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Visit of Violeta Chamorro 4/17/91 [OA 6897] [3]
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Visit of Violeta Chamorro 4/17/91 [OA 6897] [3]
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Speech Backup Chronological Files
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Originally Processed With FOIA(s):
FOIA Number:
S; 2004-0728-F; 2005-0989-F
S
FOIA
MARKER
This is not a textual record. This is used as an
administrative marker by the George Bush Presidential
Library Staff.
Record Group/Collection:
George H.W. Bush Presidential Records
Collection/Office of Origin:
Speechwriting, White House Office of
Series:
Speech File Backup Files
Subseries:
Chron Files, 1989-1993
OA/ID Number:
13751
Folder ID Number:
13751-014
Folder Title:
Visit of Violeta Chamorro 4/17/91 [OA 6897] [3]
Stack:
Row:
Section:
Shelf:
Position:
G
26
21
3
4
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6
3RD STORY of Level 2 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1991 European Information Service;
European Report
February 16, 1991, Saturday
SECTION: V. EXTERNAL RELATIONS; No. 1653; Pg. 9
LENGTH: 296 words
HEADLINE: EEC/NICARAGUA: VIOLETTA CHAMORRO TRAVELS TO BRUSSELS FOR THE
PREPARATION OF SAN JOSE VII
BODY:
The President of the Republic of Nicaragua, Violetta Chamorro, held talks
in Brussels with Commission President Jacques Delors and Commissioner for
relations with Latin America, Abel Matutes, on February 15. Mrs Chamorro
travelled to Brussels to speak with EEC leaders in preparation for the San Jose
VII ministerial meeting that will be held in Managua, Nicaragua, on March 18 and
19.
The announcement several months ago of a support plan for the Andean
countries, consisting of the elimination of customs duties on a number of farm
products, caused a ruckus in other Latin American countries. Central America,
particularly Nicaragua, is in dire straits and would greatly benefit from
similar support from the EEC. Mrs Chamorro wanted to meet EEC officials in
order to ensure support for this item that, she hopes, will be dealt with at the
Managua meeting next month.
Nicaragua is the main beneficiary of EEC aid to the region and got nearly 40%
of the 117 million Ecus allocated in 1990 to various economic, commercial,
emergency and development aid programmes in Central America. The San Jose IV
ministerial meeting decided to set in motion a plan to reactivate intra-regional
trade. An initial instalment of 40 million Ecus was committed for the
establishment of a clearing house between Central American banks.
In addition, Mrs Chamorro was informed that a 32 million Ecusbudget line had
just been set aside for the promotion of exports from "structurally deficient"
countries in the region - Nicaragua and Honduras. Half of the money will go to
Nicaragua to fund exports to the EEC. Moreover, a project to encourage
Nicaraguans with higher education diplomas to return to Nicaragua will receive 5
million Ecus. (February 15, 1991 - European Report) (JPD)
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1ST STORY of Level 2 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1991 News World Communications Inc. ;
The Washington Times
February 19, 1991, Tuesday, Final Edition
SECTION: Part A; WAR IN THE GULF; DESERT DIARY; Pg. A9
LENGTH: 164 words
HEADLINE: CBS crew discussed by Aziz, Gorbachev
BYLINE: FROM WIRE DISPATCHES AND STAFF REPORTS
DATELINE: MOSCOW
BODY:
The fate of four missing CBS journalists was raised at yesterday's meeting
between President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Iraq's foreign minister, who
promised to take action on the matter, a Soviet official said.
Presidential spokesman Vitaly Ignatenko said, "For the first time we heard
from [Tariq] Aziz that he is familiar with the issue, that he is knowledgeable.
He has specified the detail that the group of missing [CBS] journalists
contained two Latin American journalists, which is true, and one of them is a
relative of Violetta Chamorro, president of Nicaragua. =
Mr. Ignatenko did not specify which of the four was related to Mrs.
Chamorro.
Correspondent Bob Simon and his three-man crew disappeared four weeks ago
near the Kuwaiti border. The first definitive report that they were alive came
Friday. Missing with Mr. Simon are London Bureau Chief Peter Bluff, free-lance
cameraman Roberto Alvarez and free-lance soundman Juan Caldera.
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4TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1991 The Washington Post
February 25, 1991, Monday, Final Edition
SECTION: EDITORIAL; PAGE A8
LENGTH: 800 words
HEADLINE: Two Murders In Managua;
It's time to end power-sharing in Nicaragua
SERIES: Occasional
BYLINE: Jeane Kirkpatrick, Los Angeles Times Syndicate
BODY:
Two recent murders in Managua, Nicaragua, speak volumes about the politics
and government of that struggling Central American republic, where, in spite of
having lost the elections in February of 1990, the Sandinistas still control the
army, police and courts under the leadership of Army Chief of Staff Gen.
Humberto Ortega.
One of those murdered, Enrique Bermudez, was a well-known leader of the
Nicaraguan resistance during the days of Sandinista rule. He was a smart, honest
military man of humble origins who, with U.S. assistance, largely forged the
contra volunteers into a disciplined peasant army that Fidel Castro described as
"the determining factor in the [Sandinista] defeat."
Though disdained by some Americans for having served earlier in the army of
Anastasio Somoza, Bermudez was widely respected and trusted by resistance
fighters as a leader who cared about his country and his men and who would not
sell out to the opposition.
This continuing popularity with former resistance fighters was underscored in
the weeks before his murder when several groups asked him to represent them in
their efforts to persuade the Nicaraguan government to fulfill promises of
assistance made at the time the contras gave up their arms.
Bermudez knew that his life was in danger. Last Nov. 21 he wrote to Cardinal
Miguel Obando y Bravo that he had been warned on pain of death to either leave
the country or seek asylum in an embassy in Managua. He noted in a letter to the
cardinal, "If something were to happen to me, I hold responsible the persons who
in collaboration with the Sandinistas are depriving resistance fighters of
rights promised to them when they turned in their weapons.' Bermudez also
informed Nicaraguan Human Rights Commission Chairman Lino Hernandez of these
threats.
The week before last, Bermudez was quietly, expertly shot dead as he left
Managua's downtown Intercontinental Hotel. In Managua and in Miami, thousands
turned out for funeral services.
Word circulated that Bermudez was a victim of one of the irregular armed
groups tolerated by Sandinista leaders. As a prominent Nicaraguan told me, the
Sandinistas control Nicaragua through four instruments: the army, the police,
the judges and the various paramilitary groups of armed civilians.
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(c) 1991 The Washington Post, February 25, 1991
Many Nicaraguans resent the continued strength of Sandinistas in the
government of President Violetta Chamorro -- none more than the former
resistance fighters who exchanged arms for promises from Chamorro's government.
Promised farms, they have been given land without access roads or water.
Promised security, they have been ambushed and on more than one occasion
murdered. They have been the primary targets in Nicaragua's new wave of
political violence.
But they are not the only victims. In a context where political violence is
tolerated and rights are abused, anyone can become a victim.
In the other murder, a father wrote to the Permanent Commission on Human
Rights about his 16-year-old son, Jean-Paul Genie, who was killed on Oct. 28,
1990, after he tried to pass a caravan of vehicles carrying soldiers. His car
was riddled with bullets and "he was left alongside the road gasping for breath
until he expired from shock and loss of blood," according to the father's
letter.
Many eyewitnesses said the perpetrators were soldiers riding in Renegade
jeeps of the kind used only by the bodyguards of the Ortega brothers, Humberto
and former Nicaraguan president Daniel. One witness stated before civilian
authorities of the police ministry that he recognized Gen. Humberto Ortega in a
vehicle escorted by Renegade jeeps as it was entering the Managua road 1.5
kilometers from the site of the crime at about 8:42 that same evening.
The government has denied that a military convoy was in the area. No arrests
have been made. Declarations of witnesses have disappeared. Others have been
changed. The officer originally in charge of the investigation was himself
murdered.
The father of Jean-Paul Genie has concluded that, "The criminal laws of
Nicaragua, particularly the current military code, force me to think that,
even if definite individuals were identified as allegedly guilty, the
possibility of obtaining true justice would be remote."
There may be a stronger relation between these two murders than meets the
eye. Both are part of a profound deterioration in public order which some
Nicaraguans believe is now taking place.
Nicaraguans today have a president of undoubted integrity and personal
commitment to democracy. But democracy requires the rule of law, and rule of law
requires police and courts that are above politics, not part of it. Sandinista
control of these institutions is contributing to disorder. Surely, it is time
for Chamorro to reconsider this form of power-sharing.
TYPE: OPINION EDITORIAL
SUBJECT: NICARAGUA; MURDER; GUERILLA WARFARE AND INSURGENCY
NAMED-PERSONS: VIOLETTA CHAMORRO; HUMBERTO ORTEGA
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14TH STORY of Level 2 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1990 Gannett Company Inc.
GANNETT NEWS SERVICE
April 19, 1990, Thursday
LENGTH: 223 words
HEADLINE: MACK, MARTINEZ TO GO TO MANAGUA INAUGURAL
BYLINE: JUDI HASSON
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, D.C.
KEYWORD: FL-MACK
BODY:
Florida Sen. Connie Mack and Gov. Bob Martinez will join a delegation headed
by Vice President Dan Quayle going to next week's inauguration of Nicaragua's
new president, the White House said Thursday.
The 30-member delegation includes members of Congress and other officials who
will attend the April 25 inauguration of Violetta Chamorro, who easily beat
Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega in February's election.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., and President Bush's son, Jeb, also will be
in the delegation.
David Beckwith, Quayle's press secretary, said members of the delegation were
selected because of their interest in the region. Martinez is the only governor
invited to join the group.
Beckwith said the upcoming Florida's governor's race had nothing to do with
including Martinez in the delegation. Martinez, a Republican, is seeking a
second term.
''Florida is the state most affected by events in the region,' Beckwith
said.
In a statement, Mack said: ''Chamorro's inauguration will send a strong
message throughout the world that the people's right to freedom cannot be
denied.'
He added: ''As in Eastern Europe, the freedom movement is taking hold in
Latin America. It's only a matter of time before the winds of freedom engulf
Fidel Castro.'
(Judi Hasson writes for Gannett News Service in Washington.)
SUBJECT: FOREIGN COUNTRY; EXECUTIVE; SENATE; TRAVEL
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11TH STORY of Level 2 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1990 The Times Mirror Company;
Los Angeles Times
April 23, 1990, Monday, Home Edition
SECTION: Part A; Page 5; Column 6; National Desk
LENGTH: 483 words
HEADLINE: WASHINGTON INSIGHT
BYLINE: From the Times Washington Bureau
BODY:
NEW ENVIRONMENT: When President Bush chose him to head the Environmental
Protection Agency, William K. Reilly was considered a nonpartisan, patrician
defender of the earth and all its creatures. Conservatives viewed him
suspiciously.
No more. Now Reilly is giving sharply partisan stump speeches, winning cheers
from audiences, such as the recent Southern Republican Leadership Conference in
Raleigh, N.C.
Democratic criticisms, Reilly thundered, are "the actions of a party that
doesn't expect to be back in power anytime soon." Bush, he said, is "taking back
the issue of the environment and he's driving some Democrats crazy."
QUORUM CALL: Congress can't seem to act on the Administration's $300-million
aid request to help Nicaragua's spring planting. But it's sending the next best
thing -- lots of congressmen.
When Violetta Chamorro is inaugurated Tuesday as Nicaragua's new
President, at least 25 members of Congress, a half-dozen sub-Cabinet members
and dozens of other officials will fly down from Washington, all led by Vice
President Dan Quayle. "The limiting factor turned out to be how many people we
could fit on Quayle's plane," one official said.
"There is a certain irony" in the failure to pass the aid, a State Department
official noted. "Of course, we are confident that Congress will do the right
thing
eventually, anyway."
BETTER READ THAN RED? Rita Klimova, ambassador of the newly democratic
Czechoslovakian government, sends out letters on old embassy letterhead
emblazoned: "The Ambassador of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic" -- with the
word "Socialist" crossed out by hand.
YEN TO TRAVEL: President Bush's incessant travels are causing some changes in
the White House press corps. With Bush traveling about one day in three,
newspapers with only one White House correspondent are having trouble keeping
up. Moreover, as the newspaper industry struggles with sharp declines in
advertising revenue, many have decided full-time coverage of the President is
simply too expensive. Besides, many of Bush's trips simply do not produce any
news.
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(c) 1990 Los Angeles Times, April 23, 1990
The net result: roughly a 30% decline in the number of reporters following
Bush over the last year. But as American reporters drop off the presidential
press plane, some are being replaced by correspondents for Japanese papers: At
least three now cover Bush full time.
DELUGE: Unhappy with some details of a new Democratic spending blueprint
during a House Budget Committee hearing, Rep. Jack Buechner (R-Mo.) sought to
drive home his point by recalling the biblical story of Noah's Ark, in which all
the animals went aboard Noah's vessel two-by-two, including a pair of skunks.
"There may be a couple of skunks in this ark," Buechner declared, "but our
job is to get it to float. You guys got your way of launching the ark, and we
got ours, but the important thing is that the ship of state remain afloat."
SUBJECT: BUSH, GEORGE; ENVIRONMENT; POLITICAL APPOINTMENTS; REILLY, WILLIAM K;
SPEECHES; INAUGURATIONS; UNITED STATES -- GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS; UNITED STATES --
FOREIGN AID -- NICARAGUA; CZECHOSLOVAKIA -- GOVERNMENT; GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS;
NEWS MEDIA; NEWSPAPERS
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7TH STORY of Level 2 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1990 The Financial Times Limited;
Financial Times
May 2, 1990, Wednesday
SECTION: SECTION I; American News; Pg. 8
LENGTH: 941 words
HEADLINE: Nicaragua rides the roller-coaster as President Chamorro holds
vital talks with the Contra rebels
BYLINE: TIM COONE, MANAGUA
BODY:
'Central America's biggest roller-coaster' is about to arrive in Nicaragua
according to an advert this week at Managua's amusement park.
It may still be small however in comparison to the bumpy ride facing the new
government of President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro.
Mrs Chamorro is today scheduled to hold a crucial meeting with the head of
the US-backed Contra rebels, Israel Galeano otherwise known as Commander
'Franklin.'
In the past week since Mrs Chamorro took office, he has been saying from his
base in the mountains that he will not order his estimated 12,000 troops to
disarm until the Sandinistas controlling the armed forces are dismissed,
starting with General Humberto Ortega the former Defence Minister who has been
temporarily designated as head of the armed forces by President Chamorro.
On Monday she said 'I understand that in the case of the army, the people and
the political sectors that support me want a drastic and immediate change.'
She reaffirmed General Ortega as the army chief though 'to assure unity and
discipline within the armed forces, while the demobilisation of the Resistance
is carried out, while arms held by civilians are collected and the the military
apparatus is substantially reduced. General Ortega will command the army until I
decide to dispense with his services, when these tasks I have given him are
complied with.'
Mrs Chamorro confronts resistance on this point not only from the Contras,
her erstwhile allies, but also from within the ranks of the UNO alliance whose
slate she headed in the March elections. She will have to hold tight to her
beliefs.
Her own Vice-president Dr Virgilio Godoy leads the UNO dissidents. The
division has become 50 deep that Dr Godoy is not even being given office space
in the 'Casa Presidencial', the presidential administrative offices, and is
still waiting to be assigned duties by Mrs Chamorro.
Dr Godoy said last week before departing for a visit to Panama (which raised
some eyebrows locally), that the issue is not just General Ortega but concerns
the entire armed forces high command.
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(c) 1990 Financial Times, May 2, 1990
His hard-line position coincides with that of the Contras, and according to
diplomatic sources is also being adopted in private by US diplomats. US economic
aid will be vital for the survival of Mrs Chamorro's government.
Mr Jaime Bonilla, a close ally of Dr Godoy said on Monday 'The Government
should negotiate with the Contras to reach an understanding.' He accused
President Chamorro's key advisors Mr Alfredo Cesar and Mr Antonio Lacayo, of
being 'traitors' and of having formed a pact with the Sandinistas.
He said this had produced 'a crisis within UNO which is not yet a split'
although he admitted that at least two of the 14 parties in the UNO alliance had
separated as a result of the conflict.
