desde nicaragua

News updates: Ex-contras, deportees and more

Some interesting notes from these parts:

* Last year's return of Daniel Ortega here re-energized at least some ex-Contras in Miami who are now lobbying support from the U.S. government and working with anti-Ortega movements in Nicaragua with former colleagues here.

According to this Associated Press story, a few even "warn darkly" that armed resistance is again a possibility. They say they're worried about the CPCs, which I've written about earlier and have largely disappeared from local news after some typical political circus antics here.

* The increasing crackdown on undocumented immigrants in the United States is resulting in waves of deportees flooding back to their "home" countries like Mexico and Nicaragua. Many of these deportees grew up in the States and, lacking connections in their countries, are at a bit of a loss for finding work, etc., when they return. (Months ago, I wrote about one such case in Granada.)

"Some of these people are arriving in Mexico's border cities with nothing but the clothes they have on. Many have no family links, no knowledge of the country. They are very vulnerable," said Rolando Garcia, an immigration official working on the new program. "What we want to do, quite simply, is give them a human reception." (TIME)

Anyway, Mexican President Felipe Calderón announced a repatriation program to help reintegrate the deportees into society, according to a recent Time Magazine article. The program will organize refuge centers in border cities, transport to hometowns and jobs for the deportees, immigration officials say. Critics however say the program doesn't have much substance (there's nothing for it in the budget) and that Calderón should focus on defending immigrants' rights in the U.S.

* Reacting to recent legal actions taken by Exxon Mobil, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez threatened Sunday to cut off oil supplies to the United States.

A British court issued an injunction "freezing" as much as $12 billion in assets, according to recent news reports, after the oil company had gone to U.S., British and Dutch courts to challenge the nationalization by Chavez's government of a multi-billion dollar oil project.

"If you end up freezing (Venezuelan assets) and it harms us, we're going to harm you," Chavez said. "Do you know how? We aren't going to send oil to the United States. Take note, Mr. Bush, Mr. Danger."    

The threats by Chavez boosted prices, even as analysts downplayed the chances of Venezuela cutting off supplies.

"The Venezuelan president is bluffing, but his well honed rhetoric will help support prices in New York and London nonetheless," said The Schork Report, issued by U.S. trader and analyst Stephen Schork. (TIME)   

Despite this, Venezuela continues to be the U.S.'s fourth-largest supplier of crude oil — supplying some 1.2 million barrels a day, and the U.S. continues to be Venezuela's top trading partner. The threats by Chávez caused a slight tremor in oil prices, which are already affected by continued worries of a recession in the States.

* Despite earlier optimism, deforestation continues in the Brazilian Amazon. So it's back to the drawing board for officials "to figure out what went wrong and how to tackle monumental problems like endemic lawlessness and land disputes, which have long stymied governments," according to a McClatchy News Service story.

* Finally, Andres Oppenheimer writes about Republican presidential hopeful John McCain's allies in Miami's Cuban exile community, and his views on issues like undocumented immigration and farm subsidies.

* * * * *

I added a link to the Media Accuracy on Latin America's site, which I learned about last month from the LANR blog. This initiative from the North American Congress on Latin America seeks to "foster public discourse by offering more pluralistic views on events unfolding throughout the hemisphere." On the site, you can find criticism of news coverage from this part of the world, "highlighting reports in which news outlets have simplified, overlooked or distorted critical facts as well as reports in which the media fails to connect relevant U.S. policy to developments in Latin America. MALA also offers background information on economic, political, and societal issues, as well as other resources for journalists, students, and the public at large to better understand the complexity of events in the region."

As a side note, I'm strongly considering a trip to Venezuela at the end of next month, in time for the Inter American Press Association's meeting in Caracas. These folks (who are funding my stay here) highly criticize Chávez for limiting press freedom and had the audacity to invite him to speak at the conference. We'll see whether he accepts.

Anyway, does anyone have friends in Venezuela?

