by Nick Cooke
Extreme ephemerality
During their short period of bloom, flowers and flutterers abound on Mombacho Volcano, just outside of the City of Granada. When completed, two museums –one for orchids, another for butterflies– will be a multi-colored palette, a feast for the visual palate. This volcanic nucleus of biodiversity has over 700 plant species, of which more than 90 are orchids, including one (Maxillaria mobachenoenis) that can only be found there. Adding magic to mystery, more than 100 species of butterflies flutter by. The Cocibolca Foundation, charged with administering the natural reserve that covers much of Mombacho’s lushly-vegetated skirts, was given about half a million dollars from the Technological Innovation Program of the Interamerican Development Bank for this construction and other remodeling of already-existing facilities.
Born to be mild?
Who says bikers are a wild bunch? The 3rd annual Central American biker rally came through Nicaragua in early May, stopping for food, drink, and live entertainment at Zona Hippos in Managua and Ricardo’s Bar in San Juan del Sur. Black leather vests, jackets, and pants and black T-shirts were the unofficial dress code as around 100 bikes from throughout the Central American region roared chrome-shiny around nearby streets. Harley Davidsons were present, along with a variety of BMWs, Yamahas, and Hondas — the “hardley-davidsons”, as it were. There were no mishaps other than one low speed spill when a sleeping policeman caught an unwary biker by surprise. Hardly anything, considering the distances that bikes like those were born to be miled.
Get out of jail rich?
Byron Jerez, former finance minister and money manager under ex-president Arnoldo Alemán, has been let off on charges of embezzlement and scamming that had him under house arrest. His attorneys are busy trying to free up his embargoed properties, including his summer palace in Pochomil on the shores of the Pacific. That 7000 square-meter architectural monstrosity of monumentally bad taste was constructed in part with resources from the relief assistance immediately after Hurricane Mitch in late 1998. Jerez also wants the money from the auctioning off of his condo in Florida that US authorities returned to Nicaragua after his money-laundering trial.
Cleaning up education
The Minister of Education recently announced that a sweep will be made of the public education system. As part of the agreement reached between teachers unions and the ministry earlier this year during collective bargaining that almost resulted in a teachers’ strike, an investigation was made into where all the money was going. It turned out that there were more than 3,000 “irregular” teachers receiving salaries. Some had gone to private schools but continued to receive public school salaries. Another 1,500 “phantom” teachers were also getting paychecks. The Minister promised that firings were in the offing. One question: how do you fire a phantom?
The Loggers’ Picnic
When you go out to the woods today, you’re in for a big surprise. You’ll wonder where all the trees have gone. Lumber varieties, including species protected by the CITES (Convention on International Traffic of Endangered Species) are being felled at an alarming rate in still-forested areas of Nicaragua, most for export to mills in Costa Rica, where much of the precious wood forest resource was eliminated years ago and remnants are under siege.
The jungle telegraph carries word that some loggers are hacking away without the required legal permits, while others reportedly do so with falsified papers and the complicity of forest authority agents. Just who these forest rapists are and how they can get away with it has many stumped.
The Environmental Ombudsman got stung by a flurry from the hornets’ nest he stirred up in early May when he denounced that several high-level political and military figures are involved in what has been labeled as “the lumber mafia.” Speculations surrounded a few National Assembly deputies, former and present military commanders, and even a member of the government oversight body, the Office of the Controllers-General of the Republic. As we go to print, he had yet to name names but said he had passed them on to the National Police. The police were not about to let the cat out of the bag until they conducted preliminary investigations.
Meanwhile, flatbeds continue to transport trunk after trunk out of some of the world’s last remaining rainforest preserves. On the bright side, the National Forest Institute (INAFOR) plans to invest the $300,000 it has made from fining illegal loggers over the last 15 months in reforestation.
Cashew Cartel
Nicaragua has good prospects for capturing a share of the world’s cashew market. International traffic of processed cashew nuts (known here as semilla de marañon) reached 1.2 million metric tons last year, most of it from Brazil, Vietnam, and India.
Technicians from a Chemonics-USAID program, in collaboration with the Interamerican Institute for Cooperation in Agriculture (IICA) visited sites in León and Chinandega recently to assess potential and interest in cultivation of this exquisite delicacy favored much around the globe by those with an attack of the munchies.
