desde nicaragua

In Paraguay

(desde detroit, hoy)

(AFP)

Presidential elections in Paraguay won by Fernando Lugo, a leftist ex-bishop from the opposition party Patriotic Alliance for Change. The change? It's been 61 years of Colorado Party rule. The new party on top is talking big about putting an end to corruption.

"Today we can dream of a different country," Lugo, 56, told reporters late Sunday. "Paraguay will simply not be remembered for its corruption and poverty, but for its honesty." (AFP)

Paraguay is the second-poorest country in South America.

you mean YOUR state of the union

me: so i think today is the state of the union address
ive been such a slacker this week
Sent at 10:27 AM on Thursday
Rachel: oh is it?!
hmmm
not that i'm thrilled to hear Bush speaking....
me: when is that?
oh
no sorry
Rachel: he's so in the background right now
oh - you mean YOUR state of the union
me: nicaragu's state of the union address
yeaaaah
Rachel: haha - ok, gotcha....
me:
Rachel: guess i wont' be watching that

So, if I understand what's to go on in the next several hours, today promises to be interesting. The National Assembly is assembling again, and Daniel is to give something of a State of the Union speech. (Start time: 11:26 a.m. End time: 1:18 p.m.) But because the power truly belongs to the people (el pueblo presidente!), Ortega will speak again later tonight (5 p.m., supposedly; 7 p.m., more likely) at the Plaza de la Revolución to the masses.

Let me say that the word "masses" isn't exactly accurate. Not because thousands of people don't show up; they do. But people tell me Daniel hasn't been able to draw as big of crowds to the plaza as in previous years. And more than half of the people at his last event, the induction of the Citizens Power Councils, seemed awful bored or were busy doing something else. The Sandinista party pays to bus people in from around the country — even flying some in from the autonomous Caribbean regions — in order to fill the plaza ... with only some success.

We'll see how today's events go. El Nuevo Diario says some 52 opposition legislators (from the Bloc Against the Dictatorship, for sure, see old post for more) won't show up for the address; there are 92 in all. The president of the National Assembly, René Núñez Téllez (FSLN), asked his opposition colleagues a few days ago to reach political negotiations to resolve the institutional crisis between the legislative and executive powers.

Apart from the speeches, the soap opera drama continues. The liberal and conservative parties have united officially (and against Ortega). I liked this from the government's new propaganda web site:

A citizen who observed on Wednesday the scene in a capital city hotel was only able to say, "Finally, they've revealed themselves and returned to being what they always were: eternal partners in the plundering of the state, members of the same band of delinquents. And the the corruption came together with a brotherly hug, between the banker and leader of the ALN (conservative party), Eduardo Montealegre, who it's been pointed out designed the biggest State fraud operation ever seen in the history of the country and the convict Arnoldo Alemán, condemned to 20 years in prison for having inappropriately appropriated more than $100 million U.S. According to national economists, these two people caused losses of some $700 million U.S. that now the people of Nicaragua have to pay, unjustly. (Elpueblopresidente.com, my translation)

A picture of the brotherly hug:

The fat guy on the left is Alemán; the one in glasses is Montealegre.

(Oh, and for the record, U.S. President George W. Bush gives his State of the Union address on Jan. 28.)

Dress codes, reforms and a future today

One of the first things Daniel Ortega did when he took office a year ago is do away with a small fee parents had to pay to keep their children in school, which is supposed to be free under the Constitution. (The government estimates that as many as one million children weren't attending because of the fee.) As a result, enrollment numbers jumped by more than 100,000.

"We're rescuing public schools from the neoliberal market," Education Minister Miguel De Castilla said last January. " The order is to not leave a single person out of enrollment because they lack uniforms, or birth certificates, or worse of all, for not being able to pay the fees." 

But the government recently announced that school uniforms — in the blue and white of the Nicaraguan flag — will now be required, as the lack thereof had "led to many gang members to take advantage, wearing clothes in any color to enter some classrooms in elementary and middle schools, where they committed acts of vandalism," De Castilla told EFE.

The government promises to buy 75,000 uniforms for children from the poorest families —  in order to avoid retrogression or steps backward as occurred since the first years of the Revolutionary government. Considering the annual per-capita GDP in Nicaragua is $958 US, and a school uniform costs can cost about $35/year, let's hope that's enough.

