Here's Why Nicaragua Is Unbelievably Safe Despite Being Impoverished

[Judi Lynn]

Here's Why Nicaragua Is Unbelievably Safe Despite Being Impoverished
Natasha Bertrand
Oct. 29, 2014, 12:57 PM

Central America, long engulfed by bloodshed and gang warfare, has come to be known as one of the most dangerous regions in the world. Nicaragua, however, is now one of the safest countries in the Southern hemisphere despite being poor and having a bloody past, according to a new NPR report.

This is thanks to the softer approach the country has taken to fighting crime. From the NPR report:

While Nicaragua's neighbors have embraced so-called "mano dura" or iron fist policies, Nicaragua has taken a softer approach.

The Nicaraguan police, for example, pacified the Dimitrov neighborhood by having the community patrol itself and by having police officers mediate talks between gang members often after soccer games.

The government has also developed a program that sends kids to school instead of prison. A new youth training center in Managua helps high-risk youth from bad neighborhoods leave or avoid gangs by educating them in practical fields. Currently, only 70 Nicaraguan juveniles are in jail.

More:
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-nicaragua-got-to-be-safe-2014-10

[Scuba]

1. Send kids to school instead of prison? What a novel concept.

[Louisiana1976]

2. It's a good idea.

[Bacchus4.0]

3. Thats fine but they need to work on the impoverished part. Costa Rica is yet lower

and not particularly impoverished comparatively.

[merrily]

4. Thanks for another interesting story about another nation.

My focus could use expansion.

Schools instead of prison. In the US, we've done a lot of privatization of both. I don't think its been an improvement for either.

[FiveGoodMen]

5. WHICH hemisphere?!

"The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua

All of Central America is north of the equator.

[Judi Lynn]

6. A Rare Indictment of US Atrocities (Nicaragua excerpt)

A Rare Indictment of US Atrocities

February 6, 2014

Since World War II, the U.S. government has routinely sidestepped blame for the slaughters that have accompanied American foreign policy. One of the few high-profile condemnations occurred when playwright Harold Pinter accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, as Gary G. Kohls recalls.

By Gary G. Kohls



British playwright Harold Pinter won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005. For me, his acceptance speech was an important glimpse into – and sort of a summary of — the innumerable documentable U.S. war crimes that were facilitated by the multinational corporations, national security apparatus and political and military leaders that shaped American foreign policy since World War II.

~ snip ~

“The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over 40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a breathtaking popular revolution. The Sandinistas weren’t perfect. They possessed their fair share of arrogance and their political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and civilized. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic society.

“The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families were given title to land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one seventh. Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated.”

Denouncing ‘Subversion’

Pinter continued, “The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist/Leninist subversion. In the view of the U.S. government, a dangerous example was being set. If Nicaragua was allowed to establish basic norms of social and economic justice, if it was allowed to raise the standards of health care and education and achieve social unity and national self-respect, neighboring countries would ask the same questions and do the same things. There was of course at the time fierce resistance to the status quo in El Salvador.

“I spoke earlier about ‘a tapestry of lies’ which surrounds us. President Reagan commonly described Nicaragua as a ‘totalitarian dungeon.’ This was taken generally by the media, and certainly by the British government, as accurate and fair comment. But there was in fact no record of death squads under the Sandinista government. There was no record of torture. There was no record of systematic or official military brutality.

“No priests were ever murdered in Nicaragua. There were in fact three priests in the government, two Jesuits and a Maryknoll missionary. The totalitarian dungeons were actually next door, in El Salvador and Guatemala. The United States had brought down the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954 and it is estimated that over 200,000 people had been victims of successive military dictatorships.

“Six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world were viciously murdered at the Central American University in San Salvador in 1989 by a battalion of the Atlacatl regiment trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA. That extremely brave man Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying mass. It is estimated that 75,000 people died.

“Why were they killed? They were killed because they believed a better life was possible and should be achieved. That belief immediately qualified them as communists. They died because they dared to question the status quo, the endless plateau of poverty, disease, degradation and oppression, which had been their birthright.

“The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance. ‘Democracy’ had prevailed.

More:
http://consortiumnews.com/2014/02/06/a-rare-indictment-of-us-atrocities/

[Judi Lynn]

7. "Reagan Was the Butcher of My People:" Fr. Miguel D’Escoto Speaks From Nicaragua

Tuesday, June 8, 2004

"Reagan Was the Butcher of My People:" Fr. Miguel D’Escoto Speaks From Nicaragua

FATHER MIGUEL D’ESCOTO: First of all, let me start out by saying that, of course, Reagan is now dead. And I, for one, would like to say only nice things about him. I’m not insensitive to the feelings of many U.S. people mourning president Reagan, but as I pray that god in his infinite mercy and goodness forgive him for having been the butcher of my people, for having been responsible for the deaths of some 50,000 Nicaraguans, we cannot, we should not ever forget the crimes he committed in the name of what he falsely labeled freedom and democracy.

