by Nick Cooke 

Striking differences

The year got off to a rather rough start, labor relations wise. Public sector doctors struck to raise their low salaries and hospitals turned away patients. The government stated that more money for raises would mean failure to stay within the fiscal bounds established by the International Monetary Fund PRGF agreement (Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility), affecting hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign assistance. Doctors here, as usual, do not get anywhere near what they want.

Meanwhile, local, district, and appeals court judges and staff staged work slow downs, closing court offices early and going out to carry around some placards allusive to their plight. No one really noticed much difference in the pace of issuing judgments. Surprisingly and in direct contradiction to the administration’s wage restraint policy, these public employees saw their demands met. Court caseloads obviously have more clout among lawmakers than hospital caseloads.

Urban public transport operators once again clamored for government subsidies and pulled their units off their routes. A distinct lack of sympathy greeted the first semi-annual work stoppage of 2006. Bus owner/drivers want to raise the standard fare to C$3.50 at the same time as benefiting from the perpetual subsidies they have habitually used for anything but improvements and/or maintenance for their vehicles.

Improving traffic flow?

A principal entrance to the capital on the Masaya Highway has been blocked by the construction of an over-underpass combined with a roundabout, ostensibly to facilitate access during the morning rush hour. Since an essential component is below ground level, concerns have been raised about flooding. City officials hope construction will be finished before the rainy season comes. Judging by the size of the exposed storm drains, there is plenty of runoff to reroute. Or is it going to be a new drive-through carwash?

Bye-bye byway signs?

Roadside advertising is big business in Nicaragua. Signs for businesses hang out over avenues, illuminated signs line center lane dividers, and banners are strung strategically in front of stoplights. The gigantic mega-signs standing out amongst the visual cacophony along main arteries have been ordered removed by the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure (MTI), ostensibly because they distract motorists. Removing them would supposedly reduce the number of vehicle accidents. The deadline for voluntary dismantling is April 1. An MTI spokesperson said that after that, the ministry would take them down.

But they may not have to come down at all and traffic safety might not be at root of al this. There is a municipal tax charged for the smaller signs placed along rights-of-way; however, the monster high-rise signs pay no tribute to any public agency. An MTI official has suggested that a possible solution would be to extend coverage of tax charged.

On the good ship Cocibolca

It will be the largest vessel ever to ply the waters of Lake Nicaragua. Scheduled for launching in April, the Cruise Ship Cocibolca is designed to carry 12 trucks or buses on one level, 48 light vehicles on another, and up to 800 passengers on three more.

Twenty air-conditioned rooms for passengers wishing to doze during the voyage occupy one level of the 10-meter tall by 48-meter long floating behemoth, while others less affluent will sit out the trip in lounges on another level or on the top deck that also doubles as a venue for entertainment spectacles.

The route is Granada – Ometepe Island – San Carlos, and back. Two smaller craft are to escort the ferryboat, offering side trips to the Solentiname Archipelago and the community of Los Chiles to the north of San Carlos located at the headwaters of the San Juan River.

Life preservers and 30 inflatable dinghies built for 10 people are there for the security conscious.

Milton Arcia, the Ometepe entrepreneur behind this endeavor, is not stopping here. He has purchased the remains of two Bulgarian hydrofoils brought to Nicaragua in the early 1990s and plans to install new motors to get them up and running again. Those craft offered a brief yet exhilarating service of high-speed transport on the lake. Arcia has further plans for Lake Managua that include a two-storey floating restaurant catamaran off the shore of the capital city.

Dragging feet with dredging

It’s been more than 100 years since anyone dredged the San Juan River where it flows out into the Caribbean. Now the channel passing by San Juan de Nicaragua (formerly San Juan del Norte, formerly Greytown) is silted up and most of the water exits through a branch of the delta located in Costa Rica known as the Colorado River, probably because of the color imparted to the water by the load of suspended particulates. According to a study made in 1976, some 12 million tons of sediments are transported by the river.

The National Port Authority announced recently that dredging would begin soon, at the same time as saying they have no idea of how much sludge will have to be removed or how much it will cost. Given the sluggish pace of awarding government contracts, it may be awhile before the channel is reopened.

