misagh parsa, states, ideologies, and social revolutions

(7, 10, 21): structures are insufficient to explain revolutions -- need to discuss structures + process; "structural vulnerabilities by themselves do not inevitably produce social conflict, let alone revolution... there is always more than one potential outcome... any analysis of revolution must also take into account the revolutionary process"

(8): problem w/ Skocpol:multiple actors and multiple conflicts ('labor radicalism might affect capitalists from taking on the State'); States in developing countries do not necessarily rule in tandem with capitalist classes

(8-9): problem w/ ideology in explanations -- the burden of proof is actually quite serious, for a claim like this: have to show that actors were both aware of and supportive of a given ideology, and weren't supporting it out of tactical convenience.

1. methodological reductionism ('ideology of successful revolutionary challengers, assuming that participants adhered to those ideologies)
2. explantions use outcomes of revolution to account for its causes
3. ideological debates might be cryptic in revolutionary situations

(11): [1] Exclusive rule, centralization and repression -- consequences:

1. states resort to violence at time of social conflict, reducing support for regime
2. may weaken elite/moderate challengers, strengthen radicals [a la Jeff's argument]
3. more likely to be externally dependent, which might be detrimental at times of crisis

(12-21): [2] State intervention and target of social conflicts: regulative (conflicts will occur in civil society -- State is unlikely to be the direct target of collective action)* vs. administrative vs. hyperactive (State more vulnerable to challenge and attack -- also likely to negatively affect a segment of elites, even the majority of elites depending on the extent to which the rule is personalistic)

(19): conflating the 'self-employed' with the capitalist class [bizarre!]*

(21 -24): [3] Collective action and coalition formation: large-scale insurgencies emerge when political opportunities emerge (b/c state feeling external pressures, schisms within the state, or state reforms). in the absence of state breakdown or military victory, insurgencies are more likely to succeed if they are organized as a cross-class coalition (cross-class coalitions are encouraged, remember, by a high level of state intervention and a low level of open, class conflict). there is something, here, about disruptive collective action, also, suggesting that it can weaken the State's hold over society.

(24-25): [4] Ideology and social revolution: the challengers that seize power matter, for whether you will have simply political change or social revolution. all things being equal, moderate challengers are typically in a better position to win power (more resources, less repression, allies within gov't) -- but there are limits to their activism. radical challengers lack these advantages, and only a few will succeed -- they are likely to do better the more exclusive the regime was, when moderate paths to the State's overthrow have been exhausted. but radical challengers will benefit from 'toning down' their radical platform.

(26): in sum -- classes are important, but intensified class conflict can hurt, reducing the likelihood of social revolutions.* students reveal the greatest propensity toward adopting revolutionary ideologies, following intellectuals.

(26): Iran--Shah constructed exclusive polity, intervened in capital allocation/accumulation and working of market; government policies increased inequality;* political opportunities arose in 1977, as external pressure forced repression to decrease; different groups mobilized and made different claims; forced to mobilize through the mosque; a coalition succeeded in overthrowing the monarchy; but soon after the overthrow, a small minority of the clergy succeeded in repressing coalition partners and establishing a theocratic state.

(27): Nicaragua--Somoza constructed exclusive state; state intervened in the economy and capital accumulation; policies increased inequality;* after 1972 earthquake, there were mobilizations against the regime, which lasted until 1974; a new round began in 1977, when external pressures led to reduced repression; assasination of Chamorro in January 1978 intensified the conflict; a coalition overthrew the state in 1979, led by the FSLN; FSLN had turned to armed struggle because moderate tactics had been ruled out (but they had credibility,* for this reason)

(27-28): Philippines -- formal democratic institutions till 1972; Marcos imposes martial law, repressing moderates and creating a centralized executive; expanded State intervention in the economy; country comes into crisis after period of spectacular growth, and experiences rising social and economic inequalities; in 1981, in response to external pressures Marcos lifts Martial law and some repression; political mobilization emerges in 1983 as a result of the assasination of Aquino; for two years opposition can't remove Marcos b/c of lack of broad coalition, as Marcos is able to tempt moderates into running for elections in 1984; from there, a complex set of processes (having to do with elevated levels of class struggle, and the strength of the Communist Party) lead to an elite-brokered transition (elements in the Army are important); this results in a political revolution.

(36): Iran, in sum: Shah had constructed a State that excluded the population, no real social base,* external dependence on US --> rendered regime vulnerable

(44): Nicaragua, in sum: Somozas built a dynasty excluded the population, based on National Guard, no real social support* --> rendered the regime vulnerable

(53): Philippines, in sum: Marcos built centralized regime after '72 martial law, abolished democratic institutions, no real social base* and support of US --> rendered the regime vulnerable

(54): regimes varied in the success of their repression -- Iran was the most demobilizing, and Philippines the least

(66): in Iran, gov't policies --> rising economic inequalities*

(85-86): summary of account is that participation on/exposure to market --> crisis in all three cases*

(89): summary of argument that declining repression (due to external pressures) --> favorable opportunities for collective action. in this context, further repression may actually make the regime more vulnerable (the Aquino and Chamorro assasinations, he's thinking of)

(94-96): students as 'relentless revolutionaries', ideological radicals*

(96): students' role was contradictory -- frequent mobilization important part of challenge; but students' ideological orientation was also polarizing, preventing the formation of a broad coalition.

(99-101, 104): assertion that, for the most part, students were basically secular in orientation/outlook (repression of 1963 did lead a 'sizable minority' to adopt Islam, but this then waned in the 70s; some rebound after of 1978 (Khomeini becoming popular), but didn't change this basic fact)

(102): student activism predates the clergy, who did get involved until January of 1978

(106-107): in sum, students in Iran

(108): in Nicaragua, expansion of education + role of US + Sandinistas --> radical students

(110): two bouts of struggle, in Nicaragua: (1) post-earthquake (1973-1974), and (2) pre-revolution and post-opening (1977-1979)

(112): it was in the second phase that students began to draw close to the FSLN

(115-116): in sum, students in Nicaragua

(127): in sum, students in Philippines: like elsewhere, most active social group, at the forefront of collective action; assumed a radical character towards the end of the 'revolutionary' process, as the failure of the moderates became obvious

(127-129): in sum, students: (1) first social group to mobilize; (2) acted with most frequency (he acknowledges, of course, that this doesn't at all mean that they wield significant power--he's not noting their capacity/threat, but rather their proclivity. here he once again makes the point about how radical students can prevent the formation of the necessary coalitions)

(130): the breakdown of the clergy-State pact results in the politicization of the clergy--and while most stay conservative, a minority break off as radicals

(131-132): only a minority of the clergy become radical: in Iran, they advocated the formation of an Islamic government; in Nicaragua and the Philippines, they shifted to the left and liberation theology. the explanation of this is the 'weakness of the religious left, the Islamic mohajideen, in Iran [pushes the question back, to an extent]

(132): upper clergy varied--in Iran on the sidelines, in Nicaragua and especially the Philippines, in support of the regimes

(133, 140): again, in Iran, radical clergy demanding an Islamic government were a minority [this is a good example of why Parsa's right that the 'process' is important; revolutions as highly 'open' times]; moderates were the majority; conservative backers of the Shah were also a minority.

(134): the 'White Revolution' in the late 50s marked the end of the State-clergy pact: 'land reform' (opposed by Khomeini) and 'female franchise' (which he said was Baha'i)

(135, 145): in sum, in Iran, the clergy was undermined as a source of support by the Shah's policies

(143): Taleghani ('Red Ayatollah'--who demanded popular democracy, workers' councils to run factories, etc.) was actually asked by Khomeini to lead the Tasoua march on December 10, 1978, which became the largest march in Iranian history

(145): in sum, clergy undermined as a source of support. but the clergy's response to the State was not unanimous. most were moderates, which made the mosque comparatively repression free. ideal places in which to organize. this helped Khomeini and the small minority that supported him.

(146): until 1970, Catholic Church supported Somoza

(146): 'all authority comes from God; He who resists authority resists God'

(153): in sum, in Nicaragua the Catholic Church was unable to play any significant role in the months leading up to the revolution, because of Somoza's unwillingness to tolerate non-violent solution. Church hierarchy remained largely inactive, despite the fact that a minority were radicalized.

(155): radical clergy vs. Church leadership, in Philippines (Father Conrado Balweg: the gun as 'an instrument for a higher value, the value of justice...')

(157): in early 80s, clergy is becoming politicized, but still in weak ways ('reconciliation,' etc.)

(159-161): in sum, role of the clergy in revolutions--segments became politicized, after the breakdown of the clergy-State alliance (greatest in Iran). but there was heterogeneity in their response (mainly along lines of rank, though). in only the Philippines were leading clergy able to impose their will on the outcome; in Iran, it was a small minority that had their way.

(162): vs. Marxists, on workers -- too much class struggle can be a bad thing, by threatening privileged social classes, preventing coalition

(163): large-scale mobilization of workers could only emerge where opportunities were favorable

(164): workers, in sum:

1. in Iran: a low level of organization + targeting of the State --> a coalition with capitalists (here, remember, he means shop-keepers/petit-bourgeois elements)
2. in Nicaragua: better organization + targeting of State and Capitalists in '72-74, but State in '77-79 --> a coalition with capitalists, but one that the Sandinistas led ('workers shifted their support to the FSLN, after moderates failed)
3. in Philippines: well-organized radical segment, post-Martial law + targeted State and Capitalists ('low level of State intervention') + economic deterioration in mid-1980s --> prevented coalition*
   

(169): not unlike Fitzpatrick claim re: Russia, noting that high level of State intervention was 'inherently politicizing' when workers went into struggle

(171): although vast majority of workers supported Khomeini, they did not display ideological, but political support.