Negotiations with the Contras are meanwhile being ruled out in Mrs Chamorro's
upcoming meeting with them. Dr Roberto Ferrey, her personal envoy in government
dealings with the Contras, insisted this week that no negotiations were being
considered. 'The agenda as I understand it is to discuss security guarantees to
enable the demobilisation plan to be complied with entirely,' he said. Under an
unconditional agreement signed by the rebel leaders shortly before Mrs
Chamorro's investiture, they agreed to disarm their troops entirely by June 10th
this year.
When asked if the Contras might not eventually be considering a military
showdown, despite the agreement, Dr Ferrey replied 'For the moment I believe,
and we have discussed this with the Resistance leaders, there is no possibility
of them using military pressure to achieve (their) objectives.
As the June 10th deadline approaches this may well change. UN officials
charged with overseeing the demobilisation process say that no rebels have yet
handed in their arms inside Nicaragua. Many still remain outside the so-called
'security zones.
Dr Ferrey's own position is somewhat ambiguous. During a meeting with the
Contras last week, he told them publicly that he sympathised with their position
regarding the armed forces, thereby directly contradicting Mrs Chamorro whom he
represents, and sending a signal to the rebels that they have support within Mrs
Chamorro's government.
If she is forced to succumb to the pressure to dispense with General Ortega,
and by extension with the high command of the armed forces before the Contra
demobilisation plan is completed, she will most likely face a rebellion from the
Sandinistas who control the trade union and student movements as well as the
military.
As one Sandinista acquaintance said 'We would not then respect our side of
the agreements.' Commitments to be a 'loyal opposition' would go by the board.
Apparently in anticipation of this, Dr Francisco Mayorga, the Central Bank
president who is coming under a wave of criticism for his brusque 50 percent
devaluation of the currency on the parallel market this week signalling 100
percent price rises and an explosion of wage demands from the largely
Sandinista-dominated trade unions said 'What happens in the next eight to ten
weeks will be the result of a debacle deliberately prepared to cause damage to
the image of the new Government.'
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(c) 1990 Financial Times, May 2, 1990
He said 'We do not want confrontation
we want to wipe the slate clean
and look ahead. But in a climate of tension and attempts to sabotage the
economic policy, it is working people who will lose out.'
At the amusement park, poor children beg for money for rides on the dodgems
and the big wheel. Soaring prices have made such adventures a luxury. And noone
yet knows how much a ride on the roller-coaster is going to cost.
GRAPHIC: Picture, President Violetta Chamorro talking yesterday about the
poorstate of the Nicaraguan economy left by the Sandanistas
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15TH STORY of Level 2 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1990 Federal Information Systems Corporation;
Federal News Service
APRIL 6, 1990, FRIDAY
SECTION: NEWS MAKERS & POLICY MAKERS
LENGTH: 5736 words
HEADLINE: CB
SPEECH BY
DR. FRANCISCO MAYORGA
CHIEF ECONOMIC ADVISER TO PRESIDENT -ELECT VIOLETA CHAMORRO
OF NICARAGUA
MODERATOR:
EDWARD HUDGINS
THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION
214 MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE, N.E.
KEYWORD:
HERITAGE FOUNDATION MAYORGA-04/06/90
BODY:
EDWARD HUDGINS: Welcome all to the Heritage Foundation.
Dr. Francisco Mayorga has been the Chief Economic Adviser to Mrs. Chamorro in
Nicaragua who, of course -- whose party, UNO, recently won the election. much to
the surprise of nearly everybody except, perhaps, for the Nicaraguan people,
over the Sandinista government.
Mr. Mayorga, who has been the Chief Economic Adviser, is the author of a paper
-- I believe given to a number of administration officials - "The UNO Agenda
for Economic Recovery." And we suspect that he will play a very active role in
the upcoming Nicaraguan government when it - the government changes, I believe,
in April.
Mayorga has had a fairly lively career for such a young man. He worked as a
central banker from 1967 to, I believe, 1978. He was active in the anti-Somoza
movement and, for about 30 days, I'm informed, was in the Sandinista government.
However, it took that short period of time for both sides to discover some
fundamental differences and so, after about a month, Mr. Mayorga was no longer
in the government.
He has spent most of his time in Managua teaching during that period. He also
worked on his doctoral dissertation and submitted his work to Yale University
for a Ph.D. in 1986. And his doctoral work was on the economic situation in
Nicaragua. He has argued that it was not the US embargo or the contra war that
is responsible for Nicaragua's economic situation, but rather the disastrous
policies of the Sandinista government.
Without further ado, we will hear from Mr. Mayorga, and then we'll take
questions and answers from the audience. Mr. Mayorga.
FRANCISCO MAYORGA: Thanks very much for this opportunity to present the economic
perspectives of the elected government of Nicaragua to this audience.
Nicaragua is in shambles. Ten years of internal conflict have destroyed a large
portion of the infrastructure. The industry has become obsolete. However, the
main cause of our problem has been that the Sandinista regime tried to impose on
the Nicaraguan people a system that did not obtain the support of the different
sectors of the Nicaraguan society.
They took more than half of the Nicaraguan productive resources and put them
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(c) 1990 Federal Information Systems Corporation, April 6, 1990
in state enterprises -- in state farms. Most of those resources are right now
lying idle in the hands of state companies. in state of the prices, in state
farms. Most of those resources are right now lying idle in the hands of state
companies.
As a result of the freezing of most of the economic resources of Nicaragua, the
per capita GDP fell from about $900 in 1977 to about $300 now. It fell
two-thirds. GDP per capita in Nicaragua is now back to where it was before
World War II. The average Nicaraguan is eating only two meals a day, mainly as
a result of the amount of land that is laying idle in state farms.
Inflation is running rampant, at the rate of 35 percent during the month of
March. We expect it to peak again in May, maybe over 70 percent, as a result of
recent Sandinista policies. The disequilibria that were -- that the Sandinistas
tried to deal with in the last two years have shown up again in different
aspects of the economy, such as a black market rate of 120,000 new cordobas
versus 46, in the official market.
Violetta Chamorro will be assuming the Presidency of Nicaragua in the middle
of the planting season. It will be crucial for us to deal with the problems of
the economy immediately. We intend to face this situation not by repressing
demand any more, as the Sandinista government tried to do in the last two years,
but rather by liberating supply. We feel that we can apply two simple
principles to let the supply side of the economy begin to recover very quickly.
The two principles are economic freedom and economic democracy. By economic
freedom we mean moving out of the way very quickly the different controls and
regulations that were introduced by the Sandinista regime and that crippled the
capacity of private producers in Nicaragua to face the needs of the people. By
economic democratization we mean taking those resources that are virtually
frozen in the hands of the state and passing them very quickly into productive
hands.
This is the plan that we presented to the Nicaraguan people. The Nicaraguan
people did not vote for this plan with their stomachs. They voted for this plan
and for Violeta Chamorro with their heads and with their hearts. They voted for
freedom and for the possibility that the great economic potential of Nicaragua
could be really applied to generate some prosperity.
In addition to facing this serious situation in the middle of a planting season,
we face other major problems. While our exports are only $250 million a year,
the foreign debt of Nicaragua has reached $10 billion. So if we had to pay only
2.5 percent on that debt, the interest still will wipe away the entire export
revenues of Nicaragua. In order to survive, Nicaragua has been importing
something like $70 million per month on the average, in the last two years. So
comparing with exports of $20 million per month, that leaves a gap of $50
million per month. That was being filled in the past by donations from the
Soviet Union, the Eastern European countries, and Western Europe.
Much of the resources that were provided by the international community to the
Sandinista government were literally grants.
So, Nicaragua was getting, through the generosity of the Soviet bloc socialist
countries, Western Europe, and other countries around the world, was getting
about $500 million -- 5 [hundred million dollars] to $600 million per year.
Many of those contributions were given by the international community with the
idea that Nicaragua deserved a chance to resolve its problems through peaceful
means, that we would be able to find a peaceful solution to our differences.
Thanks to the Arias initiative, the Esquipulas process, and then the bipartisan
agreement at the beginning of the Bush administration, the cooperation of
President Gorbachev, and the participation of many international actors, we were
able to resolve our problems through the ballot box.
Clearly, we received a strong mandate to replace the system that was imposed
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on the Nicaraguan people by the Sandinista party with a new system, that we
present as a social market economy. This involves five principles: the
principle of liberty; the principle of economic efficiency; the principle of
private property; a role of the state in taking care of the more vulnerable
sectors of a society and making sure that those sectors have access to resources
to have control of their own destinies; and fifth, a subsidiary role of the
state in the economy. The state -- the majority of the Nicaraguan people voted
for a model in which the state will participate in productive activities only
when those activities cannot be undertaken efficiently by the private sector.
We intend to face the emergency situation with a strategy that will deal with
trying to increase -- to boost agricultural production beginning this year in
1990. We'll try to encourage farmers in Nicaragua to increase the acreages in
May 50 that planting in June can be substantially increased. This will mean
that next year we'll be able to harvest more cotton and other crops for exports
so that our export revenues will increase a little bit and so that our food
production increases and we begin to rely less and less on international
charity.
At the present moment there are about 300 -- let's say, 200,000 hectares of the
finest land in Latin America in the provinces of Leon and Chinandega, where not
a single shot was fired during several years of war, lying idle in state farms.
We intend to focus on those 200,000 hectares immediately offering them in lease
and giving priority to those who claim that they may have been unjustly
confiscated and who will be introducing their claims to the courts. If they
prove to be the rightful owners of those lands and the courts says that they
were unjustly confiscated, they'll get the land back and they will not have to
pay for the rent.
We will give priority to those farmers that in addition to claiming the land as
their rightful property sign a commitment indicating that they are willing to
reactivate those farms immediately beginning in May or June at the latest.
On the other hand, we intend to deal with the inflation problem. For that
purpose we will have the benefit of the end of the military service which will
mean the reduction of a substantial part of the defense budget of Nicaragua.
The end of the military service will be the first decree that Violetta
Chamorro will sign on April 25th.
Immediately after that, we will make an effort to try to convert the defense --
to gradually convert the defense apparatus of Nicaragua into a productive
machine. We cannot fire a lot of soldiers into the streets at a moment when
unemployment is 34 percent, when there will be very little opportunity for them
to find a productive job. We will make an effort in terms of providing them
with land if they want to voluntarily want to leave the armed forces, or with
training if they are people who come from the urban areas. In the process, as
the private productive activities begin to recover and new employment
opportunities begin to emerge, they will have a chance to find better pay in the
private sector, in the productive activities.
Concerning the deficit, we intend to deal with it also on the tax side. Fiscal
policy will mean that we will lower taxes in order to increase revenues. At
this moment, the entire tax structure is completely distorted. Taxes are
heavily imposed on local production and they tax more heavily --- local
production - than imports, so that imports are preferred to local products.
What we intend to do is lower those taxes in order to make sure that Nicaraguans
begin to consume again local products. This will mean a reactivation of local
manufacturing and the possibility that new employment opportunities will also
begin to emerge in the industrial sector.
We also intend to introduce a monetary reform to try to wipe out the
inflationary memory of recent years. But in order to deal effectively, not
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only with the immediate recovery of production, but also with a stabilization of
the economy, we will need external support. That is the reason why immediately
after we won the election, President-elect Chamorro asked me to travel to
Washington to present her plan to the administration and to the leaders of the
Congress 50 that we could set in motion a process through which we would gain
not only the political, but the economic support to the United States.
We also traveled to Japan, and from here I'll be going to Europe in order to
present her case to different European governments. We will need substantial
external support, and what we are trying to say to the international community
is that we need disaster relief. The Nicaraguan economy is in shambles. We
need to launch a recovery process. We need, of course, to bring immediate
alleviation to the suffering of those sectors of the society that have had the
largest share of the burden of this unjust situation that we've been growing
through in the last 10 years.
If we are able to do that, and at the same time we have a chance to boost
production, we believe that beginning in 1991, the Nicaraguan requirements for
foreign assistance will gradually begin to diminish. At the same time, we will
ask the international community to help us to clear the arrears that we face in
the multilateral organizations. That amount, something in the order of $250
million at this moment, and that combined with future debt payments that come
due, will be in the order of $300 million by the end of this year. We will need
to clear up those arrears to become eligible again to get concessional financing
for our reconstruction program.
We have divided our economic program in three phases. The first phase is
emergency, the phase in which we need disaster relief, but not simply in terms
of the kind of things that you give to a place that has been washed or wiped out
by a hurricane or something like that, but disaster relief that acknowledges a
need to take advantage of the planting season, of this opportunity to boost
agricultural production.
The second phase will be the recovery and the structural - the restructuring of
our economy. We will begin immediately to try to put in place the institutions
and mechanisms that will be necessary for us to transfer in an orderly way the
resources that remain frozen in the hands of the state into productive hands.
This democratization of the economy will probably take place in the course of
the next two or three years. It will have to be carefully dealt with,
especially because this involves more than half of the productive resources of
the Nicaraguan society - several billion dollars worth of land, industrial
equipment, transportation equipment, and 50 forth.
In the last part of Mrs. Chamorro's term, we will try to set the basis for
Nicaragua to be able to grow in a sustained way and also to develop a new type
of society. We envision a society that is productive and efficient but it -----
that it is also equitable.
Much of the wealth of the country was concentrated in the hands of a few tens of
families in Nicaragua before '79. In the last ten years, those resources and
other resources were put under the control of nine persons, of nine comandantes.
Never before in the history of Nicaragua were the resources worse distributed
than in the last ten years. What we intend to do is to distribute them in a
very democratic way so that Nicaragua sets the basis to start building a society
that is, as I was saying before, not only more productive and efficient but also
more just, more ethical and more humane.
These are my introductory remarks, and I would be delighted to enter now
questions and answers.
MR. HUDGINS: Thank you very much. (Applause.)
What we'll do is go on up until just before 1:00, and then we have to whisk our
guest off to a lunch. I'm going to start as the moderator, take the
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moderator's privilege of asking the first question.
One of the problems that most Socialist regimes have had in reforming their
economies, whether in Eastern Europe or in Latin America, is the existence of
large bureaucracies with people depending on the government for their incomes
and so forth. This, of course, is one of the great barriers to economic
recovery, not only the money spent but the damage that such bureaucrats do. You
face a very difficult situation since the people in power now are not exactly of
your political persuasion.
How do you plan to approach this difficulty of a bloated government bureaucracy
that's taking up a lot of resources and potentially that can block economic
reforms?
MR. MAYORGA: I think that's a very good question. Undoubtedly, we'll have to
deal with some rigidities in this respect. However, what we intend to do to
start with is to allocate those resources that will be available for private
industry and private commerce in such a way that we give priority to bureaucrats
who want to leave the government in order to set up their own businesses.
(Laughter.)
But we believe that eliminating controls and regulations will also provide a
wonderful opportunity for many bureaucrats to become entrepreneurs. At this
moment, for instance, there is a parallel market for foreign exchange that works
very inefficiently. There are only two exchange houses controlled by the
government. There are long lines there, you know, trying to buy (to any ?)
exchange, and the bureaucratic procedures are very slow.
If we, for instance, eliminate the circulation, and as we unify the exchange
rate, allow the foreign exchange market to work, if we allow private exchange
houses, you know, to simply buy and sell at whatever the going rate, the going
exchange rate may be, we believe that many of the employees of this bureaucracy
not only find the wonderful opportunity to set their own exchange houses and
have their little businesses, but that they will in turn hire some of those
people who are unemployed in their little exchange houses, in such a way that we
will not only have an impact in terms of deregulating, as well as reducing the
bureaucracy, but at the same time we'll be able to generate more jobs in the
private sector.
MR. HUDGINS: Questions and comments -- start here.
Q (Off mike) -- you said that you're not going to throw anybody off the land.
What are you going to do to support small farmers and support agriculture
producers? What's your attitude toward the collective enterprises?
MR. MAYORGA: We have a commitment not only to respect the land that has been
loaned by the Nicaraguan Sandinista state to the peasants, but also to make it
their rightful property. The first thing that we'll do is to try to convert
what the peasants call in Nicaragua the "papelucho," that little pieace of paper
into a property title, so they have - so they are sure that they will be able
to inherit the property to their children.