More perhaps than any other U.S. President, Reagan convinced many around the world that the U.S. is a fraud, a big lie. Not only was it not democratic, but in fact the greatest enemy of the right of self-determination of peoples. Reagan, as you mentioned just a few minutes ago, was known as the great communicator, and I believe that that is true only if one believes that to be a great communicator means to be a good liar. That he was for sure. He could proclaim the biggest lies without even as much as blinking an eyelash. Hearing him talk about how we were supposedly persecuting Jews and burning down non-existent synagogues, I was led to believe really, that Reagan was possessed by demons. Frankly, I do believe Reagan at that time as much as Bush today was indeed possessed by the demons of manifest destiny.

Of course, as I say this, I’m quite aware that to the people of say for example, Project for a New American Century, that is counted as a big plus. Because of Reagan and his spiritual heir George W. Bush, the World today is far less safe and secure as it has ever been. Reagan in fact was an international outlaw. He came to the Presidency of the United States shortly after Samosa, a Dictator that the U.S. has imposed over Nicaragua for practically half a century; had been deposed by Nicaraguan Nationalists under the leadership of the Sandinista Liberation Front. To Reagan Nicaragua had to be re-conquered. He blamed Carter for having lost Nicaragua, as if Nicaragua ever belonged to anyone else other than the Nicaraguan people. That was then the beginning of this war that Reagan invented, and mounted and financed and directed, the Contra War. About which he continually lied to the People. Helping the United States people to be the most ignorant people around the world. I said ignorant, I don’t say not intelligent. But the most ignorant people around the world about what the United States does abroad. People don’t even begin to see — if they did, they would rebel. And so, he lied to the people, as Bush lies to the people today and as they push on, thinking that the United States is above every law, human or divine. And we took the United States, Reagan’s United States, his government to court, the World Court. I was Foreign Minister at that time here in Nicaragua. I was responsible for that. And the United States government received the harshest sentence, the harshest condemnation ever in the history of world justice. In spite of the fact that the United States since the early 1920’s has been proclaiming to the world that one of the proofs of its moral superiority as compared to other countries around the world is the fact that it abides by the international law and was obedient to the world court when the United States was brought to the world court in Nicaragua and received the condemnation that the United States failed to heed the sentence and they till owe Nicaragua by now must be between 20,000 and $30,000 million at the time when we left government that the damages caused by that Reagan war was over $17 billion, and this, according to very moderate estimators of damage, people from the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, people from Harvard University and from Oxford and from the University of Paris basically this is the team that was pulled together to estimate the damage. The United States was ordered to pay for the damage. Bush never even wanted to talk to me about it. I said, "Well, let’s have a meeting so that you comply with your sentence of the court." He said to me in two different letters that there was nothing to talk about.

So, Reagan did damage to Nicaragua beyond the imaginations of the people who are hearing me now. The ripple effects of that; criminal murderous interventions in my country will go on for what, 50 years or more.

http://www.democracynow.org/2004/6/8/reagan_was_the_butcher_of_my

[Judi Lynn]

8. One big reason Nicaraguan people remained so very poor: US-supported dictator Somosa.

Anastasio ("Tacho&quot Somoza García (1 February 1896 – 29 September 1956) was officially the President of Nicaragua from 1 January 1937 to 1 May 1947 and from 21 May 1950 to 29 September 1956, but ruled effectively as dictator from 1936 until his assassination. Anastasio Somoza started a dynasty that maintained absolute control over Nicaragua for 44 years.

The son of a wealthy coffee planter, Somoza was educated in the United States. He assisted the ousting of President Adolfo Díaz after his return to Nicaragua, becoming foreign secretary and taking the title of "General." With the help of the US Marine Corps—occupying Nicaragua at the time—Somoza became head of the National Guard. This gave him the power base to oust President Juan Bautista Sacasa—his wife's uncle—becoming president himself in 1937. In 1947, he was succeeded in power by an ally, but remained in power as commander in chief.

A month after his successor had been inaugurated, Somoza used to the military to carry out a coup. The president declared 'incapacitated' by Congress and Somoza served in his stead. Returning to power in his own name in 1951, he maintained an iron grip on his own Liberal Party while making a deal with the Conservatives; thus, he faced no opposition. This left him free to amass a huge personal fortune. On 21 September 1956, he was shot by poet Rigoberto López Pérez. Mortally wounded, he was flown to the Panama Canal Zone where he died a week later. His eldest son Luis Somoza Debayle took over, to be succeeded by his younger brother Anastasio Somoza Debayle, who was forced to flee in 1979 and assassinated in exile in Paraguay the following year.

~ snip ~

Ruler of Nicaragua[edit]

Somoza's control of the Government[edit]

A series of puppets ruled for the remainder of the year, and, in December, Somoza was elected president by a margin of 107,201 votes to 100—an implausibly high margin that could have been obtained only through massive fraud. He took office on New Year's Day 1937.[2] Somoza, popularly known as "Tacho," amended the Constitution to centralize all power in his hands. Family members and key supporters monopolized key positions in the government and military.

While opposition parties continued to exist on paper, in practice, the system was heavily rigged in favor of Somoza's Nationalist Liberal Party. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, he acquired immense personal wealth, primarily through investments in agricultural exports, particularly coffee, cotton, and cattle. Following the massacre of Sandino's followers, he acquired most of the land that had been granted to them by Sacasa.

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasio_Somoza_Garc%C3%ADa