(172): Marxists/socialists were in the leadership of the workers' movement

(172-173): workers in Iran, in sum: needed an opening to organize (workers started mobilizing in August 1978, after reforms); most workers were neither political nor revolutionary at outset, but were politicized (because of the State), even if it was quite late in the game; leadership of movement was in hand of socialists; mobilization was crucial to the outcome, through disruption.

(182-183): workers in Nicaragua, in sum: better organized than Iran; more employed in private sector, targeting capitalists and the State; for a long time workers' activism rendered ineffective by repression; in 1978, quickly focused attacks on the State*

(184): 23% of the labour force unionized, in the mid-1960s to 1970 in the Philippines (a robust labour movement, in short)

(186-187): radicalized in the early 1970s

(192-193): in sum, workers in Philippines: tradition of collective bargaining in 50s and 60s; institutionalization of industrial conflicts generated a reformist labour movement; radicalized in early 1970s, after (1) moderates didn't gain concessions, (2) repression, and (3) rise of radical allies; favorable opportunities after 1983 brought workers' movement out; militant workers attacked States and capitalists; this threatened the social structure, and helped prevent the formation of a class coalition.

(197): key amendment -- the defection of the capitalist class is not sufficient to explain revolutions; instead, the capitalist class must take an active role in the conflict, and pursue disruptive tactics; capitalists can be scared away from this by radical threats.*

(198): in protectionist States, division between minority of capitalists, who benefit, and majority, who do not

(198): you can have 'reluctant rebels,' provided that they're not scared off by workers

(199): in sum -- capitalists in all three countries opposed because of lack of access to the polity/economy*

(201-203): Bazaaris -- not w/ clergy, but with liberal-nationalists

(214): minimal mention of Islamic gov't in statement

(215-216): Bazaaris in Iran, in sum -- political coalition rather than ideological conversion (not interested in a theocratic State)

(220): private sector wasn't politicized in '74, in Nic, but by '77 and '78 the 'desperate economic situation' and assasination of Chamorro had politicized them [so there's a story of their radicalziation, too]

(224): capitalist support for FSLN was tactical, not ideological--happened only in the final few days [and didn't live long in the memory]

(239): coalitions are important because:

1. isolate the government [aren't they an effect of this?]
2. increase the likelihood of factionalism in the armed forces
3. essential to initiate disruptive tactics [you need capitalists for the general strike]
4. broad coalitions may encourage greater support for armed struggle (thinking of Nicaragua)

(243-247): reason for the failure of secular challengers, in Iran, is repression (for the Feda'iyan, who were anyway quite weak) and political mistakes (for the National Front, who prevented students from organizing after June 1965 uprising, after they themselves had been repressed)

(247): Khomeini's rise was for political, rather than ideological reasons: (1) he had the advantage of the mosques; (2) he made good, strategic decisions (such as not to publicly advocate for theocratic State in build-up to revolution)

(254-255): the moderates fail, in Nicaragua, bringing the Sandinistas to the fore ['coalition-building'?]

(256): in 1974, FSLN had 100 members!

(261): members of Chamber of Commerce occupied Church in Leon, after FSLN deaths

(267): New People's Army/ Communist Party Philippines had a 'social base' of one million [so, so much stronger than the FSLN!]

(270):NPA had enormous power in countryside, but couldn't overthrow Marcos by rural insurgency. this is why a coalition was needed*

(270): in line with Jeff's argument, Marcos pre-empted them and brought moderates over to his side, with elections in 1985 (this also then explains something about Nicaragua, in the way Jeff wanted to).*

(275 - 278): in sum, coalitions: in the absence of State breakdown, coalitions are important for the success of 'revolutionary' challengers; broad coalitions in Iran and Nicaragua (explained by low level of class conflict) brought the regimes down; in Philippines, broad coalition could not form.

(277): in Iran, army was integrated with population, which faciliated revolution; in Nicaragua, National Guard was insulated, which meant they fought till the end

(287): vs. Skocpol, upper class defection is not the only reason that revolutions happen; here, external pressures can open up opportunities, which coalitions can take advantage of

(288): Iran, whose revolution is supposed to be explained by a 'culture of martyrdom', lost far fewer people per capita than in Nicaragua's revolution

- - - -

[1] on the one hand, it could be argued that this a recognition problem (in which case ideology, we might further argue, becomes a central determinant of whether this holds true?) on the other hand, Parsa means that this applies somewhat unconditionally -- meaning that it is impossible to make the case, to people, that the State is complicit in their suffering even when it isn't actively involved in the economy. this is either because (a) people won't accept it, no matter how accurate it is [why?]; (b) because it's true, in his opinion [no it's not!]

[2] the strangest part of his argument is the case that these small, discontented capitalists can be captured by the category 'self-employed' (this may include shopkeepers, but also those scraping for survival in the informal sector -- and, in Pakistan's case, peasants!). it is quite strange, needless to say, to stick with figures that suggest that the size of your 'capitalist class' is larger the lower your level of development.

on p. 199, they're one-third of the labour force! this is important also because it suggests, to me, that --even while his 'interventionist State offends most capitalists' line is important--he is mis-specifying the causes behind much-bourgeois activism. he thinks exclusion from the State/economy --> 'capitalist' activism. this is no doubt true, for some big bourgeois types. but when we're talking about a third of the labour force in underdeveloped countries, this is going to be, mainly, a story of pretty impoverished types, i'd expect--in that case, what's doing the work isn't really exclusion from the State (I suspect), but insecurity/poverty/etc.

[3] the suggestion that intensified class conflict reduces the likelihood of social revolution rests on the Nicaragua/Philippines examples. in Nicaragua, a coalition led to social revolution; in the Phillipines, the failure of a coalition to form (due to heightened class conflict) explains the lack of a social revolution.

but Parsa is ignoring the profound limits of what then happened in Nicaragua, as elements of the elite turned on the 'revolutionary coalition,' profoundly limiting the nature of the 'social revolution' (making it a political revolution?) -- and setting the stage for the reversal of the 1990s. this is not to suggest that a social revolution was possible; but it ought to suggest that the counterintuitive conclusion he reaches (a social revolution is more likely when you have less class conflict) is actually not perplexing (because it didn't happen!)

a related concern, here, is with revolutionaries and their audience -- he seems to suggest that the most critical constituency to 'get on board', for revolutionaries, is elites, basically. analytically this might have some insights, though not without the enormous caveats mentioned above. but politically this is ludicrous--at some level isn't it true, also, that the only reason you can force elites to sit at the same table with you is because you have a measure of popular clout that threatens them (in this sense, there might be a middle ground, where elites are intimidated, but not scared enough to run to the arms of the State)

[4] is Parsa's argument about why people become revolutionary like Skocpol on peasants, insofar as 'increasing inequalities' are sufficient to produce revolutionary outcomes. or are these real grievances, which different State policies could have avoided? put differently, is there something specific about people's rage, that can be connected to specific government policies. or are people always ready to rebel? (alternatively, maybe 'crises' are doing most of the work in the argument? in which case the extent to which you can hold the government responsible would be in question)

the case of Iran, for example, it's not at all clear, from his narrative, that it's the fact of State intervention itself that's responsible for greater inequalities (he seems to want to indict State development strategies). in one sense (taxation policy), it seems to be the fact that the State is partial to a particular elite (big capital, rather than small traders) -- the fact that the State is unwilling to move against the wealthy (p. 66), that land reform was weak (p. 67), etc. -- which is surely independent of whether or not the State chooses to intervene. indeed, it's almost as if the State couldn't become 'autonomous enough' from certain elites

so, in short, one question is what exactly about these States --> rising inequalities/unfairness in economic benefits (can we indict State intervention in the economy?)

a second question, also, is whether any of this can explain the nature of the crises they confront. the just-so stories he tells (pp. 79-85) rest on the claim that increasing integration on the world market with specialization in a few commodities --> being prone to crises. but this is independent, we should be clear, of the fact of the State's involvement in the economy.

[5] seems at first as if the State intervention claim explains, for his schema, whether or not workers will be radical and closed to 'coalition-building' (because they won't attack capitalists).
if it is his argument, this seems insufficient. even in the examples where there is supposed to be heavy State intervention (Iran), a majority of workers are employed in the private sector (is the mechanism for his argument actually ideological, as was suggested earlier?). note also that the 50s and 60s in Philippines (p. 193) are almost the opposite argument--a lack of State intervention produces a reformist trade union movement. though this presumably has something to do with the political climate at the time?

regardless, in his reconstruction of the claims, on p. 193, it's not exactly State intervention that's doing the work -- instead, it's lack of success of moderates + repression + rise of radicals --> social revolution. is this plausible? (it partly lines up with Jeff's account)

in the Nicaragua example (182-183), two of these three things are also here (repression + lack of success of moderates)? so what needs to be explained is rise of radicals?

on the one hand this might be a State intervention claim? so the repression of the Somoza regime leads not to radical hegemony, but to a coalition with the capitalists, because workers focus on their primary antagonist, the State. in the Philippines, what's supposed to be different is the lower level of State intervention (because there's severe repression in the Philippines, too, but workers still indict capitalists), and thus the heightened level of explicit class conflict, which scares the moderates away from a coalition

but (a) what seems to be doing much more work is the longstanding strength of radical elements in the labour movement in the Philippines (vs. the much weaker position of the FSLN in Nicaragua, which wasn't supported by the trade unions until later, correct?), which cannot be best explained by conjunctural (repression) or this structural ('State-intervention') factor. this gives them the ability to refuse an alliance with 'capitalists'; (b) if not the above, perhaps strategy would be a superior way of understanding this? I understand the importance of a structural theory of strategy (to a point); but Parsa's account just doesn't sit right.