Of course, we'll have to go into the structure of agrarian - of the agrarian
reformed bureaucracy to review very carefully. We intend to make a special
effort not only to provide the seeds, the fertilizer, and the access to credit
that will be necessary for those peasants to really begin - become really
active in production, we intend to set up programs dealing with technical
assistance and -- but we feel that the main thing that we can do about the
peasants, the small farmers, the medium-sized farmers in Nicaragua - and by the
way, let me tell you that yesterday I was discussing the issue of Nicaraguan
development with a few colleagues here, and I was telling them that in Nicaragua
we are pretty arrogant because we sometimes call ourselves "farmers" when by
comparison with your farmers we would be peasants, even the larger farmers that
operate right now in Nicaragua you might consider sometimes rich peasants.
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But the best we feel WE can do for them is to be able to buy the inputs from
whomever sells them, those inputs at the low cost without the imposition on the
part of the government to buy the input from the government agency, and the
freedom for them to sell their crops at the price that they deem right and not
at the price that was being set in a very unjust way by the government in the
last ten years, in such a way that the government was consistently confiscating
the product of their effort.
We believe that -- and they have told us very clearly, that if we fulfill this
commitment of ours to allow them to go to the marketplace and sell their crops
to whomever is willing to pay the highest possible price for it, they will
increase their acreages.
Q The -- you mentioned -- the moderator mentioned the problem of an existing
bureaucracy, but there are other problems that third world nations have
encountered when they've tried to restructure their economy into a market
system. And I'm talking about the problems that Argentina and the Philippines'
Corazon Aquino have encountered, and that is monopolists -- state monopolists'
control over economic functions -- importing, exporting, sales, manufacturing.
In the Philippines, for example, there is one man who controls the sale of air
conditioners in the entire country.
Do you have -- do you have a cleaner slate than they do in this respect?
MR. MAYORGA: Yes, we have a big constitutional wall in the sense that, according
to the constitution, the state has the monopoly of foreign trade and the
financial sector.
However, the Sandinistas were - decided to concentrate this monopoly of trade
on a few items that are very important for the Nicaraguan economy, such as
coffee -- coffee, bananas and fertilizer for imports. In -- (inaudible) -
risk, they decided to provide licenses as a delegation of the state monopoly.
What they intend to do is claim that that is a precedent and that we will be
licensing of this monopoly of the state to anybody who wants to come in and set
up a little shop to buy coffee and sell it abroad ---- to ---- (inaudible) --- and so
forth.
So, the constitution will remain there with the principle there that we'll be
delegating it in a very little way.
The same will happen with the financial system. According to the constitution,
it is a state monopoly; we will license that.
MR. HUDGINS: (Inaudible.)
Q I was struck by hearing that 50 many of your goals for your economic reform
sound familiar to many of the successes that we've seen in Chile in the last few
years, and I hope that if your officials working with you are interested that,
to the extent that our Agency for International Development is administering our
US foreign aid program, that foreign aid program, that you will request that
some of the AID funds be used, if you so desire, to send some of your officials
to Chile to work with them and learn from some of their success stories. Of
course, what I mean is the successful slashing of the debt and debt equity
swaps, and doing it in such a way that there are numerous methods by which
they've made it -- cut the inflationary problem that sometimes comes with the
equity swaps and from swapping and from government enterprises and to get this
-- the privatization in there and successful use of employee ownership in the
privatization and -- also you mentioned the desire to target your social
programs more strictly in the poorest of the poor, and that's another thing
they've done so well.
MR. MAYORGA: I'll comment briefly on your comments. We try to take advantage of
the very good lessons that have been produced not only in Chile, but also in
Bolivia, in Costa Rica concerning export through promotion of diversification.
We're also aware of the fact that there were some lessons of how not to do
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things in Chile, such as the financial sector liberalization. We know that
there were many bankruptcies in Chile several years ago after the
liberalization. And something like that also happened in Costa Rica. We want
to learn from all possible places how to do things well and how not to do things
badly.
MR. HUDGINS: Okay, I think it's you next.
Q Would you happen to have some figures on how much land is the public - area
de propiedad publica and how much is cooperatives, how much is these titles that
were handed out and how much is private. Do you happen to have those?
MR. MAYORGA: Let me tell you, there are figures available concerning that. It
may be possible that something like 20 percent of the total land -- agricultural
land of the country -- is in state farms, for instance.
Q In the ATP, and that's form of Somoza's properties influence?
MR. MAYORGA: No. It is a little more complicated than that. You see, the
Sandinistas first confiscated Somoza and his allies, and then continued to
confiscate larger farmers, then went on with medium-sized farmers, and they made
even some progress with the smaller farmers, so that at some point in time more
than 50 percent of the arable land of the countries was in the hands of the
government.
Then, they began to revert it -- convert this process after 1984. In November
'84, they made a strategic switch to a process in which they began to distribute
land to the peasants, but the difference, these figures have to be anlayzed very
carefully, because while they were giving away to the peasants third-rate land
and second-rate land, they kept in state farms the finest lands of the country.
So the real potential, in terms of the flatlands, the rich flatlands of the
Pacific, for instance, is extraordinary, because most of those flatlands are in
state farms. That's why the figures -- with those figures, the world statistics
are not a clear indication of the real potential.
But there is another thing. I often hear and sometimes am able to confirm that
those statistics do not - are not very accurate, sometimes, because the
Sandinista government has been very careful in the sense of keeping secret a lot
of economic information, but also because sometimes they don't know what they
have. You see, Mr. Willock (ph) is the largest landowner in Latin America. He
doesn't know what he has. He doesn't know the farms. He doesn't the know how
many tractors are there in the state farms. He doesn't know how many trucks.
And they didn't know -- they don't know how much fertilizer may be available in
the state farm warehouses.
Of course, they are sometimes a little confused about the situation. For
instance, there was a technical economic mission visiting Nicaragua in recent
days. And the authorities of the Sandinista government told them that when we
arrive in the government we will find the warehouses full of fertilizer, the
silos full of foodstuffs, full of grain, that there will be enough oil, you
know, to run the country for several months after April and that we will find
maybe $150 million, $180 million in cash in the central bank. (Laughter.) And
of course, those are very encouraging news, but after 10 years of dealing with
them I have serious doubts that that -- that what they tell us will be the case.
Q (Off mike) -- these papeluchos you talked about, that these were the titles
that were handed out amid much fanfare and 50 forth.
MR. MAYORGA: Maybe 25 percent of the land in the country.
Q Those are conditional titles, aren't they? Like, one thing is you have to
belong to the Sandinista Peasant Union and things like that.
MR. MAYORGA: Yes.
MR. HUDGINS: Let me get one over here.
Q What manufacturing sectors may be targeted for investment in Nicaragua?
MR. MAYORGA: Excuse me, I didn't hear you.
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Q What manufacturing -- you said -- well, what manufacturing sector may be --
(inaudible) -- or targeted for -- (off mike)? What industries?
MR. MAYORGA: You mean on the part of the private sector?
Q Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned one -- (off mike).
MR. MAYORGA: We have to revamp all of our agribusiness industry. We'll have to
go and check on what the status of the different plans -- state plans may be.
We don't know. We are working in the dark. Sometimes we feel that there are
industries that could be reactivated quickly, but there are some government
technicians who come and tell us, "If you begin reactivating that plant it will
fall off in pieces because it is in very bad shape." We don't know.
We know that the cement plant hasn't been subjected to any major maintenance for
several years. It is working at a very low capacity. Construction sector needs
will be great. We might --- you know, there is these mines of cement; there
might be a possibility to put together a new cement plant very quickly in the
future. But we do not have a specific assessment of the different investment
needs for different sectors, and I doubt very much that the outgoing government
has one. It will be up to the private sector to go in and explore these issues
very carefully and get the right information.
MR. HUDGINS: Let me go back here.
Q Francisco, what has happened to the Eastern European groups that were in
Managua? There was a Bulgarian group there that was pickling little -- beef,
corn and things for export. Are they still there?
MR. MAYORGA: Yes, they are still there. They are not doing very well, but they
are learning. (Laughter.) They are more enthusiastic now then they were before.
Something that's very important about the Eastern European countries, the
Eastern European missions in Nicaragua, when they became Central European ---
East to Central European at the end of last year -- (scattered laughter) -- many
of them were visiting us, very quickly, and hoping that there will be an
opportunity to convert aid into trade, given the fact that they realized that
they couldn't possibly continue to help Nicaragua in the way that they were
doing before. But at the same time, they said that it would be very good if
they could learn from our own process and establish new ways of cooperation in
our respective countries and peoples.
Last year, there were several missions from the Soviet Union trying to make
contact with the private sector of Nicaragua to explore the possibility for
joint ventures. When this news leaked, the Sandinista government expressed
their concern, and they stopped these missions and these initiatives, so we were
theirs, out in the cold.
In recent days, the Soviet officials that were in charge of those initiatives
said that they were hoping that the new government wouldn't restrict them to
continue in this way.
Q I read somewhere that you were planning on making a normal cordoba equal to
the dollar, and I'm wondering whether you still plan on doing that, and if you
have any ideas on how to go about -
MR. MAYORGA: Yes, we are still planning on how the new cordoba at par with the
dollar, and we are planning to keep it there at a fixed rate for many years in
the future. We might surprise you and - but we think we'll be able to do it.
It will be a tough task to put it in place and to keep it there. You see, we
have studied very carefully the monetary dynamics of Nicaragua, the cause of
inflation over the year, the fact that the Nicaraguan economy is highly
seasonal.
And maybe I would like to take advantage of this question to mention a couple of
points concerning the Nicaraguan economy. You know that the Sandinistia regime
was trying to solve the problem of the inflation in '88 and '89 and that they
failed. They did everything according to the book, and they failed. They got
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very good advice from a permanent American professor of the MIT faculty, but
they failed.
They didn't recognize the nature of the economy concerning the seasonality
factor. The Nicaraguan economy is highly agrarian. The rainfalls arrive in
May. We plant in May. We harvest in December. It makes a great difference for
the functioning of the economy, the timing of any economic measures.
When you devalue, say, in November, you give a windfall to the farmers, because
they hold the inventories of the economy. The inventories of the economy in
November are in the bushes, are in the little cotton plants, are the little red
fruit in the coffee trees, the bananas, and 50 forth. So they get a windfall.
But they harvest, the crop moves immediately in the hands of the industries, the
trading companies, and so forth. And if you devalue by the same amount in
February, you give the windfall to those companies, at the expense of the
farmers who at that moment don't have real inventories but have cash in their
pockets. So clearly, the timing of a specific economic measure is crucial as to
the effects, the impact that they will have in the economy.
Let me go a little further into this issue. You see, this aspect of seasonality
is very seldom recognized by economists in other countries. But I used to -
I'd like to use this example: The Nicaraguan economy is pumping like a heart,
every year it's beating. If a surgeon takes a scalpel and makes an incision on
the heart at the moment when the heart is closed, makes a small incision and
sets in a looped tube, he can then continue to operate without any problem. But
if the same surgeon takes the same scalpel and makes the same incision at the
same point of the same heart, but at the moment when the heart is expanding, you
might get the heart to explode. This is very important.
We are getting into the conscience (?) of the government a little late, as to
the moment in which you have to set in motion the process of stabilization. If
we have, you know, external support, we should be able to deal with the problems
in the course of the following few months, because that is precisely when the
nature - the seasonal nature of the economy will give us the room necessary to
operate.
MR. HUDGINS: Let me get you and then I'll go for one more in the back.
Q You mentioned the 200,000 -- (off mike) acres of the finest land that is
still owned by the state, that you plan to return to that to its rightful
owners. How much of that land had been originally controlled by the few
families that controlled all the land in Nicaragua, most of it before the
Sandinistas came into power. Do you plan to return it to those families, or ---
MR. MAYORGA: Much of that land was owned by medium-sized owners. There may have
been a few larger farms that belonged to the wealthiest families of Nicaragua.
If that was the case, those are probably the most productive farms. They must
have been modern farms. They may be running relatively well, although to a high
degree inefficiently in state bureaucrat's hands.
We will not object to anybody who claims to be the rightful owner of a piece of
land on the basis of their original wealth, but we will demand these two things:
First, that they reactivate the lands immediately, and second, that they pay
their taxes.
MR. HUDGINS: We have time for one more quick question.
Q Perhaps you've touched on this, but do you presume that the confiscation of
property was legal or illegal? How will you handle that in the future?
MR. MAYORGA: Decree Number 3 was signed by Mrs. Chamorro when she was a member
of the Junta. Decree Number 3 says that all property belonging to Somoza, his
family, and his associates, was to be confiscated.
On the basis of Decree Number 3, an old man, a physician, who, being very well
known by his honesty, was asked in '77 to run a hospital in my home town, was
confiscated his home and a small farm, claiming that being the director of a
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hospital in a province was being associated with Somoza. That was a very clear
injustice.
After that, Decree Number 33 gave the right to confiscate other properties with
political criteria and the government also introduced the princple that those
who have left the country and have been away for six months should be
confiscated immediately, as well. We believe that those were unjust
confiscations.
MR. HUDGINS: Okay. I'm afraid -- sorry we've run out of time. I thank you all
for coming. (Applause.) It's been a very interesting talk. Thank you, Mr. --
(applause) - and we will be having refreshments outside for those of you who
want to stay around a few minutes.
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20TH STORY of Level 2 printed in FULL format.
The Associated Press
The materials in the AP file were compiled by The Associated Press. These
materials may not be republished without the express written consent of The
Associated Press.
March 13, 1990, Tuesday, PM cycle
SECTION: Business News
LENGTH: 944 words
HEADLINE: Bush Lifts Trade Sanctions Against Nicaragua
BYLINE: By JIM DRINKARD, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
KEYWORD: U.S.-Nicaragua
BODY:
President Bush today lifted a five-year trade embargo against Nicaragua and
asked Congress to provide $$300 million quickly to help speed the transition to
democracy. He said the funds should come from the Pentagon budget.
Bush also renewed his call for $$500 million in assistance to Panama, where
an American invasion force installed a new government last December. He said
both Central American nations "need our help to heal deep wounds" after years of
political and economic struggle.
Bush's 45-minute news conference was the first time in 10 days the president
Bush had met with reporters. In fielding numerous questions, he said:
-He remains opposed to higher taxes and Social Security limitations to
eliminate the budget deficit. But he said he was "prepared to negotiate" with
congressional Democrats over a deficit-cutting plan.
-"Every president" wants to see interest rates lower, but he denied the
existence of a "bubbling war" with Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal
Reserve.
-Appealed to major league owners and ball players to settle their labor
dispute "50 the American people can hear that cry 'play ball' again."
The president opened his news conference by announcing that he had lifted the
five-year trade embargo that former President Reagan had imposed against the
Sandinista government of Daniel Ortega.
Ortega was defeated in last month's elections by opposition candidate
Violetta Chamorro. Ortega told Vice President Dan Quayle in Chile on Monday
that he would abide by the results of the elections and permit an orderly
transition to democracy.
Bush called for creation of a "Fund for Democracy" to assist Nicaragua and
Panama.
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The Associated Press, March 13, 1990
The president never mentioned the Contras, the rebels who received millions
of dollars from the United States during the Reagan administration. But his aid
request includes about $$45 million to help pay costs of relocating some 10,000
Contra rebels and tens of thousands of family members from camps along the
Honduran border to homes inside Nicaragua.
Bush urged Congress to speed the aid on its way by April 5 and to assist the
administration in identifying Pentagon programs that could absorb the needed
reductions "without having an unacceptable impact on national security."
At another point, however, he said he was prepared to submit a list of
suggested Pentagon cuts on his own. "It will be done like that," he said,
snapping his fingers for emphasis.
Bush's plan for aid to Panama has been bogged down in Congress over the issue
of which programs would lose money to finance the assistance.
Bush called Mrs. Chamorro on Monday to brief her about the aid package, a
source said.
The president paid tribute to the extraordinary worldwide move toward
democracy in 1989, and said the drive for freedom "leaves us with a new
challenge, how best to support newborn democracies."
"These nations need our help to heal deep wounds," he said.
On other topics, Bush responded with a blunt "no" when asked whether he would
freeze Social Security benefits or raise taxes to reduce the federal deficit. A
senior House Democrat made such proposals last weekend as part of a
comprehensive deficit-cutting plan.
Bush said his administration had an encouraging response to the plan by Rep.
Dan Rostenkowski, D-I11., because it showed "evident goodwill." He said that
despite his distaste for some specifics, he was "prepared to negotiate" with
Congress to reduce the deficit.
"There's a lot of things that I'm not for that are in his proposal. A lot
including taxes," the president said.