Never missing a chance to trash their neighbor to the south, some here claim that most of the offending sediment is coming from Costa Rican tributaries, specifically the Frío, Sarapiquí, and San Carlos Rivers. Further sketchy reports have the nefarious Ticos stringing nets across the mouth of the Colorado River, thereby preventing the migration of Bull Sharks and Swordfish upstream from the Caribbean. A temporary ban on the fishing of these species has been declared for Lake Nicaragua.

This time for sure…?

Nicaraguan welterweight sensation Ricardo Mayorga is slated to have another punch up with famed gentleman of the ring Oscar de la Hoya on May 6 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The free-flailing street brawl style of Mayorga is only outshone by his out-of-the-ring antics that include street racing for cases of whiskey, being charged with rape, and general braggadocio.

The picturesque pugilist has boasted about how he hardly even bothers to train for his fights, usually undergoing the rigors of pre-fight preparation for only a month or so. This time, however, he says he will train seriously, going so far as to even quit smoking for the time being.

Eyes on the Atlantic Coast

The vast under populated and resource rich Atlantic Coast region of Nicaragua is finally getting some much-deserved attention, coincidentally during a double election year. This spring will see voting for the North and South Autonomous Regional Governments followed by federal elections for the Presidency and National Assembly in the fall. Many feel that the former will a harbinger of what will happen with the latter, though that thesis has not played out fully in the past.

In the months leading up to the regionals, there has been much fiddling with electoral rules to do with who is eligible to vote and where they can cast their ballots. The election roll is out of date and there is no way to bring it up to speed in time. People have moved from one polling district to another, others have died, and many young people have turned 16 since the last time the roll was published. Other voters have lost their national identity card and there are countless difficulties in issuing replacements, let alone new ones for the segment of “new” adults.

There are provisions in the law for such cases, involving having the person appear with two witnesses who will attest to the fact that the person wanting to vote does indeed exist and is who they say they are. But the question is, apparently, whether or not they are supposed to vote where they are.

Liberal politicians have proposed that people should be able to vote wherever they want, and not just at the polling station that has them on that particular list. Reportedly, thousands of voters could not vote in the last regional elections because the lists did not jive with the actual population in any given area. This gave rise to what is known popularly as the “crazy mouse,” in allusion to what it is like having to run around from polling station to polling station looking for your name on a list. They say the law allows for their proposed solution, but as with many legalities, there are discrepancies in interpretation. At root are suspicions that one solution or another will inevitably favor one party against the other.

The Supreme Electoral Council is the State power that is in charge of election affairs, but the magistrates sitting on it have been illustrious in their lack of ability to bring order to this apparent chaos.

From regional to national

A certainty is that the results will be slow in coming out, leading to allegations of fraud. Uncertain is what this exercise in democracy will augur for the jockeying for position for the November national elections.

The main stated issues in both contests are employment and development, both of which hinge on economic growth. For the Caribbean Coast regions, the question of autonomy is also core. In essence, this translates into who reaps the royalties from the exploitation of the natural resources and who gets to decide on what to develop and how much to charge for it. In the view of the Costeños, throughout the nation’s history and under whatever political administrative division is in force at the time, they have been victims of a grand rip off.

Some on the Pacific, often with overtones of racism towards the indigenous peoples and ethnic communities living there, feel that those regions are a potential source of wealth that is underutilized. They want to see regional governments in place that would ensure a continuation of lucrative businesses based on extracting the forest and mineral resources. The people and their development are not the first concern with these people, popularly known as Pañas on the Coast, a derivative from the Castillian word for Spain.

On a somewhat related tangent, US Ambassador to Nicaragua Paul Trivelli announced in early February the end of the travel advisory his government issued for the Atlantic Coast, particularly Corn Island, warning off US visitors due to security concerns. Such an advisory would be a dissuasive consideration for potential investors or tourists and may have had a slight impact on recent development initiatives in the region. Though nothing much has changed security-wise over the few months that the advisory was in effect, it appears as though the local representation of the US government feels that the Coast is open for business once again.

Economic cultures clashing

Yet another bone of contention is the demarcation of communal lands. The Caribbean Coast has a diverse cultural composition with Mískitu, Mayagna (or Sumu), Rama, and Ulwa indigenous populations living at times alongside the Black Creole and Garifuna ethnic communities. All are interested in having the law for delimiting their traditional territories applied. This would then enable them to implement policies for the development of these lands that could potentially benefit their populations.