[6] worth thinking about, in the context of theories of the State, what it means for a State to 'lack' a social base. on the one hand, this history could be read as a perversion of the theory -- the State must serve society, so how you can you have a State that fails to serve society? more accurately, however, the narratives of these regimes' collapse might better be understood as a confirmation of that same argument: it is precisely the fact that these States failed to serve the social base that explains elite opposition to them, and the instability in which they found themselves (though it's not simply elite opposition, of course, that explains the social revolutions; there would be other mechanisms for elites to discipline the State, more like what happens in the Philippines)

[7] on the claim about students: it's unclear whether this is best understood as students --> radicals, or whether it should really be 'the historical context' --> radical students. the explanation on pg. 98 makes the latter seem much more plausible (a 'just-so' kind of story about student radicalism)

[8] he's not particularly alive to the passive weapons that the capitalist class wields over the State.

[9] NPA and coalition -- it's not at all clear that what's at issue is the fact that they weren't in coalition with elites. what's at issue is the fact that they were strong in rural areas and not the city (whether this is for reasons of strategy or not, is irrelevant to this point).

[10] Jeff's argument seems to have more purchase on Philippines vs. Nicaragua, which cuts against what Parsa's trying to do. the critical difference in explaining the lack of revolution is Marcos' 1985 concession. Somoza's intransigence is important to the Nicaraguan outcome. this means, also, that 'coalition' isn't the real issue -- that the FSLN was in coalition, is true, but presumably this was a tactical decision which they didn't, necessarily, need to take. could they have won, without coalition, given Somoza's intransigence?

[11] can you really measure the strength/leadership of a movement through 'newspaper reports'?

Gregorio Seltzer, the late great historian of U.S. imperialism in Latin America, described Honduras as "a county for rent" and from the 1920s on, United Fruit rented this impoverished nation of 7.2 million, transforming Honduras into the quintessential Banana Republic. During the 1980s with revolutions raging in neighboring El Salvador and Nicaragua, the CIA rented Honduras as a platform for counter-insurgency. The Nicaraguan Contras' supply lines began at Palmarola. More discreet intelligence operations were housed at Puerto Castilla where suspected insurgents were reportedly tortured, dismembered, and fed to the crocodiles.

notes from "good muslim, bad muslim" by mahmood mamdani (part III)

(71): Congo became independent on June 30, 1960. Less than two weeks later... its richest province, Katanga, seceded... Led by Moish Tshombe... trained by officers from Belgium, the former colonial power there. Katanga's mines were operated by a Belgian company... in which the Rockefellers were soon to acquire a major interest. Late in the summer of 1960, the Eisenhower administration concluded that Patrice Lumumba... was 'an African Castro' and must be eliminated... On August 18, following a National Security Council briefing, Eisenhower asked his aides whether 'we can't get rid of this guy.' (... [Belgium/US collusion to kill Lumumba]) With Lumumba out of the way, in December 1962 President Kennedy concurred with the use of UN troops to quash the Katangan rebellion. In May 1963, a grateful Kennedy welcomed Mobutu in the White House: 'General, if it hadn't been for you, ... the Communists would have taken over. (72): By the end of 1963, anti-Mobutu rebellion broke out in Kwilu, led by Pierre Mulele, a prominent Lumumbist. The rebels were poorly armed, and there was no evidence of outside involvement. But the CIA did intervene on the government's behalf... By October 1964, the CIA estimated the humber of mercenaries in Conto at more than one thousand... Washington was clear from the outset that there would by no US citizens among the mercenaries. Without American support, however, the mercenaries would have been lame. Four US C-130s with American crews transported mecenaries and their equipment across the west-east span of Congo, roughly the same distance as from Paris to Moscow.
(77): [In Angola], Washington was determined to block any possibility of the MPLA coming to powe, having identified it as a Soviety proxy... Washington's preferred option was to give covert support to the two movements that were opposed to MPLA: the Front for National Liberation of Angola (FNLA), which operated more or less as a surrogate of Congo's General Mobutu, and the Union for the Total Dependence of Angola (Unita), which had few external contacts apart from fledgling ones with apartheid South Africa.... Meanwhile, instead of fighting MPLA, FNLA and Unita took to fighting each other. Faced with an ignominious end, Kissinger opted to back a proxy invasion by regular South African forces.... South African troops entered Angola in mid-October 1975, and Cuban troops followed in early November.
(80): On February 10, 1976, the US Congress passed the Clark Amendment, prohibiting any covert aid to any side in the Angolan civil war. The next month, on March 31, the UN Security Council branded South Africa the aggressor and demanded that it compensate Angola for war damages...
(81): The Angolan fiasco reinforced the lessons of Vietnam, but those lessons provoked contradictory interpretations by the executive branch and by Congress, each asserting a different influence on post-Vietnam US foreign policy... Pulbic resistance... was echoed in Congress with the election of a host of antiwar legislators and led to a number of changes: the draft was abolished; the Pentagon's budget for special operations was cut; the CIA's paramilitary capabilities were reduced and its activities subjected to congressional oversight; and the president was required by the War Powers Act to seek congressional approval before any extended commitment of US troops overseas.... The clearest expression of this surge in antiwar sentiment was the amendment of the Freedom of Information act and the passage of the Clark Amendment. The two years and three months between the passage of the 1973 War Powers Act and the 1976 Clark Amendment marked the high point of the antiwar movement that swept the United States.
(83): Enacted in 1976, the Clark Amenment was repealed in 1985.
(87): CIA chief William J. Casey eventually took the lead in orchestrating support for terrorist and proterrorist movements around the world--from Renameo in Mozambique to Unita in Angola, and from contras in Nicaragua to the mujahideen in Afgahnistan--through third and fourth parties. In a nutshell, after defeat in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal at home, the US government decided to harness and even cultivate terrorists in the struggle against guerillas who had come to power and regimes it considered pro-Soviet.
(91): A State Department consultant who interviewed refugees and displaced persons concluded that Renamo was responsible for 95% of the instances of civilian abuse inthe war in Mozambique, including the murder of as many as ten thousand civilians.
(91): Political terror had brought a kind of war never befroe seen in Africa. The hallmark of the terror was that it targeted civilian life: blowing up infrastructure such as bridges and power stations, destroying health and educational centers, mining paths and fields, and kidnapping civilians--particularly children--to press-grang them into recruits. Terrorism distinguished itself from guerilla struggle by making civilians its preferred target. If left-wing guerillas claimed that they were like fish in water, right-wing terrorists were determined to drain the water--that is, civilian life--so as to isolate and eliminate the fish. What is now termed collateral damage was not an unfortunate by-product of the war; it was the very point of terrorism.
(95): The CIA and the Pentagon called terrorism by another name: "low-intensity conflict" (LIC). The move from counterinsurgency to low-intensity conflict signified a strategic reorientation in US war strategy...
(97): With the shift in military strategy to rollback, a clear distinction was made between counterinsurgency and low-intensity conflict: the ambition of counterinsurgency during the Vietnam era had been to defeat revolutionary insurgents; LIC aimed to undermine revolutionary governments, not just movements.
(109): Following the 1982 coup that installed Montt as dictator of Guatemala, Pat Roberston and other Christian-right leaders lobbied succssfully for the resumption of US military aid to the country. when Montt's army annihilated entire Indian villages, Gospel Outreach members defended the 'scorched earth' campaign in religious terms. One enthusiastic pastor put it: 'The army doesn't massacre the Indians. It massacres demons, and the Indians are demons possessed; they are communists.'
(110-111): Israel emerged as a significant military supplier to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua in the late seventies and early eighties after those countries were found guilty of human rights violations and the Carter administration terminated military aid to all three... As 'a quid pro quo for El Salvador's decision to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem,' Israel supplied the military regime 'with over 80% of its weaponry for the next several years, including napalm for use against the Salvadoran civilian population'... Israel moved into Nicaragua as soon as the Carter administration cut off aid: 'Israel sold Somoza 98% of the weapons he used against the Nicaraguan population' between September 1978 and his ouster the following July.
(111): Israel's military links with Iran began with the Iraq-Iran War... Retired General Aharon Yariv... told a conference at Tel Aviv University in late 1986 that 'it would be a good idea if the Iran-Iraq wars ended in a tie, but it would be even better if it continued.' Israel and the United States shared the same strategic objective: to prolong the Iraq-Iran War as long as possible. To realize that objective, each armed a different side.
(116): [In Nicaragua] When it came to the practice of terror, governments and private groups shared the same minimal objective: to put into question the ability of a government in power to ensure security of person and property for the population it claimed to represent.
(118) [In sum] The United States' embrace of terror can be plotted as a learning curve that went through three successive phases of the late cold War, from southern Africa to Central America and central Asia. Each phase can be identified with a dicstinct lesson. If the patronage of terror in the opening phase was shy, more like the benign and permissive tolerance of the practices of an aggressive regional ally--apartheid south Africa--the Unites States moved to a bold and brazen embrace of terror when it came to the counter-revolutionaries in Central America, combining it with patronage of an illict trade in cocaine as the preferred way of financing its covert operations. It was, however, in the closing phase of the Cold War that the United States came to see the embrace of terror as the means to an international public good. It did this in two ways: by privatizing and by internationalizing the main operations in the war. Whereas both tendencies were already present in US support of the contras, each truly blossomed only with the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan, which was so ideologized that it was seen less and less as a national-liberation struggle and more and more as an international crusade: a jihad.
(120-121): The revolutions of 1979 had a profound influence on the conduct of the Afghan War. The Iranian revolution led to a restructuring of relations between the United States and political Islam. Prior to it, America saw the world in rather simple terms: on one side was the Soviet Union and militant Third World nationalism, which America regarded as a Soviet tool; on the other side was political Islam, which America considered an unqualified ally in the struggle against the Soviet Union. Thus, the United States supported the Sarekat-i-Islam against Sukarno in Indonesia, the Jamaat-i-Islaami against Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in Pakistan, and the Society of Muslim Brothers against Nasser in Egypt.... Israeli intelligence allowed Hamas top operate unhindered during the first intifada--letting it open a university and bank accounts and even possibly ehelping it with funding--only to confront a stronger Hamas as the organizer of the second intifada.
(126-127): 'literally days after the Soviet invasion, Carter was on the telephone with Zia offering him hundreds of millions of dollars in economic and military aid in exchange for cooperation in helping rebels.' Zia held out for more, and the Carter-Zia relationship remained lukewarm. The real warming came with the Reagan administration, which offered Pakistan 'a huge, six-year economic and military aid package which elevated Pakistan to the third largest recipient of US foreign aid'--after Israel and Egypt.
(127-128): Historically, the tradition of 'lesser jihad' itself comprises two different--and conflicting--notions. The first is that of a just war against occupiers, whether nonbelievers or believers. There were four such just wars: Saladin's jihad against the Crusaders in the twelfth century, the Sufi jihad against enslaving aristocracies in West Africa in the seventeenth century, the Wahabi jihad against Ottoman colonizers in the Arabian peninsula in the eighteenth century, and the Mahdi's anticolonial struggle against the combination of Turko-Egyptian and British power in late nineteenth century Sudan... The second, conflicting, tradition is that of a permanent jiad against doctrinal tendencies in Islam officially considered 'heretic.' This is a tradition with little historical depth in Islam.... [T[he notion of a standing jihad--a state institution in defense of state interests--is identified less with historical Islam than with the later history of the House of Saud and the state of Saudi Arabia.
(128): The Afghan jihad was in reality an American jihad, but it became that fully only with Reagan's second term in office. In March 1985, Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 166, authorizing 'stepped-up covert military aid to the mujahideen, and it made clear that the secret Afghan war had a new goal: to defeat troops in Afghanistan through covert action and encourage a Soviet withdrawal.' The redefined war was taken over by CIA chief William Casey, who undertook three significant measures in 1986. The first was to convince Congress to step up American involvement by providing the mujahideen with American advissers and American-made Stinger antiaircraft missiles. The second was to expand the Islamic guerilla war from Afghanistan into the Soviet republics of Tajikisan and Uzbekistan, a decision reversed when the Soviet Union threatened to attack Pakistan in retaliation. The thrid was to step up the recruitment of radical Islamists from around the world to come train in Pakistan and fight alongside the mujahideen.
(131): Beyond the front-line proxy states and their intelligence agencies, increasingly the intermediaries were private institutions, both religious and secular. The overall effect was progressively to privatize the war on an international basis. From this dynamic emerged the forces that carried out the operation we know as 9/11.
(132): The numbers recruited and trained were impressive by any reckoning: the estimate of foreign radicals 'directly influenced by the Afghan jihad' is upwards of one hundred thousand.
(133): Though Osama bin Laden had been a student of Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, the first Afghan-Arab gatekeeper of the jihad in the mid-eighties, a break between Azzam and bin Laden came twoards the end of the Afghan jihad. The parting of the ways was the result of a disagreement in 1989 over the future of the jihad: bin Laden 'envisioned an all-Arab legion, which eventually could be used to wage jihad in Saudi Arabia and Egypt,' whereas Azzam 'strongly opposed making war against fellow Muslims.' Soon after, Azzam and two of his sons were blown up by a car bomb as they were driving to a mosque in Peshawar. A meeting was held toward the end of 1989 in the town of Khost to decide on the future of the jihad... [A] new organization was created in the meeting[:]... al-Qaeda, 'the Base.'