On a sensitive economic issue, Bush also declined to be drawn into
speculation about whether he would reappoint Greenspan, the chairman of the
Federal Reserve, whose term expires next year. Some members of the
administration have said Federal Reserve concerns about inflation have kept
interest rates relatively high.
"Look, every president would like to see interest rates lower, there's no
question," Bush said. "There's no bubbling war with Alan Greenspan." He said
such disputes over economic policy are common in every administration.
Asked about the major league baseball dispute, Bush said, "Yes I'm a ball fan
and I want to go to the opening game some place," he said. But he quickly added
he didn't want to have the federal government intervene" in the decision by
owners to lock players out of spring training camps.
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The Associated Press, March 13, 1990
Even before Bush formally unveiled the Nicaragua aid package, there was
support in Congress for the assistance.
"After 10 years of trying to destroy Nicaragua, we do have a responsibility
to help democracy," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate
Appropriations subcommittee that doles out foreign aid.
"I may well agree with whatever the president's policy is there. But I don't
think it is wise to be raising expectations by promising money we don't know
whether we have," Leahy said.
Included in Bush's proposed Nicaraguan aid package is $$60 million for
critical agriculture, petroleum and medical supplies; $$10 million for emergency
employment programs; $$50 million to help Nicaragua pay off debts to the
International Monetary Fund and other financial institutions; $$75 million to
help support Nicaragua's currency as part of economic restructuring; $$60
million for infrastructure projects including major bridgem highway, school and
hospital repairs, as well as the $$45 million for the repatriation and
resettlement of the Contras.
The White House said $$21 million left over from programs to assist the
Contras and monitor the Nicaraguan elections would be used for emergency aid to
Nicaragua while the larger package goes through Congress.
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26TH STORY of Level 2 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1990 Newsday, Inc.;
Newsday
February 28, 1990, Wednesday, NASSAU AND SUFFOLK EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 17
Other Edition: City Pg. 31
LENGTH: 731 words
HEADLINE: Chamorro Advisers Set U.S. Talks
BYLINE: By Pat Wechsler and Saul Friedman. Newsday Washington Bureau
DATELINE: Washington
KEYWORD: VIOLETTA CHAMORRO; NICARAGUA; ECONOMY; PRESIDENT; UNITED STATES;
AID; GEORGE BUSH
BODY:
Economic advisers from the newly elected Nicaraguan government of Violeta
Chamorro are scheduled to meet Monday in Washington with an interagency task
force set up by the Bush administration to deal with the weak Nicaraguan
economy.
The Nicaraguans - led by chief economic adviser Francisco Mayorga - are
likely to ask for substantial aid, an immediate end to the U.S. trade embargo
and a restoration of lending by multinational financial institutions, such as
the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and International Monetary
Fund, said Dario Moreno, an expert on U.S.-Nicaraguan relations based at Miami's
Florida International University.
After his visit to Nicaragua last week, Rep. Stephen Solarz (D-Brooklyn) said
he expected the Nicaraguans to request between $ 200 million and $ 300 million
in aid directly from the United States.
While the administration has said it expects to lift the five-year-old trade
sanctions soon, officials concede that to raise enough economic aid, which
analysts project should reach at least $ 1 billion, a united effort of European
allies and Japan will be necessary. Moreover, one senior State Department
official, paying tribute to the Soviet Union's support of the election process
in Nicaragua, suggested that Soviet aid also may play a role.
"We want to move as quickly as possible to support the new democratic
government
[but] the U.S. can't supply all the needs," said the State
Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "I would not be
surprised if Mrs. Chamorro was happy to receive economic assistance from
whatever generous sources might want to provide it," he added, apparently
referring to the Soviet Union, which supplied Nicaragua about $ 1 billion
annually through 1988 and between $ 700 million and $ 800 million last year.
Experts are not certain how much Soviet support can be counted on. There are
questions about whether the Soviets will continue to donate $ 100 million in oil
to the Nicaraguans annually; the possibility of U.S. contributions from its own
oil reserves has been raised by members of Congress.
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(c) 1990 Newsday, February 28, 1990
Nicaragua has been cut off from traditional international economic monitors,
such as the World Bank and IMF, since 1984, when it defaulted on its
international loans, and lending was suspended after the Reagan administration
put political pressure on the multilateral institutions. Although precise
figures are uncertain, experts concede that the plight is desperate.
"Foreign debt is simply astronomical," said John Williamson, senior fellow at
the Washington-based Institute of International Economics. "They owe the
Soviets, they owe the banks and there will almost certainly have to be some
restructuring of that situation before anything happens."
The Nicaraguan economy, primarily based on sales of coffee, sugar, cotton and
bananas, is estimated to be one-third the size it was when the Sandinistas took
over in 1979. For Nicaragua to regain its 1979 standard of living, Larry Birns,
director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs, estimated that
the national economy would have to grow at 5 percent a year for the next 20
years.
"This, of course, is ridiculous with coffee prices depressed and cotton
prices slumping," Birns said. "We have been supplying hundreds of millions in
aid to neighboring nations, like E1 Salvador, and they still have negative
growth rates. How is Mrs. Chamorro going to thrive on private investment?"
Moreover, the United States will be placed in a politically tight spot if it
is required to rebuild the Nicaraguan sugar industry, which, before the 1985
U.S. trade embargo, competed head-to-head with sugar producers in other Latin
countries, as well as with sugar producers in the southeastern United States.
Despite the seeming readiness of Congress and the administration to help,
congressional sources expressed some concern. One source pointed out that the
Bush administration has still not sent Congress legislation authorizing money
for Panama.
Many in Congress and the administration believe that the United States owes a
special obligation to Nicaragua, since it was American money that funded the
contras for eight years and U.S. sanctions that helped cripple the economy.
"Its inconceivable to me that we can't find the money," Solarz said yesterday.
"All we have to do is cancel one B-2 bomber."
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36TH STORY of Level 2 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1989 The Times Mirror Company;
Los Angeles Times
November 9, 1989, Thursday, Home Edition
SECTION: Part A; Page 15; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 462 words
HEADLINE: NICARAGUA'S OPPOSITION CANDIDATE AT WHITE HOUSE;
ELECTIONS: BUSH ASSURES VIOLETA CHAMORRO OF WASHINGTON'S SUPPORT FOR DEMOCRATIC
GOVERNMENT.
BYLINE: By DAVID LAUTER, TIMES STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
BODY:
Nicaraguan opposition candidate Violeta Barrios de Chamorro met for half an
hour with President Bush on Wednesday and asked for American financial
assistance for her country, if she wins February's presidential election.
Chamorro, the U.S.-backed candidate in the race against Nicaragua's
Sandinista President Daniel Ortega, is on a tour of the United States and
Europe to seek campaign funds and support.
"In a clean, fair election, Ortega is not going to win," she told reporters
after meeting with Bush. "I believe (the elections) are going to be clean and
fair, because that's what the Nicaraguan people want."
In a statement issued after the meeting, White House spokesman Roman Popadiuk
said that Bush would "assist in Nicaragua's reconstruction" if Chamorro wins.
The only specific step the statement mentioned was an end to the trade embargo
that the Reagan Administration had imposed on Nicaragua.
Bush assured Chamorro that "he's very much willing to support a democratic
government in Nicaragua with all he can do," said Chamorro's campaign manager,
Antonio Lacayo.
The Administration has been centering its Nicaraguan policy on Chamorro and
her campaign. Administration officials say that they are encouraged by high
voter registration figures in Nicaragua and have been pushing efforts to provide
support to the opposition campaign. Last month, for example, Bush won
congressional approval for $9 million to be spent on the elections. So far,
however, the money has not been sent to Nicaragua.
The meeting came on the eve of a meeting planned at the United Nations today
in which representatives of the Nicaraguan government will meet with leaders of
the Contras to discuss a resumption of the cease-fire that Ortega ended late
last month.
Bush Administration officials have been pushing for a renewed end to the
fighting, saying that they fear Ortega could use the warfare as an excuse to
cancel the elections. Ortega has blamed the fighting on the Contras, saying that
rebel attacks on Sandinista soldiers were endangering the election.
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(c) 1989 Los Angeles Times, November 9, 1989
At the State Department, spokesman Richard Boucher on Wednesday urged the
Sandinistas to resume the cease-fire.
"If the Sandinistas are truly interested in peace and national reconciliation
as they claim, the (U.N.) meeting could have a positive result, one that ends
the fighting and moves the peace process forward," Boucher said.
Neither U.S. officials nor Chamorro, however, were willing to respond to one
of Ortega's chief conditions for resuming the cease-fire -- an agreement by the
Contras to disband their military forces before the elections. White House
spokesman Popadiuk repeated the Administration's longstanding position that any
demobilization must be a "voluntary" decision by the Contras.
GRAPHIC: Photo, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro AL STEPHENSON
CHAMORRO, VIOLETTA BARRIOS; BUSH, GEORGE; POLITICAL CANDIDATES; NICARAGUA -
ELECTIONS; UNITED STATES -- FOREIGN RELATIONS - NICARAGUA; ORTEGA, DANIEL
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29TH STORY of Level 2 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1990 Gannett Company Inc.
USA TODAY
February 26, 1990, Monday, FINAL EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 304 words
HEADLINE: Nicaragua elections 'look fair'
BYLINE: Johanna Neuman; Juan J. Walte
DATELINE: MANAGUA, Nicaragua
KEYWORD: VIOLETA CHAMORRO
BODY:
President Bush opened the door Sunday to a ''better climate'' for relations
with Nicaragua as voters here chose between the ruling Marxist Sandinista regime
or a U.S.-backed coalition.
President Daniel Ortega, who has run Nicaragua for 10 years, took an early
lead over challenger Violetta Chamorro de Barrios of the United National
Opposition party.
There were no reports of violence or irregularities as voters waited hours to
cast ballots.
Former U.S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson, head of the U.N. observer
mission, said after polls closed: ''Things have been going very smoothly. So far
they look fair.'
Pre-election polls indicated voters were split over both candidates' big
negatives:
- Ortega was saddled with a faltering economy.
- Chamorro was forced to defend U.S. support for the contras waging war
against the Sandinistas.
Final results are expected to be in today.
Bush's comment at a news conference was his clearest signal of a possible
thaw.
''If these elections are certifiably free and fair, whoever wins the election
will find a better climate in which to improve relations with Nicaragua,' Bush
said.
But he said ''what follows on ... freedom of the press, freedom of
institutions, freedom to protest, freedom to speak your mind, is also
important.
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(c) 1990 USA TODAY, February 26, 1990
The White House cast doubts on an NBC News report that the process already is
under way, with State Department officials talking with Ortega about an end to
U.S. economic sanctions if the election is fair.
Although saying there was no deal, White House spokesman Roman Popaduik said:
Of course we talk to them, we have an embassy, we talk to them every day.
'But the president laid down our policy and we haven't changed from that.
We'll have to see what the elections are like before we even consider any
normalization.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO; color, Pool photo via AP (Daniel Ortega, daughter Camila)
CUTLINE: ONE FOR THE PRESIDENT: Daniel Ortega, who has been Nicaragua's
leader for 10 years, holds daughter Camila as he receives his ballot in national
elections Sunday. He took an early lead.
SUBJECT: FOREIGN COUNTRY; ELECTION
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2ND STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1990 The Times Mirror Company;
Los Angeles Times
September 15, 1990, Saturday, Orange County Edition
SECTION: Calendar; Part F; Page 2; Column 2; Entertainment Desk
LENGTH: 494 words
HEADLINE: LOW TURNOUT GETS SYMPOSIUM CANCELLED;
POETRY: THE CSUF EVENT, AT WHICH NOTED FOREIGN POETS WERE TO HAVE ADDRESSED THE
ISSUE OF FREE EXPRESSION, WAS CALLED OFF WHEN ONLY FOUR PEOPLE SHOWED UP FOR IT.
BYLINE: By RICK VANDERKNYFF, TIMES STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: FULLERTON
BODY:
In much of the world, the right to freely express ideas is a precious -- and
elusive -- commodity. But as some leading poets from Latin America and Canada
discovered Thursday at Cal State Fullerton, the U.S. guarantee of free speech
does not guarantee an audience.
A symposium scheduled for noon was cancelled when it drew all of four people
from a campus of more than 25,000 students.
"For the first time," quipped Nicaraguan poet and journalist Pablo Antonio
Cuadra, "the poets were in the majority."
The symposium was part of La Terra Nova 1990, a weeklong series of readings
and symposiums that started Monday as part of the ongoing Los Angeles Festival
and moved to Orange County on Wednesday.
Wednesday readings, held at three locations in the county, also were plagued
by lower-than-expected attendance and organizational problems. Program
coordinator C. George Peale, an associate professor of Spanish at CSUF, said he
had been led to expect "a couple hundred people" at a reading in Santa Ana that
only drew about 70. Readings in La Habra and San Juan Capistrano had audiences
of 40 and 20, respectively.
A Thursday evening lecture by Cuadra at CSUF drew a sparse crowd, about 50.
La Terra Nova closed Friday with a series of student poetry workshops.
"This is just baffling," Peale said after canceling the Thursday symposium.
He said the event had been well-publicized in local newspapers and the campus'
Daily Titan.
The symposium, titled "Writing on the Pacific Rim," was to have addressed the
issue of free expression in the poets' home countries -- and, by extension,
recent controversies over censorship and artistic freedom in the United States.
Participants were to have included Cuadra, Veronica Volkow (from Mexicol,
Eduardo Mitre (from Bolivia), Alfonso Barrera Valverde (from Ecuador), Juan
Gustavo Cobo Borda (from Colombia), Daphne Marlatt (from Canada), Blanca Varela
(from Peru) and Carlo Illescas (from Guatemala).
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(c) 1990 Los Angeles Times, September 15, 1990
Because of his links to the right-wing Cristiani government, the original
inclusion of poet David Escobar Galindo had been criticized by the Los Angeles
Salvadoran community. But Galindo eventually dropped out to take part in
Salvadoran peace talks this week.
Cuadra would not guess why the symposium drew so poorly but said: "It would
be pitiful if people didn't come for political reasons. It would be killing the
basis of American freedom."
Canadian Marlatt said that while the small audience for her Wednesday reading
in San Juan Capistrano initially was disappointing, ultimately "the feeling was
very good. Still, she said she was very disappointed by the turnout for the
symposium.
"I can't believe, given all the promotion they had, it was just a case of
people being too busy to come," she said. "I have my private guesses (about the
turnout), but I'm not a citizen of Orange County."
She said the turnout for Los Angeles events was generally stronger, with
packed rooms for some of the readings.
GRAPHIC: Photo, Nicaraguan poet Pablo Antonio Cuadra ; Photo, Mexican poet
Veronica Volkow ROD BOREN / For The Times
SUBJECT: POETRY; POETS; AUDIENCES; FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION; CONFERENCES;
CENSORSHIP; ARTS; APATHY
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3RD STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1990 The Times Mirror Company;
Los Angeles Times
September 14, 1990, Friday, Orange County Edition
SECTION: Calendar; Part F; Page 26; Column 1; Entertainment Desk
LENGTH: 671 words
HEADLINE: CELEBRATING MODERN POETS OF THE AMERICAS;
READINGS: SEVERAL LATIN AMERICAN POETS SHARED SELECTIONS FROM THEIR WORKS IN
THREE ORANGE COUNTY CITIES. THE RECITALS ARE PART OF A WEEKLONG FESTIVAL
ORGANIZED BY CAL STATE FULLERTON.
BYLINE: By JANICE L. JONES
DATELINE: SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO
BODY:
But the lords of darkness (the censors) said, "Let no one approach this tree.
Let no one dare pick this fruit." And a girl whose name was Blood Girl knew this
history. The maiden bravely asked, 'Why can't I know this tree's miracle?' And
she jumped over the oppressor's words of warning and approached the tree. She
approached the tree so that the myth could bring us together in its image.
Because the woman is the freedom that provokes action. And the hero is the
unhindered will."
-- From "The Calabash Tree"
by Pablo Antonio Cuadra
Quito Downs, a writer and artist who lives in El Toro, grew up in Nicaragua
during the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. As a teen-ager, he voiced
his discontent by writing letters to the editor of La Prensa, the country's only
independent newspaper. Several of the letters were published, but Downs left
Nicaragua before he got to meet the editor, Pablo Antonio Cuadra, an
internationally known poet and journalist who was imprisoned twice by Somoza.