Odds and Ends

Today is for maintenance. You'll notice a few changes to this blog, including more links to news outlets here in Nicaragua. I need to do a better job of offering variety, especially when it comes to sources. As always, send me links, because it's easy to miss things. And give me advice on where to go to learn what's happening. I can easily spend a couple hours every day just reading the main newspapers here and still miss big news. I want to be more selective of what I read and how much time I spend doing so.

I also changed the title of the blog to more accurately capture what it is I'm doing here. Most of what I write is about Nicaragua, because obviously this is where I am and where I do journalism. However, I will continue to get sidetracked on other issues going on in Latin America, as this blog was originally intended. For example, I'm going to be in Mexico from Dec. 24 to Jan. 4, so expect to read more about that country soon.

Finally, some news.

* From Reuters, a longish story about Nicaraguan migration to neighbor Costa Rica. The trend is similar to Mexican migration to the States, although some say with more popular acceptance on the part of Costa Ricans. From Nicaraguans find USA in booming Costa Rica:

Forest-cloaked Costa Rica's low-skilled immigrants work in agriculture, at construction sites and as domestics and security guards -- jobs Costa Ricans, better educated and settled in the middle class, prefer not to do ...

As in other countries where immigration is a heated issue such as the United States, whenever the media publicizes a crime by an immigrant, the immigration debate flares up, exposing racism toward migrants, experts said.

Yet as the role migrant workers play in the economy is better understood, the debate is changing. The free health care and education immigrant children receive, for instance, are seen less as a national burden and more of an acceptable result of integration, said Jorge Peraza-Breedy of OIM, an immigrant advocacy organization.

* Andrés Oppenheimer, an Argentine columnist and foreign correspondent with the Miami Herald/El Nuevo Herald, was in Managua recently to speak about his most recent book, Cuentos Chinos, and how poor countries can reduce poverty by attracting foreign investment, spending money on education and relying on social consensus.

Today, Oppenheimer writes about Nicaragua in his syndicated column: As world watches Venezuela, other leaders make moves, providing four solid reasons why President Daniel Ortega can't be Hugo Chávez (no oil, opposition controls National Assembly, unpopular wife, no control of police/army or support from media).

* This is not in English, but yours truly had a story on the front page of La Prensa about how a new(ish) web site that claims to be for the Citizens Power Councils — which isn't a legally recognized entity — uses government resources to churn out official good news. You might call that propaganda.

* And I'll leave you with an unusual story and pleasant photo from The Associated Press:

MEXICO CITY - Thousands of Mexicans are skating, wobbling and often falling on a giant ice rink set up by the tropical capital's government to bring some holiday cheer to this massive, chaotic metropolis.

The rink in Mexico City's main square measures 34,445 square feet — twice the size of a professional hockey rink and nearly five times as big as the one at New York's Rockefeller Center.

Mayor Marcelo Ebrard inaugurated it Saturday night and by Monday, more than 5,000 skaters glided across its surface, sometimes none too gracefully. At least 30 people received medical attention for bumps, bruises and one broken nose.

"Don't hold on to the rail, keep moving and keep your feet in a V shape. Don't lean forward," yelled a city worker, as a woman struggled to stay on her feet.

I never would have thought to imagine such a sight. Hopefully I'll be on that ice in three weeks' time.

back on track

You only feel like you're doing real work here if you go to Managua. Going into the city involves an hour-long bus trip, taxi drivers who love ripping you off and a ton of confusion and lies once you get to your destination.

Today I will do real work. I expect to finish a story I've spent far too long playing around with by tomorrow. It's weird how easy it is not to do work if you don't have a deadline. I think I am going to start paying somebody to yell at me a couple of times a day so I move faster. Anyway, the story compares campaign promises made last year about "zero blackouts" with what is happening today. I'm a little miffed that La Prensa had something very similar to what I'd been working on in today's paper.

