Nicaragua: The New Prisoner

Like a herd of hungry wolves, hemispheric organisms of different stripes, but of the same kind, open their jaws and throw their claws at the violent events that have taken place in Nicaragua.
Posted: Saturday 28 April 2018 | 08:39:57 PM

By Marina Menendez Quintero
marina@juventudrebelde.cu

A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.

A march for peace, last Monday, extended over 6.5 kilometers in Managua, the capital Author: El Nuevo Diario Published: 04/28/2018 | 08:01 pm

“The herd” is a term coined in Spain these days that identifies, in an incriminating tone, a group of five young men who are accused of raping a girl… even though they have been tried and convicted by the courts for violence alone.

They could have been christened with that nickname because of the way they acted, like wolves in a group. Or by force.

Thus, like a herd of hungry wolves, hemispheric organisms of a different stripe, but of the same kind, open their jaws and throw their claws at the violent events that have taken place in Nicaragua.

Their very identification gives rise to conjecture about the sincerity of their concerns, and allows them to guess what it is that they crave.

The biased Humans Right Watch already calls for a meeting of the Permanent Council of the OAS, so that the presence of a representative of the draft Inter-American Commission on Human Rights may be applied to Nicaragua.

IDEA – the so-called Democratic Initiative of Spain and the Americas, which brings together former right-wingers, conspirators and interferers – also called on the head of the OAS, the discredited Luis Almagro, to promote the adoption of measures within the framework of the so-called Inter-American Democratic Charter, created by the United States to justify certified intervention in other nations.

And it should come as no surprise that in Miami the congressional far-right is calling for a tightening of sanctions established by the NICA-ACT (Nicaraguan Investment Conditionality Act of 2017).

But what best allows us to feel the magnitude of that which is being woven against the Sandinista government, and where it is coming from, is Washington’s attitude. By order of the State Department, its Embassy in Managua pulled out its staff and closed it, while “alerting” U.S. citizens not to travel to the country, in a wake-up call that should be taken into account.

In a statement of harsh and little-used epithets in diplomacy – so similar to those of President Donald Trump’s verbiage – the White House on Friday spoke of “repugnant political violence” that “has impacted the international democratic community.

Meanwhile, on social networks and in the right-wing international media, where so many errors are made, the reasons that gave rise to the facts hardly exists any more. Gone is the social security reform that sparked the riots and was repealed by the government a week ago, almost immediately after its enactment. The point now is to keep up the protests.

A Twitter account cited by the website Misión Verdad for its suspicious appearance along with the demonstrations and which identifies itself as SOS Nicaragua, continued to call for insubordination this Saturday with this message: “How disappointing that we are surrendering so quickly for the sake of “tranquility.” That it is disappointing that all those who died have died so quickly for us to surrender. You don’t have to have conflict in the streets to keep fighting.”

Thus, a situation of supposedly social origin has turned into a political crisis that seeks to give rise to foreign intervention and the demise of the Sandinista government.

The speed with which events that seem to have come out of nowhere flowed evokes a magic art, even if there is no such thing. Rather, it seems to be the maneuvering of a well-oiled machinery that, as in other nations that are victims of the US and pro-imperial right-wing animosity, sadly uses young students as cannon fodder for violent acts that oblige the forces of law and order to act. This makes it easier to blame the executive branch for the deplorable deaths and to justify the adoption of hemispheric pressure measures.

In theory, everything already has a name and has been applied in Eastern European countries to remove goverments which make Washington uncomfortable, just as they tried to apply it to Venezuela. The so-called “color revolutions” that lead to what has been called a soft coup, that is, the demise of a president without the use of bayonets and military boots.

It was not promoted in left-wing theory. It is written in Pentagon documents and is a well-thought-out imperial strategy, as noted in the November 2010 Special Operations Forces Training Circular 18-01, entitled The Un-Conventional War.

In each place with its own characteristics, the executives of Fernando Lugo in Paraguay, Manuel Zelaya in Honduras, and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil can attest to this, without leaving out the saga of corruption and the unjust imprisonment plotted against Lula. The issue is regional, and it is a question of completing the shift to the right, manipulation by means of a population as victimized as the political subject who is demonized.