Downs was among the first to arrive to hear Cuadra, now 78, and other poets
give recitals Wednesday night at the San Juan Capistrano Regional Library.
Cuadra, who combines the pre-Mayan myths of his homeland with the modern
folklore of Central American Indians, read three poems, including "The Calabash
Tree," dedicated to Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, the publisher of La Prensa whose
assassination in 1978 was a catalyst for the 1979 Sandinista revolution.
Cuadra originally was a Sandinista supporter but became disillusioned with
the movement's policies and eventually backed the Contras. In retaliation, the
Sandinistas shut down La Prensa for 15 months in 1986-87.
He said that the new government -- headed by Chamorro's widow, Violeta
Barrios de Chamorro, who defeated Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega in the
February presidential election -- presents another opportunity for Nicaragua to
achieve democracy. The Nicaraguan people, he said, have always loved freedom,
but in the past, totalitarian governments have risen from the very revolutions
that promised a better life.
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(c) 1990 Los Angeles Times, September 14, 1990
Cuadra hopes that this time it will be different, since more countries are
turning to democracy. The Eastern Europeans, he said, have helped pave the way.
Cuadra was a member of the 1920s' Vanguard literary movement, which sought to
create a poetry indigenous to Nicaragua, free from European influences imposed
by Modernism. He was influenced by the poet and revolutionary Augusto Cesar
Sandino, who fought off a U.S. Marine occupation of Nicaragua during the 1920s
and 1930s.
Cuadra stepped down recently from his position as editor of La Prensa but
still edits the newspaper's literary supplement.
Colombian poet Juan Gustavo Cobo Borda also read Wednesday, along with Daphne
Marlatt of Canada. The readings were part of La Terra Nova 1990, a weeklong
festival organized by Cal State Fullerton to celebrate contemporary poetry of
the Americas. The festival is a co-production of the Los Angeles Festival and
the 1990-1992 Orange County Festival of Discovery.
While Cuadra, Cobo Borda and Marlatt read in San Juan Capistrano, Guatemalan
poet Carlos Illescas read at the La Habra Library along with Peruvian poet
Blanca Varela. Veronica Volkow of Mexico, Alfonso Barrera Valverde of Ecuador,
Gonzalo Rojas of Chile and Eduardo Mitre of Bolivia read at the Corbin Center in
Santa Ana.
The lineup, selected by organizers Florinda Mintz and Paul Vangelisti, drew
criticism from the Southern California Salvadoran community because it
originally included David Escobar Galindo, a Salvadoran poet linked to the
right-wing Cristiani government. Galindo eventually canceled so he could attend
the United Nations peace talks that resumed this week.
"We never meant to offend anybody," said Mintz, an Argentine writer who lives
in Santa Ana. "The goal was to bring the poets here as individuals and artists,
as world citizens."
The festival closes today after an all-day student poetry workshop at Cal
State Fullerton.
GRAPHIC: Photo, Colombian poet Juan Gustavo Cobo Borda discusses his works. ;
Photo, Daphne Marlatt of Canada also participated in the readings. ; Photo,
Pablo Antonio Cuadra was formerly editor of Nicaragua's La Prensa. KARI RENE
HALL / Los Angeles Times
SUBJECT: POETRY; FESTIVALS
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5TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1990 The Times Mirror Company;
Los Angeles Times
September 12, 1990, Wednesday, Orange County Edition
SECTION: Calendar; Part F; Page 2; Column 6; Entertainment Desk
LENGTH: 236 words
HEADLINE: 3-DAY POETRY FESTIVAL OPENS
BYLINE: By RICK VANDERKNYFF
DATELINE: FULLERTON
BODY:
Pablo Antonio Cuadra, poet and editor of Managua's daily newspaper La
Prensa, will offer "A Nicaraguan Poet-Journalist's View of Current Events in
Central America" on Thursday night at Cal State Fullerton's University Center.
The 7:30 p.m. talk in Titan Hall will highlight "La Terra Nova -- -- New World
Poets, New World Visions," a three-day poetry festival opening today. Additional
events are:
Today
* Noon -- Bilingual poetry recital, Cal State Fullerton Little Theatre.
* 7:30 p.m. -- Recital with Veronica Volkow (Mexico), Eduardo Mitre (Bolivial
and Alfonso Barrera Valverde (Ecuador) at the Corbin Center, 2215 W. McFadden
Ave. in Santa Ana.
* 7:30 p.m. --- Recital with Juan Gustavo Cobo Borda (Colombia), Pablo
Antonio Cuadra (Nicaragua) and Daphne Marlatt (Canada) at the San Juan
Capistrano Library, 31495 E1 Camino Real.
* 7:30 p.m. - Recital with Blanca Varela (Peru) and Carlo Illescas
(Guatemala) at the La Habra Library, 221 E. La Habra Blvd.
Thursday
* Noon -- Bilingual symposium with all the poets, "Writing on the Pacific
Rim," in the Cal State Fullerton Little Theatre.
* 2:30 p.m. -- Informal reception and conference with Daphne Marlatt, Blanca
Varela and Veronica Volkow at the Cal State Fullerton Women's Center.
Friday
* 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. -- Poetry workshops on Cal State Fullerton campus.
Admission for all events is free. Information: (714) 773-3534. RICK
VANDERKNYFF
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6TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1990 The Times Mirror Company;
Los Angeles Times
September 5, 1990, Wednesday, Home Edition
SECTION: View; Part E; Page 1; Column 6; View Desk
LENGTH: 919 words
HEADLINE: A POET RETURNS TO HIS MUSE;
LITERATURE: NICARAGUAN EDITOR PABLO ANTONIO CUADRA HAS GIVEN UP JOURNALISM AND
IS REFOCUSING HIS ATTENTION ON POETRY. HE WILL PARTICIPATE IN THE LOS ANGELES
FESTIVAL THIS WEEKEND.
SERIES: Festival '90 A Celebration of Asian, Pacific, Latino art and culture.
BYLINE: By KEVIN BAXTER, TIMES STAFF WRITER
BODY:
A small wooden sentry stands guard near the front door of Pablo Antonio
Cuadra's home in Managua's exclusive Las Colinas neighborhood. The statue,
carved at the art commune of Solentiname, center of Nicaragua's cultural
renaissance, depicts Jonah in the belly of a whale.
"For me," Cuadra explains, "it represents the Resurrection of Christ."
But for others, the statue is just as likely to symbolize the resurrection of
Cuadra. After a decade of fighting the censors and cultural hierarchy of
Nicaragua's deposed Sandinista government, Cuadra, who many consider to be one
of the most important literary voices of the 20th Century, is returning to his
poetry full time.
The Sandinistas' defeat in last February's national elections ended a bitter
period in Cuadra's life. As editor of La Prensa, Nicaragua's supermarket
tabloid-style afternoon newspaper, Cuadra directed a fierce campaign against the
government. That led to tight censorship and eventually a yearlong publishing
ban of La Prensa, and a short period of self-exile for Cuadra. But it also
produced a presidential victory for Violetta Barrios de Chamorro, the paper's
publisher.
And after that final victory, Cuadra, 78, stepped down as editor to become an
adviser to La Prensa, freeing valuable time for poetry.
"I feel more free now," he said. "Journalism and poetry are not good
friends."
Cuadra will demonstrate the fruits of that new-found freedom this weekend in
the Los Angeles Festival. Cuadra and Peruvian poet Blanca Varela, whose work
offers a similar attack on the powerful, open the La Terra Nova 1990: Pacific
Poetry Festival at 8 p.m. Saturday at Occidental College's Keck Auditorium.
Cuadra may be finished with journalism, but it's unlikely he's through with
politics. Inevitably, Nicaragua's writers have always found themselves drawn
into their country's turbulent politics and Cuadra's career certainly offers no
exception.
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(c) 1990 Los Angeles Times, September 5, 1990
He began writing during the charged atmosphere of the 1920s -- when U.S.
Marines occupied Nicaragua -- and he soon became active in the political and
cultural projects of la Vanguardia. The movement -- whose ranks included poets
Jose Coronel Urtecho, Joaquin Pasos and Octavio Rosas -- was deeply influenced
by European fascism and fervently backed the U.S.-imposed dictatorship of
Anastasio Somoza Garcia.
Stylistically, poets of la Vanguardia were influenced by fledgling trends
in North American literature. The result -- a poetry built around conversational
language, free verse, dialogue and satirical humor, among other devices -- is a
distinctly Nicaraguan poetry.
"We were never a group of provincial poets writing about church steeples,"
Cuadra told cultural historian Steven White. "We wanted to see what was going on
in the world, assimilate it, and then create our own poetry. And WE did that
instinctively."
Among those most inspired by the new approach was Cuadra's cousin, Ernesto
Cardenal, perhaps the most widely read Nicaraguan poet since Ruben Dario.
But by 1934, when "Poemas nicaraguenses" ("Nicaraguan Poems"), Cuadra's first
collection of poems, was published, the author was already beginning to question
the political orientation of la Vanguardia. Three years later, Cuadra was jailed
by Somoza for demonstrating against the dictatorship.
Whether by choice or by circumstance, Cuadra has never strayed far from
politics since. Jailed twice and continually harassed by the government during
the Somoza family's 33-year reign, Cuadra worked clandestinely with the
Sandinistas during the Nicaraguan revolution. But shortly after the guerrilla
army came to power, Cuadra found himself again leading the opposition, only this
time he was tilting at a different windmill.
The one constant since his break with la Vanguardia, Cuadra insists, has been
his promotion of Nicaraguan nationalism, democracy and self-determination. But
he has insisted on doing so outside the rigid constraints of party politics.
"You need freedom to create," he says. "When an artist uses (partisan)
politics in his work, he makes propaganda. And when an artist does that, he
loses the ability for self-criticism.
"The artist and the poet must become personally engaged in the political
struggle but he must not compromise his art."
Which is not to suggest that Cuadra's poetry is apolitical; indeed, many of
his poems are just the opposite. In an early work, "Poem of the Foreign Movement
in the Jungle," Cuadra rails against the U.S. occupation of Nicaragua, a
nationalistic stand he repeated a few years ago in "The Calabash Tree."
But there are other themes and inspirations, as well. An enthusiastic student
of Nicaraguan history and indigenous culture, Cuadra has compiled an extensive
collection of books on ethnography and archeology. He is also widely read in
mythology and linguistics and speaks fluent French. He may be the closest thing
Nicaragua has to a Renaissance man -- and each of these interests have made
their way into his poetry.
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9TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1990 The Times Mirror Company;
Los Angeles Times
March 31, 1990, Saturday, Home Edition
SECTION: Part A; Page 9; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 1332 words
HEADLINE: MANAGUA COMING TO TERMS WITH PAST, FUTURE;
NICARAGUA: AN EARTHQUAKE AND AN INSURRECTION FORCED CHANGES ON THE CAPITAL.
BYLINE: By MARJORIE MILLER, TIMES STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MANAGUA, Nicaragua
BODY:
Ask anyone in Managua for directions to "the little tree" and they will point
confidently to a downtown intersection with a service station, Roco's Bar and
the ruins of a two-story house, but no tree.
Never mind that the tree has been gone for 17 years, that when city workers
dug it up to pave the streets after the earthquake it was no longer a little
tree but a great big tree, an Indian laurel.
"It's a point of reference," said Rene Cano, 66, who has run the service
station for 30 years. "For everyone, this corner is the little tree."
The invisible tree is the key to many Managua addresses, including Cano's -
"five blocks down from the little tree and one block to the lake." But Cano
cannot fathom a stranger's interest in the tree and, furthermore, he considers
it one more example of how little foreigners understand his country.
Another example, he says, is the fact that multitudes of observers on hand
for last month's presidential election failed to foresee the sweeping opposition
victory.
"You have to know the idiosyncrasies of the Nicaraguan people," Cano said.
Right. Except that this is like trying to understand Managua, which is
hurtling through change at lightning speed while holding onto its past by means
of landmarks that ceased to exist long ago.
The earthquake of Dec. 22, 1972, leveled Managua. Seven years later, the
Sandinista guerrillas led a popular insurrection that brought down the
dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza, and this was followed by the Contra civil war.
After a decade of revolution and civil war, Nicaraguans booted the
Sandinistas out of office in an election that was one of the Sandinistas'
greatest achievements -- the first free and competitive election in the
country's history.
All those changes notwithstanding, younger generations still refer to Cano's
corner as "where the tree used to be." They say it's down the street from Las
Delicias del Volga, a cantina that is also gone.
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(c) 1990 Los Angeles Times, March 31, 1990
For 10 years, the Sandinistas' battle cry was "Free Fatherland or Death," and
that is what they taught in Managua schools. Sandinista Youth spent their
summers in the countryside picking coffee and teaching adults to read.
Now, under the new government of the National Opposition Union (UNO),
children are to learn that free enterprise is the law of the land.
"The law of supply and demand is like the law of gravity," UNO leader Carlos
Hurtado said in the flush of victory. "It is inexorable."
But even gravity is sometimes different in Managua, where the four points of
the compass are "up, down, to the lake and to the mountains." On any given
block, up may be downhill, and the lake may be nowhere in sight.
How is an outsider to understand this?
Easy, says Maria Elena Castro, a resident of the neighborhood known as July
19th: "Down is where the sun sets, and up is where it rises."
After their triumph, the Sandinistas renamed many of Managua's streets and
neighborhoods to honor the heroes, martyrs and battles of their uprising. July
19th, for example, is the day they celebrate their rise to power. Under the
Somozas, the July 19th neighborhood was called "The Redeemer."
Those who oppose the Sandinistas have steadfastly refused to accept the new
names, SO that many places have two names. Castro calls the square in front of
the crumbling Metropolitan Cathedral the Plaza of the Revolution, but her
anti-Sandinista husband calls it the Plaza of the Republic.
They both know what they are talking about. And by means of these labels, any
Nicaraguan can identify which side of the political landscape they occupy.
Castro wonders whether the new government will try to erase the Sandinista
names.
"I think they should stay the same," she said, "because this was a historic
process. These people spilled their blood, and that cannot be in vain."
Her husband said, "I think they should go back to the way it was before the
revolution."
Before the revolution, Managua had the Anastasio Somoza Garcia National
Baseball Stadium, named for Somoza's father. The Sandinistas renamed the stadium
after Rigoberto Lopez Perez, a tailor and poet who assassinated Somoza Garcia
and was killed in the process.
Names, according to the opposition's premier poet, Pablo Antonio Cuadra,
are not all that important, but monuments are. The government of President-elect
Violeta Barrios de Chamorro plans to build two monuments, Cuadra said, one to
Gen. Augusto Cesar Sandino, who fought off a U.S. Marine occupation of Nicaragua
in the 1920s and 1930s, and another to poet Ruben Dario. They are Nicaragua's
political and cultural heroes.
Although they take their name from Sandino, the Sandinistas never put up a
statue of him, Cuadra noted. Instead, they erected a towering statue of a
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(c) 1990 Los Angeles Times, March 31, 1990
muscular worker raising an AK-47 rifle overhead. The opposition refers to it
disparagingly as "the hulk." Even Sandinistas privately malign the oeuvre that
they feel obliged to defend in public.
"That statue should remain as a monument to July 19th," Cuadra said. "The
less a civilization tears down its statues, the more it advances. If people
always took down their monuments, you'd never have a Paris or a Salamanca."
Cuadra does not pretend to compare Managua to Paris, calling Managua "the
ugliest city in the world
a volcano with a black hole in the middle."
Definitely, the city is diffuse, divided by blocks of overgrown lots and the
rubble of buildings that crumbled in the earthquake. Every lamppost and wall is
a chaos of political graffiti and campaign banners. Thin palm trees bend and
whip in the wind.
The new government, Cuadra says, must call an urgent meeting of builders,
urban planners and seismologists to construct a post-earthquake,
post-revolutionary Managua.
"You cannot govern from a disperse city that is without syntax," he said,
with distaste. "You end up with disperse, dehumanizing politics. It leads to
mental disorganization."
Indeed, there is a maddening quality to Managua. Streets that are paved are
potholed; the rest are dirt. Water is scarce and electric power is erratic, as
is the telephone system. But the inconveniences are tempered by the character of
the Nicaraguans.
Most Managuans are poor. Men push carts, and horses pull them. As in any
Latin American city, a gaggle of little boys surrounds any car stopped at a
traffic light. They reach in with long and grubby arms, not to steal a purse but
for the thrill of sounding the horn.