Anyway, back to reading the news. From Cox News Service is a story about a different Latin American president's campaign promises vs. reality: Mexico's job promises unfulfilled

Mexico's job challenge is frightening: The country needs about 1.3 million new jobs annually just to make room for young people entering the workforce. That does not account for the estimated 27 million underemployed and unemployed Mexicans, millions of whom have fled across the border in search of work. The maquiladora industry, once considered the panacea for Mexico's job woes, has suffered in recent years as factories moved to China and Central America; it now employs fewer Mexicans than it did in 2000.

And a cool NYT story about remittances on the global scale: Migrant Money Flow: A $300 Billion Current.

Globally, the tally is huge: migrants from poor countries send home about $300 billion a year. That is more than three times the global total in foreign aid, making “remittances” the main source of outside money flowing to the developing world.

Surveys show that 80 percent of the money or more is immediately spent, on food, clothing, housing, education or the occasional beer party or television set. Still, there are tens of billions available for savings or investment, in places where capital is scarce. While remittances have been shown to reduce household poverty, policymakers are looking to increase the effect on economic growth.

Some migrants, for instance, send home money to savings accounts at small bank-like microfinance institutions, which use the resulting capital pool to lend to local entrepreneurs.

Okay, off to Managua. Thanks friends for sending links.

More on Chávez

We were having a few beers the other night with a couple of historians from the Canary Islands. They're  in Managua for the next few weeks on a sort of professor exchange with UNAN and giving a few lectures, including one later today about social exclusion in Europe at the Central Bank.

The conversation turned to the Chávez-King of Spain "incident" this weekend, and what the Venezuelan president gains from undiplomatic discourse. What I'm talking about isn't so much the content of Hugo Chávez criticism, because frankly we can all agree with him on a lot of points. It's the way he presents himself.

A Nicaraguan journalist who was with us pointed out what seemed the obvious context of the comments. In October, a Spanish man racially insulted and then physically attacked an Ecuadorean girl on a train. It was caught on security cameras and widely broadcast on television and the Internet.

The incident provoked an angry and resentful reaction in Latin America, he explained. While many people here still hold a historical grudge because of Spanish colonialisation, most people have gotten over it and warmly welcome Spanish/Europeans to their country. In Nicaragua, you meet a lot of Spanish tourists.

The resentment kicks in because people feel they don't discriminate against Spanish tourists, ex-pats living here, so they don't think it's right that they receive that treatment when they're in Spain. As I'd written a few days ago, Latin American immigration to Europe (Spain in particular) has increased in recent years.

This doesn't explain Chávez's comments, but it puts them in a different context.

In the end, it seems as if nobody really lost anything, one of the historians said. Chávez continues to appear as if he's standing up to power, for the poor and the defenseless. The King of Spain is a hero in his country for defending it. The current president might gain the support of some of his conservative opposition for defending his predecessor.

Thoughts?

If you're interested in further reading, here are a few articles that looked at his rhetoric in recent months. From ...

The Christian Science Monitor about a year ago: Chávez's anti-US Campaign

National Public Radio in late September: United Nations Provides a Platform for US Critics

BBC News: Chávez anti-US rhetoric draws crowds

I'm out in a bit for one of those lectures in Managua. In the meantime, looking for a good explanation for Chávez's big mouth from somebody who knows what they're talking about. Send links if you got 'em.

On merit and adventures

The conversation quickly turned to dating, sex and extra-marital affairs.

It was Monday afternoon and we were not working. My friend Eric and I decided against playing journalists for the day, opting instead for hours at the lake, drinking beers and riding bikes.

He told me he can't wrap his head around how casually some of his friends sleep with women who aren't their wives. How, even after telling people he's married, he's still asked why he doesn't have a young, beautiful Nica girlfriend on the side.

There are loads of white American/European men here with gorgeous teenage locals. The kind of guys you'd classify as "scum" back home (where these girls would definitely be too good for them).

But to be a foreigner in such a small, poor country means to have access to people and a social set you might never have access to back home.

