TUESDAY, AUGUST 30, 2011
Nicaragua News Bulletin (August 30, 2011)
1. European Union to send observers2. Ortega condemns bombing of Libya
3. Swedish film accuses Borge of La Penca bombing
4. Murderer of priest captured
5. Coffee is King but still has needs
6. Hemispheric labor meeting in Nicaragua
7. Cuban Five mother visits Nicaragua
8. More visitors to Somoto Canyon
1. European Union to send observers
The representative of the European Union for Central America, Mendel Goldstein, announced that the EU hopes to send a team of 100 members to observe Nicaragua's Nov. 6th elections. Goldstein said that he was scheduled to meet on Aug. 29 with magistrates of the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) to discuss the rules of what the CSE calls “electoral accompaniment.” Goldstein noted that he had already submitted a request for accreditation of the EU observers to the Foreign Ministry and the CSE, adding that they would probably begin to arrive in Nicaragua at the end of September. Mendel said that both President Daniel Ortega and CSE head Roberto Rivas had stated that the rules for accompaniment were “a framework document which doesn't restrict anyone, which permits free movement” and “if that is true, then I see no problem” for EU participation. CSE Magistrate Luis Villavicencio told Channel 4 Television that requests for accreditation would be reviewed in the order they are received. Rivas said that requests from both national and international groups had been received at the CSE.
Meanwhile, opposition parties and groups said that they were confused by discrepancies between the printed regulations, which they called restrictive, and statements by President Ortega, which appeared to allow flexibility of action for the observers. Last week, a group called the Democratic Coordination Roundtable (MCD) was pushing the political parties to present an appeal to the CSE demanding changes in the observation rules. Erving Calero of the MCD said, “He [Ortega] can say one thing but the fact is that there is nothing written; the rules say one thing and he says another.” A bill in the National Assembly on electoral observation failed to win the support of enough members of the Assembly leadership to be put on the agenda for consideration. (Radio La Primerisima, Aug. 27, 29; La Prensa, Aug. 23, 29; El Nuevo Diario, Aug. 27)
2. Ortega condemns bombing of Libya
President Daniel Ortega on Aug. 27 condemned NATO bombing of Libya saying, “Who can deny that NATO has invented a brand new way of protecting the human rights of citizens by massive bombing?” Opposition media outlets noted that Ortega did not mention Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi as he had in past speeches. [Back in April, Ortega had called Gadhafi a “brother in the good times and the bad.” There was even a report in March in the Jerusalem Post claiming that Gadhafi's sons wanted their father to go into exile in Nicaragua.] Presidential advisor Bayardo Arce said that he doubted that Gadhafi would request political asylum in Nicaragua but that, if he did, the government would consider it “positively.”
Opposition figures concurred that it would be unlikely for Gadhafi to seek asylum in Nicaragua. Oscar Rene Vargas said he would be more likely to go to another African country like Algeria. Vice-presidential candidate Edmundo Jarquin said that “any country that gave asylum to Gadhafi would know that it would confront a delicate international situation because Gadhafi is wanted by the International Criminal Court.”
Even Costa Rica got into the act when Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Carlos Roverssi exhorted the other Central American countries to ask Nicaragua to reject any possibility of political asylum for Gadhafi. When pressed by a radio interviewer, he admitted that he had not consulted his statements with Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla, generating criticism from those who said that certainly the statements rose to the level where they should have been approved first, given the possibilities of a new diplomatic conflict with Nicaragua. (El Nuevo Diario, Aug. 23, 27, 29; Radio La Primerisima, Aug. 29; La Prensa, Aug. 26)
3. Swedish film accuses Borge of La Penca bombing
In the documentary film El último capítulo, adiós Nicaragua (The Last Chapter, Good-bye Nicaragua), producer Peter Torbiornsson explores, using numerous interviews, the responsibility for the placing of a bomb at a press conference in May of 1984 held by then-counterrevolutionary Eden Pastora on the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Seven people were killed by the bomb, four of Pastora's force and three journalists. Fifteen other journalists and seven fighters were wounded. Through the years the blame has been variously placed on the Sandinista revolutionary government and on the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Torbiornsson, visiting Nicaragua for an Aug. 24 showing of the film, was a journalist covering Nicaragua in the 1980s. He blames himself for agreeing to take with him to the press conference a photographer who he suspected from the beginning was not a Dane named Per Anker Hansen and not even a photographer. He was, in reality, according to Torbiornsson, an Argentine named Roberto Vital Gaguine working as an agent of the Nicaraguan Ministry of the Interior and its head Tomas Borge. Torbiornsson says that it was Vital Gaguine who placed the bomb that wounded, but did not kill, Pastora. His version of the events is supported by Luis Carrion, who was second in command at the Ministry of the Interior under Borge at the time. In the film, Borge vehemently denies responsibility.