* * * * *

Following news that how the so-called "Bloc Against the Dictatorship" wants to enact reforms that limit executive power, Greg Weeks does some comparing of history:

This sounds exactly like the arrangement that emerged in Chile after the 1891 civil war, which pitted the president versus Congress. The congressional opposition cheered the end of presidential tyranny. The result was political inaction and eventually disintegration because it combined the combativeness of a presidential system and the legislative influence of a parliamentary system, but the president had no power over the legislature and coalition building didn’t happen. Ultimately, in 1924 the military (which by that time was angry at all sides) forced out President Arturo Alessandri and the country experienced civil-military governments until 1932.

In other words, this type of reform is not likely to make Nicaragua more governable.

Meanwhile, the liberal party insists it's unified against Ortega, despite speculation about further negotiations between ex-president Arnoldo Alemán and the president. And the vice president (not a Sandinista) is bringing back to life old news by saying the country isn't ready for a parliamentary system.

* * * * *

Finally, I strongly recommend this column by Roger Cohen, of The New York Times. He writes about progress across the South American continent, and Brazil in particular:

Latin America’s transformation in recent decades has been underestimated. It has been political and economic but also cultural. Deep prejudices against indigenous, mestizo and mulatto populations have been confronted and, if not defeated, undermined. In historical terms, this has been a time of empowerment for the dark-skinned.

The Americas are changing and, despite the anti-Yanqui rhetoric of Chávez, becoming — step by step — more one.

Is it unethical to hum along to Danny O's theme song?

I'll begin with something light.

A very cool note in the Chicago Tribune about presidential hopefuls and their theme songs: In Latin America, politicians feel the beat. (You can see videos here!) It covers the songs of now-presidents in Latin America like Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Nicaragua's Danny O during their campaigning, along with those of folks like Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee back home.

You can't run a campaign in Latin America without a song (or better yet, an album's worth) that lets supporters dance while extolling your virtues.

In Nicaragua, ex-dictator Daniel Ortega applied his own version of John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance" to a 2006 political comeback based on reconciliation ... The songwriters kept the melody of the chorus but substituted new lyrics to soften the former Marxist rebel's image.

"What we want / Is jobs and peace. / Together we achieve / Reconciliation."

In Latin America, these songs become part of the candidates' political biography, a less offensive way to trumpet themselves. And for voters who don't have the education or access to read detailed platforms, the music is a convenient shorthand.

The best jingles burrow into the consciousness.

Danny's "Reconciliación" jingle is definitely burned into my consciousness. Whenever he gives a little speech in a barrio or public plaza, his theme music plays on repeat for hours, since events tend to start some two hours after they're "scheduled" to. (Nica time, Meli, get used to it.) People know the words, sing along. I have to stop myself from mouthing the words.

A friend promises to get me the CD.

Something interesting about this story is that in the first mention of Ortega is paired with the word "ex-dictator." I guess that's all a matter of interpretation, but it was just sort of an unexpected word coming from the Tribune.

Along those lines, my friend Tim Rogers has a story in today's  The Miami Herald about how legislators who formed the "Bloc Against the Dictatorship" plan to challenge President Daniel Ortega using reforms — which he himself had pushed through in 2005 — that transfer power from the presidency to the National Assembly:

Opposition lawmakers, who claim that Ortega's authoritarian ways have marginalized the legislative branch in the past year, now hope to regain some political muscle by reenacting his own reforms against him. The law that temporarily suspended the reforms is due to expire Jan. 20, and lawmakers say they won't renew it.

''The bloc against the dictatorship will not [extend the suspension] . . . of the constitutional reforms, and the president will have to comply,'' said Liberal party lawmaker and National Assembly secretary Wilfredo Navarro. ``[Ortega] is going to fall into his own trap.''

Apparently, the president met with some opposition last night to try to work out a deal. One solution the "bloc" has it to delay approving the annual budget. We'll see if anything comes from it.

Other than that, another fairly slow news day. This may be due to the fact that 1) it's Sunday and nobody — politicians and journalists included — likes to work on Sundays, and 2) There are fewer reporters at media outlets. From what I know about La Prensa, people are leaving for jobs in government, and they aren't being replaced. The editors tell me this is because of lack of cash, something directly blamed on the government's cutting of advertisement.

This doesn't bode well for the quality of journalism being produced in Nicaragua, something compounded by the general antagonism between private media and government. (Read a recent La Prensa article here, which is actually belated coverage of an October country report by the Inter American Press Association.)