Then enter romance.

Can you imagine what it's like to know that, if you wanted to, you could hang out with/date/sleep with just about anybody you wanted to — and not because you're pretty or brilliant or funny but because you're gringa?

It can screw with your head a bit — especially if you don't wanna think of yourself as scum, if you don't want to take advantage of anybody or if you fear compromising your ethics.

Then Eric proposes I set the most impossible goal for myself this year, something so ridiculous that my ego can be kept in check, so unlikely I won't feel bad for having my undeserved and supposed access. The target: Get a helicopter ride from Nicaragua's richest citizen.

I'll keep you posted on the progress.

* * * * *

I hate the word surreal, but it's appropriate for the past couple of days. Just an hour after dropping Eric's bike off at his house, I am shocked again by the sheer luck/privilege I am granted. I am stumbling back to my house, clumsily punching a text message into my phone when an old man calls something out to me.

He's in front of his house, a beautiful colonial-style building that faces the central park. He's obviously wealthy, white (the richest Nicas are), and watching the sun set from a rocking chair.

"Are you sending a message to your boyfriend?" (In Spanish, of course.)

I don't have a boyfriend. But this man is nosy and I am drunk. "What do you care?"

Then in the space of what seems like a minute he tells me he left during the revolution, he once lived in Miami and New York and Washington, The New York Times interviewed him recently and would I like to come inside to see the proof?

I don't know whether I've been in such a luxurious place. The NYT photo does Gabriel justice:

 

* * * * *

The following night I am with a friend in the backseat of a cab in Managua, on our way to Art Café, a trendy "alternative and cultural" venue for live music, poetry, drinking and hanging out. It is closed and so we decide to walk around Parque Las Palmas until a friend picks us up.

I am with a guy who is expecting a phone call ... from the president's wife.

We find a bench. She calls. They talk.

I touch my face, shake my head, stand up. I know this is happening because I am here but I can't believe it and can the country really be this small and my friend really have all these peoples' numbers in his phone?

Plans are made, the call ends, and my friend's friend Roger (who runs the tourism site, Via Nica) shows up. We head to another bar, El Grillito (The Little Cricket), for 40s and more conversation. It is my first real night spent in Managua, and I think I can live here. There is life here greater than the tourist scene Granada offers. I am comfortable. I will move to this city.

* * * * *

The next morning is total disorder. We stop by the president's house/compound, eat tajadas (delicious fried bananas with fried cheese and salad) and drop off documents at Central America's biggest and dirtiest market, el Mercado Oriental. Then a bus takes us to León.

When you ask people about this city they will tell you it's hot before they say anything else. They aren't joking. It hits you hard the moment you step outside. It hurts to sit anywhere but in the shade.

I took some pictures.

The central cathedral is pretty. I am stupid and kept asking why there were lions everywhere, including inside guarding Rubén Darío's crypt. Oh, right. León means "lion" in Spanish.

The Museum of Traditions and Legends was closed, so we walked around the courtyard looking at sweet murals depicting traditional myths.

Like La Llorona, who drowned her children and now walks through the streets, wailing at night in regret.

Rubén Darío — Nicaragua's beloved poet and national hero — lived in León. This is his house. Read one of his most famous poems, Ode to Roosevelt.

* * * * *

We left León late in the evening and on the two-hour bus ride back to Managua I meet a guy with tattoos down his arm. There's a globe with the words in English "The World is Mine." I ask him in Spanish for its meaning.

He responds in Spanish with the translation. He tells me he used to live in the States. Without blinking we switch languages. It's much easier since we both think in English.

Dennis Montealegre left Nicaragua when he was 2 in 1986, during the country's civil war. His parents came from money. He is shy when I pry this out of him. His parents split and he lived with his mom in a rough Philadelphia neighborhood. He was a U.S. resident but never went through the naturalization process out of sheer laziness.

