favorite cooling off spots.  Beaches throughout the country were patrolled by the Red Cross, the Police, the Health Ministry and local authorities in what was called “Plan Summer.”

Not everyone spent the week at the beach.  Thousands attended outdoor Stations of the Cross that threaded their way through most of the cities of the country on Good Friday.  In Matagalpa, one procession made its way from the small Molagüina church to the cathedral while another wound its way from San Jose Church to the cemetery.  In Leon, artists, with the help of local children and youth, made pictures in carpets of sawdust in the streets of the indigenous neighborhood of Subtiaba which were then destroyed as always by the feet of those participating in the Good Friday procession.  In Lake Cocibolca, the now traditional three day aquatic Stations of the Cross was held on Monday and repeated on Tuesday and Wednesday with decorated boats visiting the small islands called Las Isletas where the scenes represented in the 14 stations were set up.  

A series of earth tremblers were felt along the coast prompting concern about possible tsunamis.  An alert system was installed at San Juan del Sur, joining sirens already placed at the beaches of Poneloya, Masachapa, Pochomil, Corinto, Las Peñitas, and Quisalá. The strongest quake at 4.9 on the Richter scale was on Easter Sunday off the coast of the Department of Chinandega but none of the quakes caused a tsunami.  Among historians and the very old, however, memories were stirred of March 31, 1931, when an Easter-day quake and subsequent fire killed as many as 2,000 people in Managua, destroying much of the city.  While there was no damage from the earth tremblers and the country’s volcanoes were quiet, an unusual storm in the north of the country gave birth to a rare tornado that damaged 58 houses in Somoto while hail and heavy rain fell in Nueva Segovia and Esteli. 

Fifty-one people died of unnatural causes during Holy Week, including 21 from drowning, 20 homicides, along with ten people who died in traffic accidents. Deaths were down 11% from last year.  For all of Central America the total was 453 deaths with 155 deaths in Guatemala, 135 in Honduras, 74 in El Salvador, 32 in Costa Rica, and six in Panama.  The majority of the deaths were from traffic accidents and drowning.  (Informe Pastran, Apr. 1; La Prensa, Mar. 27, 29, Apr. 1; El Nuevo Diario, Mar. 25, 28, 30, Apr. 1; Radio La Primerisima, Mar. 29, 30, Mar. 31, Apr. 1)

2. World Bank funds next phase of property titling

The World Bank has approved a US$40 million grant to support the project of property titling of the government of President Daniel Ortega.  The money will be used to finish the property census of 9,000 square kilometers in 20 municipalities in the departments of Jinotega and Nueva Segovia, the second phase of the government’s program, completing the modernization of property registration in 24.4% of the national territory. The first phase included the departments of Leon, Chinandega, Esteli, and Madriz. Attorney General Hernan Estrada said, “The modernization of the system of property registration has been one of the greatest successes of the first stage of the project” and he added that it would continue.

The focus of the property titling project is on families whose ability to produce on their property has been limited because of lack of clear title. The entire project, which is a top priority of the Sandinista government will encompass the whole country. By the end of 2013 the goal is to have titled over 240,000 families in the past six years.  The titling process is scheduled to conclude in 2018 and to benefit by then another 90,000 poor families both urban and rural. Secure titles are a prerequisite to gaining credit and other services. Of the 162,000 titles granted between 2007 and 2011, 60% were granted to women heads of households. Also included were 15 collective titles to large areas of land encompassing indigenous and Afro-descended communities in the autonomous regions of the Caribbean Coast. (Radio La Primerisima, Mar. 27)

3. Law against Violence toward Women challenged and defended

A debate has arisen over Law 779, the Law against Violence toward Women, that began some days ago when Supreme Court President Alba Luz Ramos revealed that there were justices who “have been pushing for Law 779 to be declared unconstitutional.” She added that some of her colleagues on the Constitutional Panel “should recuse themselves if the case comes before them because they have already pronounced” their opinions against the law.  She said that churches and men’s groups have challenged the law.  Monsignor Silvio Fonseca, head of the Catholic office of the family in Managua, said that the law “inclines the balance toward women and leaves men unprotected.”

Law 779 was passed in Feb. 2012, establishing punishments for crimes against women, including “femicide” defined as the killing of a woman because of her gender.  The law also mandates a series of public policies to prevent and sanction gender violence and to establish measures to protect women. 

Sandinista Deputy Carlos Emilio Lopez, who serves on the Justice Committee of the National Assembly and was involved in passing the law, said, “It is totally coherent with the constitution, since it develops constitutional rights such as equality between women and men, the right to be free from sex discrimination, … the right to live free from violence, among other rights.”  He added that the law mandates that the state remove obstacles to the free right of women to justice and equality and that it is in accord with international laws such as the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the Inter-American Convention to Prevent, Sanction, and Eradicate Violence against Women.

Women’s organizations announced that they were planning a march in defense of the law and against the four challenges that have been introduced at the Supreme Court.  The groups are demanding that the challenges be declared inadmissible.  Juanita Jimenez of the Women’s Autonomous Movement (MAM) said that the law was constitutional and that the Court should reject the challenges.  She protested the fact that the challenges to Law 779 were moving forward while the challenges to the banning of therapeutic abortion have gathered dust in drawers at the Court for seven years.   Luz Marina Torres of the Network of Women against Violence said that it would be a contradiction “for the justices of the Supreme Court to accept these challenges because many of them collaborated in the writing of the law.”

