By Brian Willson The NICA Act, which would attempt to cut Nicaragua off from multilateral loans (World Bank, IMF, etc.), which passed the House several months ago has been introduced in the Senate with the surprise backing of Democratic Senators Leahy (VT) and Durbin (IL) which greatly increases its chances of passage. The Alliance for…
By John Kotula For the last few months I have been going to Diriamba to study with Marlon Flores. He is teaching me to carve traditional wooden masks used in Nicaraguan folk dances. Marlon is a wood carver, folklorists, flautist, choreographer, and community organizer. He is a key person in the annual Festival of Saint Sebastian in…
By Chuck Kaufman Many people have said that their trip to Nicaragua in the 1980s was a life-changing experience. That was certainly the case for me. Since my first trip to Nicaragua was as part of a Nicaragua Network coffee brigade for three weeks over Christmas 1987 – 30 years ago – I thought it…
By John Kotula The situation in Honduras is chaotic and changing rapidly. Things may be quite different by the time this is read. At the moment (December 9, 2017), the country is in a deep, deadly crises brought on by apparent election fraud. The incumbent, Juan Orlando Hernandez, is almost certainly using his control of…
By John Kotula Over the last couple of weeks, I have lent a hand on the restoration of a mural on the long wall in front of the Ajax Delgado municipal police headquarters in Managua. This large complex is named after a student activist who fought against the Somoza regime and was murdered on September…
By Chuck Kaufman A couple of weeks ago, the Trump administration announced that Nicaraguans in the US would no longer have Temporary Protected Status (TPS) allowing them to stay legally and to work in the US. First extended when Hurricane Mitch devastated Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador in 1998, Nicaragua was the first country to lose TPS status during an overall review…
By John Kotula One of the many accomplishments of Gioconda Belli, former revolutionary, novelist, poet, memoirist, was to capture in a single phrase – “the country under my skin” – what Nicaragua means to so many people. Nicaragua can really become a part of you and be in you even if you are far away…
By Katherine Hoyt Katherine Hoyt is the former National Coordinator of the Nicaragua Network/Alliance for Global Justice. The results of Nicaragua Municipal Elections on Sunday affirmed that voters credit the Sandinista party for the country’s stability and economic progress. The elections were accompanied by two different international teams of observers and over 5,000 internal monitors.…
By John Kotula I imagine that most readers of NicaNotes are up to speed on the NICA Act. If you would like to read the details of why this is such terrible legislation, check out Chuck Kaufman’s last couple of NicaNotes blogs here and here. Rather than review that information, I want to write about my own experience of…
Guest Post by By John Perry The US is Out, Nicaragua’s In This article was first published in the London Review of Books blog on Oct. 3, 2017 and is reprinted with permission of the author. Nicaragua signed the Paris Agreement on Oct. 23, 2017. While Donald Trump gives the appearance of wavering over his decision to…