He was too busy with the drugs. They landed him in prison for 18 months. Then he got deported. He came back to a country he barely knew. He spoke Spanish like a Puerto Rican. It was a tough adjustment but he's happy now. He loves Nicaragua and makes a living repairing copy machines.

Dennis doesn't blame anybody for his problems and wants to stay in this country. But he wishes the U.S. legal system took into account people like him who are American in all but status.

"When they first told me I was gonna be deported, I was like, 'Fuck. Cause this is what you made me.'"

He isn't the first deportee I've met in Nicaragua. I interviewed a guy named George a few weeks ago and wrote about him here. Dennis tells me he regularly gets together with a half-dozen guys like him who were born in Nicaragua, left for the States to avoid getting drafted or because their parents hated the Sandinista government. None of them became U.S. citizens, and they all got into drugs. After serving time in prison, they were sent back to the country of their birth. Strangers in a strange land.

We made plans to hang out soon, and it was a comfortable bus ride back to Managua.

* * * * *

It has been a good week of discovery, and I am happy.

Quick reading material

The New York Times had an interesting article* yesterday about remittences to Mexico slumping this year: Mexicans Miss Money from Relatives Up North

But after years of strong increases, writes Elisabeth Malkin, the amount of migrant money flowing to Mexico has stagnated. From 2000 to 2006, remittances grew to nearly $24 billion a year from $6.6 billion, rising more than 20 percent some years. In 2007, the increase so far has been less than 2 percent.

Migrants and migration experts say a flagging American economy and an enforcement campaign against illegal workers in the United States have persuaded some migrants not to try to cross the border illegally to look for work. Others have decided to return to Mexico. And many of those who are staying in the United States are sending less money home.

The story is especially interesting to me because of the dateline. El Rodeo isn't far at all from where my dad is from, a teeny village called La Joya de Sanchez near the city of Apaseo El Alto in the state of Guanajuato. (And actually when I talked to him Sunday morning, he told me the woman in the main photo is the wife of a cousin who was over at our house a few weeks ago!) My dad left for the States when he was a teenager, got thrown out of the country a half dozen times, worked a variety of jobs nobody else would ever want including one at a meat factory, eventually got his paperwork figured out, and continues to send remittences to his mother and sisters.

In case you didn't know, my dad is sort of my hero.

Anyway, the story worth checking out and a quick read. And here's a roundup of some other interesting articles:
As glaciers melt, Chile's future uncertain
Bush wants $1.4 billion for Mexico drug war
Pinochet family charges dropped
Lone Bidder Buys Strands of Che's Hair at U.S. Auction
And, just for good measure, one that connects back here to Nicaragua
Ex-Contra activist represents US children of illegal immigrants

* Thanks to my friend Devin for sending me this link

con campesinos cafeteleros

This morning I took a couple buses into Matagalpa, a city in the interior of northern Nicaragua. It is a coffee-growing region and I came to learn about the causes and effects of out-migration. Wages are very low here, and food prices are increasing every day. So in order to provide for their families, coffee pickers leave for Costa Rica, El Salvador and the United States, legally and not. This might mean there aren´t enough workers to pick coffee beans this year.

One of the first people I met is Reina Godínez, a 31-year-old woman who lives with her husband and three children in a tiny brick building they share with another family. The families live and work on a coffee finca on a road that winds through the lush, green mountains around Matagalpa. The men work from 6 am to 2 pm and get paid in terms of how much coffee they pick. These weeks it's 52 córdobas per day, which is under $3 U.S.

They´re paying so little for coffee right now. We earn enough only to eat, sometimes for school supplies for the children, never to save money.And lately it hasn´t been enough for the food. And food is always more and more expensive, every day it´s more and more expensive.

This is the neighbor´s daughter, who didn´t speak and may have been mute. Her parents can´t afford to feed their children more than beans and rice. Small pieces of meat are a rare luxury.  Because the price of beans has nearly doubled in the past several weeks, the family buys less beans and more rice every week.