Eden Pastora, the target of the bomb, said that Torbiornsson and Gaguine were the only ones responsible for the bombing and that he would formally accuse Torbiornsson (Gaguine has since died) of crimes against humanity, along with Carrion. According to Pastora, Torbiornsson and Ganguine, acting as free agents, came to shoot him at the contra camp before the press conference but, unable to carry out that task, they decided to place the bomb that killed innocent people. He denies that Sandinista officials were aware of the attack beforehand and believes that the showing of the film at this moment in Nicaragua is part of the campaign against the reelection of President Daniel Ortega.
The film won the Giraldillo de Oro prize for best European documentary at the Seville Film Festival of 2010. (El Nuevo Diario, Aug 25; La Prensa, Aug. 29; Radio La Primerisima, Aug. 29)
4. Murderer of priest captured
On Saturday, Aug. 27, the police arrested the principal suspect in the murder of Father Marlon Pupiro Garcia who had been found dead, wrapped in black plastic bags in an illegal garbage dump, on Aug. 23. The police said that Yasker Blandon Torres confessed how, at the La Borgoña restaurant, where he was a waiter, he put strong sleeping pills into the priest's drink, took him out of the restaurant, put him in his truck, hit him on the head with a wrench, and later strangled him. The motive appeared to be the stealing of Fr. Pupiro's truck which Blandon sold to a used auto parts dealer in the Mercado Oriental. The dealer, Rene Martinez, was also arrested and charged with receiving stolen goods. Two other men were charged as collaborators in the crime.
However, Auxiliary Bishop of Managua Silvio Baez said, “There are holes in the [police] version of the facts of the case that we are not able to explain; we can't see clearly that the motive of the crime could be the stealing of the truck. That could not justify such a horrible crime.” He said that he had expressed his concerns to the police who, he said, told him that investigations were still continuing. Fr. Pupiro served the communities of Sabana Grande and La Concepcion in the Department of Masaya.
Everything is political at the time of an election campaign and the murder of the Fr. Pupiro is no exception. Members of the group Youth Resistance for National Dignity (REJUDIN) said that the killing was a message to the Catholic Church that priests should not object to government policies or the reelection of President Daniel Ortega from the pulpit. They noted that Fr. Pupiro sometimes denounced the use of Christianity in the political messages of the governing Sandinista Party. (Radio La Primerisima, Aug. 29; El Nuevo Diario, Aug. 23, 29; La Prensa, Aug. 27)
5. Coffee is King but still has needs
The 2010-2011 coffee season will end September 30 with an estimated US$411.8 million in sales from 1.7 million hundredweights of coffee. International coffee prices have exceeded $270 per hundredweight for a total value of sales of US$411.8 million. The 2011-2012 coffee cycle which begins Oct. 1 will be “a magnificent year” according to Jose Antonio Baltodano, president of Grupo Cisa.
Some analysts, including Baltodano, say that Nicaragua's production could be doubled with sufficient investment and more credit for growers. “We need to renew the coffee groves and plant at least 3,500 bushes per manzana (1.7 acres),” he said. Nicaraguan producers average 8-12 hundredweight of coffee from each manzana compared to 20+ hundredweight in Costa Rica and Guatemala. The general manager of the Bank of Central America (BAC), Juan Carlos Sanson, countered that there is sufficient credit available. BAC alone has US$150 million for agricultural loans. While Nicaragua produces less coffee per acre than its neighbors, the Association of Nicaraguan Special Coffees (ACEN) defended Nicaraguan coffee as consistently judged the higher quality in international contests, thus gaining Nicaragua top dollar for its beans.
Coffee is Nicaragua's top export. The government estimates that 322,000 acres are under cultivation by 43,000 producers.
