U.S. preparing to "intervene" in Nicaragua?

I don't speak Spanish but I fully understood that. ETA: now I don't understand your revision. I'll look it up.

and where were the international election observers when Bush forced the votes of so many ethnic minorities in Florida to be thrown out so that he could win the state of Florida and the 2000 election?

You are sort of mistaken, in fact. 

JFK appointed Bobby to be Attorney General, a post as important as Secretary of State. 

Bill appointed Hillary chair of the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, which failed, but wasn't nothing. 

And hey, Kevin Spacey appointed Robin Wright his VP candidate. Oh wait, that was House of Cards. I get it confused with the real 2016 elections sometimes, though it is less fanciful than the Year of Trump, of course. 

(I don't actually object to the appointments of Bobby Kennedy and Hilalry Rodham Clinton to those posts especially, but they did take palce.)

The only role the US should be playing in any Nicaraguan election is to promise, whoever wins, to pay for past atrocities: , e.g., the Internaional Criminal Court found them guilty of, [bombing Nic ports], or other atrocities, like killing school teachers, priests, agricultural workers and the like, where they used funds from drug sales [Iran Contra] to fund the contra terrorists. 

Given U.S. history in Latin America there are really only two words I can think of that are appropriate to say to U.S. officials when they speak out about regimes in the region that they don't like.    The first word starts with the letter "F".   For the second word, you have to buy a vowel.

Electoral Contras: US Plotting to Sabotage Nicaraguan Democracy Yet Again

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2021/11/03/electoral-contras-u-s-plotti...

"The US strategy in the 2021 elections is to denounce them as illegitimate before they even take place. The US has intervened in every election since Nicaragua's first free and fair election which took place in 1984..."

Can't international observers certify the vote?

Some 40 opposition figures – among them seven presidential hopefuls – have been detained since June in what rights groups and international observers have decried as a campaign aiming to guarantee Ortega’s re-election. Some have been charged with treason or money laundering.

The Nicaraguan government has defended its actions, saying “usurpers” backed by the United States were seeking to topple Ortega.

But critics say the charges have been trumped up and designed to sideline them from running in the election. Many other activists have been forced into exile in Costa Rica.

Cristina Chamorro, 67, who was widely seen as a favourite to defeat Ortega, was detained on June 2 as part of an alleged money laundering investigation.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/2/eu-foreign-policy-chief-blasts-...

The Grayzone News (and vid)

https://twitter.com/TheGrayzoneNews/status/1456307044147945474

"...Max Blumenthal and Benjamin Norton will also address the purge of pro-Sandanista social media users..."

The Nicaraguan government passed laws to stop the foreign NGO's from engaging in political work in their country. The people who have been banned from running broke that law and refused to stop taking funding from various and sundry of the US State Departments regime change NGO's. You seem to think that other countries have no sovereign right to conduct their own political process. Canada makes laws about who can fund political parties and we are very strict about foreign money. The US with Russiagate has shown that any kind of interference by a foreign power in its internal politics is too much interference. Why are the people of Nicaragua not allowed to have the same sovereign rights?

If Obama had arrested Trump in your scenario would that justify Russia and China and Iran interfering in their elections? Should FB and Twitter ban accounts of Obama supporters like they have done to the Sandinista's? Your scenario only proves how wrong foreign interference is. I know I tend to support left wing politicians in foreign countries who oppose the US backed Neo-fascists but that has nothing to do with the issue of the State Department actively interfering in the elections ins a foreign country at the same time as the US billionaire led internet outlets are interfering in who gets to speak in the week leading up to the election.

You may think that is copacetic but I do not.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

If Obama had arrested Trump in your scenario would that justify Russia and China and Iran interfering in their elections? Should FB and Twitter ban accounts of Obama supporters like they have done to the Sandinista's? Your scenario only proves how wrong foreign interference is. I know I tend to support left wing politicians in foreign countries who oppose the US backed Neo-fascists but that has nothing to do with the issue of the State Department actively interfering in the elections ins a foreign country at the same time as the US billionaire led internet outlets are interfering in who gets to speak in the week leading up to the election.

You may think that is copacetic but I do not.

I agree there should be no foreign interference. That it exists makes it all the more important that the elections are shown to be legitimate. I'm not against the Sandinistas.

Yes, some leftists, like me, actually refuse to follow the party line and support free and fair elections.  That does not mean, however, that we support overthrowing the government or imposing sanctions on the country.  

