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Film review: American/Sandinista

Posted November 22nd, 2009 by paddaniels
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In 1979 the Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional – FSLN) drove Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza Debayle out of the country, putting an abrupt end to three generations of Somoza family rule. Over the course of the next decade, any efforts to re-stabilise and rebuild the country were thwarted by the war raging between the Sandinistas and US-backed Contra rebels.

American/Sandinista highlights the work of a group of American engineers who worked tirelessly during this chaotic period to improve facilities for Nicaraguans. Ben Linder, Donald Macleay and their colleagues trained Nicaraguan locals, and together they constructed the country’s first hydroelectric plant in El Cuá – bringing this village and subsequently many others their first-ever taste of electricity. 

World cup kick-off for Nicaraguan street kids

Posted November 22nd, 2009 by paddaniels
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IN MARCH 2010, street children from across the globe will head to Durban in South Africa to compete in the first-ever Street Child World Cup. Teams from nine countries – Nicaragua, Brazil, India, Philippines, South Africa, Britain, Ukraine, Vietnam and Tanzania – will work with international coaches to express themselves on the football pitch and with specially trained artists who will enable them to tell their stories. Players will also discuss solutions to the issues they face with NGOs, policy makers and the media, and will launch a ‘Street Child Manifesto’ forming the basis of a new international campaign on street children’s rights.

Factory employment rights under threat

Posted November 22nd, 2009 by paddaniels
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Bosses have used the coup to squeeze workers, says Laia Blanch of anti-poverty organisation War on Want.
COLECTIVA DE MUJERES Hondureñas (Honduran Women’s Collective – CODEMUH) is a women-led rights organisation and long-term partner of War on Want that works to empower women workers in Honduras’ Export Processing Zones (EPZs). Over the last 20 years, the maquiladora industry has become an integral part of the Honduran economy. CODEMUH has monitored and documented violations of human and employment rights in its garment factories, especially among women workers.  

Women lead resistance

Posted November 22nd, 2009 by paddaniels
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Katherine Ronderos, a women’s rights officer at the Central America Women’s Network (CAWN), visited Honduras during the recent turmoil and was an eyewitness when ousted President Zelaya slipped back into the country in September and took refuge in the Brazilian embassy. She talks to Cheryl Gallagher about the women who have been at the forefront of the resistance and the threat the coup poses to women’s rights.
KATHERINE RONDEROS already had a research trip to Honduras planned when Zelaya was dramatically ousted from office. The initial purpose of the visit had been to monitor a partnership programme funded by the National Lottery to tackle violence against women. However, Ronderos also found herself on a fact-finding mission to explore how the coup was affecting the women’s movement.

US right uses coup to undermine Obama

Posted November 22nd, 2009 by paddaniels
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The Honduran crisis highlights the weakness of Washington’s policies on Latin America, writes Helen Yuill.
BARACK OBAMA’S ELECTION in November 2008 was cause for cautious optimism in Latin America for more respectful relations with the US. Speaking at a Summit of the Americas in April, Obama talked of a new alliance of the Americas based on equal partnerships and mutual respect. However, faced with other priorities and an increasingly ferocious attack from the domestic right, little has changed and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s warning that “he [Obama] is president of an empire and that empire has rules that he can’t change” has proved soberingly accurate.

Honduras coup sends shock waves across region

Posted November 22nd, 2009 by paddaniels
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The crisis in Honduras has had serious political, social and economic repercussions throughout Central America, a region still experiencing the the dark consequences of the wars of the 1980s and early 1990s. Toni Solo examines the impact on Nicaragua.
IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING the coup, Nicaragua’s FSLN-led coalition government gave refuge to President Manuel Zelaya and played a key diplomatic role in coordinating a regional response through the Central American Integration System (SICA). Meetings were also held at the highest level of the countries in the left-wing Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA). The measures agreed included a 48-hour trade embargo against Honduras.

Growing coffee in a warmer world

Posted November 22nd, 2009 by paddaniels
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Megan Rowling reports on a project helping farmers protect their livelihoods.
AS PROSPECTS FADE for a new deal on climate change at UN talks in Copenhagen in December 2009, communities in countries already feeling the effects of global warming are working out how to adapt. While they have yet to secure the billions of dollars in international support needed to protect their lives, homes and crops, many farmers, coast-dwellers and other vulnerable groups are doing what they can to cope with the impacts. 

Cafédirect, the UK ethical hot drinks company, and German technical cooperation agency GTZ are helping tea and coffee producers in four regions to manage climate change through a three-year project called AdapCC. 

Film on ‘crazy life’ of gangs has tragic ending

Posted November 22nd, 2009 by paddaniels
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Ruth Collins reports on the work of Christian Poveda (1957 – 2009) who was killed in El Salvador after making a documentary about the country’s violent street gangs.
DESCRIBED AS “one of nature’s anarchists” by friend and colleague Nick Fraser, Christian Poveda was well known for his inability to accept authority. A talented French-Spanish photojournalist and documentary film-maker, Poveda told Salvadoran webzine El Faro in July this year that he wished “to understand why a 12- or 13-year-old child joins a gang and gives his or her life to it”. However, his desire to unravel the inside story behind gang violence in El Salvador ultimately cost him his life on September 2 2009. 

Guatemala grapples with food shortages

Posted November 22nd, 2009 by paddaniels
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Chronic child malnutrition and persistent food insecurity require a more sustainable solution
INTERNATIONAL AID AGENCIES are providing nutritional, health and farming support to hungry families in Guatemala after President Álvaro Colom declared a national “state of calamity” in September in response to severe food shortages.

The rural poor are being hit hard by falling remittances and rising unemployment caused by the global economic crisis, persistent high food and fertiliser prices, and a lack of rain stemming from the El Niño weather phenomenon. Drought conditions have damaged corn and bean crops, which are staple foods, and this has compounded the impact of a poor harvest in late 2008 in the wake of flooding.

DISCUSSION: Town twinning gives schools ‘food for thought’

Posted January 25th, 2009 by Megan Rowling
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Jane Freeland

Jane Freeland, who convenes NSC’s Education Working Group, talked to Claire Plumb about how an interactive project led by the Leicester Masaya Link Group (LMLG) is helping British children learn about global citizenship. Claire recently led a Leicester City Council delegation to Masaya.

As part of our education campaign, the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign (NSC) and town twinning groups have been discussing how to make more strategic use of the experience of years of solidarity with municipalities and communities in Nicaragua. The insights of this work into Nicaraguan daily life illuminate more vividly than any abstract analysis how Nicaragua’s problems derive from global systems involving us all. LMLG’s Food for Thought programme is an innovative example of how solidarity links can be built which draw on the experiences of both communities and are truly reciprocal.

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