Groves of the shady trees that bear the fruit will make for a welcome change to the parched flatlands in those two northwestern departments of the country. The husk of the nut produces an oil that can be processed for use in paint and brake fluid. And the fruit, looking somewhat like an off-color sweet pepper is used locally to make a refresco drink, which though somewhat bitter, is reportedly good for kidney functions and other common ailments.
Turning Japanese
Exporters’ eyes are looking more and more to Japan. Overall, Nicaraguan exports to the Land of the Rising Sun rose by 85% in 2004, up to $7.4 million. Much of this amount is accounted for by sesame seeds. Those produced in the former cotton fields of León and Chinandega are much appreciated in Japan for their white color, making them an excellent condiment for bread, salads, and rice. With worldwide concern over mad cow disease, other Nipponese importers are looking to ship in Nicaragua’s free-range beef that is not forced onto a bovine cannibalistic diet with feed supplements that include ground up renderings from previously slaughtered steers. An import company from Japan recently paid a visit looking for manufacturers to fill the market niche over there for good cigars where they generally fetch from 10 to 20 dollars each, more if they are of renowned international quality as some local products are.
Farmers can’t bank on it
The rainy season prognosis is positive, welcome news to farmers. For months, they had also been waiting for the government to announce the establishment of a Banco de Fomento y Desarrollo, or Production Development Bank to provide much-needed credit for agricultural activity. Daniel Núñez, a leader of the National Ranching Commission (CONAGAN) had clamored for this in order to put an end to the “economic dictatorship” of the private banks and their exorbitant interest rates. President Enrique Bolaños went to a farmer/rancher assembly in Nueva Segovia in early May, as the pre-season rain clouds were building off the Caribbean Sea. Those present lent him their ears.
He put the kibosh to the whole idea, reason being that international funding sources (donations, grants, soft loans) would not be forthcoming due to mistrust accumulated around the turn of the century with the breaking of seven banks in the country, private and public, and the presence of the “same ones as before” in allusion to corrupt banking officers, again private and public. He promised roadway improvements instead. In that way, farmers would be able to the get crops to market – but how do they afford to sow them in the first place?
Chaos? Or Compromise?
The pre-rainy season protest season has come and gone. This year saw the most effervescent one since the cargo transport strikes in the late ‘90s. At the center of the pre-May maelstrom: urban transit fares.
As they had been doing since late last year, bus operators throughout the country called for an increase in fares to cover rising fuel costs. Fares inside Managua were 2.5 córdobas (US 15 cents) and the proposal was to hike it to three cords (US 18 cents). It may not sound like much, but that 3 cent difference became a political football that had everyone wondering who’s in charge and where would it all lead.
Negotiations began between bus cooperatives, the Transport Ministry, and Managua City Hall. The Ministry, a wing of the Presidency that regulates inter-urban fares, quickly reached agreement on a new table for what to charge on routes connecting different urban centers. Managua Mayor Dionisio “Nicho” Marenco, using faculties granted him under the Municipalities Law and other legislation governing municipal affairs, said that fares in capital could go to 3 córdobas.
Smoke and cameras
That was all it took. Some university students and several others who have a Jones on for a good protest began to shoot off their home-made “mortars,” essentially an open-ended pipe with a handle attached, into which a bag of gunpowder is dropped and lit to produce a loud noise. Catholic churches throughout the land commonly use something similar to call the faithful to mass. They also burned old tires from buses and trucks at roundabouts and the intersections that they blockaded with sparsely-laid paving stones. The police responded routinely with riot squads firing tear gas canisters to disperse them.
In an not-so-artful flip-flop, Mayor Marenco claimed he had never approved the fateful 3 córdobas and that it is the responsibility of the federal government —in other words President Enrique Bolaños et al— to set bus fares. The protests continued, now with their ire directed at the President.
Assumedly after having seen similar protests from elsewhere in the past on the telly, some protesters opted for a Guatemalan approach. Two buses from one cooperative and a few State vehicles were torched, making for flaming drama and plenty of smoke. The police responded with more tear gas and the protesters responded by loading bits and pieces of metal into their mortar launchers and firing them at the cops. Two officers were seriously wounded. Some protesters got hit by flying tear gas cans. Many residents choked on the noxious gases. Two police motorcycles went up in flames.