(134): [T]he Tablighi Jamaat, with headquarters in Pakistan and branches all over the world, [was] founded in 1926 by a Muslim scholar, Maulana Mohammad Ilyas, to 'purify' borderline Muslims 'who had retained many of the customs and religious practices from their Hindu past.

nicaragua's sandinista government:
"For a party with a socialist mission like the Sandinista Front, our situation is very complex and contradictory. The party holds the presidency and has the most political sympathizers in Nicaragua. However, it is still a minority in other state powers, and faces an opposition that is trying to unite and jointly oppose it. This party, now in power, has to administer a country where capitalist economy dominates and must govern a society whose hegemonic values are liberal and neo-liberal. Its strategy implies defending revolutionary measures of the government and acting as a party opposed to the capitalist system now in force."
(...) But how can we Sandinistas contest capitalist "hegemonic values"? In Venezuela, repeated popular mobilizations turned back the right-wing assault. Can Nicaragua follow a similar path?

notes on the G8 and ALBA:
Economically the G8 countries are still very significant: although they represent under 14 % of the world population, they account for nearly two-thirds of the world's economic output measured by gross domestic product. In fact, Russia is the only G8 country not in the World Bank's 2006 listing of the top ten economies, coming in at number 14. Significantly, the Peoples Republic of China and Brazil are in the top ten (numbers 4 and 10 respectively), and even India at number 12 outranks Russia.
(...) These "Bolivarian" principles draw their inspiration from Simon Bolivar, the symbol of Latin American independence: they are based on cooperation and complementarity, national sovereignty, resource transfer and redistribution, and support for small farmers, cooperatives, family, and small-scale producers. For example, the first Peoples Trade Agreement (TCP) signed between Cuba and Venezuela in December 2004 facilitates the exchange of medical resources and petroleum between both nations: Venezuela delivers about 96,000 barrels of low-cost oil per day from its state-owned petroleum operations to Cuba and Cuba, in exchange, sent 20,000 state-employed medical staff and thousands of teachers to Venezuela's slums.
(...) While the ALBA is the anti-thesis of the FTAA, the Washington Consensus or economic domination by the G8, there are still problems with its orientation, not least that it is being driven by the personal vision of Chavez and the oil wealth of Venezuela. In so far as the ALBA is an anti-imperialist project, it is a great success but to the extent that it is anti-capitalist, (or, to put it another was, an experiment in socialism for the 21st century) it is still largely oriented towards large scale projects, industrialization and resource extraction -- such as the controversial proposal for an 8,000km pipeline to carry gas from Venezuela, across the Amazon, to the South - albeit in an anti-imperialist frame.

pesticides in central america:
Many had spent their lives toiling on banana plantations that U.S. companies operated in this region some 30 years ago. By day, the workers had harvested bunches of fruit to ship to North American tables. At night, some had sprayed pesticide into the warm, humid air to protect the trees from insects and rot.
(...) The U.S. firms that sold and used the pesticide have never faced a U.S. jury trial over its use abroad. Last month, a Los Angeles attorney named Juan J. Dominguez stood before a sea of nearly 800 dark, hard faces and predicted that the day of reckoning was at hand. "We are fighting multinational corporations. They are giants. And they are going to fall!" Dominguez thundered. The crowd exploded. They leapt to their feet, waved their hats, shook fists in the air. "Viva! Viva!" they chanted.
(...) Chaney linked Dominguez's case with four other pending lawsuits in Los Angeles involving sterility claims on behalf of more than 3,000 former banana workers from Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala and Panama. In addition to Dow and Dole, Del Monte Fresh Produce Inc., Chiquita Brands Inc. and Shell Oil Co. are named as defendants in those cases.
(...) Dominguez and Miller filed legal briefs citing old corporate documents which, they said, showed that Dole officials were aware of the dangers. In a 1978 memo, a top Dole official warned that implementing all the procedures in a guide for safe use of DBCP was "well nigh impossible."
(...) Dominguez has registered about 12,000 clients in Nicaragua alone. Worldwide, the number of possible clients is estimated to be hundreds of thousands.
(...) The region around Chinandega has long been dominated by agriculture, producing cotton, sugar cane and other crops. For decades, growers -- from both the United States and Nicaragua -- sprayed DDT, DBCP and other highly toxic pesticides, many linked to developmental or health problems.
(...) "Those bananas weren't for us," she said. "But so many of us have died."

excellent article on venezuela:
RCTV, together with three other private media corporations (Globovision, Venevision and Televen), which together control some 90% of the TV market, played a leading role in instigating and supporting the 47-hour coup. These private stations, owned by anti-Chavez billionaires and businessmen, have led an unceasing anti-Chavez campaign since the day he was elected. During the coup, they cooperated in suppressing any news that might portray the putsch in a bad light. So, for example, when hundreds of thousands of Chavez supporters took to the streets on April 13 demanding that Chavez be restored, the corporate media stations chose to ignore them and instead broadcast old movies and cartoons.
(...) Another example of blatant falsification from the corporate media stations occurred during the protests in the run-up to the coup. The media channels showed footage of Chavistas shooting from a bridge at unseen targets off the screen, and repeatedly claimed that they were firing at "unarmed opposition demonstrators" (without showing any actual footage of these "unarmed demonstrators", of course). In fact, those protestors on the bridge were themselves being shot at from nearby buildings and there were no "unarmed demonstrators" nearby for them to shoot at.
(...) Could you even imagine a situation whereby CNN or FOX News openly supported an armed putsch against the U.S. government and over four years later were still permitted to broadcast over the public airways, with basically the same people in charge? The very idea is laughable.
(...) The editors of Media Lens, a British-based media watchdog, have detailed at length the ridicule and scorn poured on Chavez by the mainstream press. They point out that the media finds itself unable to mention Chavez without prefixing his name with either "strongman" , "controversial left-wing president" , "extreme left-winger" , "controversial leader" , "outspoken" , "aggressively populist", "left-wing firebrand" , "international revolutionary firebrand" , "maverick" , "virulently anti-American" , etc. etc.
(...) Can you imagine The Guardian or the BBC introducing Tony Blair as "controversial leader Tony Blair", or George Bush as "virulently anti-Venezuelan George Bush"?
(...) For more on the "cartoonisation", ridicule and smearing of Chavez by the mainstream British press (including what John Pilger called "one of the worst, most distorted pieces of journalism I have ever seen"), see here, here, here and here.
(...) [a labor mp:] That was a novel place for Venezuela, because it had previously attracted little interest in terms of its history or politics, other than as the birthplace of Simon Bolivar, although that is fairly important. According to people to whom I spoke at the Foreign Office, Venezuela was never considered an attractive diplomatic posting. The usual take was that Venezuela was an oil-rich country run by a white, Americanised elite, with nearly 70 per cent. of its 24 million people living on the edge of hunger and poverty...
(...) Given Opposition and US claims about Chavez's democratic legitimacy, it is interesting to note that he had faced the electorate eight times in six years by the end of 2004—a record that has been matched nowhere else in Latin America and which none of us would like to match...
(...) The domestic impact of Chavez's politics is clear. After the dramatic rise in oil prices in 2002 following the failed coup, the Venezuelan Government invested more than $3 billion in social policy reforms in 2005. A series of social investment programmes called missions cover such matters as pre-school education, primary education and literacy, secondary education, vocational worker training, primary health care in the most deprived neighbourhoods and a food distribution programme that covers 60 per cent. of the population. It is estimated that just over 1 million people have acquired literacy skills as a result of those programmes. The poorest in that country have access to medical assistance for the first time ever, thanks partly to the 17,000 medics provided by Cuba."
(...) [article begins again] That the U.S. knew about the April 2002 coup weeks in advance and gave it the go-ahead is also deemed unworthy of mention.
(...) e's referring to Chavez' comparison of Bush to Hitler, of course, and not to any of the many examples of similarly overblown Western rhetoric:

Rumsfeld likens Venezuela’s Chavez to Hitler
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11159503/

Robertson apologizes for assassination call
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/08/24/robertson.chavez/

Germany likens Ahmadinejad to Hitler
http://archive.gulfnews.com/indepth/irancrisis/more_stories/10016391.html

Newt Gingrich: Iran’s President is the New Hitler
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/1/25/100038.shtml

Israel should not shy away from threatening to kill Iran's Ahmadinejad
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3390265,00.html

Sen. Voinovich: Ahmadinejad 'Hitler-like'
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/9/19/135836.shtml

Ahmadinejad – Another Hitler
http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/20345.html

Olmert compares Ahmadinejad to Hitler
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3245121,00.html

(...) To give just one example of the brutality inflicted upon the people of Nicaragua by the U.S.-backed Contra death squads, an American priest living in Nicaragua described 'the Contras going into a town, shooting it up, killing people, taking a fourteen-year-old girl, raping her, slitting her throat, cutting her head off and putting it on a pole to intimidate the rest of the population.'

immigration numbers:
When we think of immigrants, we generally picture people from poor countries moving to rich ones. But only about a third of the 200 million people who comprise the global migrant populace moves from developing to wealthier nations. Another third moves between developing nations, and the remainder moves from wealthier nations to developing nations.
(...) Of the many forces that drive individual immigration from developing countries, neoliberal capitalist policies are among the most significant. They have disrupted traditional and protected economies in nations like Mexico and Guatemala. “Free-trade” agreements like NAFTA (and the impending DR-CAFTA) have lowered tariffs and abolished the government subsidy and welfare programs that have sustained the campesino classes of these nations for generations. Absorption into the competition of the “world market”—dominated by heavily subsidized American agricultural corporations—has led to the clearing of indigenous peoples from their land at a rate that reproduces the Cherokee “Trail of Tears” weekly. Displacement in rural regions is matched by urban out-migration, as the “Wal-Martization” of the economy accelerates the rate of deindustrialization.
(...) Overall, the undertow of “economic restructuring” pushes about a million workers a year to risk unauthorized migration across reinforced borders.
(...) Ironically, these same policies make national boundaries increasingly irrelevant for migration in the reverse direction. During the last decade, according to U.S. State Department estimates, the number of Americans living in Mexico has soared from 200,000 to 1 million—a quarter of all U.S. expatriates. But we don’t call these people “immigrants.” They are “retirees.” They are the “managers” and “technicians” in the maquiladoras. They are the “commuters”—the working poor of the United States, gentrified out of inflated housing markets like San Diego and seeking refuge in more affordable Tijuana.
(...) José arrived at the pick-up spot this morning, but others have been waiting here for weeks. Some are among the approximately 850,000 Mexicans who, according to the Mexican Interior Ministry, try crossing each year, get caught, and are deported. Most will try again, because about 350,000 Mexicans do successfully make it to their destinations each year. And about 500,000 people from Mexico and farther south do find work in the U.S. each year.
(...) Since 1994, the U.S. enforcement strategy has been two-pronged: criminalize the immigrants and militarize the borders. The U.S. has choked off traditional urban crossing points by building double and triple walls, increased the number of agents, and introduced military technology and personnel into routine activities. This policy has made the journey more dangerous by pushing crossing points into remote, hazardous regions in desert and mountainous terrain, or into the equally dangerous underworld of human smuggling—through ports of entry as container cargo. Funding for border enforcement has increased from $1.3 billion in 1994 to $7.3 billion in 2005, and the yearly death toll during that period has mushroomed from 23 to 473.
(...) In all, more than 4,000 men, women, and children have died in the act of looking for work in the U.S. But the rate of unauthorized crossings has not slowed.
(...) During the past year, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) has issued 3,667 “administrative violations,” which generally involve the apprehension of undocumented immigrants at work sites—up from 485 in 2002.
(...) Another 24,000 people were picked up separately during Operation “Return to Sender.” Although it was theoretically a plan to arrest those with criminal records, two thirds of those apprehended in this operation had committed no crimes at all but were detained as “collateral arrests.”
(...) At least 25,000 undocumented migrants are imprisoned in more than 200 immigrant detention centers across the country. But there is still an overflow. So detainees en route to deportation hearings are routinely housed in local and state prisons, integrated into the general population there, and subjected to a host of foreseeable problems. Since 1995, about 1.5 million people have been ejected from the U.S. through this process.
(...) Deportations have tragic consequences for families. They separate parents from children, husbands from wives, and same-sex partners from each other. An estimated 5 million children in the United States—at least 3.1 million of them U.S.-born citizens—have parents who are undocumented immigrants.
(...) Deported parents, hoping that they can soon return, commonly leave citizen children with relatives. But current immigration law dictates that if an undocumented person is deported or leaves the country voluntarily, he or she cannot re-enter the United States for 10 years. Worse, anti-immigrant opponents have proposed legislation to deny “birthright citizenship,” so that the children of undocumented migrants born in the U.S. would be denied the right to citizenship that has historically been granted by the Constitution to all people born in the United States.
(...) In 2006, 570 immigrant bills were introduced in 32 states, mostly to implement such restrictions. Local governments have enacted restrictions on renting or providing services to migrants without proof of residency, passed “English-only” ordinances, and empowered local police to check immigration status as part of their normal routine.
(...) Despite the virtually open borders for the migration of American capital and people into Mexico (90 percent of the 2,000 foreign-owned firms in Mexico are U.S.-based), many layers of obstruction prevent Mexicans from obtaining authorization to work in the north. For one, displaced laborers or subsistence farmers like José are categorized as “unskilled,” and the U.S. distributes only about 5,000 visas each year for unskilled workers globally. In 2005, only two of those went to Mexicans.

falwell, robertson, and fundamentalisms:
Falwell's flock didn't laugh. They nodded. He talked of "the evil men, those who deny the existence of God, thus have no authority, no code of ethics." They stared. "One hundred 42 million have died as a result of Marxist Leninism," he reported, "because men do not know the principles of truth and have been seduced by the "evil man." He smirked. "I think of Fidel Castro in Cuba. Castro is nothing but the stooge of Brezhnev, exporting revolution through Nicaragua." Thus, he warned, Satan has "come dangerously close to our borders."
(...) Falwell also opined: "the Antichrist is probably a Jewish man alive today." Anti Semitic? No way, says Falwell who backs Israel -- especially Israel's attempts to enlarge its borders.
(...) He shares his pro-Israel and anti-Semitic penchant with fellow televangelist Pat Robertson. International Jewish bankers conspire to overthrow the U.S. government, claimed Robertson in his book, The New World Order. Robertson who founded and hosts the Television Christian Broadcasting Network's "700 Club" accused Jews and Freemasons of plotting to use occult finance to control Christians.
(...) After all, the theological progeny of Falwell and Robertson decided recent elections. Logically their elite members populate the Bush government; political payback and ideological obeisance. For the more desperate of these zealous Christians, Bush has less than two years to deliver Armageddon and of course The Rapture. Falwell and Robertson turned out their massive and programmed flock to canvas. They turned out millions of voters to vote the way Jesus would have voted.