In neighborhood after neighborhood, Managuans gather at the end of the day in
the living rooms and on the front porches of their one-story houses. In
high-back rockers called "little grandmothers" they debate television soap
operas and national politics with equal fervor.
Nicaraguans do not always tell outsiders exactly what they think --- as in
whom they think they will vote for. But the language they use can serve as a
guide to their politics.
Sandinistas frequently use the word companero -- companion -- an affectionate
term for anyone from a lover to an army buddy to a waiter in a restaurant.
The opposition, on the other hand, is enamored of the word fanatic, by which
they mean Sandinista, and for which they have created a verb, to fanaticize,
which is what they insist the Sandinistas have done to Nicaragua's youth.
Sandinistas call the opposition burgueses -- bourgeoisie. They prefer army
fatigues and tropical guayabera shirts, but Chamorro's American-educated preppie
crowd is expected to bring back the suit and tie. Already, upper-class women are
chattering about the floor-length dresses they will wear to the inauguration.
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(c) 1990 Los Angeles Times, March 31, 1990
Few Nicaraguans are willing to predict what other changes the new government
will bring. Businessman Pablo Vijil hopes to lure a pizza chain to Managua. The
elimination of a U.S. trade embargo lifts an economic cloud from Managua, but
Vijil is not expecting a flood of new investment.
"Expectations will not necessarily coincide with reality," he said. "There
are many unknowns."
GRAPHIC: Photo, Before election, opposition supporters climb Sandinista monument
referred to as "the hulk.' CHRIS VAIL / For The Times
SUBJECT: MANAGUA (NICARAGUA) -- HISTORY; EARTHQUAKES -- NICARAGUA; SANDINISTA
NATIONAL LIBERATION FRONT; NICARAGUA -- REVOLTS; MEMORIALS; NICARAGUA --
GOVERNMENT; NICARAGUA -- CULTURE; NICARAGUA -- POLITICS
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DATE: APRIL 9, 1991
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21
18TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1990 The Chronicle Publishing Co.
The San Francisco Chronicle
APRIL 12, 1990, THURSDAY, FINAL EDITION
SECTION: DAILY DATEBOOK; Pg. E4
LENGTH: 570 words
HEADLINE: A Look at Nicaragua Through Poets' Eyes
BYLINE: Judy Stone, Chronicle Staff Critic
BODY:
A revealing portrait of Nicaraguan life emerges through the diverse voices of
its poets in 'Azul,' an unusually eloquent documentary that opens today at the
York theater.
Although it was made by Roland Legiardi-Laura long before the recent
election, in which the Sandinista government was voted out, the poetic film
evokes the strains that have shaken Nicaragua from the time the U.S. Marines
occupied the country (1912-1933), through the Somoza family dictatorship and the
revolutionary movement that overthrew it.
As the camera ranges over the mountains and valleys of the country,
professional and nonprofessional writers from every walk of life express their
feelings in their poems and in interviews: a soldier on border patrol, a
'macho'' prisoner and his female ''critic,'' women who believe in the
revolution and those who lost faith in it, men in the Sandinista government and
those who disagree with politicized art.
CREDIT TO DARIO
Although the esthetic and political attitudes of these writers vary, they
agree that poet Ruben Dario (1867-1916) was one of the creators of the modern
Nicaraguan nation. (The title ''Azul'' (blue) is taken from a book of Dario's
poems.) Dario was to the Spanish-speaking world what Poe, Whitman and Ezra Pound
were to the English-speaking world in terms of their ground-breaking styles.
Poet Ernesto Cardenal, the Sandinista minister of culture, points out that
Dario also was an important influence on General Augusto Sandino, who led
Nicaraguan fighters against the Marines and was killed in 1934 on orders of
Anastasio Somoza, then head of the National Guard.
Those battles inspired Pablo Antonio Cuadra's 1934 ''Poem of the Foreign
Moment in the Jungle'': ''I must make something of the mud of history / dig in
the swamp and unbury the moon / of my forefathers. Oh! uncoil / your dark fury,
hypnotic snake / sharpen your obsidian claws, black tiger / rivet your
incandescent eye, there! / In the heart of the jungle / 500 North Americans
(The poems are in Spanish, but they inevitably lose something in the English
subtitled translations.)
Today, Cuadra, who was opposed to the Sandinista government, says, ''The
nation of Nicaragua flies with two wings: one of political sovereignty, the
other of cultural sovereignty. The hero of political sovereignty is Sandino,
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(c) 1990 The San Francisco Chronicle, APRIL 12, 1990
and the hero of cultural sovereignty is Ruben Dario. If you clip the wing of
culture by taking away freedom of expression, the bird cannot fly. Its future
will be clipped. The bird of Nicaragua needs two wings to fly.'
POEM OF LOVE AND LONGING
Two sides to one man's personality are expressed by Tomas Borge, former
minister of the interior. He believes that ''poetry is fundamentally subversive,
for taking power
and for keeping power. Yet when he was in prison under
Somoza and deprived of conjugal visits, he fantasized about them and wrote a
lyric poem, full of love and longing.
Ligia Guillen, who left Nicaragua in 1981, took issue early on with
Cardenal's statement that the artist or intellectual who was not with the
revolution was against it. ''That's a dictatorial way of treating creative
people,'' she declares.
On the other hand, Daisy Zamora felt privileged to have lived during the
anti-Somoza revolution, but says sadly, ''We don't know how this is going to
turn out, do we? Because we're under attack, because we have 50 many economic
problems
GRAPHIC: PHOTO, Ruben Dario, poet influenced rebel leader Augusto Sandino
MOVIES; REVIEW
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DATE: APRIL 9, 1991
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7TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1990 The Times Mirror Company;
Los Angeles Times
September 5, 1990, Wednesday, Home Edition
SECTION: View; Part E; Page 1; Column 6; View Desk
LENGTH: 919 words
HEADLINE: A POET RETURNS TO HIS MUSE;
LITERATURE: NICARAGUAN EDITOR PABLO ANTONIO CUADRA HAS GIVEN UP JOURNALISM AND
IS REFOCUSING HIS ATTENTION ON POETRY. HE WILL PARTICIPATE IN THE LOS ANGELES
FESTIVAL THIS WEEKEND.
SERIES: Festival '90 A Celebration of Asian, Pacific, Latino art and culture.
BYLINE: By KEVIN BAXTER, TIMES STAFF WRITER
BODY:
A small wooden sentry stands guard near the front door of Pablo Antonio
Cuadra's home in Managua's exclusive Las Colinas neighborhood. The statue,
carved at the art commune of Solentiname, center of Nicaragua's cultural
renaissance, depicts Jonah in the belly of a whale.
"For me," Cuadra explains, "it represents the Resurrection of Christ."
But for others, the statue is just as likely to symbolize the resurrection of
Cuadra. After a decade of fighting the censors and cultural hierarchy of
Nicaragua's deposed Sandinista government, Cuadra, who many consider to be one
of the most important literary voices of the 20th Century, is returning to his
poetry full time.
The Sandinistas' defeat in last February's national elections ended a bitter
period in Cuadra's life. As editor of La Prensa, Nicaragua's supermarket
tabloid-style afternoon newspaper, Cuadra directed a fierce campaign against the
government. That led to tight censorship and eventually a yearlong publishing
ban of La Prensa, and a short period of self-exile for Cuadra. But it also
produced a presidential victory for Violetta Barrios de Chamorro, the paper's
publisher.
And after that final victory, Cuadra, 78, stepped down as editor to become an
adviser to La Prensa, freeing valuable time for poetry.
"I feel more free now," he said. "Journalism and poetry are not good
friends."
Cuadra will demonstrate the fruits of that new-found freedom this weekend in
the Los Angeles Festival. Cuadra and Peruvian poet Blanca Varela, whose work
offers a similar attack on the powerful, open the La Terra Nova 1990: Pacific
Poetry Festival at 8 p.m. Saturday at Occidental College's Keck Auditorium.
Cuadra may be finished with journalism, but it's unlikely he's through with
politics. Inevitably, Nicaragua's writers have always found themselves drawn
into their country's turbulent politics and Cuadra's career certainly offers no
exception.
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(c) 1990 Los Angeles Times, September 5, 1990
He began writing during the charged atmosphere of the 1920s -- when U.S.
Marines occupied Nicaragua --- and he soon became active in the political and
cultural projects of la Vanguardia. The movement -- whose ranks included poets
Jose Coronel Urtecho, Joaquin Pasos and Octavio Rosas --- was deeply influenced
by European fascism and fervently backed the U.S.-imposed dictatorship of
Anastasio Somoza Garcia.
Stylistically, poets of la Vanguardia were influenced by fledgling trends
in North American literature. The result - a poetry built around conversational
language, free verse, dialogue and satirical humor, among other devices -- is a
distinctly Nicaraguan poetry.
"We were never a group of provincial poets writing about church steeples,"
Cuadra told cultural historian Steven White. "We wanted to see what was going On
in the world, assimilate it, and then create our own poetry. And we did that
instinctively."
Among those most inspired by the new approach was Cuadra's cousin, Ernesto
Cardenal, perhaps the most widely read Nicaraguan poet since Ruben Dario.
But by 1934, when "Poemas nicaraguenses" ("Nicaraguan Poems"), Cuadra's first
collection of poems, was published, the author was already beginning to question
the political orientation of la Vanguardia. Three years later, Cuadra was jailed
by Somoza for demonstrating against the dictatorship.
Whether by choice or by circumstance, Cuadra has never strayed far from
politics since. Jailed twice and continually harassed by the government during
the Somoza family's 33-year reign, Cuadra worked clandestinely with the
Sandinistas during the Nicaraguan revolution. But shortly after the guerrilla
army came to power, Cuadra found himself again leading the opposition, only this
time he was tilting at a different windmill.
The one constant since his break with la Vanguardia, Cuadra insists, has been
his promotion of Nicaraguan nationalism, democracy and self-determination. But
he has insisted on doing SO outside the rigid constraints of party politics.
"You need freedom to create," he says. "When an artist uses (partisan)
politics in his work, he makes propaganda. And when an artist does that, he
loses the ability for self-criticism.
"The artist and the poet must become personally engaged in the political
struggle but he must not compromise his art."
Which is not to suggest that Cuadra's poetry is apolitical; indeed, many of
his poems are just the opposite. In an early work, "Poem of the Foreign Movement
in the Jungle," Cuadra rails against the U.S. occupation of Nicaragua, a
nationalistic stand he repeated a few years ago in "The Calabash Tree."
But there are other themes and inspirations, as well. An enthusiastic student
of Nicaraguan history and indigenous culture, Cuadra has compiled an extensive
collection of books on ethnography and archeology. He is also widely read in
mythology and linguistics and speaks fluent French. He may be the closest thing
Nicaragua has to a Renaissance man -- and each of these interests have made
their way into his poetry.
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(c) 1990 Los Angeles Times, September 5, 1990
With his thick-rimmed glasses, gray hair and mustache, Don Pablo Antonio --
he prefers the traditional formal address -- even looks the part of an
intellectual, or college professor, which he has been at various times in his
life.
And despite some impressive -- and unlikely --- political victories, Cuadra
insists his most lasting contribution to Nicaragua has been his poetry.
"The poet creates the language of the future," he says. "Art is one of the
messages that transcends the human condition."
GRAPHIC: Photo, PABLO ANTONIO CUADRA Nicaraguan poet and former editor
TYPE: Series
SUBJECT: LOS ANGELES FESTIVAL; FESTIVALS; ARTS -- NICARAGUA; POETS; POETRY;
WRITERS; NICARAGUA -- POLITICS; JOURNALISM; CUADRA, PABLO ANTONIO
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1ST STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1991 Chicago Tribune Company;
Chicago Tribune
February 7, 1991, Thursday, FINAL
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 8; ZONE: M
LENGTH: 928 words
HEADLINE: Sandinistas reportedly in joint-rule accord
BYLINE: By Nathaniel Sheppard Jr., Chicago Tribune
DATELINE: MANAGUA, Nicaragua
BODY:
Moderate forces in the new civilian government and in its predecessor, the
Sandinista Front, have worked out a secret agreement on joint rule in the
country, political sources say.
The arrangement, under which most major political decisions are to be made
through a process of compromise, has angered the ideologically rigid left wing
of the Sandinistas and the right wing of the U.S.-backed government, according
to some involved.
The Sandinistas, who ruled Nicaragua for 10 years, were defeated in
elections last February by a political coalition headed by now-President
Violetta Chamorro and known as UNO.
Sources in and close to the government said UNO's lack of political
experience and inability to organize a loyal grass-roots support network had
left officials no choice but to seek the cooperation of the Sandinistas.
"They (the Sandinistas) showed they were in position to make good on their
promise to rule from below by pulling Sandinista unionists off their jobs in May
and July," said a foreign diplomat. "It is not a well-kept secret that they (the
government) must placate the Sandinistas on most of the major decisions they
make."
A Sandinista official said the new arrangement was "implicit but not
explicit. There 15 a strong lobby in the Legislative Assembly; we have
established control over certain key agencies, including the military, and have
five Sandinista ministers in government.
"If Chamorro wants something, she has to negotiate it with us," he said. "If
she does not there could be a social explosion."
The official said the Sandinistas were instrumental in the government's
ability to hold a week of national dialogue last year. "The trade unions were
not going to participate," the official said. "But the leadership, after certain
promises were made in meetings with the government, told them to cool it and not
disrupt the meetings."
The Sandinistas' coziness with the government is reflected in the new
appearance and softer tone of Barricada, the Sandinistas' official newspaper.
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(c) 1991 Chicago Tribune, February 7, 1991
Its logo of a soldier behind sandbags aiming an AK-47 has been replaced by a
10-gallon hat symbolizing Augusto Sandino, the Nicaraguan revolutionary who
inspired the Sandinista movement. A recent front-page editorial explained that
the paper would take a more cooperative posture toward the government and toward
rebuilding the destitute nation.
Government officials refused to be interviewed on the subject, but
Sandinistas expressed contrasting views on the desirability of the new
arrangement.
"We say officially that there is no co-government but that we have some
influence in government because we are the best organized political party," said
Luis Carrion, a ranking Sandinista official.
"We have high-level contacts with the government fairly regularly in which WE
tell them our point of view or they ask our view on things they plan to do," he
said. But "sometimes they pull off things without telling us or the Legislative
Assembly in advance."
Pressed for details, Carrion said meetings are held at least twice a month.
The Sandinistas usually are represented by former President Daniel Ortega,
Sergio Ramirez, Jaime Wheelock and Carrion. Government representatives include
Antonio Lacayo, minister of the presidency; Carlos Hurtado, minister of
government; and Alfredo Cesar, assembly president, Carrion said. Ramirez was
Ortega's running mate in the February elections.
Lacayo, to whom Carrion referred as "the prime minister," is widely regarded
as the most powerful political figure in the government, even more powerful than
his mother-in-law, the president, who often is not present at key planning
meetings.
Asked what role Chamorro had in the governing arrangement, Carrion said, "She
affixes her signature to every agreement."
Conservatives in the government, led by Vice President Virgilio Godoy and
Managua Mayor Arnoldo Aleman, oppose the agreement with the Sandinistas. They
have called for the resignations of Lacayo, Hurtado and others involved.
Many Sandinistas also bristle at the power-sharing arrangement and derisively
refer to the Sandinista participants as "social democrats."
"There are two problems with this arrangement," said Francisco Lopez, a
Sandinista founder who heads the National Institute for Social and Economic
Studies. "It makes it appear that we have reneged on the revolutionary
principles we spent 11 years fighting for, and we begin to help justify all the
mistakes this government is making.
"We also run the risk of demobilizing the very sectors which were the key to
our support. We lose the perspective of an organization working at the public
level and start negotiating the problems of our country at the highest levels of
leadership," Lopez said.
"This co-government idea developed during the period of transition for the
new government. It is a social democrat-style not viable among the bases of
Sandinista support - women, workers' groups, small industry, intellectuals and
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(c) 1991 Chicago Tribune, February 7, 1991
artisans," Lopez said.
"In theory those involved in co-government say 'We are Sandinistas and have
the people's interest at heart,' = said Norma Cuadra, a Sandinista activist. "In
practice we haven't seen this. Decisions are made at the highest levels.
