by Nick Cooke
¡Mayor, mayor!
Recently-elected municipal authorities take office in January 2005. All wait to see what all these mayors and their local authorities will do next. Of 152 municipalities, the FSLN party –known merely as “Sandinistas” to those who oppose them – triumphed in more than 90. Granada, the oldest in-the-same-place colonial city in the Americas, was won by less than two dozen votes, out of 22 thousand ballots cast, más o menos. A close call, a harbinger, or just another democratic expression? National elections are on the horizon. Doubtful it is that same-sex marriage or medicinal marijuana will be “referendumbed”. The ballot sheet will be complex enough already.
Exports rise
Third quarter reports for 2004 had Nicaraguan export earnings rising by 25% over the same period last year. The United States is the main buyer of the country’s products with 33%, followed by El Salvador with 14%. The latter country buys mostly cheese, “squeaky” cheese, the kind you can sink your teeth into.
Filling the GAP
An $18 million investment on the outskirts of Granada will reportedly create 3,000 jobs for the production of 200,000 pairs of pants a week. GAP jeans and leisure wear sell for up to $50 a pair or $27.93 in discount retailers. Into the breach will ride the light industry brigade, producing a million dollar “value” in pants. Do the math. More than likely with a monthly salary from such enterprise, not one of their workers would be able to afford a pair. Reminiscent of the coal miner who has no coal to heat the shack. Where is Woody Guthrie when you need him?
On the 3rd Day
Letting light rule, Nicaragua’s electrical service is fueled 80% by petroleum. The generation industry lobbies for subsidies, or else… Bills charged to consumers could rise. With no petroleum whatsoever yet, Nicaragua has awarded explore-contracts to enable its potential petro-reserves (read, offshore Pacific/Atlantic drilling platforms). Untapped reserves of geothermal energy in promising areas are being put up for bid by the government in December. Nevertheless, they will still be up for grabs in the New Year. With some exploration already done, national authorities hope to attract investors. Areas up for tender run along the volcano chain, including Ometepe Island.
What a relief!
Nicaragua has a newly-produced map showing the terrain of the entire country. The 1:250,000 scale wall map is actually 3-D, more or less. Rounded bump mountains and dipping lakes and valleys. Read it, almost like Braille. Copies are available at INETER in Managua, right in front of the Immigration Offices. Get ‘em while they last. The perfect housewarming gift for a wannabe real estate mogul in this territory?
Can you see me (now)?
Telecommunications burgeon all over the country. With the field privatized, new operators with new services appear in the most remote places. Net-to-phone for cheap long distance, already available in many cyber-cafés, cuts into the earnings of land-line monopoly of ENITEL. Soon to come maybe… those new mobiles with full keyboard and video-phone capacity. Red lights on Eiffel Tower-esque repeater structures dot the countryside. Can you see them now?
Can´t see the Bush for the forest
National authorities are really quite pleased with US election results. Former contender Kerry openly opposes ratifying recently-negotiated Central American Free Trade Agreement, CAFTA. Bush has yet to find time to read the treaty. Look for openings for niche products. Look for no basic grains subsidies. Look for imported beans-rice-corn on any super’s shelves. Look for copyright protection on genetically-altered plants. Look for stacks of litigation of treaty interpretation when Nicaragua’s terms are infringed. Look what became of NAFTA. Look how much the lawyers make dealing these deals. Memorable moments notwithstanding, Bush did ask during that campaign debate, “Got wood?”
Look and learn
State-run TV Channel 6 is to go back on the air after numerous embezzlement scandals over equipment involving officials from former-president Arnoldo Alemán’s administration, some jailed temporarily, some still in voluntary exile while drawing off illicit bank accounts. The Ministry of Education is entering the world of distance education as way to reach secondary students throughout the country, offering courses and presenting the material in a novela way. After Lulu sings To Sir With Love, plans are to go cable for a couple or three months and then look for funding.
Over a barrel
Post-Iraq-Attack oil price hikes have most complaining. Prices at the pump provoked public transport operators to threaten strike. Succeeding in wringing C$30 million in concessions from the government, they still insist on raising busfares. In the capital, they want to go 3 córdobas, just over 20 cents US.
It may not seem like much, but for those wage-laborers working at somewhere around the minimum, it’s a fair-sized bite of take home pay. Workers in free trade zones, or zonas francas, may have to clamor for a raise. That would not go over well with manufacturers who came to Nicaragua precisely because wage rates are low.
Though ostensibly subsidies were to improve service provision, riders still complain about the lack thereof. Service runs from poor to insolent, litter-lined floors for free, and the occasional bus loses a rear axle or has a brake failure.
Less is more?
This decade Nicaraguan women are bearing fewer children. Averaging 6.6 kids per woman throughout the 1990s, the country had a birth rate among the highest in the world, a result of decades of civil strife and military conflict. Few would call it a “baby boom.” Similar rates were reported in recent decades in Somalia, Kampuchea, Kosovo, Guatemala, and Ethiopia.