Blinken: 'Yesterday's undemocratic election denied the Nicaraguan people a real vote'

https://twitter.com/camilapress/status/1457764481799528452

"The Trump regime did this in Venezuela and it failed, now the Biden regime will use the same script as Nicaragua (and fail). There's absolutely no difference between Republican and Democrat Party regimes for the people of the American continent."

kropotkin1951 wrote:

josh wrote:

Yes, some leftists, like me, actually refuse to follow the party line and support free and fair elections.  That does not mean, however, that we support overthrowing the government or imposing sanctions on the country.  

What is the "party line." The Sandinista government is the one in charge of ensuring that the elections are free and fair and the information above clearly shows they are doing a great job despite the US Congresses bi-partisan disinformation campaign. Given the "party line" that you seem to have adopted from the US Dems it does seem that you would prefer the right wing neo-fascist opposition otherwise why the gratuitous insult interwoven in your comment.

Yes, you’re either with us or against us. Part of his “great job”:

Ortega 2.0 rules as a vicious autocrat. Having made peace with the Catholic Church by banning abortion and with the support of the nation’s oligarchs and a few former Contra leaders and military leaders with whom he has cut financially advantageous deals, he and his wife (and vice president), Rosario Murillo, rule the nation as dictators. They use the military to fire on protesters with live ammunition and encourage vigilante gangs to beat up their opposition. They jail potential opponents and shut down critical media.

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/nicaragua-media-ortega/

Thanks Josh for giving us the State Department narrative. It is always good to hear exactly what the lies are that the American regime change organizations are pushing. You believe those "truths" originating out of Washington and I will  believe these women instead.

"Of course, no policy can force attitudes to change, so machismo still remains an issue in 2021. Yet the difference between the women’s movement under the FSLN and the movement under neoliberal governments, is that the FSLN has provided important support to the fight for gender equality, and since the return of the FSLN government in 2007, a number of laws have been passed in this vein.

The Gender Policy and Law No. 648: Equal Rights and Opportunities Law (2007)—quickly passed after FLSN re-assumed power—are based on the premise of working for gender equality, strengthening women’s protagonism, and the construction of more humane, equitable, and complementary gender relations as both a human right and a strategic necessity for the country’s development.

Later came the approval of Law 779: the Integral Law against Violence against Women (2014), a policy first proposed in the 1980s and finally ratified, despite strong counter-opposition by the religious sector, with the return of the FSLN government. It gives Nicaraguan women a legal framework for the protection and defense of their lives which is implemented with the assistance of 85 all-women police stations, comisarias, whose main focus is on protecting women and children from abuse.

In 2021, the government additionally passed a law enshrining women’s representation at parliamentary level, which was vehemently condemned by the opposition. All electoral lists, from local councils to the National Assembly, must now comprise 50 percent women. The percentage of congresswomen now stands at 48.4. For comparison, Canada is only at 28.9 percent. Today, Nicaragua ranks fourth in the world for women in parliamentary positions and first in the world for women in ministerial positions. It is one significant indicator of the FSLN’s attempts to eradicate gender disparity and make it easier for the women’s movement to have both a voice and enact law.

In the 21st century, the women’s movement has undoubtedly made huge gains at parliamentary level, yet it has also made a big impact in other areas of society. One of the most important actors in this regard is the aforementioned, ATC.
Working for liberation

The most essential component of Nicaragua’s economy has for centuries been its agricultural sector. Prior to the revolution, all available fertile land was forcibly converted into vast monocultural cash-crop plantations and worked by the local population, be that slaves, Indigenous people, or mestizos. From the moment William Walker’s men invaded in 1855 up until 1979, Nicaragua was a victim of this agro-imperialism. However, when the Sandinistas launched a comprehensive agrarian reform in the 1980s, land was democratized and given to peasant families, creating the base for Nicaragua’s food sovereign model today. Moreover, when men went to fight in the mountains during the US-funded counter-revolution in the 1980s, women took on agricultural jobs that had been traditionally held by men—carrying out the field work, driving tractors, applying inputs, tending to the animals—in addition to all of the traditional housework and childrearing. This was an important moment that showed that women too could carry out agricultural activities other than harvesting, breaking off from traditional machista ideas about the division of agricultural labor.

