Nicaragua: These Women Had Dreams
ELEANOR KLIBANOFF, FOR THE PULITZER CENTER
On the anniversary of Nicaragua’s revolution, a national holiday akin to the 4th of July, First Lady Rosario Murillo delivered an impassioned address to the swarms of party supporters bused in from the countryside. Swathed in scarves and dripping with expensive jewelry, she captivated the crowd with her slogan-heavy speech, applauding Nicaragua’s impressive freedom “for all, and for the good of all.” Those watching at home were captivated: no other television channels were allowed to air during the speeches.
In Nicaragua, Murillo’s popularity is second only to the female Chief of Police, according to a 2012 poll, with Murillo's husband, President Daniel Ortega, ranking a humble third. The power of the First Lady is a national inside joke on par with Bill and Hillary in the United States.
“Nicaragua has the strongest feminist movement in Latin America,” says Magaly Quintana, director of Catholics for the Right to Choose, a pro-life organization. “There are many, many women’s rights organizations and women can have immense political power, but we also have many more issues to combat.”
Ortega’s own Sandinista party encourages the narrative that women, “Sandino’s Daughters,” played a large part in the 1979 overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship. And under an Ortega-approved law, 50 percent of all party and government positions must go to women.
http://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/central-america-nicaragua-domestic-sexual-abuse-women-children-feminist-movementNicaragua shaken by second earthquake
Just as residents of Managua were clearing up the damage from an earthquake on Thursday, a second earthquake struck Nicaragua on Friday.
Measuring 6.6 on the richter scale it could be felt as far away in San Jose in Costa Rica.
The epicentre was 24 km south of Granada near the Pacific coast, the depth of it suggested that a tsunami was unlikely.
The government had evacuated buildings and schools were closed on Friday as thousands of aftershocks continued to rattle the country, which helped avoid many injuries when the second quake struck.
The government raised the number of those injured in Thursday’s quake from 23 to 200 and one person was reported to have died.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=edit&forum=1255&thread=41764&pid=41766Nicaragua: Poverty Assessment
Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries in Latin America. In the 1980s, per capita GDP declined to one-third of its 1977 level due to the combined impact of inappropriate macroeconomic policies, institutional changes toward a centrally controlled economy, continued civil strife, and a trade embargo. Starting in 1991, the government initiated ambitious reforms to support Nicaragua's transitions from war to peace, from dictatorship to democracy, and from central planning to a market economy.
Poverty Profile
Using data from the 1993 Living Standards Measurement Survey, the Poverty Assessment computed poverty and extreme poverty lines. The poverty line was defined as the level of "total" per capita monthly expenditures at which an individual obtains the minimum daily caloric requirement (2,226 calories per adult). The extreme poverty line was defined as the level of per capita monthly "food" expenditures at which an individual obtains the minimum daily caloric requirement. According to these definitions, half of the population, or about 2 million people, fall below the poverty line. Forty percent of the poor, or 20 percent of the population, fall below the extreme poverty line and are food poor; that is, they cannot meet the daily minimum caloric requirement even if they were to devote all of their consumption to food.
Poverty and extreme poverty are overwhelmingly rural. With 41 percent of the country's population, rural areas contain 63 percent of the poor and 78 percent of the extreme poor. Rural poverty is also deeper than urban poverty. The average expenditures of the urban poor are 11 percent below the poverty line, while those of the rural poor are 37 percent below the poverty line. The poverty profile also shows major regional disparities in the incidence of poverty. With 23 percent of the population, the Northern (Jinotega and Matagalpa) and the Segovias (Esteli, Madriz, and Nueva Segovia) regions contain 46 percent of the country's extreme poor, with the average expenditures of the rural poor being 48 percent below the poverty line. In contrast, Managua, with one-third of the country's population, has only 7 percent of the extreme poor. Poverty is largely a problem of underemployment and low productivity rather than one of widespread unemployment, and is concentrated in the agricultural sector. Over three-quarters of poor households derive most of their income from agriculture either as farmers and/or wage laborers. Small farmers engaged in basic grains production are the poorest of all. Informal sector employment was not found to be a good predictor of poverty. Informal sector earnings are well above the poverty line, indicating that it is high dependency ratios that make them inadequate on a per capita basis. Although poor women participate less in the labor market than nonpoor women due to household work (childcare, fetching water, and collecting wood for cooking), female-headed households were not found to be at a greater risk of poverty than male-headed households.