Like most things in Nicaragua, truth changes depending on where you're standing. The Sandinista cab driver who picked me up from the airport Friday night asked me whether I thought there was freedom of the press in his country. I hesitated for a few seconds, then said it's too much of a mess to say a simple yes or no. Neither media or government play the game fairly. One is not objective, the other is secretive; it's hard to know whether the chicken or egg came first. Both are mean and vindictive. One wants money from the other. One spews propaganda and happily feeds friendly media. Journalists are regularly bought out, independently fighting for their party, or sleeping with sources.

The driver nodded at me. "At least government doesn't censor stories like it did during the Contrarevolución of the 1980s," he says finally.

That's one way of looking at it.

García Laviana and rabid dogs

Last night, President Daniel Ortega spoke in Tola at an event honoring Gaspar García Laviana, a Spanish Roman Catholic priest who in worked in Nicaragua, and in 1978 took up arms to fight with the FSLN. Before getting into what was said, because as expected Ortega went off on a few other things, let me share a little about García: 

It was in this country where Gaspar truly becomes conscious of what poverty is, and the outrage of the Somoza dictatorship's treatment against the most unfavored classes. He was always on the side of the poor, struggling especially against child prostitution. His voice was  heard loud and clear against the Somoza regimen, which quickly labeled him Communist. That wasn't a much of a mistake since Laviana plainly embraced liberation theology (we must remember that this sector of the Catholic Church was later harshly reprimanded ...) García Laviana finally decided to take arms and join the Sandinista Front insurrection. “Martín” (his war alias) died in combat on Nov. 11, 1978. (Cabeza Mechero, my translation)

There appears to be some confusion about the date of his death. During an August speech, Ortega said the mistake was made on García's tombstone, and that he actually died on Dec. 11.

The following is one of his poems, in Spanish and English (my translation):

La niña del prostíbulo

Catorce añitos de edad,
dos de puta,
cara joven
rasgos viejos,
piel lozana,
ojos muertos.

Pantaloncito ceñido,
desnudos pierna y ombligo,
pies descalzos,
recorriendo el puterío.

— ¿Cuántos años tienes, niña?
— Señor, tengo diecinueve.
— Niña, tú no tienes tantos años.
— Son diecinueve, señor, ataja la criatura.
Mira, niña, soy el jues. Si eres menor
de edad yo te llevaré conmigo y serás honrada.
(cruza un sueño infantil por los ojos viejos
de la niña puta)
— Señor, tengo diecinueve.

El juez se vuelve hacia mí:
— Tiene miedo a la rufiana.

Catorce añitos de edad,
dos de puta.

The girl from the brothel

Fourteen years of age,
Two as a whore,
young face
old features,
lush skin,
dead eyes.

Tight little pants,
naked legs and belly button,
barefoot,
making the rounds at the whorehouse.
— How old are you, girl?
— Sir, I'm nineteen.
— Girl, you are not that old.
— I am nineteen, sir, the creature cuts in.
— Look, girl, I am the judge. If you are under
age I will take you with me and you will be respectable.
(a childlike dream passes those old eyes
of the child whore)
— Sir, I am nineteen.

The judge turns to me:
— She is scared of the madame.

Fourteen years of age,
two as a whore.

* * * * *

So back to last night in Tola ... Ortega compared his political opposition to "a rabid dog that barks every day in the media" (END/photo, too).

As I mentioned earlier, a group of Ortega's critics formed the Bloc against the Dictatorship on Friday.

Ortega called the new bloc "Somocistas." He said they're simply upset that his administration isn't helping the rich and elite stay rich and elite, and that during the 16 years that Sandinistas weren't in power, his opponents did nothing to resolve poverty.

Meanwhile, those opponents are after blood.

They say they plan to pass a legislative decree against a Supreme Court's resolution last week that legalized the controversial Citizens Power Councils (CPCs). They're also asking for the head of Enabás, Róger Alí Romero, for allowing CPC members to handle the money in his agency's program to sell cheap beans in poor neighborhoods.

"The political agenda is one thing, and the needs of the people are another thing, and we want to attend to the needs of the people," Alí Romero said last night.

The opposition's logic is this: If the CPCs are not a legal part of government, then the members shouldn't be allowed to handle government money. The CPCs' legal status is entirely unclear, though. And the topic gets more complicated because not all the judges were in on the ruling that made them legal, so the opposition safely call the ruling illegal.