In the build-up to the Sandinista revolution, the ATC was founded with the goal of organizing peasants and farm workers in defense of their rights as well as to improve living conditions in the countryside. Shortly after the historical triumph, they made the decision to found the ATC’s Women’s Secretariat (later adding the ‘Movimiento de Mujeres del Campo’/MMC or Rural Women’s Movement). This space was perhaps the first in a Nicaraguan organization specifically created to address women’s issues, and in this case, to meet the demands of peasant and working-class women. The Secretariat and MMC have since their inception struggled for better wages, access to education, respect for women’s physical and moral integrity, and equal opportunities. This union has continually played a crucial role in defending the needs of both male and female land workers, especially during the first phase of the revolution when many workers left bondage for the first time in their lives to then define a new form of workplace that would transform society.
| Women founders of ATC including Lola Esquivel center El Crucero | MR Online

Women founders of ATC including Lola Esquivel (center), El Crucero

With the arrival of the neoliberal period in 1990 and the concomitant decline in workers’ rights, women’s organizing became even stronger as a response. ATC women led shutdowns of main roads in Managua to ensure that the land they had obtained during the 1980s agrarian reform was respected. They also spearheaded the creation of new autonomous zones in northern regions of the country, especially the department of Jinotega.

Today, the ATC has 18,000 women members in different social sectors. Both women and men are trained by the likes of the Francisco Morazán Peasant Worker School in gender relations and eliminating violence against women. These programs also work on fostering women’s leadership for rural movements; in the ATC itself the majority of both national and departmental leaders are women, not just the Women’s Secretariat.

Government social programs such as those organized by the Ministry for Family, Cooperative, Communal, and Associative Economy/MEFCCA, have a particular focus on women heads of households, providing them with the productive resources they need to run their own small business and contribute to the country’s economy. One such notable initiative is the Zero Usury program, that provides financing at an annual interest rate of 2 percent to women entrepreneurs, farmers, and producers. Women are also given quick access to credit and without the risk of being dispossessed of their land or belongings. This is in sharp contrast to the neoliberal system that, through private microfinance companies, charged rates of up to 11 percent per month, snatching from women the little they had because they did not provide support or training for the development of their businesses. Since 2007, the Zero Usury program has provided one or more loans to over a half million women in Nicaragua.

Another notable MEFCCA program is the Hunger Zero program (modeled on the one in Brazil), whereby all agricultural assets are put in the woman’s name, including livestock, inputs, and technology. This model, not seen anywhere else in Central America, has empowered economically rural women to be self-sufficient. These initiatives are crucial because they allow women to break the dependency on male breadwinners, giving them more autonomy and stopping the cycles of violence that have historically existed in the Nicaraguan countryside.

One example of where this has all come into action is the Gloria Quintanilla Cooperative in El Crucero, a nationally-recognized women’s coffee farmer cooperative. The 22 women members are leaders in their community that is made up of 79 families. With assistance from both the ATC and the Sandinista government, the women have organized to build an elementary school in the community, inaugurate a well for potable water, and all of the women farmers are trained in agroecological techniques that they implement in their plots, contributing to the national food sovereignty and security campaigns.

As shown by the Gloria Quintanilla Co-operative, raising employment for women cannot happen without increasing participation and standards of education. Before 1979, there were no educational provisions for children of any gender under six years old. Schooling post-13 was rare. Illiteracy was at 50 percent with women forming a majority of the illiterate (Collinson et al, 1990). Responding to the successes seen in Cuba—over a thousand Cuban teachers came to Nicaragua in 1981 to assist in the education sector—the FSLN embarked on a ‘Literacy Crusade’. Within only a year, illiteracy was reduced to 12 percent, with women being the primary beneficiaries. This is reflected in the mass training of ‘popular teachers’ after the crusade, 95 percent of whom were women. Education thereafter became another key source of employment for women, especially in rural areas. As of 2017, 78 percent of the teachers are women. Starting in 2012, the government has promoted a program of specialization and professionalization of school teachers to improve the quality of the education system across the country.

This is an education system that under the FSLN has always been rooted in the popular pedagogy of Marxist thinker, Paulo Freire. In the second revolutionary period, his teachings are embodied in the creation of the Latin American Institute for Agroecology/IALA, an education centre established with the global peasant movement, La Via Campesina, and former Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez. The IALAs, including the IALA campus in Nicaragua called IALA Ixim Ulew (meaning “land of corn” in Maya Quiche) are training centers for youth that come from social movements and rural areas providing political, ideological, and technical training in agroecology. Part of this training is about dismantling patriarchal systems that have acutely affected rural areas and replacing them with a model that not only acknowledges women as the cornerstone of agriculture, but values seed saving, fights machismo, builds shared responsibilities between women and men, and boosts food production. These concepts are included in the ‘popular peasant feminism‘ modules that are imparted at the IALAs.