We met Petrona, a 32-year-old woman, walking down a dirt mountain road with a woven basket wrapped around her waist. She and a small group of women were walking to a different part of a small hacienda, picking mature coffee beans. Her hands moved fast over the branches, seperating out the bright red beans from the immature green ones. Beans go bad if they aren't picked as soon as they´re ripe.

Petrona, who has two children, sees her husband once every three weeks. He too works at a coffee plantation, but it is more than two hours away. Like Reina´s family, they are landless peasants who work for haciendas that offer housing.

What we pick is a misery considering how much they pay. Maybe it isn´t even worth it but I can´t leave to another place where they pay more because what will I do with the kids? I can´t just abandon them here to earn more. But this pay isn´t enough, isn´t fair, for a whole family.

I was with a taxi driver named Julio. We stopped at this tiny shack on the mountain to visit a family he knew. At least seven people lived in this tiny room. The mother is a Sandinista, and her house was plastered in Daniel Ortega posters.

This is Julio, talking with a woman inside making tortillas. I rented us a motorcycle and he sped me up and down the mountains that surround the city for four hours, stopping when we saw campesinos picking beans or in front of the shacks that lined the road. He doesn´t have faith in this government.

I realized I left a notebook on Reina´s step so we returned. The men by this time had returned from picking coffee. We met her husband, Antonio, who is 60. He has been picking coffee since he was 12. He has never owned a house. He never went to school. During the first Sandinista government he was ´alphabetized´during a literacy campaign.

I asked him what he expects from his children.

If God gives me strength I will keep encouraging them to stay in school, little by little. I´m not sure but if they put in the effort then when I die I will know I´ve done what I could to orient them a little. They will probably pick coffee.

He wants to be one of those people who migrate somewhere else to earn more money. He can´t because it costs money to leave, at least 1,000 córdobas.

Clearly it would be great to leave for another country, to find a different scene because things here in Nicaragua are awful. We´re working only to eat a mouthful.

I wanted to know whether this government helps the poor.

Some, not all. It doesn´t help us.

rains

Matagalpa, a city a few hours north of here, has been hit by intense rain for the past several weeks. They're so bad and have destroyed so many homes and growing fields and roads that the president declared it a national emergency. I was hoping to go there tomorrow to write a story about how rains and immigration are to affect this year's coffee harvest. The roads may be too flooded to make it. Then I was thinking about going to El Salvador with a group I met the other night. That country is also on national alert because of the heavy rains. In limbo.

first proof i do real work

Busy week.

I overcame skin fungus, skin allergies and a skin rash. Got rid of the cat that was causing me so much grief. Rode into Managua four times this week for interviews, university adventures and La Prensa tagalongs. Had my first "chicken bus" experience when I realized I didn't have enough Córdobas to catch a cab. Made friends.

And yesterday the first edition of The Nica Times with my stories inside came out. I want to share this with people but you have to pay to be a subscriber, and even if you can log in you must download a PDF of the paper to see what's inside. Kind of weird.

I wrote a story about a slight shift in migration motives since Daniel Ortega took office in January. After the Sandinistas first came into power in 1979, thousands of families moved for political reasons. Many professionals and business owners left in protest of property confiscations, and others left during the mandatory draft a few years later (during the civil war, when the US backed the Contras). They moved to the United States and Costa Rica.

About 5,000 of those families who'd moved to the States returned when the Sandinistas left office in 1990, often opening businesses and reviving the private sector.

Massive migration has continued since then, although for economic reasons. It's a different group of folks leaving. People leave to find work that pays. Unemployment and underemployment is around 50 percent here.

But when Ortega took office again in January, that group of people who'd left for political reasons and then returned in 1990 got anxious. Many have left, and many are looking for ways out.

If you're interested I'll send you the PDF of the paper, just let me know. Otherwise, I had a story about abortion and foreign investors seeking assurance the government wants them here. I feel good about what I'm doing.