On April 1, Saturnino Cerrato, president of the Assembly of God Church in Nicaragua told Noticias 12 television news that his church was challenging the law because it does not promote or permit reconciliation of couples even when the woman pardons her husband.  He said that the law divides families and separates children from their fathers when the fathers are ordered not to come near the family.  He said the church was being advised by a group of lawyers to push for amendments to the law in the National Assembly and challenges in the court. 

However, Liberal Deputy Wilfredo Navarro asked which rights are violated when criminal penalties are imposed against those who attack and kill women.  He added that those who are promoting changes to Law 779 are promoting barbarism against women.  And, in related news, two women were murdered during Holy Week, one in the Department of Jinotega and the other in the Department of Matagalpa. (El Nuevo Diario, Mar. 26; Radio La Primerisma, Mar. 29; Informe Pastran, Apr. 1; La Prensa, Apr. 1)

4. Brownfield says “Welcome” to Russians, but…

William Brownfield, assistant Secretary of State and head of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, recently returned from Honduras and Costa Rica, told a press video-conference that, “I welcome any contribution, any donation and all the support that the Russian government wants to give this hemisphere,” in answer to a question by US journalist Tim Rogers, editor of the Nicaragua Dispatch in Managua about the recent visit to Nicaragua by the Russian drug tsar Victor Ivanov.

Ivanov laid the first stone last week for a Central American technical training center in Nicaragua for the fight against drug trafficking and organized crime.  While the words sounded friendly, Informe Pastran headlined “Washington resents closeness with Russia.”  The report notes that Russia has sent field hospitals, helicopters, Tiger military vehicles, and weapons for the drug war along with fire trucks and busses for the civilian population and now provides nine times as much aid to Nicaragua as does the US.

Brownfield went on to say, “Ivanov and his agency are absolutely firm and dedicated to the elimination of illicit drugs in Russia.  And the truth is that they collaborate with us in several parts of the world such as Central Asia.”  On Apr. 2, Cuarto Poder, a sister publication of the Informe Pastran, published material from documents obtained by Wikileaks which revealed Brownfield’s role in the destabilization of Venezuela when he was US ambassador there between 2004 and 2007.  (Informe Pastran, Apr. 1; La Prensa, Apr. 1; Cuarto Poder, Apr. 2)

5. Federal court in Florida rules against government of Nicaragua

Federal District Court Judge Ursula Ungaro on Mar. 21 ordered the Nicaraguan government to pay two members of the Solorzano family of Miami, former Nicaraguan citizens, a total of US$18 million for Laboratorios Solka.  The Managua pharmaceutical company was confiscated in the 1980s by the revolutionary government but part of the company was returned to the Solka family in 1990.   The government of President Daniel Ortega took it over again in 2007 and an agreement was signed for compensation in 2008.  The suit resolved on Mar. 21 was for failure to fulfill that agreement.  (Informe Pastran, Mar. 27, Apr. 1; La Prensa, Mar. 27; South Florida Business Journal, Mar. 26)

6. Smithsonian to exhibit Central American ceramics

The National Museum of the American Indian, a part of the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC, will open an exhibit this week of Central American ceramics titled “Cerámica de los Ancestros: Central America’s Past Revealed.” The exhibit will include ceramics from all the five countries of Central America plus Belize and Panama. The exhibit will run until February 2015.

According to American Indian Museum Director Kevin Gover, this is the first time the museum’s world class collection of Central American ceramics has been displayed and the exhibit is the first time the museum has created a fully bilingual exhibit. Eduardo Diaz, executive director of the Smithsonian’s Latino Center said that this exhibit was a valuable opportunity to share an incredible Smithsonian collection with the largest Latino population in the Washington, DC, area—the Central Americans [mainly Salvadorans].   (La Voz del Sandinismo, Mar. 26; http://nmai.si.edu/explore/exhibitions/washington/)

7. Dead fish and dolphins appear on beaches

Juana Argeñal, minister of the Environment and Natural Resources (MARENA) announced that the ministry’s investigation into the cause of death of thousands of fish in Lake Xolotlan (Lake Managua) will be concluded this week. She said that although there are several hypotheses on the cause of the die-off, she preferred to wait until the official test results are in before commenting. During Holy Week, fish washed onto the shores at San Ramon and San Antonio in the municipality of San Francisco Libre. A brigade from the Ministry of Health, the Institute of Fishing, and MARENA speculated that the cause of the deaths could have been from pesticide run-off from watermelon and chile pepper fields in the area. Farmers were fumigating crops last week. MARENA officials stated that “the water looked different” from surrounding waters. The health ministry announced that it was taking steps to remove the dead fish and clean up the area. It warned people not to eat or sell the dead fish and to be conscious of the risk of bathing in the contaminated water.

Meanwhile, four dead dolphins were found washed up on ocean beaches along the Pacific Coast during Holy Week. They were immediately buried. Speculation was that they may have been forced ashore by the recent massive waves or disoriented by illegal underwater explosions.  MARENA issued a temporary announcement on Mar. 28 calling on beach goers to alert authorities so that stranded dolphins could be helped back into the sea before they died. Nicaraguans traditionally go to the beaches during Holy Week. (Radio La Primerisima, Mar. 27, 28, 29; El Nuevo Diario, Mar. 28, 29; La Prensa, Apr. 1)