Within Nicaragua, the alignment, on the side of instability, of the Council of Private Enterprise (Cosep), an ally of the executive in this Sandinista term, although its old and very bitter enemy, also sheds light on who can prosper from these undesirable events, even though they have not yet been clarified, and where an Episcopal Conference continues to play a fundamental role, which has agreed to be the guarantor of the dialogue called for by the Government, but is cited as its criticism of the facts.

Leaders of the Unen (National Union of Students of Nicaragua) denounced the presence in one of the universities taken over by the demonstrators of members of the opposition Sandinista Renewal Movement, where figures who left the ranks of the FSLN gather, and their pressure on the young demonstrators to remain in revolt.

In a statement by the Sandinista Front, which was not widely disseminated, the ruling party has given elements of judgment. For example, the fact that the protests were initiated and led by university students, especially from private religious schools – basically the UCA, the Jesuits and the Polytechnic (Upoli), of a Protestant church based in the USA.and its adoption of a violent character with the use of homemade mortars; the mobilization of the Sandinista Youth as a counterpart; the assaults and fires of representative Sandinista premises and State institutions and Sandinista houses, as well as the looting of supermarkets and warehouses, among them the one that kept all the medicine of the insured….

The establishment of a Truth Commission announced on Friday by the Nicaraguan National Assembly should, hopefully soon, clarify the interim events, and the dialogue called for by President Daniel Ortega should restore the stability that has characterized the last decade in Nicaragua.

But everything must be resolved from within. The herd of Washington-protected institutions seeking intervention must remove their teeth from their new prey.

The protests led to violent acts that served as an excuse for interference and demonization. Photo: AP

The US and its Bad Neighbor Policy

By Lazaro Farinas
Posted: Monday 23 April 2018 | 09:31:55 PM

A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.

“Speak softly and carry a big stick, so you can go far.” That is the definition of the Big Crow’s policy implemented by President Theodore Roosevelt at the beginning of the last century. What became known as the Roosevelt Corollary established that “if a European country threatened or endangered the rights or property of US citizens or businesses, the US government was obliged to intervene in the affairs of that country to ‘reorder’ it”.

With the implementation of this Corollary, the American President was actually putting into practice the doctrine that James Monroe, who was the fifth president of this country, had proclaimed before the Congress in 1823. “America for Americans,” the president told the congressmen and the world. Of course, you have to understand that for Americans, Americans are Americans. Roosevelt, with his big stick, gave free rein to this country’s interventions in Latin America. Just a few weeks ago, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made a public statement that the old Monroe Doctrine was still in force.

Many countries have been invaded by U.S. military forces since Monroe proclaimed his famous doctrine, but even more have been the ones that have secretly suffered this country’s interventionism in its internal affairs; many governments overthrown in one way or another, many were the military dictatorships established with his support, many were the pressures to overthrow democratically elected rulers.

Fortunately, military interventions have disappeared from the hemisphere, but have been replaced by conspiracies, pressure and sanctions. Many Latin American countries have received and continue to receive this form of interference.

Venezuela and Cuba are classic examples of this approach, but countries such as Honduras, Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, Nicaragua and others cannot be left behind.

What is happening with Venezuela is incredible. The United States and its allies in the region and the Western world have mounted a campaign of disinformation about the homeland of Simón Bolívar and his government that is on the edge of infamy. Ever since the late Commander Hugo Chávez became president of that country through fully transparent and democratic elections, the United States and its international right-wing cronies began mounting a disinformative campaign against him and his government. In reality, they did not settle for anti-Chávez propaganda in the national and international media, but from there, they went on to practice, with a coup d’état, an oil strike, unbridled violence in the streets, etc.

The Venezuelan government is accused of everything in international organizations, in the discredited OAS, in the forums of the United Nations, in Unasur, now it has just been vetoed at the Summit of the Americas and in the Washington Congress, measures are being taken and sanctions are being created against the rulers of that nation.