from envio, january 2002:
[trickle down] The most defined feature of the new government’s economic design is that the motor force of economic growth during its five-year term will be large-scale foreign investment, followed by national private business investment. This growth strategy is based on the very traditional idea that the benefits of the big investments will trickle down to the others.
(...) These two investments reflect the new government’s priority areas: tourism and the assembly plants known as maquiladoras, which process imported materials for re-export and are exempt from import and export taxes. The latter will be given particular priority because this type of operation seems to be of greatest interest to the investors currently sniffing around.
(...) [employment] With all polls showing unemployment as the social problem most affecting the population over the past decade, Bolaños’ campaign promise to create new jobs sparked particularly high expectations. Like its predecessor, the current government is counting on the maquila industrial parks—commonly referred to as free zones—as the quickest way to mass-create the longed-for jobs. Indeed, when Alemán took office, around eight thousand people were employed in the maquiladoras; today, according to the Central Bank, that figure has climbed to nearly forty thousand. Nonetheless, his seemingly exclusive reliance on big investors is questionable considering that small urban and rural businesses still provide the bulk of Nicaragua’s jobs and the government has no clear plan for this sector.
(...) Bolaños is offering investors two advantages. The first is competitive prices—"starting with the cost of our labor force," to use his words. The second is security, at least compared to most of the other Central American countries vying for tourists and maquila investors. In his opening speech at the investment forum, Bolaños told the audience that "Nicaragua is a safe country, its people very warm and welcoming. We have one of the lowest crime rates in Latin America, and the public safety we can offer today is the envy of our neighbors north and south. There are no kidnappings or violent crimes against tourists or investors here, and the tourists who come don’t have to listen to special instructions about security beyond the dictates of common sense."
(...) [the future of agriculture?] The most noteworthy aspect of this government’s economic strategy is that agriculture, for nearly two hundred years the kingpin of the national economy and the source of the new President’s own wealth, has been left in the dust. It seems to be viewed as a problem rather than a solution, a sector that drags on the economy rather than driving it forward.
(...) [credit] In Nicaragua, private commercial banks do not work with the rural productive sectors. The bulk of their credit portfolios is dedicated to financing consumption. An individual can easily get a loan to buy one of the plethora of luxury 4-wheel-drive vehicles clogging Managua streets today, but faces often insurmountable obstacles when applying for a loan to plant papayas for export. Around five years ago, the World Bank set up a program to extend private banking services to the countryside, providing a US$30,000 subsidy to the banks for each branch they opened in rural areas. The banks jumped at the offer, but did precisely the opposite of what the World Bank intended: they used these branches to attract the savings of the rural population and thus increase their capacity to finance consumer loans in the cities, providing no credits for any rural productive activities.
(...) [strategy for poverty] If very few resources have been invested in the productive sector in the past decade, the Poverty Reduction Strategy, now an official World Bank-approved document that the new government is committed to implement, does not appear particularly concerned with production either, mentioning it only in very general terms. The strategy’s main objective is to create a social safety net that will use subsidies to alleviate (not reduce) the poverty of the most vulnerable population. The strategy does not propose incorporating the poor into the national economic project. Based on a very traditional mentality, it assumes that the poor will automatically be pulled in as the large, modern sector of the economy grows.
(...) [on GDP] In 1990, the annual per capita GDP was equivalent to US$454. Today it is US$484. In other words, eleven years after the war, during which Nicaragua has been receiving an annual average of US$500 million in foreign cooperation, the income of each Nicaraguan has only grown US$30! If that is not shocking enough, it must be remembered that this figure only expresses a mathematic or artificial reality, homogenizing the head count of not only both babies and the retired, but also the very rich and the very poor. It in no way reflects real income distribution, which is profoundly inequitable in Nicaragua and becoming more skewed with every passing day.
(...) [poverty] International analysts calculate that a country’s economy must grow at least 7% a year to effectively reduce that country’s poverty. During the reactivation period of the past seven years, Nicaragua’s economy grew an average of 4.5% annually.

from envio, september 1992:
Everyone recognizes that this poor showing is primarily due to the country's high degree of instability, but not all sectors agree on what causes that instability. The government and the right wing lay the blame on rebellious Sandinista workers and armed rural groups of impatient and battle-hungry former soldiers. But they do not admit that behind these rebellions lies the government's own economic plan, which is driving these sectors to desperation.
(...) [investment] Some say that foreign investment is good in and of itself: the capital it brings to the country can help in times of crisis of domestic capital; it offers new jobs; and it can bring new technology. But the history of Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast demonstrates the weakness of these criteria. For many years, the coast was at the mercy of foreign companies that exploited the region's natural resources, plowing nothing back into the local economy, then simply picked up and left when the resources were exhausted.
(...) Governments want to attract investment because it will supposedly bring foreign exchange into the country. But this is not guaranteed unless the government takes care to do so: in many cases, investors simply borrow money from the recipient country to build or buy their assets. In addition, there should be control over the repatriation of capital. Nicaragua's law—which curiously only applies to those who choose to accept the rights and obligations it stipulates—allows capital repatriation after three years.
(...) What would be a good investment? On the one hand, raw materials extracted from Nicaragua should not be exported as such; the industry that processes those materials and increases their value should also be located in Nicaragua. And industry, on the other hand, should acquire the majority of its inputs from raw materials produced or extracted in Nicaragua. Instead of operating in isolated enclaves, such integration of economic processes, from raw material extraction to industrial processing, would tie each individual production process into others, producing a multiplier effect in the economy. This means, for example, that cotton itself should not be exported, but that cloth, thread and even clothing should be produced here and exported; and an industry that produces clothing should not import cloth or cotton but purchase its inputs from local producers.
(...) [on a violent culture?] Instability is not caused by those who protest; protest is a predictable response to instability. If the government and big business insist on blaming the Sandinistas for the results of their own policies, they should be more accurate: the FSLN played an important role in heightening the people's capacity to protest in an effective organized fashion. Since Nicaraguan officials often cite Chile as this government's model for economic policy and growth, perhaps they see the "problem" in attracting investment here as simply the lack of an ironhanded Pinochet.
(...) [FTZ at this time] the cost of renting space in the zone is cheaper here than in Honduras; workers' wages are much lower here than in Costa Rica; and Nicaraguan workers have a reputation for being more productive than either Honduran or Costa Rican workers. Zamora also mentioned that problems with electric power in the Dominican Republic are even greater than in Nicaragua. ... The six existing companies together occupy 25,000 square meters, almost all the space currently available. Only 26% of the 57-hectare industrial park has been constructed. New construction and remodeling, which will be undertaken with a $7.6 million loan from the Inter-American Economic Integration Bank, will bring the total to about 35%. The National Penitentiary System, says Zamora, has agreed to abandon the 8,600 square meters within the zone that it is currently using as a prison by the middle of this year.
(...) This means that maquila industry, as a whole, has very contradictory consequences—it can offer jobs where there are none, yet, by nature, it works against any improvement in workers' wages. The Costa Rican example also demonstrates how easily it can pack up and move on if it gets better "advantages" elsewhere.
In addition, investors in maquila prefer authoritarian governments where there are no unions or they have no power. None of the three private companies in the Free Trade zone has a union. Though Latino said that he would accept any "reasonable" workers' organization in Crecen, he had previously referred to workers interested in forming a union as "rebels," who, according to him, "left on their own."
(...) [skills] Zamora also claims that maquila plants will bring free worker training in new technologies and the transfer of technology to Nicaragua. This, however, is a somewhat absurd assertion. Maquila plants by definition only do piecework—one small part of an assembly process—in the host country. If workers learn a new skill, it is one with very limited use, as is any new technology that an industry would import.
(...) [question of integration] Zamora also asserts that over time there will be "vertical integration" with the local economy, that is, that the maquila plants will begin to purchase some part of their inputs from the domestic market. But while this is true in a few cases, there is no vertical integration in the vast majority. Purchasing inputs from the local economy could interfere with mobility, and the very nature of maquila plants is that they are highly mobile enterprises. If conditions suddenly look better in another country, it is easy to move. The kinds of conditions that could encourage such a move include rising wages, active unions or effective worker health and safety laws—conditions to which we would hope Nicaragua aspires. Because of the "attraction" to investors of conditions that could include a dangerous work place or the abuse of workers' rights, many activists are fighting internationally for a "social charter" that would make it more difficult for transnationals to compete "on the backs of the workers."
(...) [the various development plans] Using Chile as its model, the Nicaraguan government's priorities, according to Ramírez, lay in agroindustry and the industrialization of natural resources, such as canning fish and processing lumber into plywood or furniture. Other investments, he says, such as in tourism, transportation and maquila, are complementary but not strategic. The government's priorities, therefore, appear to fall precisely in line with "good investment" as described above. But this is contradicted by a document called "Basic Information for the Investor," written by Ramírez' office. It specifically says that "the highest priority is placed on investments in nontraditional agricultural exports," which are not likely to further the country's industrialization and development. While the director of Nicaragua's Non-traditionals Commission, Alvaro Velásquez, told envío of his hopes for establishing plants for making and canning fruit juices, the most common nontraditional crops grown in Central America—such as melons, snow peas and broccoli—involve no industrial processing whatsoever. In addition, while crop diversification in itself is clearly not a bad thing, nontraditional agriculture generally brings with it excessive agrochemical use, with all the health and environmental consequences that generates, as well as significant economic risks, and should hardly be Nicaragua's top investment priority. The November 1991 preliminary version of another Ministry of Economy (MEDE) publication, "General Guidelines for a National Development Strategy 1991-2000," states that development would be based on both natural resource processing and "production processes not integrated at the local level, which form part of multinational production chains and make intensive use of national labor," in other words, maquila industries.