UN reports indicate the average is now 3.2 per woman and the overall birth rate has dropped from 2.7 to 2.4%. Despite Church campaigns to the contrary, surveys indicate 70% of women here are aware of and use family planning methods.
Hopes are this trend will continue and Nicaragua’s modest economic growth rate may finally have an effect on improving the well-being of several multitudes. The demographic bulge, however, must be considered. All those progeny pressure education and health systems. All those future adults pressure the infrastructure and they want to make money by working or otherwise.
Nicaragua has always been a “young” country. In the mid-90s, over 45% of the population was under 15. Expert projections foresee that in 11 years, by the year 2015, that proportion will fall to 33.3.
Concretely, what does all this mean? There will be just under 100,000 youths looking for jobs each year from now through the next decade. The more jobs – so the plan goes – the more taxable income will be generated in order to pay for the services required to get to the point of having more employment generated.
Play Ball
The new 4-team Nicaraguan Professional Baseball League (LNBP) threw out the first pitch in mid-November, putting into play a new league featuring professionals from the U.S. and around the region. Philadelphia Phillies hurler Vincente Padilla will pitch for his native Chinandega squad, along with Nicaraguans currently playing in the minor leagues. The four teams- from Managua, Masaya, Leon and Chinandega- play 48 games from October through January, terminating in time for players to return to their North American major and minor league teams for spring training. Unfortunately, the Granada and Esteli entries in the amateur league the LNBP replaces struck out in entry requirements, leaving those towns’ fans with nothing to cheer.
Got missiles?
President Enrique Bolaños told U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Nov. 12th that Nicaragua will eliminate a stockpile of hundreds of surface-to-air missiles with no expectation of compensation. A jittery U.S. wants to destroy as many missiles as possible to eliminate the possibility of them falling into the hands of terrorists. In May and July, Nicaragua destroyed batches of more than 300 missiles each. Nicaragua had also previously suggested it would eliminate all its remaining SA-7s in exchange for about $80 million in aid, but none has been forthcoming. Some analysts believe destruction of the total stockpile is unlikely.
Deputy Dan to the Rescue
Bells and whistles have been going off in Washington since the virtual Sandinista sweep of the November 7 municipal elections. The Bush Administration is dispatching Dan Fisk, Deputy to Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega, to visit Nicaragua this week to rally the troops in the Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC) and allied parties. The US State Department is “concerned” at the news of the Sandinista Party’s victories in November elections and at the growing number of left wing party electoral victories in Latin American countries over the last few years.
Wilfredo Navarro, first vice president of both the National Assembly and the PLC, said the motive of Fisk’s visit is “to see first-hand the political and economic situations in Nicaragua at present” and implied that it is part of an effort to guarantee the National Assembly’s leadership stays out of Sandinista hands in the 2006 general elections.
Hare today
A tortoise-like creature in Jinotega was found moving slowly in a mountain dell only
Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble
Do you know the way to San Jacinto? Thermal vents bubbling mud well up from the depths of the volcanic subsurface are there to see. Some may call it child labor, but about 30 kids from the surrounding area offer service as guides. They will show you how to walk the walk around the cracked mud-rock surface around the fumaroles. Remember one thing though, you probably weigh more than they do, and you do not want a breakthrough into boiling mud.
The Flying Frenchman
You saw him on Ripley’s as he rode his bike into smithereens breaking his own land speed record. Extreme is as nothing as they leap from volcano peak to cone. The flying Frenchman Eric Barone is back on the black sand, with a crew of bons amis. Try inventive sport sand-boarding. A short hardwood plank, some flat zinc sheeting, a few brads tacking the two together. Find a sandy slope on Telica or Cerro Negro. Watch for moguls. Kids, do NOT try this at home! Only here, in Nicaragua.
My way, the highway, or the Masayway
If you take the high road, and I take the low road, and they all take the road in between, that would constitute a roadways plan. The current Administration had one, but for technical reasons, it lacks the shoulders necessary to bear traffic flow.
The Bolaños Administration has suffered numerous shortfalls in paving this particular paradise. In its proclaimed National Development Plan – announced to the public and the international community-at-large a couple of years ago – it stated that the only road forward for this country has “sharp curves and precipices on both sides.”
Speaking of roads skirting valleys, in Telpaneca – where the paving stones were to have been laid from Palacagüina by a Korean company with a branch-off operation – the surface is still waiting. The trunk road is there, leading to the headwaters of the Río Coco.
The “super”-highway towards Granada from just outside of Managua – bypassing much of Masaya – looks a lot like a cost-plus job, make-work project, and promises have been made along the way.
The Coastal Highway from the southwest corner border with Costa Rica all the way up to Poneloya appears to still be in the drawing-board phase. Negotiations for rights-of-way through prime coast-front property have yet to hit the papers. Where is that twisty-curvy two-lane blacktop that begs for a good motorbike?
On the other lane, these authorities have turned a blind eye so far to offers to use Philadelphia trash incinerator ash as base material for roads along the Atlantic Coast, as offered back in the early 90s. That consideration was rejected back then. How many roads? Must we walk down them all?