* * * * *

Unrelated, but important to me: I just learned a woman I worked with on the college paper is in Iraq right now, covering the war for McClatchy News Service. You have to respect the courage it must have taken her to go there. This is her blog.

Come on, now, you really think it's a dictatorship?

Slow news day for Nicaragua because of the holidays. Still, enough people are doing the normal badmouthing of someone else. You know, business as usual.

(One of my friends recently explained it like this: Since Nicaragua doesn't have its own Hollywood-type celebrities, that's what politicians become. So when someone says Eduardo Montealegre has a secret, late-night meeting with his nemesis President Daniel Ortega, it's gossip and it's juicy.) 

What we have today is the following:

1) Former education ministers are criticizing changes to school funding under Ortega. Before, parents made "voluntary" monetary contributions to their children's schools. Now, school is free and the government puts down a smaller amount of money than the total collected before.

Critics say the difference is costing security, and schools are getting broken into and ripped off more frequently. What's more interesting to me, and the Prensa article didn't mention, is whether quality of education has changed at all since the changes. After all, education (as well as health) were the two areas where the first Sandinista administration had the most success. This is one of the stories I'm working on this month.

2. The other day, anti-Danielistas in the National Assembly joined to make dark predictions about Ortega using the new Citizens Power Councils to militarize the country, jail political opponents and confiscate property.

Now, they've founded an official movement against Ortega's "totalitarianism" called the Bloc against the Dictatorship. Their plan: If they can't prevent Daniel from making the CPCs a legit part of government, they'll vote against funding programs that the CPCs would probably manage, such as Hunger Zero and Usury Zero.

Read the bloc's declaration here in Spanish, or this excerpt translated by me:

The "Bloc against the Dictatorship" which we form declares itself in permanent session until we can achieve the reestablishment of the institutionalization of separate of powers and the respect for their independence. For that, we will initiate political and international actions, and mobilize all levels to put an end to the threat of dictatorship that has manifested itself with the dictatorial attitudes of current President Daniel Ortega.

3. Ortega said yesterday that he expects to finish the process of nationalizing the importation of petroleum by next week, with a treaty with Esso Standard Oil. (read earlier post)

He said that doesn't mean the government will "confiscate or expropriate the Esso refinery," nor will the company's commercial operations be affected, according to Radio La Primerísima. That scenario is only what the right-wing media wants people to think, he added.

"Those who are always planting fear and terror, who say, 'They're going to confiscate, they're going to expropriate,' — a lie. It's a lie as big as the lie they told about there not being power, that the next day the blackouts would return, when there is electricity all around."

* * * * *

As for elsewhere in the world ....

Sometimes, I really love the LA Times. This Column One (from two days ago, I just noticed) is a beautifully written story about life and death in the drug trade.

Here is just the top of In Mexico's drug trade, no glitter for grunts (you need to register to see the story, but that is free):

GUAMUCHIL, MEXICO -- Jose Alan Montoya died far from the beloved roosters he raised on his patio, far from the tortilla shop his mother ran, far from the people who still weep for a man gunned down on a marijuana plantation in the mountains of Michoacan.

Montoya was born and raised in a humble, orderly neighborhood just outside this town in the northwestern state of Sinaloa. He died more than 600 miles to the south, shot and killed by army troops who say he opened fire on them.

Drug traffickers are mythologized throughout Mexico by a subculture that portrays them as lavishly paid gunslingers. But most of the 5,000 who have lost their lives in the last two years in the business are people of limited horizons who die in relative anonymity.

The oldest of six children, Montoya had little education. In Guamuchil, he held odd jobs at hospitals and construction sites where he rarely made more than $20 a day, relatives said.

"Someone told him he was going to make a lot of money, that he could send money to his family," said Elva Camacho, his mother. "They must have filled his head with big dreams."

If I go back to the States — funny how that's changed from "When I go back to the States — I am seriously looking at getting a job at that newspaper.

"Wait a minute. I know these people ... "

Yesterday, President Daniel Ortega announced that regardless of what the National Assembly or courts say, he will go ahead and install the controversial Citizens Power Councils (CPCs) as a national cabinet.

He said if the Assembly continues to paralyze his work, "I would be obligated to govern by decree."

This alarms people.

The CPCs will be "formalized"  on Friday during a massive rally at the Plaza de la Revolución, Ortega said.