Bertha Sanchez is an 18-year-old young woman from the department of Masaya. She is a single mother and is currently studying to be a specialized technician in Agroecology at IALA. In her testimony as an IALA student, she shared:

My experience has been unique because, truthfully, I never thought I’d say, ‘I’m going keep studying’. I am a single mother of a three-year-old child, I thought I’d just get a job and struggle from paycheck to paycheck. But by the grace of God, I now have the opportunity to continue studying. I like to work the fields. I have a plot where I grow vegetables… I have to think about the fact that I have someone who comes after me, in this case my son. I need him to feel proud of me, to be an example of discipline and show him what is means to be from the countryside

While there are IALA campuses throughout Latin America, the IALA campuses in Nicaragua and Venezuela are unique in that their training programs are state-accredited, meaning that the students receive a valuable title in acknowledgment of the studies they have carried out.
Reproductive rights and healthcare

Women’s healthcare and reproductive rights are a major priority of the FSLN. With the reinstatement of the universal right to healthcare after 2006, a series of impressive achievements have been made that mean that women, and consequently their families too, are living healthier lives.

Through Nicaragua’s extensive public healthcare system, women receive access to free, high-quality, and culturally-appropriate healthcare from the Pacific to the Caribbean Coast. This includes a whole fleet of mobile clinics that tour the country to perform regular cervical and breast cancer screenings, along with the opening of a women’s hospital in 2015 to specifically treat women’s health issues.

The Maternal Homes program, that covers women from rural areas or with high-risk pregnancies, ensures accommodation, food, and prenatal training for pregnant women. In 2015, 51,189 pregnant women were housed in 174 Maternal Homes and in 2018, 61,648 pregnant women were housed in 178 Maternal Homes. According to the Nicaraguan Ministry for Health, these types of programs have contributed to the 60 percent reduction of maternal mortality rates, going from 78.2 deaths in 2007 to 47 deaths per 100,000 live births registered in 2018.
| An example of the Nicaraguan Casa Materna | MR Online

An example of the Nicaraguan Casa Materna

Family-planning methods are widely available in the Nicaraguan public healthcare system, where five types of contraception are freely available. The Ministry of Health also connects with local community health promoters to ensure that women can access their preferred birth control method without even having to leave their communities, helping to reduce teenage pregnancies.

Internationally, there is much attention around the case of abortion in Nicaragua. In order to understand why abortion has not been nationally legalized, it is important to understand some cultural components of Nicaragua. The large majority of Nicaraguans are Catholics or Protestants, which combined with traditional peasant cultures, means public support for abortion is low. At all levels, but particularly at a governmental level, there is a greater focus on family planning (rare in other Catholic countries) and avoiding unwanted pregnancies, as well as ending and criminalizing violence against women. For example, rape is heavily criminalized, with average sentences of 25 to 30 years in prison, significantly more than the average 5-year-sentence rarely handed out in England.

That all said, abortions can be carried out for medical reasons and so far there has not been a case of imprisonment nor a legal case brought against a woman who had practiced abortion.
The right to live in peace

Owing to the Sandinista Revolution, women in Nicaragua now have the political power and organization to struggle for their demands, whether it be land, education, potable water, or community health programs. These in turn support the working class and all Nicaraguans in improving their quality of life, on its own terms and according to its own needs and culture.

What should also be obvious from the above is that the Nicaraguan women’s movement is deeply engaged with the country’s political future and with women’s everyday lives. Whether fighting on a local, national, or international level, it is evidently an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist movement with a clear sense of identity and autonomy.

In this regard, the last word ought to go to Lea Moncada, secretary of the Gloria Quintanilla Co-operative:

Now we are prepared for anything. The advice I could give is that we unite more, that we look out for the well-being of our country, of our nation, of our world. We are all human beings and we have to love each other because the big businessmen only look out for their stock market; they don’t look out for the proletarian class, the poor people, the working people, the peasant people.

The authors would like to thank the Women’s Secretariat of the ATC, the Rural Women’s Movement, Magda Lanuza, Ada Farrach, and Jenny Bekenstein for their invaluable contributions, without which this piece would not have been possible."

https://mronline.org/2021/11/06/womens-struggle-in-nicaragua/

Meet 'Joly' America's new Canadian poodle that capers on command...

https://twitter.com/CanadaFP/status/1457880156161327106

"Nicaragua's November 7 elections do not reflect the will of the Nicaraguan people..."

So how do you like her so far?

[email protected]

Ajamu Baraka: Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela as Existential Threats to the US

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/11/11/class-warfare-and-socialist-resi...

"One of the extreme ironies of the latest attack by the settler-colonial regime of the US against the national democratic project of Nicaragua, is that in Nicaragua, the second poorest nation in the Americas, universal healthcare and education are guaranteed to the population as a human right, while in the US these are distant dreams..."

Alas, I agree. Non-action against oppression in our name is complicity, from Nicaragua to Cuba to Palestine to Haiti to Donbass to Secwepemc and the rest of our own Occupied Territories etc. Rise and organize!