from envio, september 1999:
The major source of employment nationwide, the maquila is said to have already created 110,000 jobs, with the possibility of more in the future. As in other countries, the majority of this labor force, approximately 85%, is female and between the ages of 13 and 34. In order to better understand this “world,” we spent time with young maquila workers (14-24 years old) from La Lima and El Progreso. Some of them live in the city and others in the countryside.
(...) [liberation thesis?] Many young people from both urban and rural settings dream of the day they will reach legal age and be able to work in a factory. Provoked by impatience, in many cases brought about by acute economic need, but also by a fascination—especially among young women—with the factory world, many of them find ways to get around the age requirements. There are 14-year-olds who work under false identities, for example. For these young women, the factory is the door to a whole new world. It offers them the opportunity for new experiences and adventures free of parental control—a novelty not permitted them within the family structure. “Female children are subject to stricter controls than male children. My father always says that women belong in the home, and men belong in the streets.”
(...) [internalizing stratification] The plants are organized either by modules or by classic assembly lines. Both systems strive for the highest productivity, which is measured by production targets. In the factory, a worker's value is determined by her or his capacity to produce. “Tell me how much you produce and I'll tell you what you're worth.” In the same vein, operators who reach or come closest to the production targets get better pay, in accordance with an incentive system. (...) Both organizational models create conflict and animosity among the workers, who unconsciously begin to internalize capitalist ideology: “What matters is production, not people.” A woman who doesn't keep up with the rhythm of her production line or module is often pressured by co-workers to leave the group, and in some cases, to leave the factory.
(...) [authority] Very few dare to contradict or answer back a boss, because, as at home, they are used to submitting to parental authority, and the boss is like a parent. The supervisor, on the other hand, plays a role more like that of a big sister. The women recognize that she has a certain amount of authority, but when all is said and done, she's just another “daughter,” so they have the right to question and even buck her. In other words, they experience the factory as a larger version of the home environment, where they are merely “daughters of the house” who have no choice but to accept parental controls unquestioningly. And just like at home, they have their ways of mocking authority and are punished when they get caught.
(...) A culture of fear permeates the maquila environment. Most workers are afraid to stand up to authority, and since the weight of authority is so strongly felt in the factory, they are afraid to seek the help they need to defend their rights. “Why make trouble with the bosses?” is a common response to problems in the workplace, as is “If they don't want to give me anything, just forget it, let them use it to buy altar candles.”
(...) For some of the women, the most important thing they get from working in the factory is economic independence. They are proud of no longer being a burden on their parents and happily acknowledge that the maquila has helped them remain single. “If we had stayed at home, we'd be married and have children by now,” explains one, “because young women who stay alone in the house all day have a lot of time for foolish thoughts.”
(...) The incorporation of youth—both male and female—into assembly plant work has also brought changes to the communities, especially in the countryside. The most noticeable change is the increase in rural-to-urban migration. Once young people leave the peasant world, they usually don't want to return, and even become magnets that attract other relatives and friends to the city. “I'll never go back to live in the country, because we're better off here. We can help our parents more by staying here, too, because every month we send them money. When our other sister is old enough, we're going to bring her here, and among the three of us we can help out more.”
(...) [a new consciousness?] If many of the young women are still short on a sense of nation, development and their place in all this as a class, they do seem to be developing a new sense of themselves in gender terms. The factory is a place where all kinds of women come together, where one finds a wide range of human, particularly female, experience. The convergence of this diversity combined with economic independence might just create the mold for a different model of womanhood in countries like ours. If this is so, it will take a form we cannot yet imagine, at least not here in Honduras, where themaquilaphenomenon is a couple of decades younger than, say, in Mexico, and where women have not had a revolution that began breaking old molds, as they have in neighboring Nicaragua. ... It's a tremendous paradox: at the end of the day, will the maquila’s greatest contribution to Honduras' development be the unfolding of a new gender consciousness among women?

from envio, september 1997:
This exploitation is possible because of the high national unemployment level together with the competition among businesses and countries to produce more at a lower cost. This combines with the state's compliance toward foreign maquila investment as an immediate solution to social problems, ideological defense of the maquilas by the national owners of the industrial parks and the constant threat by the foreign investors that they will fly with their business to more favorable countries—which is why they are called "swallows."
(...) Despite the obvious exploitation, the people who benefit from the workers' wages, and the workers themselves, are satisfied with this source of work. In Christian reflection groups it is not rare to hear prayers thanking God for the arrival of a new factory, and even the greatest critics recognize that it is better to be exploited than unemployed.

[note: not very critical article in general, and exclusively about honduras]

from envio, july 2003:
[on urbanization]: The invasion of trans-national companies stimulates migratory movement in various ways. To be more competitive, landowners in poor countries acquire more land, mechanize agricultural work, introduce high-yield seed varieties and apply industrially produced inputs. All of these transnational-inspired novelties make a large part of rural labor redundant and also leave small producers at a disadvantage by reducing the prices of agricultural production. Those displaced seek employment in other areas of the country as well as abroad.
(...) This growing outflow of people from our countryside is considerably reducing the rural population’s overall weight and is a symptom of well-known changes caused by various factors, of which rural unemployment, most recently aggravated by the coffee crisis, is undoubtedly the most drastic.
(...) The penetration of transnational companies and their methods into rural areas undermines the peasant economy’s structures, which are based on reciprocity and established roles, replacing them with a labor market rooted in more individualistic conceptions and private profit, cultural features that trigger the uprooting of peasant populations. The increasing monetization of the economy tends to bring about the disappearance of the traditional institutions based on family networks and community solidarity that have provided the social infrastructure for many other exchanges. Wages as the exclusive mediator of all labor purchases erodes such rural institutions as the practice of bartering for services with no monetary exchange involved. Although this deterioration of the peasant economy’s structures is perhaps not quite so attributable to the transnationals in Nicaragua’s case, it is already palpable.
(...) [free trade zones´ role in this] Some of the maquilas and other foreign companies also produce goods that compete with those manufactured by local industry while familiarizing their workers with certain goods not within their financial reach. In short, these companies displace labor while at the same time whetting the national appetite for a new range of consumer goods. The result is an uprooted population group prone to migrate because it cannot attain the living standard to which it aspires and ideological links have been forged with the places from which the capital originated.
(...) [education as path to mobility] The 2001 living standards survey conducted by Nicaragua’s National Institute of Statistics and Censuses contains figures on almost 900 emigrants, provided by relatives responding to the census. Of the 52 who are university graduates, only 25% are working abroad in jobs that correspond to their professional qualifications. Another 13.5% work as waiters, cooks, nannies and above all salespeople; 19% work as carpenters, cabinetmakers, painters, mechanics, electricians and particularly foremen; and 21% as menial workers, domestics, doormen, launderers, agricultural laborers, security guards and unskilled construction workers.

from envio, july 2005:
[stability with pillage] Violeta Chamorro’s government liquidated almost all of the state-run industrial and agricultural companies, even selling off the railway system’s trains and tracks for scrap metal, paying people to rip up the rails. Arnoldo Alemán’s government sold off the state electricity and telephone companies at derisory prices and pillaged the public coffers. And Enrique Bolaños’ government’s budgetary priority is to pay local bankers usurious interest on the treasury bonds issued to cover the enormous fraud perpetrated by the owners of five bankrupt banks. US, Canadian, European and Taiwanese companies conduct a permanent pillage of our national wealth—timber, minerals, and fishing and water resources—while rewarding their workers with miserable wages. The rich don’t pay taxes. And ministers, magistrates, legislators and top public officials from all state branches earn the kind of salaries more associated with developed countries. Yet while all of this has been going on—and it still is—the three governments have enjoyed relative social stability. The reasons for such passivity are complex, interwoven and particular to this country.
(...) [on being organic] They played a leading role in at least two general strikes and several other specific strikes with great national impact. In the words of former CST leader Miguel Ruiz, “We stood up for the Sandinista Front,” which had not managed to put its party-government phase behind it and transform itself into an opposition party and was in the midst of a heated ideological battle between “renovators” and the “orthodox” over its identity and methods of struggle.
(...) [autonomy?] Up until 1997—marked by a failed national strike and roadblocks in April and May—these organizations were the Sandinista movement’s main political arm when it came to defending grassroots interests and maintaining its power bases. A year later, they were practically demobilized as a result of the first pact between Daniel Ortega and Arnoldo Alemán. Beyond their current numbers, what is most striking about all of these organizations is that most still operate according to basically the same model under which they were created. They still act as FSLN “intermediaries” and have leaders who respond to the political interests of the party leadership.
(...) [NGOization] While they do help palliate state deficiencies in areas such as health, education and housing, they have also acted as retaining walls against grassroots discontent towards the government and the system, as people tend to wait for outside charity rather than fight for their rights. Many of these organizations use attractive salaries in dollars and other benefits to contract officials, supposedly to promote citizens’ participation or stimulate grassroots organization. In this way, they turn activists into either professionals or simply employees who obey their bosses’ orders. ... And when it comes to organizing, NGOs very often tend to presume to represent their beneficiaries—or “target population,” as they like to call them—without even consulting them about the decisions being made in their name or their particular political position on any given matter.
(...) [autonomy again?] Above all, the union organizations have been subject to a phenomenon born of their own experience: their leaders on all levels no longer accept party control and have achieved an appreciable degree of autonomy in their protest actions. The most important examples are ANDEN and FETSALUD, each of which launched its own union struggles, including strikes, against the wishes of an important sector of the Sandinista leadership known as the Businesspeople’s Bloc. And each won its struggle, turning a deaf ear to the siren’s song of “governability” from legislators such as Bayardo Arce and prominent figures like Manuel Coronel Kautz. One FETSALUD leader privately said some months ago that “the sin lies not in the fact that we [FETSALUD leaders] are Sandinista activists, but rather that some of us place the dominant interests of the FSLN over and above those of our members.” This phenomenon of autonomy has also occurred among transport cooperatives, which have now turned into powerful businesses. In this case, autonomy has even led them to face off against other sectors of the FSLN, particularly those linked to grassroots organizations.
(...) [part of systematicity: creation of a political class] As a result, they do not exercise control of the business of politics. The political class, meanwhile, consolidates this false popular belief by concealing information and offering half truths to neutralize the people’s social and political awareness, even putting the brakes on any possibility of autonomous organization. Deep down, the political class knows that an aware and organized people would endanger its own privileges.
(...) [and the sandinistas, in this] This contradiction extends to the party’s whole national leadership, which has succumbed to the ferocious laws of the market in which honesty, the vocation for service and personal integrity are disposable merchandise.
(...) [to a more organic future] All of this has generated a profound crisis in the current model of representative democracy, and makes finding a path to participatory democracy more urgent than ever. Núñez sustains that “the political parties, union organizations and social movements have to redeem politics and participate in a new way of doing it. Depoliticization is suicide... Political participation without social and economic participation is an illusion. Political democracy without economic democracy is not enough. The workers have to take the economy and the market.”
(...) [ftz in context] In a country plagued by maquiladora assembly plants with ruthless and despotic owners and managers protected by the state itself, workers prefer to put up and shut up. Most have accepted the confiscation of their right to organize in a union. In this context, the few cases of total rebellion—particularly in Managua’s Las Mercedes Free Trade Zone—stand out more as exceptions than as examples.
(...) Although there is no reliable census, the number of Nicaraguans resident abroad is between 1.2 million and 1.5 million, or around one in every four Nicaraguans. Of these, from 50% to 60% send home money to maintain their families, while the rest have either completely broken their ties or have brought their families over to join them. Calculating an average of five people in each family nucleus, some 700,000 to 900,000 Nicaraguans are living off family remittances.
(...) [social movements combating systematicity] Among the most significant are the peasant marches against hunger and for land, carried out by thousands of families. In two consecutive years, 2003 and 2004, they marched on Managua from the mountains of Matagalpa and Jinotega, forcing the government to negotiate and agree to many of their demands. ... The thousands of victims of Nemagón and other pesticides used for years on banana plantations in the west of the country have provided another example of impressive mobilization. ... Teachers also achieved an overwhelming success with their national strike at the beginning of the year. ... The Consumer Defense Network has also had significant successes, though based on legal actions rather than mobilization. ... But perhaps the greatest political awareness has been displayed in the mobilization of the women’s movement. Thus far, it is the only movement that has gone beyond the scope of its own particular demands to take on national demands against the system and against the anti-democratic results of the Ortega-Alemán pact. Its main leaders have publicly stated that they will not be able to achieve gender equity or sexual and reproductive rights unless they first recover the democratic rights wrested away from the whole population by the top PLC and FSLN leaderships.
(...)