"There is currently a class struggle within the movement between the working
class and the elite. The elite, or social democrats, agree with the elitist end
of UNO that neoliberalism can solve the country's problems," she said. "They are
the same as the technocrats in UNO but less brutal in their decisions."
NICARAGUA; PROFILE; GROUP; OPPOSITION; GOVERNMENT; MILITARY; NAMELIST
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DATE: APRIL 9, 1991
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3RD STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1990 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
March 4, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
NAME: Violeta Barrios de Chamorro
CATEGORY: Politics and Government (Foreign)
SECTION: Section 4; Page 3, Column 1; Week in Review Desk
LENGTH: 1188 words
HEADLINE: THE WORLD; Nicaragua's Family History: An Insider's Tale;
The Chamorro Saga Began Long Ago, But as for the Ortegas
BYLINE: By ARTURO CRUZ Jr.; Arturo Cruz Jr., who is writing a history of
Nicaragua, is a former Sandinista and a former contra.
BODY:
IN his moment of defeat after the election last week, President Daniel Ortega
Saavedra of Nicaragua gave a concession speech. Then he went to the house of
Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, almost like a neighbor in distress coming to seek
solace. ''Come in, my little father, because I love you,' the handsome woman
was quoted as telling the man she had just defeated in the race for president.
A curious scene, given the decade's rages. To understand it you have to
understand who the Chamorros are and who the Ortegas are and that Nicaragua's
history is largely a history of families.
Dona Violeta, as the new President-elect is known, is rightly described as an
aristocrat. But aristocracy does not mean the same thing in Nicaragua as in
other Latin countries. Dona Violeta is closer to the people than her skeptics
would like to believe. She is a devout Catholic. She keeps alive the memory of
her murdered husband. In fact, she talks to her late husband every night.
The voters related to her campaign style more readily than to the Madison
Avenue techniques of Daniel Ortega, whose international notoriety made him less
appealing to many Nicaraguans than to the Hollywood crowd. (The man he helped to
overthrow in 1979, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, liked to be recognized among
foreigners, too, but his orientation was East Coast - West Point, to be
precise.) When the Nicaraguans chose Mrs. Chamorro, they were choosing a symbol
of their country. But it is necessary to start at the beginning.
In the days of Spanish colonization in the early 1800's, Nicaragua was a
forgotten province, rich in land and with relatively few people. From time to
time a boat would put in at the mouth of the San Juan River on the Atlantic
coast. This river linked the port to the Great Lake, on the shores of which sat
(and still sits) Granada, home of the Chamorro family.
The boat came bearing liquor from Peru, guitar strings, and news of the
world. Granada had two or three ''commercial'' families who dealt in contraband.
The other great clans raised cattle. The Chamorros were among them, hard-working
folk of rustic habits, possessing land but little cash. At great sacrifice they
sent one of their own, Pedro Jose Chamorro, to study in far-off Guatemala.
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(c) 1990 The New York Times, March 4, 1990
There, he had a son with an Indian woman.
With independence in 1821 came the first civil war. Don Pedro sought refuge
in Managua, where he died. His widow had to take the charity of her late
husband's illegitimate son, who was summoned from Guatemala to run the family
business.
In one of those mythic twists of Nicaraguan history, Jose Fruto Chamorro, a
mixture of dispossessed Indian and white landowner, founded a dynasty and became
the first Chamorro to become president. For Don Fruto, the country was like a
family: it needed a firm but affectionate father. Perhaps he lacked brilliance,
but no one doubted his character. Nicaraguans say that if he had been alive when
William Walker arrived in the 1850's, the American adventurer would never have
seized temporary control of Nicaragua.
The country enjoyed 30 years of peace in the second half of the 19th century.
Many who governed were relatives of Don Fruto, and Nicaragua saw the advent of
railroads, telegraphs and good roads. Schools were built and coffee was
introduced. All this without a buildup of foreign debt and without a political
life disfigured by violence and corruption. The country lived in splendid
isolation from the revolutions that swept other Central American lands.
Aristocracy Without Luxury
The aristocracy was never wealthy enough to indulge in a life of luxury. The
landowners seemed almost small tradesmen compared with their counterparts in E1
Salvador and Guatemala, who grew wealthy on coffee, and indolent and arrogant by
exploiting the abundant and docile labor force. With time the Chamorros became
an aristocratic family, but from the beginning they could not deny their partly
Indian origins, and they slept in hammocks and ate the same diet of tortillas,
rice and beans as their workers. It was only later that such people learned more
refined habits, after the arrival of French and Italian immigrants. Then came
the Liberal Revolution in the early 1900's, and a challenge to the landed
aristocracy by the new families like the Somozas and the Ortegas. The upstarts'
victory meant an end to republican institutions. The times turned against Don
Fruto's relatives; they suffered exile, imprisonment and economic ruin. (Two
Chamorros led the country for a time: a pompous intellectual and a caudillo
whose courage in facing bullets was legendary.) In the 20th century the
Chamorros would be out of power more often than in - whether the triumphant
adversary was named Zelaya, Somoza or Ortega. There was a certain repetition.
Every new family that seized power set about reorganizing the state,
establishing its own bureaucracy, widening the circle of new rich, refounding
the army, putting warships on both coasts. Each new clan sought to draw
legitimacy and self-esteem from its recognition by foreigners and, in the case
of the Somozas, from the accumulation of wealth.
The most notable Chamorro of this century was Pedro Joaquin Chamorro
Cardenal: proud of his heritage, a man of character, heir to the newspaper La
Prensa, which was founded by his father. His quarrel with the Somozas led Don
Pedro Joaquin to admire Sandino, and to pay for his opinions with jail, exile
and eventually his life. It led him to travel to Cuba to ask Fidel Castro for
the means to set up his own guerrilla army. Later, in the early 70's, he went to
Chile during the rule of Salvador Allende Gossens, whence he returned
unimpressed with the ''Leninist delirium'' sweeping that country. But he also
returned convinced that his own Conservative Party had to be made into a
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(c) 1990 The New York Times, March 4, 1990
vehicle for introducing social democracy.
Pedro Joaquin Chamorro eventually married Violeta Barrios, who was from a
land-owning family in Rivas. Like most Nicaraguan women, Violeta lived for her
husband and her children, despising politics and hoping for the fall of the
Somozas. Her husband was killed in 1979.
Today, she is about to govern Nicaragua. Those who say that Dona Violeta
has no social conscience are ignorant of the legacy of her husband. They forget
that more than 40 percent of the best land in the country is in the hands of the
Sandinista state, and that there is reason to think that Dona Violeta will
really divide these lands among the rural population - the equivalent of turning
Manhattan Island over to the homeless. One problem she faces is more uniquely
Nicaraguan, namely whether in running the country she will choose only members
of her family. (In this regard the Ortegas were entirely traditional, with one
brother running the Government, the other, the army.) Dona Violeta depends
heavily on her older son, her older daughter, on her son-in-law, on the sister
of her son-in-law, on the husband of the sister of her son-in-law, and the
brother of the husband of the sister of her son-in-law. Her challenge will be to
go beyond matters of family, and govern for the benefit of all.
GRAPHIC: Photo: Young couple: Violeta Barrios de Chamorro with her husband,
Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Cardenal (Sygma/Jason Bleibtreu)
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LEVEL 1 - 29 OF 35 DOCUMENTS
Public Papers of the Presidents
White House Statement on the President's Meeting With
Violeta Chamorro
25 Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. 667
May 5, 1989
LENGTH: 271 words
The President today met with Mrs. Violeta Chamorro, publisher of the
Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa. Mrs. Chamorro is in Washington at the
invitation of the National Endowment for Democracy. Mrs. Chamorro and La
Prensa have become symbols of freedom of expression and the struggle against
tyranny and dictatorship throughout Latin America, beginning with the struggle
against the Somoza government.
During the meeting, the President expressed his deep regard for Mrs.
Chamorro and of her unceasing efforts to carry on the tradition of her
assassinated husband over the last 10 years in the face of Sandinista harassment
and intimidation. The President told Mrs. Chamorro that he shared her
25 Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. 667
and intimidation. The President told Mrs. Chamorro that he shared her
disappointment and concern that the new media law promulagated by the
Sandinistas does not guaranteed the free functioning of the media and
unrestricted political expression. The new law gives the Ministry of Interior
wide latitude for prosecuting and publishing the media for such ill-defined
concepts as violating "national integrity" and for publishing "injurious,
defamatory and false news." Rather than relaxing existing controls and
increasing freedom of expression, the law is a more systematic compilation of
existing restrictions and sanctions.
The Sandinista media law, as well as the recently approved electoral law, do
not comply with the letter or the spirit of the Esquipulas and El Salvador
agreements signed by Central American leaders. The President and Mrs.
Chamorro expressed their hope that international leaders would use their
influence to persuade the Sandinistas to fulfill their commitment.
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23 Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. 471
voice of its publisher, Violeta Chamorro, who makes it clear that on the
subject of freedom the press can never be agnostic. She said: "Without liberty
of the press, there is no representative democracy nor individual liberty nor
social justice, only darkness, impunity, abuse, mediocrity, and repression."
Well, that's the choice WE face: between the light of liberty or the darkness
of repression. When, after terrible voyages of sickness and hardship, out
ancestors first spied Liberty's torch, they knew that light shone for them --
"those huddled masses yearning to breathe free." For those who've known only the
bitterness of want and oppression, that torch burns especially bright.
Today the light of freedom is our sacred keepsake, the promise of America to
all mankind. We must forever hold its flame high, a light unto the world, a
beacon of hope that extends beyond this harbor, all the way to the jungled hills
of Nicaragua, where young men are fighting and dying today for the same
liberties we hold dear, all the way into the hearts of people everywhere who
fight for freedom.
Thank you all. God bless you.
Note: The President spoke at 4:59 p.m. in the Great Hall on Ellis Island. In
his opening remarks, he referred to Dr. Billy Graham, nationally known
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LEVEL 1 - - 1 OF 35 DOCUMENTS
Public Papers of the Presidents
Statement by Press Secretary Fitzwater on the Liberalization
of Trade and Investment With Nicaragua
26 Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. 1780
November 8, 1990
LENGTH: 246 words
President Bush today signed a Presidential proclamation designating Nicaragua as
a beneficiary of the trade measures provided for in the Caribbean Basin Economic
Recovery Act. Nicaragua's participation in the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI)
benefits will give Nicaraguan businesses duty-free access to the U.S. market for
a wide range of goods and will prompt growth in Nicaragua's export sector, which
is critical for its economic recovery program.
In recognition of the disastrous economic situation which the democratically
elected government of President Violeta Chamorro inherited, President Bush has
determined that it is in the national interest to waive the statutory
requirements that a lengthy review of worker rights in Nicaragua be conducted
26 Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. 1780
before CBI benefits are extended. Nevertheless, we are satisfied that the
Nicaraguan Government complies with the criteria of the law and that there is
labor freedom in Nicaragua. Today the Nicaraguan workers are free to organize,
the press is uncensored, political activity is unrestricted, and religious
activity is free from government interference. This is in strong contrast to
the record of the previous government.
By promoting increased trade ties between the United States and Nicaragua,
President Bush's action is yet another sign of the new, friendly relationship
between our two countries. The United States reiterates its strong support for
the democratically elected government of Nicaragua.
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26 Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. 1533
26 Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. 1533
October 5, 1990
LENGTH: 1182 words
September 29
In the afternoon, the President and Mrs. Bush attended the National Security
Council picnic at Fort McNair.
Later in the afternoon, the President and Mrs. Bush traveled to New York
City. In his suite at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, President Bush held
bilateral meetings with:
-- President Cesar Gaviria of Colombia,
-- Prime Minister Salim al-Huss of Lebanon,
-- President Violeta Chamorro of Nicaragua,
-- Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of Canada,
26 Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. 609
April 20
The President announced that the Vice President will head a Presidential
delegation to the inauguration of Nicaraguan President Violeta Chamorro on
April 25. The following Members of Congress and distinguished citizens have
been named to the delegation:
Mrs. Quayle
Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN)
Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT)
Senator David Durenberger (R-MN)
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
Senator Connie Mack (R-FL)
Senator John McCain (R-AZ)
Senator Claiborne Pell (D-RI)
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26 Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. 609
Senator Harry Reid (D-NV)
Senator Terry Sanford (D-NC)
Gov. Bob Martinez of Florida
Representative Rod Chandler (R-WA)
Representative Mickey Edwards (R-OK)
Representative Jim Slattery (D-KS)
Representative Tom Tauke (R-IA)
Representative Anthony Beilenson (D-CA)
Representative Henry Hyde (R-IL)
Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL)
Representative Cass Ballenger (R-NC)
26 Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. 609
Representative Barbara Vucanovich (R-NV)
Representative Bob Dornan (R-CA)
Representative Steve Solarz (D-NY)
Paul Coverdell, Director of the Peace Corps
Ambassador Joseph Reed, Chief of Protocol
Bernard W. Aronson, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs
Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick
Carol Hallett, Commissioner of Customs
Jeb Bush, chairman, Bush Klein Realty, Inc., Miami, FL
Allen Weinstein, Center for Democracy
Following the inauguration, the Vice President will travel to Mexico to meet
with President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.
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26 Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. 412
Request to Congress for FY 90
The President has requested that Congress approve a FY 90 supplemental
appropriation of $300 million for economic assistance to Nicaragua. The
objective of these funds are to support the Chamorro government in its efforts
to democratize, demobilize, and develop, and for the private sector to restore
the productive capacity of Nicaragua's economy. The funds will be used to:
*
Restore productivity by providing critical agricultural supplies (seeds,
fertilizer, equipment), petroleum, and health inputs (approximately $60
million);
*
Fund emergency employment programs (approximately $10 million);
*
Provide for the repatriation and resettlement of the resistance and
refugees (approximately $45 million);
*
Provide technical assistance in restructuring the economy (approximately $1
million);
*
Help clear arrears of $234 million to the international financial
institutions (approximately $50 million). These funds would be disbursed as
26 Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. 412
part of multilateral efforts to clear the arrears and would be linked to a sound
economic policy framework supported by the IMF [International Monetary Fund];
*
Provide balance of payments support to restructure the economy
(approximately $75 million); and
*
Help fund development projects (approximately $60 million). Activities
would include support for democratic institutions, repair and maintenance of
basic infrastructure, education, and health.
Request to Congress for FY 91
The President intends to submit to Congress a separate request for
approximately $200 million in economic assistance to Nicaragua in FY 91.
Details of this assistance will be announced later.
Source of Funds
The FY 90 supplemental request to Nicaragua will be offset from the
Department of Defense budget. The President is requesting Congress approve the
FY 90 funds for Nicaragua, along with his January 25 request of $570 million for
Panama and refugees, by April 5, 1990.
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46TH STORY of Level 2 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1985 The Washington Post
April 16, 1985, Tuesday, Final Edition
SECTION: First Section; Mary McGrory; A2
LENGTH: 787 words
HEADLINE: Running on Empty
BYLINE: MARY McGRORY
BODY:
My first reaction on getting a good look at downtown Managua was to burst out
laughing.
Could President Reagan be serious, I asked myself as I looked at the littered
block-size vacant lot opposite the city's finest hotel, the Intercontinental.
The panorama of desolation was dotted by gutted buildings, which were further
packed by the removal of bricks from the shells. I could see squatters inside
and roosters strolling through the squalor.
The 1972 earthquake flattened the capital of this wretched country and the
ever-odious dictator Anastasio Somoza grabbed the relief funds to rebuild villas
for his rich friends on the outskirts of town. The Sandinistas never got around
to cleaning up. They have better things to do, they say.
Near the hotel I saw a taxi that seemed to be a metaphor for the whole mess,
the unspeakable poverty, the incoherent government, the battered hopes and
dreams of the revolution. Its tires were flat, its hood paintless, and its
insides seemed to have been chewed by rats. A medallion on the battered door
proclaimed it to be a member of the Fraternity of Taxis of Solidarity.
Beat-up, rusted-out city buses, packed to the eaves, grind through the
streets, passing horse-drawn wagons. The only new vehicles are the East German
trucks that are used to transport soldiers to the war zone.
This is the engine of military might that our president warns us threatens
Nicaragua's neighbors and even ourselves?
The military threat evaporates on sight, and no serious American here will
discuss it. Instead, they cite the danger that this poor wreck of a nation will
be a model for other restless Latin-American revolutionaries.