But since what was called the Reincorporation more than 100 years ago, a steady stream of migrants from the predominantly Spanish-Mestizo Pacific side of the country has been pushing eastward, geophagically gobbling up the land. Vast tracts have been cleared of tropical forest in a cycle that starts with poor campesinos slashing and burning in order to eke out a transitory subsistence level lifestyle from the soil. When the soil is depleted, they move on and do it again.

Close on their heels come cattle ranchers, buying up or otherwise acquiring cleared land in order to graze bovine herds for beef production. The local indigenous and ethnic communities feel that they should have some sway in all this, including not only the right to put levies on production in order to have income for other projects, but also the right to have some land remain as it is – used for their traditional low impact forms of production.

Gold, seafood, lumber… and drugs

Illegal commerce is another issue that the soon-to-be-elected regional authorities will have on their plate. Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast was once a haven for pirates and buccaneers, its shore lagoons providing shelter from storms and a ready supply of timber for refitting, along with fresh water. Technology has changed, but the game remains much the same.

Cocaine running has become increasingly frequent in recent years, judging by the number of drug busts reported in the papers. Some traffickers jettison their cargo before getting caught on the high seas and then, waterproofed bales of coke sometimes wash up on shore. Some indigenous on the Coast claim that recovering the packages and marketing them is simply an extension of traditional hunting and gathering activities. The Caribbean Coast abounds with originality when it comes to making a living.

In a land where government presence is at a minimum and resentment to it is endemic, it’s no wonder some enterprising souls engage in trading contraband. Illegally felled precious hardwood trees are shipped out to mills and processing plants in Costa Rica, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic. It is also a given that a portion, no one knows how much, of the seafood catch off the Atlantic Seaboard is traded in open water, thereby avoiding taxation and other governmental regulations. And now, with the price of gold climbing, some panners and miners will no doubt attempt to avoid regulation by the authorities, preferring to export their produce downriver from the mountains of the interior and out to boats waiting just offshore.

Resources and resourcefulness on the part of the population, combined with a shortage of other opportunities, have created this situation. The new regional governments on the Coast, and then the new one in Managua, will have to address this at some time.

Routes for the future

In the meantime, President Enrique Bolaños has announced a new mega-project for the Atlantic Coast. A deepwater port, he says, will be built to the north of Bluefields and a new highway will push out from the river port town of Rama to Kukra Hill and Haulover and on to Pearl Lagoon.

The Port of Arlen Siu just outside of Rama was recently refurbished and there are plans to dredge the Escondido River out to Bluefields Bay and El Bluff, the site of a failed deepwater seaport project in the 1980s. This will allow cargo on merchant ships entry inland to the highway leading west to San Benito and points north or south along the Pacific Coast. That highway has been worked on for the last decade and now is one of the best in all the land.

Another idea on the drawing board is to improve the route from the town of Nueva Guinea out to Bluefields, thereby facilitating overland transport to the Caribbean. Bolaños cast doubt on the probability of this ever coming to fruition when he announced the Pearl Lagoon port project. He mentioned that an environmental impact study had been made and, as he said, “They say that highway would destroy who knows what thing we must care for, so we looked elsewhere.” The “thing” to be cared for comprises the wetlands in Bluefields Bay that have been declared an international RAMSAR site for preservation in order to maintain hydrological balances and the nesting grounds of migratory birds.

The proposed new route out to Pearl Lagoon must have fomented confusion among those who bought up land along the route out to Monkey Point to the south of Bluefields, speculating that a deepwater port is to be built there as one railhead for the long talked about cross-country railroad, or “dry canal.”

One presidential candidate, Herty Lewites, has already begun campaigning on the Coast, anteing up with a promise to finally build a paved highway out to Puerto Cabezas in the northeast from the central region of the country. The present route is a concatenation of mudholes interspersed with bridges that are at times out. Upgrading of this “road” would definitely improve the flow of goods in and out of the region, but who will benefit? East side, west side, or the country as a whole?

Either way, with all these proposed routes, be they new or renewed, someday in the not too distant future Nicaragua may finally be able to take full advantage of its geographic position between two oceans.