from envio, september 2006:
Bolaños has borne major respon-sibility for this issue for no fewer than ten years and his legacy to his successor is totally negative. His “excuse” for the August blackouts is an apt epitaph for his administration: “It was my fault for getting so enthusiastic about foreign investment to generate jobs that I never thought about how the energy demand would rise.” When Bolaños announced on taking office that he hoped to be remembered as “the best President in Nicaragua’s history,” the country would have been forgiven for expecting something more than this disingenuous myopic oversight and unbridled enthusiasm for energy-guzzling free trade zones.
(...) Montealegre has announced that he will “sow fuel,” extending the cultivation of African palm and sugar cane to produce biodiesel and ethanol, projects already initiated in the country by private enterprise. He has also promised to push through the small renewable energy projects that the outgoing government ignored together with the gigantic Copalar dam, an environmentally destructive mega-project that would evict thousands of people from their communities and towns. Postponed since Somoza’s times, the project has recently been revived by foreign investors and their national partners, who reportedly include bankers, leaders of the ALN, FSLN and PLC, and even top army brass.
(...) [growth:] As the chart below shows, the last two years of Alemán’s government showed a growth blip due to post-Mitch aid, but in Bolaños’ first year the accumulated problems mentioned above took their toll. In the past three years, it has recovered a modest but sustained growth rate, which is ex-pected to continue this year for six different reasons.
First, exports have increased significantly and the prices of coffee, sugar and beef—still the country’s main exports—have improved. This government is also responsible for an important growth in Korean, Taiwan-ese and US investments in the tax-free assembly plants for re-export, known as maquilas, ormaquiladoras, most of which assemble and export garments.
(...) Moreover and unlike anybody else, Bolaños included the total value of the exports from maquiladoras operating in Nicaragua. The rest of the world only counts the value added by the maquila in the country, not the raw materials imported tax free for assem-bly. Doing things correctly, we would end up with $1.1 billion in exports.
(...) That’s not to say that exports haven’t grown or that we haven’t achieved some diversification in our traditional export products. In addi-tion to the traditional coffee we’ve been exporting for a century, we’re now beginning to export organic coffee and gourmet shade-grown coffee, and these new products fetch better prices. Nicaragua is also exporting dairy products, especially to El Salvador, and is beginning to export beans. For all that, however, we’re still mired in the export of raw materials, with little or no value added.
(...) [trade deficit] While export earnings grew, so did import spending, especially in the past couple of years, thanks in part to the rise in oil prices. Even accepting Bolaños’ asser-tion that we exported $1.6 billion in 2005, we imported $3 billion, nearly twice as much. This trade deficit is more or less the same as at the end of the Sandinista government in propor-tional terms. The largest in Latin America, it shows no sign of shrinking, and in fact keeps growing every year in absolute figures.
(...) Emigrants’ remittances resolve many family problems and help stabil-ize the economy, but they also express the misfortune of a country that is expelling so many citizens because it doesn’t offer them jobs or a decent standard of living. Surveys taken in recent years consistently show an incredibly high percentage of Nicara-guans who say they would leave in search of work somewhere else if they could. The Bolaños government’s economic policy, which favors big capital and banks, has increased the emigration of small businesspeople and workers whose only option is to go work hard in some other country and send a little back home.
(...) [credit] The clouds also hang very dark over the credit expansion, another of the factors that have contributed to the economy’s growth and dynamism. The vast bulk of that new credit has financed upper-middle-class housing construction, commerce and above all high ticket consumer items such as vehicles and major household appliances. A full 60% of the loans provided by the country’s banks go for such items, while the entire agricultural sector only gets 10% of the credit supply.
(...) The combined portfolio of all members of Nicaragua’s Association of Micro-Financing Institutions (ASOMIF) is now nearly US$200 million, and 300,000 people have access to that service. But even then, only 32% of these micro-credits get to the rural sector.
(...) [MAQUILAS:] We’re in the situation we’re in because the development strategy is perpetuating and exacerbating the in-equalities. The National Development Plan, with its six or seven “clusters,” is a strategy geared to creating what is fondly called a “business climate” to attract major foreign investors to Nicaragua. Unfortunately, most of the modest number this government has attracted are maquiladoras. Bolaños’ tenacious and sustained orientation has excluded all Nicaraguans linked to small and medium urban and rural businesses, even though they are the majority and generate the majority of productive jobs.
(...) We’re in the situation we’re in because the privileged actors in this story are in the financial system and because the bulk of the remaining investments have gone into improving the infrastructure for foreign investors. The clearest case is investment in free trade zone infrastructure, in other words the maquila industrial parks. Thanks to Bolaños’ strategy, the free trade zones have highways and ports to move their products while peasants don’t even have access roads to get their harvests out to the rural highways.
(...) It’s pathetic to think that the magnet attracting maquila investors to Nicara-gua isn’t even all the tax exemptions and infrastructure they demand of governments, but rather that Nicara-gua offers them its “competitive advan-tage” of the lowest paid labor force in Central America. And now that we’ve signed the Central American Free Trade Agreement, they are guaranteed not only profitability with low salaries but preferential access to the US market.
(...) With his peculiar triumphalism, President Bolaños recently inaugur-ated a huge free trade zone for a new US investment that, in his words, will “revolutionize” the maquila industry in Nicaragua. A very powerful textile group decided to bring its entire blue jeans production to Nicaragua. The maquila will even produce the cloth in Nicaragua, which is a major step up given that maquilas traditionally import all production inputs, cloth included, tax free and only sew the garments here. In addition to producing its entire line of jeans locally, this maquila will thus also foster the resurrection of cotton production in northwest Nicaragua, which is currently in its second year of pilot cotton crops. This new factory expresses the change of strategy of the North’s textile industry in response to Asian compe-tition. There’s nothing new in moving to Nicaragua to slash costs by paying low wages, wresting tax exemptions from the government and then export-ing back to the US market, also tax free, to sell their line to the US consumer at a handsome mark-up, even though the production cost is a fraction of what it would be in the States Such offshore maquila production began in Mexico even before NAFTA. The “revolution” consists of creat-ing an integrated chain from agricul-tural production through to the export of the manufactured product for the first time in history. And it’s no accident that it’s being applied to heavier pieces such as jeans, which would have uncompetitive costs if they had to be transported from China or even if the bolts of denim had to be shipped down from the States. The industrialists of this new strategy say that they’ve already spoken with all presidential candidates and have nothing to fear from any of them. Daniel Ortega dedicated a good part of his opening campaign speech to these investors and lauded the benefits they will bring to Nicaragua.
(...) [overall indicators] The estimated average annual population growth rate since the 1995 census was 2.6% annually, but with the 2005 census, it was discovered to have dropped to 1.8%, presumably ex-plained by the hemorrhage of emi-gration and greater access to and use of birth control methods by women of fertile age. Even with this significant drop, however, the 3.7% projected economic growth for 2006 isn’t nearly enough to generate sufficient jobs and opportunities for all the young people who enter the restricted job market each year and are often forced to leave the country at the first chance.
(...) The estimated average annual population growth rate since the 1995 census was 2.6% annually, but with the 2005 census, it was discovered to have dropped to 1.8%, presumably ex-plained by the hemorrhage of emi-gration and greater access to and use of birth control methods by women of fertile age. Even with this significant drop, however, the 3.7% projected economic growth for 2006 isn’t nearly enough to generate sufficient jobs and opportunities for all the young people who enter the restricted job market each year and are often forced to leave the country at the first chance.
(...) Latin America has the greatest wealth distribution inequalities in the world, and Nicaragua is competing for first place according to the Gini Co-efficient, which measures inequality. On the Gini scale of 0 to 100, in which 0 is absolute equality, Nicaragua has a coefficient of 55, greater than the Latin American average of 52 and nearly double China’s 30. Nicaragua’s official income distribution data show that the wealthiest 20% of households hoard 60% of the national income, while the poorest 20% try to get by on 3%. There’s no way in the world to reduce poverty with this income distribution.