The country that has set a record for holding democratic elections is accused of being an infamous dictatorship. A country that has held 20 elections in less than 20 years in power, fair and transparent elections, elections that have been supervised and observed by foreign organizations. They accuse the government of fraud in these elections, but we must ask ourselves, how is it that by fraud they lost the elections that took place a few years ago to elect the National Assembly?

According to them, Nicolas Maduro is an ironclad dictator, but how is it possible for such a dictator to accept freedom of the press, from which he is subjected to dirty campaigns. The right always says the same thing and uses the same speeches. When Donald Trump was running for president of the United States, he got tired of proclaiming that the American electoral system was fraudulent, but when he won the elections, he did not mention the issue any more.

Now that presidential elections are to be held again on 20 May in Venezuela, an international campaign has already begun to discredit them, despite the fact that several opposition candidates are running for the presidency. All the polls are giving it to Maduro as a winner, but what if an opposition candidate wins? Would they do like Trump did?

I don’t know if the day will come when a U.S. government will stop thinking of Latin America as its backyard and start to respect it. It is my hope that the day will come when you will truly forget what you have done so far and come to the conclusion that you must relate to that region with respect, that you will forget the Monroe Doctrine and the Big Club and that you will erase the carrot and stick theory. Because I love this country where I have lived for so many years and because I love Latin America, the region where I was born, I do not lose hope. Maybe I’m daydreaming.

In the face of gender-based violence, silence is not an option

Although in the First Workshop on Communication, Gender and Equity, organized by the Oscar Arnulfo Romero Center, the FMC and the National Center for Sexual Education, which took place in the province of Ciego de Ávila, progress was recognized in a series of stereotypes and prejudices , it is a priority to continue working to address the problem of physical, psychological, sexual or economic violence, in a transversal and multisectoral manner
Posted: Friday 27 April 2018 | 04:51:01 PM

By Yuniel Labacena Romero
digital@juventudrebelde.cu

A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.

No to gender-based violence. Author: Martirena Published: 21/09/2017 | 05:59 pm

CIEGO DE ÁVILA: About ten women out of 30 reported having received some kind of physical, psychological, sexual or economic violence for 12 months, according to the Survey on Gender Equality, conducted in 2016 by the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), which also revealed a low perception of this problem in our society.

These data demonstrate the urgent need to accompany, make visible, analyze, explain and systematically put the issues associated with gender violence in all areas of society, especially in the media, given their social function and scope.

It is precisely with this aim in mind that the First Communication, Gender and Equity Workshop, organized by the Oscar Arnulfo Romero Center, the FMC and the National Center for Sex Education, has been held to date, bringing together some 40 media professionals and actors with an impact on the public sphere from almost every region of the country.

During the days of debate, Cuban advances in a series of stereotypes and prejudices were recognized, but also that silence is not the option in the face of gender violence. The participants argued this statement, since this problem is often a hidden, naturalized, invisible fact, which is framed in a patriarchal culture. And in most cases, women are in a position of subordination to men, making them more vulnerable.

Tackling this problem should not remain a matter of slogans or tasks. There is a need to develop broader strategies that contribute to greater production and positioning of educational materials that reflect gender gaps and equities, as well as better implementation of public-good campaigns on the issue, the experts said.

Mareleen Díaz Tenorio, researcher for the Oscar Arnulfo Romero, explained that recognizing how acts of gender violence are evident is, in the first instance, the key point of how society and the media can achieve, together, the identification of this problem that affects a group of the unjustly called “weak sex” in the country.

It is essential to create awareness, consensus and political will so that all social actors can participate in this process. The longer we take to begin to transform, the more people will continue to suffer. Only respect for human beings will allow us to live in that better world that we need, the specialist said.

At the workshop – dedicated to the memory of Dr. Isabel Moya Richard, who was director of the Women’s Publishing House who was highly knowledgeable and a defender of gender issues – Eres más, a Cuban campaign for non-violence against women and girls, was presented, and the need to target specific actions at adolescent and youth audiences for their role in society was reiterated.