Trashing Nicaragua’s Success
Trashing Nicaraguas Success
August 8, 2016
by John Grant
The New York Times is the best old-style, broad-sheet newspaper in America; it still covers the world with resourceful and enterprising reporters and commentators. But, then, theres the other New York Times, the imperial rag that prints editorials like the one on August 5 titled Dynasty, the Nicaraguan Version. Its not that Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega is a saint or even a model democrat; its that the editorial department and the writer who penned this sloppy embarrassment are still playing a version of the Reagan Cold War game of the 1980s. Those days are over; one hopes for something a bit more worldly.
After listing a number of negatives the popular President Ortega has appointed judges favorable to his rule and has been able to assure a legislature filled with his allies the editorial tells us how well the Nicaraguan economy is doing, how well the Ortega administration works with investors and international business and how safe the place is compared to its three closest neighbors. This safety is, were told, due to a sinister vast police force. Reading this, one might forget here in the US we have our own vast police and criminal justice problems.
Lets consider for a moment the interesting fact that Nicaragua is notably safer than Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. First off, during the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan the United States of America directly supported, and in some cases actually directed, cruel and bloody wars against armed guerrillas (and the poor in whose name they fought) in these three small, poor nations. It was the Cold War, so these wars were couched in East-West (communist-capitalist) terms, when they arguably were more accurately described as North-South struggles: ie. they were about powerlessness versus power, poverty versus wealth.
In the case of Nicaragua, the US Contra War was a proxy war against a sovereign nation. In 1979, the Sandinista rebels had overthrown a dictatorship run by Anastasio Somoza, junior, whose father Anastasio, senior, had been a US ally. Franklin Roosevelt famously said of Somoza, senior, Somozas a son-of-a-bitch, but hes our son-of-a-bitch. In 1956, the father was shot dead eating dinner in a Leon restaurant by a patriotic poet working as a busboy. (Many Nicaraguans aspire to be poets.) Anastasio, junior, took over the family business and ruled as a US ally until 1979, when he fled to Paraguay, where in 1980 his Mercedes was blown apart by an RPG as the climax of a seven-member Sandinista plot called Operation Reptile. His unidentifiable remains were buried in Miami following a big funeral of fellow tyrants and right-wing fat cats.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/08/trashing-nicaraguas-success/
Igel
(35,374 posts)Ortega can't change from what he was 30-40 years ago. Why? Because it's inconvenient. Others argue he has changed.
The same kind of thinking applies to what elementary-school-kid versus adult version of a person are like.
The point is that the possibility of change is there, varies depending upon the age different and length of time, but the possibility of accepting a change depends entirely on the observer's biases.
Ortega was an adult both times, so change is less likely. Still, it's possible. It's more likely if you're talking about the change from elementary-age kid to middle-aged adult.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)especially El Salvador do. Instead of fighting the insane drug war, they pretty much just give the narcos a blank check to use the Caribbean coastline to transport their goods.
Paladin
(28,278 posts)They despise Ortega and his militarized nation. Costa Rica is absorbing significant numbers of Nicaraguans who are fed up with their native country.