"We're going to newly install all of this legally ... in such a way that if they erase (veto),
we will again write the law, and that's how it's going to be: They erase the CPCs, we will
re-install them; whoever comes and tells the Assembly that no, I the following day will dictate another law that yes, and that's how we're going to be." (Radio Primerísima, FSLN outlet)

Last week, the National Assembly had vetoed Ortega's plan to make the CPCs an official arm of government. An appellate court later overturned the veto, and the Supreme Court was expected to follow with a decision.

To opponents, the CPCs are another name for a Sandinista volunteer group that existed during the first Sandinista administration, the Sandinista Defense Committees. The CDSs are often remembered for serving as neighborhood spies to government, pointing out dissenters in the community.

Of course, we must remember the context in which the CDSs existed: the civil war of the 1980s, a Counter Revolution funded by the U.S. government.

These new CPCs, under the direction of First Lady Rosario Murillo, operate in neighborhoods to "exercise direct democracy," according to the government. (Check out this January speech by Murillo that talks about this and creating consciousness and citizenry.)

Ortega's opponents don't want the CPCs to receive and/or distribute government resources because the groups are politicized. Who will know for sure whether the CPCs are only helping out Sandinistas?

So far, the government is crediting the CPCs with a lot of good work. Yesterday afternoon, they were even credited for ending the blackouts. Sounds weird? Well it is:

According to the energy minister, Ortega made the decision of "zero blackouts" after CPC members solicited the FSLN secretary's office on Monday, asking to end the energy rationing, motivated by the start of "la purísima" (a religious holiday) prayers, “so that one way or another, those of us who begin to celebrate "la purísima" no longer have darkness." (El Nuevo Diario, my translation)

And last week the CPCs helped with Enabas' discounted bean sales throughout the capital.

My friend and I were walking to in his (working-class Grandada) neighborhood  the other day when we passed by a huge group of people talking in front of a house. They were talking about education, politics and what the community needs.

Are these the scary CPCs? I ask myself.

"Wait a minute," my friend says. "I know these people. These are my neighbors."

I ask an older man what's going on, and he warmly invites us to join the discussion. The meeting is to elect the neighborhood's CPC representative.

Let's hope they don't get too politicized. They seem to have promise.

On rhetoric and action

I swear I'm not trying to make this blog all about Hugo Chávez, but here's the latest, from Reuters: Chávez Threatens to Reconsider Venezuela's Ties with Spain. The headline basically tells you what's up, and we'll just have to wait and see whether Venezuela's president actually does cut some ties with Spain or punish business interests there.

Venezuela's oil might gives Chávez the power to make that kind of decision, to risk losing substantial foreign investment. On the other hand, Nicaragua can't do really that because it lacks economic resources. It's one thing for President Daniel Ortega to use international podiums to lash out against Western imperialism, to choose diplomatic alliances with fellow champions of the poor who are unpopular with the rest of the world.  But it's quite something else for him to act on that.

For example, many here believed that Ortega's complaints at the summit about the Spanish company Unión Fenosa would be followed by strong demands that Fenosa reduce blackouts, or worse for the company.  Part of the context is that the president had announced a few weeks ago that outages would be greatly reduced this month and end by December 1 because of a substantial boost in the country's energy production.

However, as the front page of El Nuevo Diario tells us today, Neither blackouts or Unión Fenosa will go.

There are no guarantees that the energy sector will reduce or end the extensive blackouts before the first of December, as the government had promised and this Tuesday made clear that it never contemplated booting Unión Fenosa from the country and doesn't intend to do so.

During a speech ... President Daniel Ortega made clear that his government has never contemplated getting rid of Fenosa, only make it fulfill the investments it has programmed in its concessionary contract.

"It's not as simple as saying that Unión Fenosa should go. If that was the solution I would have done that a long time ago," Ortega said, justifying the declarations he made against the company at the Ibero-American Summit celebrated in Chile.

"We prefer that Unión Fenosa fulfills its obligations," manifested the president, signaling the existence of a valid contract with the company and, "unfortunately, dismantling that so the country can take it over takes time." (my translation)

My friend Tim Rogers recently had a story about Ortega's Two Faces of Economic Change in the Miami Herald that's worth checking out:

One day he is denouncing yanqui tyranny, and the next he is shaking hands with U.S. investors who are building a massive free-trade textile plant north of Managua. At one moment he preaches the importance of socialist revolution, yet behind the scenes his government is signing free-trade accords with Panama and Taiwan and negotiating with international lending institutions.

...