Coffee producers and processers are meeting in Managua Aug. 29-31 to discuss their industry at the 10th International Ramacafe Coffee Meeting 2011. Nicaraguan growers called on the government to improve infrastructure such as roads and bridges and to speed up the legalization of property titles in the coffee zones. (La Prensa, Aug. 23; El Nuevo Diario, Aug. 27; Radio La Primerisima, Aug. 29)
6. Hemispheric labor meeting in Nicaragua
Nicaragua hosted the Fourth Our America Trade Union Meeting (ESNA) in Managua Aug. 25-27 with 337 delegates from 130 organizations in 27 countries. The group first met three years ago in Ecuador. Special guest this year was Irma Shewerert, mother of Rene Gonzalez, one of the Cuban Five serving long sentences in the United States for their anti-terrorism work. [See separate article below.]
President Daniel Ortega spoke to the delegates on the final evening exhorting them to defend the political and social changes in Latin America that favor the people. He said the meeting showed a unified spirit to plan actions in the anti-imperialist, anti-neoliberal struggle. He said that in Latin America the capacity of progressive forces is multiplying because the people never gave up and have always been present [in the struggle]. “Against more repression, more rebellion; against more terror, more courage; against more brutality and barbarity, more consciousness and firmness in our ideals, that has been the continental experience,” Ortega stated.
The delegates expressed their agreement that the crisis in capitalism has made more evident that the salvation of humanity lies in socialism. The Declaration of the 4th ESNA reaffirmed the promise to continue to defend the rights of workers, called for the liberation by the US of the Cuban Five, expressed support for the Sandinista revolutionary process and condemned aggression against Palestine and Libya. The declaration also condemned the government of Chile for repression and death carried out against the student movement and the growing presence of US military bases and military operations in Latin America. The general secretary of the Cuban Workers Central (CTC), Salvador Valdes, told the assembly that neoliberalism was able to disassemble unions, to atomize and disperse them, “but in Latin America that history has been turned back.” (Radio La Primerisima, Aug. 25, 29)
7. Cuban Five mother visits Nicaragua
Irma Shewerert, mother of Rene Gonzalez, one of the Cuban Five political prisoners in the US, visited Nicaragua as part of the Cuban delegation to the Fourth Our America Trade Union Meeting (ESNA) held in Managua last week. Shewerert said she always knew her son, who had fought in Angola, was not a traitor to the revolution when he left for the United States, “but I could never say that publically,” she added. Gonzalez and four other Cubans infiltrated violent right wing Cuban-American groups in Miami and when the Cuban government passed the information they had gathered to the FBI, it was the Five who were arrested on charges of espionage and conspiracy to commit murder. The other Cubans are: Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González, Gerardo Hernández, and Ramón Labañino. Rene's 15 year term is up in October but he must stay in the US for three more years under parole before he can return to his homeland.
Former Nicaraguan Foreign Minister, who is also former President of the United Nations General Assembly, Fr. Miguel D'Escoto, said that the case of the Five reveals the ultimate hypocrisy of the United States on the issue of terrorism. D'Escoto called on President Barack Obama to use his presidential power to free the Cuban Five. Sandinista Front founder and current ambassador to Peru, Tomas Borge, called for a petition campaign to get millions of signatures from Latin Americans calling for the Five to be returned to Cuba. The final declaration of the meeting included a demand to the US for the release of the Cuban Five. Shewerert, whose mother was from the United States, said that instead of five families in Cuba, they have all become one, and none of them will rest until all five heroes are home. (El Nuevo Diario, Aug. 27; Radio La Primerisima, Aug. 24, 25, 26)
8. More visitors to Somoto Canyon
Only 20 minutes from Somoto, in the Department of Madriz, the Somoto Canyon is a growing tourist destination since its designation as a national monument and a protected area. Amazingly, the canyon was not known even to residents of the town of Somoto until it was “discovered” by geologists from the Czech Republic eight years ago. The canyon, formed by the Coco River, is three miles long with walls 820 feet high.
The stunning vistas of the canyon, the area's huge trees, and abundant and varied plants and animals drew 11,000 tourists last year. Area residents have risen to the challenge of becoming a tourism destination by offering housing and food. There are excursions to the canyon, some by burro, and boat trips on the river. (La Prensa, Aug. 27)
Labels: Archives