By Katherine Hoyt on August 2, 2018

The phrase that has been going through my head for the last few weeks is something that Orlando Núñez Soto said a number of years ago with relation to Cuba: “We are seduced by the fact that the children eat and go to school.” It can also be applied to Nicaragua. I am seeing that, on the issue of the violence in Nicaragua, people on the left, be they Nicaraguans or concerned foreigners, break down into two groups. The first group is composed of those for whom free education and health care, land titles, dependable electricity, food and transportation subsidies, expanding potable water and sanitation, renewable energy, rising minimum wages, farm-to-market roads, low crime, high levels of GDP growth, declining Gini coefficient, declining poverty rates, declining infant and maternal mortality rates, etc., are enough to allow them to close their eyes to certain adjustments in election results and other questionable partisan political and governmental activities. And those achievements now make it difficult for those same people to believe (in spite of some shocking videos) that the police would have changed from one day to the next, from community policing to working hand in glove with blue shirted, black hooded goons. (I count myself among that number.)

In the second group are those who find that material improvements are not enough for them or they are not particularly interested in them. They want an open political system with democratically run political parties, term limits, an end to closed-door decision-making, clientelism and nepotism, and much more, including removal from office of men who have abused women and girls. Some have been trained in liberal democratic forms by non-governmental organizations financed by the United States and European countries. They were appalled by the police reaction to demonstrators at the beginning of this uprising, believe that the authorities are responsible for almost all the subsequent deaths and feel that this reveals the true character of the FSLN government.

But, let’s take a look at the political uprisings of the last few years especially those of the so-called “Arab Spring,” which were similar to the events in Nicaragua in that they were demands for liberal democratic reforms. We see that none of them (with the possible exception of Tunisia) experienced results, after the head of state was forced out of office, that improved the lives of citizens. In Nicaragua, the political parties are notoriously ineffective and have not been visibly involved in the recent events. The groups and individuals that have been involved have no joint program or any program at all and seem to incoherently span the political spectrum from right to left. And some have carried out brutal acts of violence that, much as others among them liken themselves to the Sandinistas of the 1970s, the FSLN of that period would never have committed. (I know; I lived in Nicaragua for the last eleven years of the Somoza period.) Does some of this brutality indicate that organized crime and drug traffickers have gotten involved on one side or the other? Or on both?

And where will this go from here? The uprising has been put down and it remains to be seen if the various bodies, national and international, assigned to investigate the over 250 deaths will complete their missions and if the culpable will be brought to justice. The dialogue mediated by the Catholic Church has been on again, off again (it is now off) but may result in something good. The government and the Organization of American States say they have been working steadily on the electoral reforms that were agreed upon months before the uprising began. These reforms are with an eye toward the presidential elections of 2021 while the opposition continues to demand that those elections be moved up to 2019.

The economic damage has been enormous. The government has announced that highway and other construction projects will move forward and will be a boost to getting the economy back on its feet. However, the government was already feeling the crunch from the economic problems in Venezuela. As one example, Nicaragua’s cattle ranchers had come to rely on Venezuela’s large purchases of beef. That has dropped down to almost nothing. Big agriculture and big business, both of which were in coalition with the Ortega government and benefitted from both ALBA and CAFTA, now appear to be breaking away. The government is turning to the medium, small and micro (MIPYME) sector which forms 40% of the economy (and is a more natural ally) for support. Because Nicaragua has such a high rating for completion of projects from the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and other international financial institutions, loans from these agencies will probably continue but some bi-lateral aid will likely be cut. It would be a moral travesty for the United States Congress to pass the so-called Nica Act, which would use the US vote in the financial institutions to try to stop loans to Nicaragua, or to approve the new proposal for sanctions by Senator Melendez.

But, on the personal, family, and neighborhood level, Nicaragua has been ripped apart by this crisis. Both sides apparently have lists of people they want to harm or even kill. Whether Nicaraguan society can knit itself back together again will depend on the actions of the President, the investigative commissions, and the Catholic Church and other religious bodies that the people look to for moral guidance. We have to wish them well.

https://afgj.org/nicanotes-we-are-seduced-by-the-fact-that-the-children-eat-and-go-to-school

Source: Nicanotes