This was how it went for a couple of days at selected sites around the city. A commonality was established with the ruckus ending each day around sunset, now one hour later because of daylight savings time having been instituted. News crews were on the scene like flies on honey and every local TV channel beamed the same repeated footage over and over for hours and hours into Nicaragua’s households. Each day, it all broke off as the sunset glared reddish through the smoke and haze so that the protesting protagonists could go home and review their actuation of that day on the local evening news.
Managua Mayor Marenco used a national municipalities forum to call for the president to resign, saying he was “inept and incapable.” The Liberal and Sandinista deputies in the National Assembly jumped on the bandwagon and clamored for Bolaños to step down. They have been trying for months to force the president to give up and go. In a surprising display of moderation, Sandinista Party founder and deputy Tomás Borge opposed that maneuver, stating that if Bolaños resigned, then the Sandinistas would be blamed for the chaos resulting from the power vacuum. As if that thought ever crossed anyone’s mind!
Damn, he did
Labor union and student leaders called a march on the offices of the Presidency under the slogan of “Bolaños Out!” Rising prices for basic public services, food, and consumer items were an issue, as was the proposal to privatize the water utility. Many people had several axes to grind, and they united at that demonstration.
They wanted to get to the steps of the Presidential Palace and forcefully call out the president himself and put forward their demands. Police barricades blocked them. Going boldly where no Nicaraguan president has ever gone, Bolaños came out to meet them and was met with a hail of stones and bags of water and quickly withdrew. He was seen calling out, “You say you want talks…Where are your leaders?” The march leaders were somewhere far back from the front line, giving statements to TV news cameras.
For having come out to meet the crowd, FSLN leader Daniel Ortega basically said Bolaños had lost his mind, using the word “desquisiado,” which can be roughly translated as being a few bricks short of a load. The idea was obvious… make it look like Bolaños is unfit to govern and have him removed, thereby paving the way to another political arrangement in which Ortega and his cronies in the Liberal/Sandinista political pact could slice the power pie up among themselves into ever finer slices.
Temporary settlement
New negotiations got underway and a deal was worked out in less than two days. The government and Managua City Hall would dig up funds to provide yet another subsidy for public transport in order to keep bus fares at 2.5 córdobas for a three-month period. Flip-flopping yet again, Mayor Marenco, a diehard Ortega loyalist, came out with praise for the president for having brokered such an arrangement.
This deal runs out in mid-August, just after the Managua Patron Saint celebrations end. That gives a month’s space for protests before the Independence Day celebrations on September 14 and 15. More effervescent bubblings are to be expected around that time. It is a traditional protest season, coming before the one in November before the celebrations of the Virgin Mary in early December.
Concerns raised
With the onset of the protests, the US State Department issued standard travel advisory, warning visitors off Nicaragua due to civil strife and an insecure situation for people in general. Would the Bronx, East Los Angeles, Southside Chicago or other zones of the USA be off limits at different times? One scheduled tour group canceled. There was also word of investors being put off for reasons of instability, though this was only at the level of unconfirmed rumors.
In a situation like that of Nicaragua today with widespread poverty and distrust of politicians due to the rampant corruption of the past, protests are to be expected. The response by police, one of business-as-usual in terms of protest management, indicates a new sense of maturity on the part of the authorities. Some hotheads were simply attempting to provoke a conflagration. Cooler heads prevailed and instead, a negotiated settlement was reached.
Investors that shy off the country because people protest problems posed by economic difficulties will miss out on benefits from the solution. This country needs investors with the imagination to see through the smoke.
Some unanswered questions
Why were buses from one particular co-op torched? Does this have anything to do with the rumors that Mayor Marenco and Sandinista deputy Bayardo Arce are planning to go into business with a new bus cooperative? Who provided the gunpowder for those 20-cord-a-shot morteros? If the students were protesting against the greed of the bus cooperatives, where did they get all the used bus tires to burn? And, as Bolaños asked, where are the leaders? Do they have a proposal to deal with the worldwide rise in fuel prices?