''The President of Nicaragua has the right to say what he wants, but he knows that he can't do everything he says,'' said (Humberto Arbulú, the International Monetary Fund's resident representative in Nicaragua). ``The private sector knows when the message is for them and when it's not. They heard [Ortega's] discourse in the plaza, but they also see the agreement with the IMF.''

That's it for now. A friend has been in town all this week so I've been slacking a bit on reading the news. Should be back on top of things next week. Up next is a trip to San Juán del Sur with some surf lessons, hopefully.

on oil money and celebrating the dead

My friend Moisés Martínez did a nice job explaining this fishy petroleum deal between Nicaragua and Venezuela in today's paper.

At the National Assembly earlier this week, President Daniel Ortega explained the reason why benefits from the deal weren't explicity detailed in the national budget: although the state buys the oil from Venezuela, it immediately gets sold to Albanisa, a private company, which then takes the risks — and profits — involved in such a business venture. I guess 25 percent of profits is supposed to go toward social welfare programs by Alba, or the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas.

But one question is how much of a private company is Albanisa when Venezuela owns 60 percent of it, and Nicaragua 40 percent. Would that make it a state company whose profits/spending should be regulated by government? And who will oversee whether the 25 in profits — estimated at around $30 million U.S. — earmarked for public welfare spending is actually spent responsibly if it's considered a private company?

Moisés wirites that Ortega's explanations "left more doubts than answers among his political adversaries and economic specialists from civil society, and contrary to what the president expected, there's been more criticism about the negotiations."

After Wednesday's session, I spoke with Eduardo Montealegre, who heads the  Nicaragan Liberal Alliance and was Ortega's main opponent during the presidential campaign last year. He'd been demanding that Ortega detail the benefits from the oil deal for weeks.

"What has been made clear today," he said, "is that there is no such support from Venezuela. It's all been a lie if all the profits go to a private company."

Ortega — who speech in Spanish can be read here — explained some of the benefits that already exist from the deal. The main one is that bus fares in Managua are subsidized at 2.50 córdobas — or some 13 cents U.S.
Most people here depend on public transportation, and while fares across the country have been increased to compensate for rising oil prices, that has not been the case in Managua. Opponents say this was a deliberate measure on Ortega's part to placate the bus unions — a very powerful political force here.

Another plan, Ortega said, is to buy new buses from Mexico for Managua.

That's it for now. I'm finishing a couple of stories today and trying to come up with a costume for a Día de los Muertos party tonight. (If you don't know what this holiday is, read this Los Angeles Times story about some fears the Mexican Catholic Church has about Halloween replacing the traditional religious holiday.)

I've never actually celebrated the holiday before! It's not as big here as it is in some parts of Mexico, but it will be lovely to take part. Let me know if you have costume ideas!

to top it off, i barely had to walk through security

you remember your high school cafeteria?

kids bunching up in little groups here and there, getting up to chit chat in particular corners or sort of in the middle of it all, people standing and walking around, lots of noise, maybe someone taking a nap, definitely some yawning the ocassional yelling, something getting stolen, someone sneaking a call on their cell phone, and of course eating ...

you remember, right?

that's what nicaragua's national assembly was like yesterday ... for more than six hours.

i spent the day there at a special session to vote on an emergency budget reform. ortega asked for an extra 53 million córdobas — money originally slated for internal debt repayment — to repair roads damaged by two months of intense rains.

repairing roads and bridges (30 out) is especially important as coffee harvest hits its peak and agricultural exports are vital to nicaragua's economy. senators easily approved the proposal, but not without taking several hours at the mic dishing it out to ortega for ---

1) taking so long to ask them for help
2) not being transparent about where profits from a petroleum deal with venezuela are going
3) suggesting a renegotiation or moratorium on the country's internal debt to pay for total disaster relief. some would rather not pay the debt, period, because of its own historical controversy
4) daring to propose constitutional reform to switch to a parliamentary system when the country has enough problems right now as it is
5) not calming down the rowdy FSLN supporters in the balcony above

i dont mean to sound sarcastic or anything. its their job, and some of them take it very seriously. and thats a good thing.

ortega spoke for an hour and 20 minutes, sort of in circles, offering so many numbers and explanations that it was really hard to keep track of what he was talking about. hes pretty passionate but i didnt get where he was coming from on a lot of topics. ill post the transcript as soon as its available.

thats it for now. exhausted. if you want to read a nicely put together story about the kids of undocumented immigrants pursuing college degrees, have a look at this spokesman-review story.

happy halloween.

(photos by la prensa)