Poor households have, on average, almost twice the number of children than nonpoor households, an important factor that explains low per capita incomes resulting from high dependency ratios. Poor households also have less education than the nonpoor, another key factor explaining low earnings capacity. Over half of the extremely poor in rural areas and over a third in urban areas are illiterate. With the important exception of enrollments in primary education, the poor have worse social indicators than the nonpoor, particularly in rural areas. Comparing very well with the rest of Central America, access to primary school is almost universal. However, many poor children do not complete primary school due to late entrance, high repetition, and the low quality of schooling. The poor have less access to health care services, including immunizations and prenatal and birth care and lack access to water and sanitation services. The study also found a strong correlation between poverty and child malnutrition. Almost one-third of all children below the age of five are malnourished, a proportion that increases to four out of 10 among the extreme poor in rural areas. In the poorest regions, the Northern and the Segovias, almost half of the rural children are malnourished. The poverty assessment found that: (i) a literate mother nourishes her children better; (ii) each additional child in the household increases the probability of malnutrition; (iii) breastfeeding is associated with lower malnutrition among children under 18 months; and (iv) children in households without water and sanitation are twice as likely to be malnourished as children in households with water and sanitation.
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPOVERTY/EXTPA/0,,contentMDK:20207612~menuPK:435735~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:430367~isCURL:Y~isCURL:Y,00.htmlHunger in Nicaragua
There is something about Nicaragua that just makes me hungry. The doctors assure me that it's normal--something about constant gastrointestinal stress, a result of being transplanted from microbial immune New York directly into a country that houses an impressive variety of tiny organisms, each and every one eager to make my intestines their new home.
But today, despite that gnawing sensation in my stomach, I can't eat. My food tastes funny, sour almost. I briefly wonder if it's the heat. Given that my shirt is soaked through with sweat, I wouldn't doubt if my Styrofoam-packed lunch has gone bad. It might even be that the beans were old to begin with. But I immediately dismiss both possibilities. I know if I just glance up, I can stare the sour taste in the eye. After pushing my food around a bit, I decide to bite the bullet and look. I meet the longing expressions of three children across the fence and I am certain, just by looking, that my own recent intimacy with hunger is pale in comparison to their mutual long-term relationship. I quickly decide that a few bites of beans can hold me over until dinner, and pass the tortilla, chicken, and rice along to the kids.
Nicaraguans are no strangers to hunger. The country is considered the second poorest nation in the western hemisphere, and with a large portion of the population barely eking a living from the land, it's no wonder that the current world food crisis is hitting Nicas hard. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO), Nicaragua is one of 17 countries worldwide at "high risk" of deteriorating food security as a result of high food prices. And prices are high.
Silvana Lorena Bertrand Betancourtan is a friend of mine who has lived her entire 52 years in a small Nicaraguan city of about 35,000 people. She says the canasta básica ("basic basket," including maize, beans, rice, sugar, bread and coffee, and soap) costs more now than she has ever seen and claims that it's difficult for her to get by on the few tomatoes that she sells weekly from her nephew's farm. With no home and her children grown and gone, she needs to look to other people to help her survive. She relies on the community and is well acquainted with the need to beg for the occasional Córdoba (Nicaraguan currancy).
http://www.peacecorps.gov/volunteer/learn/whatvol/foodsecurity/volstories/werderlyttle/
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