A model? Are there Latin Americans who want a capital where there is no water
two days a week, where shortages -- of light bulbs, toilet paper, sugar --
strike like bandits? Where gasoline and certain foods are rationed and the
inflation rate is 50 percent?
George P. Shultz, our secretary of state, tells us it is "a Soviet state."
If it is, it's nothing like Albania. The first thing you see in the lobby of
the hotel are plaques advising of weekly Lions Club and Rotary meetings. And the
morning after the congressional delegation I accompanied arrived, we met with
two vehemently dissident businessmen who spent an hour ripping the Sandinistas
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(c) 1985 The Washington Post , April 16, 1985
up one side and down the other -- even though they said the room was bugged and
they would be reported and perhaps arrested.
Like all other stories I heard in Nicaragua, this one had a contradictory
sequel and no real conclusion. Enrique Bolanos, the small, voluble head of the
country's largest business federation, told us in the morning how he had been
jailed twice for criticizing the state. But in the evening, we met him at a U.S.
Embassy reception and heard him recount proudly how he had appeared several
weeks ago on a televised town meeting with President Daniel Ortega and other
members of the National Directorate and had told them how they were wrecking the
economy.
"They don't repress very well," murmured an American colonel.
Freedom of the press may be curtailed, but freedom of expression is not.
Nicaraguans are friendly, talkative people, and, in spite of everything, they
like Americans. They argue about their government openly and passionately in
terms that will be heard during the congressional debate on the $14 million in
aid for the "contras."
The discussion rages nonstop, ding-dong, tick-tock. It is the U.S.-sponsored
war, say the Sandinistas, that has distorted everything, distracted the
leadership, made repression mandatory. No, say the anti-Sandinistas, it is the
crazed authorities, who burn to make Central America a Soviet satellite.
On censorship, which so inflames Reagan, we met with the Chamorro family,
owners of La Prensa. The day we arrived, La Prensa did not publish because of
heavy censorship. But the next day, all the censored stories were printed,
including full discussion of Reagan's new plan. The one deletion: the word
"peace" to define it.
Violetta Chamorro, widow of publisher Pedro Chamorro, who was murdered by
Somoza, told of the return of censorship. Somoza at least had done it
efficiently. The editor, however, told of a recent visit from Vice President
Sergio Ramirez, who spoke of possibly limiting censorship to military matters.
Ortega, whom we met the next day, confirmed it. Ramirez had negotiated with
what Ortega called "the voice of the contras" but nothing has come of it
because, he said, "La Prensa went running off to the U.S. president to tell him
what they talked about." Thus, another unresolved question is added to the
rubble, which is the only thing that Nicaragua -- Reagan's "threat" and "model"
-- has plenty of.
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42ND STORY of Level 2 printed in FULL format.
The Associated Press
The materials in the AP file were compiled by The Associated Press. These
materials may not be republished without the express written consent of The
Associated Press.
October 23, 1989, Monday, AM cycle
SECTION: Washington Dateline
LENGTH: 360 words
HEADLINE: Bush Going to Costa Rica; Will Meet Nicaraguan Opposition Candidate
BYLINE: By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
KEYWORD: Bush-Summit
BODY:
President Bush intends to meet with Nicaraguan opposition candidate
Violetta Chamorro during a summit in Costa Rica but does not plan to have
talks with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who also will be there, the White
House said Monday.
Bush will fly to San Jose, Costa Rica, on Friday at the invitation of
President Oscar Arias to take part in a meeting marking 100 years of democracy
in that Central American country.
Leaders of about 18 countries are expected to participate in the summit. The
talks, which conclude before noon Saturday, are to be held at a resort complex
about five miles from San Jose.
Ortega will attend as president of Nicaragua, while Ms. Chamorro will be
there as part of an observer delegation. She is the presidential candidate of
the National Opposition Union in elections scheduled for Feb. 25.
Following a policy he inherited from Ronald Reagan, Bush is trying to drive
Oretaga from office, arguing that he leads a Marxist government.
On Saturday, Bush signed a $$9 million aid package intended to help the
opposition defeat the ruling Sandinista government.
While no meeting with Ortega is planned, White House press secretary Marlin
Fitzwater noted that that the Nicaraguan leader will be in the same room with
Bush during two plenary sessions and again during dinner.
Fitzwater said the summit "may be a very unique opportunity for us and the
other countries of the hemisphere to impress on Nicaragua the importance of
democracy and the folly of their ways."
However, Fitzwater said Bush's role will be "somewhat limited" because he
will not have any remarks or speeches related to the summit.
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The Associated Press, October 23, 1989
Bush is expected to make departure remarks at nearby Andrews Air Force Base
before dawn Friday as he heads for Costa Rica.
After the close of the summit, Bush is supposed to speak to employees at the
U.S. Embassy. in Costa Rica. Fitzwater said the president probably will meet
outside the summit with some of the leaders.
Because the theme of the summit is democracy, the leaders of Cuba, Panama,
Haiti and Chile were not invited. Fitzwater said the United States "did not
dictate or comment on the guest list."
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1ST STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1990 The Times Mirror Company;
Los Angeles Times
November 25, 1990, Sunday, Home Edition
SECTION: Part A; Page 6; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 1069 words
HEADLINE: OLD TROUBLES HAUNT NEW NICARAGUA;
POLITICS: PRESIDENT CHAMORRO IS EARNING DEFIANCE BY FAILING TO CURB ABUSES BY
SANDINISTAS.
BYLINE: By RICHARD BOUDREAUX, TIMES STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SANTO TOMAS, Nicaragua
BODY:
Hilario Vargas, a slight, soft-spoken agronomist, became mayor of this cattle
town last May after voters all over Nicaragua swept the Sandinistas from office.
A month later the local Sandinista army captain had him arrested.
A renegade Contra, defying a post-election peace pact, had shot a Sandinista
lieutenant to death in a diner that day and escaped. Tension ran high. For an
hour and a half, Vargas recalls, Capt. Francisco Henriquez held a pistol to his
head, threatening to kill every government supporter in town. "He was
hysterical," the mayor said.
Capt. Henriquez later apologized, but Vargas and the townspeople didn't
forget. Joining a popular revolt across southeastern Nicaragua, they shut down
the country's main east-west highway for 18 days this month to demand removal of
all Sandinista soldiers and policemen from the region.
The blockade was the first serious challenge to President Violeta Barrios de
Chamorro by her right-wing supporters, who question her survival strategy of
leaving the military under Sandinista command. The protest gained weight when
Vargas and seven other mayors from the region, where Chamorro ran strongest in
the election, carried the demand to Managua.
After negotiations failed, Chamorro moved to end the conflict unilaterally.
She sent an army convoy to clear the highway, then announced last Wednesday that
18 of the region's 34 army bases would be closed and 500 officers, nearly half
those on duty there, would be retired by Dec. 31. But the mayors were not
satisfied and asked local officials elsewhere in Nicaragua to join new protests.
"The war is over and the Contras have disarmed, so why do we need the
military?" Vargas asked. "They are not doing anything but rustling cattle,
stealing from homes and threatening us. They are nothing but parasites."
During the 8-year-war, the southeastern region embracing Boaco and Chontales
provinces and southern Zelaya province were the U.S.-backed Contras' most secure
haven. The frontier ranchers and dairy farmers remained aloof from the
Sandinista insurgency that seized national power in 1979. Afterward, they
resisted the arrival of Sandinista teachers, collective farms and army
recruiters so stubbornly that Chontales became known as "La Vaca Echada"
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(c) 1990 Los Angeles Times, November 25, 1990
the COW that lies down and won't move.
Although Chamorro polled 70% of the region's votes and remains enormously
popular here, her government is earning the same defiance by failing to curb
abuses by Sandinistas who kept their weapons after nearly 17,000 Contras laid
down theirs.
Some mayors of her National Opposition Union, or UNO, say that the army or
police routinely bar them from recovering municipal property stolen by their
Sandinista predecessors. Forty-four former Contras have been arrested in a
campaign of harassment, according to international officials supervising their
resettlement.
"In every town I visit, people who are UNO activists have been arrested,
tortured and accused of being delinquents," said the Roman Catholic bishop of
Juigalpa, Pablo Antonio Vega, who joined protesters at the barricades. "There
is no legal security here. Armed Sandinistas are the only law."
Vargas and other mayors want the region disarmed except for municipal
policemen chosen by and responsible to them, not to the Sandinista command in
Managua. Because such forces could include former Contras, the Sandinistas
pressed Chamorro to resist.
"Their criminal purpose is to dismantle the army so they can get on with the
pleasurable task of sticking the knife to the hated Sandinistas," declared the
Sandinista newspaper Barricada.
The protest was sparked by the arrest Oct. 28 of a former Contra commander
known as Oscar who, as part of the rebels' demobilization accord, had been
allowed to set up a 30-man rural police force in a small resettlement zone in
the southeast.
When Oscar decided to expand the force to 79 and refused to take orders from
Managua, the government sent troops and helicopters to seize him and disarm his
men. Two protest rallies ended in bloodshed when troops opened fire on Oscar's
supporters in Yolaina and Nueva Guinea, killing five of them.
Former Contras, also angered by the government's delay in providing land for
their resettlement, built the first barricades at the eastern end of the Rama
Road on Oct. 31. But as the protest spread west to Juigalpa -- throwing up 16
barriers of boulders and parked vehicles along a 110-mile stretch -- it was
joined by thousands of people who had never picked up a gun. The mayors'
participation helped keep the roadblock gatherings peaceful and festive.
"This is a rebirth of civilian activism," said Roger Garcia, a Ministry of
Education official who helped build the barricade here. "There are no more
Contras. This is the people.
After 50 many years of trauma, we just want
the Sandinistas to go away.
The protesters' demands for security were backed by Nicaragua's Roman
Catholic bishops and Vice President Virgilio Godoy. He called their action,
which caused shortages in Managua of the isolated region's milk and cheese, "a
beautiful act of civic protest."
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(c) 1990 Los Angeles Times, November 25, 1990
Chamorro branded it the work of "extremists." Negotiations broke off when she
refused to dump Sandinista Gen. Humberto Ortega as army commander and her
son-in-law, Antonio Lacayo, as minister of the presidency. The crackdown came
after four policemen were killed by one of their own grenades while trying to
stop the protest from spreading to the Pan American Highway.
The army cleared the barricades with little resistence last weekend. Police
arrested former Contra leader Aristides Sanchez and raided the Contras'
resettlement office, seizing field radios, computers, military uniforms and a
few AK-47 rifles and grenades.
Chamorro promised an investigation of the shootings at Yolaina and Nueva
Guinea. But so far the conflict has only increased resentment among the
president's supporters over hers and Lacayo's perceived leanings toward the
Sandinistas. Said Garcia: "I'm afraid we are seeing the beginning of a new
dictatorship."
As traffic resumed on the Rama Road last week, Sandinista troops and police
were deployed to prevent new blockades.
"It's true that the majority of the people here want us to march out of this
zone with our heads hanging low," said Lender Aleman, a policeman who was
guarding a bridge Friday near Santo Tomas. "But it's not their decision to
make."
GRAPHIC: Photo, Former Contras and supporters blocking Rama Road at El Cacao,
140 miles southeast of capital. Blockades, a rightist protest against government
strategy, shut down Nicaragua's main east-west highway for 18 days. Rightists
demanded removal of Sandinista soldiers, police from the region. Reuters; Map,
NICARAGUA, VICTOR KOTOWITZ / Los Angeles Times
SUBJECT: NICARAGUA -- POLITICS; NICARAGUA -- GOVERNMENT; CHAMORRO, VIOLETA
BARRIOS; GUERRILLAS -- NICARAGUA; SANDINISTA NATIONAL LIBERATION FRONT;
NICARAGUA -- ARMED FORCES; BLOCKADES; DEMONSTRATIONS -- NICARAGUA; POLITICAL
ACTIVISM
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015
ESTRADA, Gen. Jose Dolores.
History
Nicaraguan patriotic hero. Leader in
the September 14, 1856, Battle of San
Jacinto that helped lead to William
ALTAMIRANO, Pedro. General.
Walker's defeat. An ERN/North Re-
Known as "Pedron." A Liberal general
gional Command is named after him.
who fought alongside Sandino and was
famed for his innovative ways of killing
HERRERA. Rafaela. Directed the
people with a machete. As one admirer
defense of the Castle of the Immaculate
delicately put it: "the fearsome Pedron
Conception at the Battle of San Juan,
never forgave a collaborationist." The
1782, when her father, the Spanish
Sandinista army has named a BLI after
comundante, was ill. Participating in
him.
the battle was the future Admiral
Nelson, who was to later defeat
BOLIVAR, Simon. Liberator. In-
Napoleon's fleet at Trafalgar. An ERN/
ternationalist military brigade named
North Regional Command is named for
after him fought against Somoza. Sand-
her.
inistas then sent them home, replacing
them with Cubans. A Sandinista army
LOPEZ Perez, Rigoberto. Poet
BLI is named after him.
and dissident Liberal who assassinated
President Somoza Garcia on September
CASTRO Castro, Andres.
21, 1956. Lopez was killed, and Somoza
Prominent Nicaraguan nationalist hero.
Garcia's sons Luis and Anastasio
At the battle of San Jacinto, September
Somoza Debayle assumed the presi-
14, 1856, Castro is said to have used a
dency and directorship of the National
rock to bash in the head of an unknown
Pedro Joaquin CHAMORRO Cardenal.
Guard, respectively.
American follower of William Walker.
(9 AP/Wide World Photos)
An ERN/North Regional Command is
NICARAO, Cali. Indian chieftain
in what is now known as Rivas, circa
named for him.
1500 A.D. Entered into a treaty with
CHAMORRO Cardenal, Pedro
sponsored by the Chamber of Com-
the Spanish who began to refer to the
Joaquin. Anti-Somoza martyr. Born in
merce. It. is widely viewed as the major
territory as Nicarao. Eventually the
1924; died 1978. Educated at the Jesuit
event catalyzing Nicaraguan opinion
word became "Nicaragua." An ERN/
Colegio in Granada. A leader of the
against Somoza. His elder son, Pedro
North Regional Command is named
student "Generation of 44" known for
Joaquin, is a member of the Nicaraguan
after him.
its democratic spirit and opposition to
Resistance Directorate. His daughter,
ORTIZ Centeno, Pedro Pablo.
dictatorship. Finished his law degree in
Claudia, is FSLN Ambassador to Costa
Former National Guard sergeant.
exile at the National University of Mex-
Rica. His younger son, Carlos Fer-
Fought against Pastora's troops on the
ico. Assumed the editorship of La
nando worked BA a propagandist for the
Southern Front during 1979, before es-
Prensu in 1952. Imprisoned for his role
Sandinistas and now edits the FSLN
caping by sea to El Salvador. Known as
in a 1954 anti-Somoza revolt. Released
party daily, Burricada. His daughter,
"Suicida" for his ability to get his men
in 1956 but arrested again after the as.
Cristiana, works for La Prensa. His
in and out of firefights no one would
sassination of Somoza Garcia. Escaped
widow, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro,
have been expected to survive. As
to Costa Rica in 1957. Traveled to Cuba
was a member of first governing junta
founder of the "Anti-Sandinista Guer-
in the spring of 1959. Imprisoned after
after Somoza's nuster but resigned
rilla Special Forces" in late 1979, he led
the failure of the "Olama y Mollejones"
quietly after the FSLN revealed its in-
one of the first armed groups against
attempt against Somoza. Prominent in
transigence. Today she is publisher of
the new Sandinista government. Later
efforts to convert the Conservative
La Prensa.
integrated his forces into the FDN. Ar-
Party to revolutionary Christian De-
COLINDRES, Juan Gregorio.
rested, tried, court-martialed, and ex-
moeracy. Arrested as one of the leaders
Former combatant under Sandino.
ecuted by the FDN on charges of rape
of the UNO riots of January 1967. Put
Killed by the National Guard in an anti-
and killing of prisoners in late 1983.
together the UDEL opposition coalition
Somoza rebellion in 1948 that had Con-
of conservatives and leftists in 1974
servative Party backing. A Sandinista
RAUDALES, Ramon. General. A
after breaking with Aguero over the
army BLI is named after him.
member of Sandino's General Staff in
Liberal-Conservative pact of 1971. Ar-
the 1930s. In September 1958,
rested a fourth time and sentenced to
DARIO, Ruben. Nicaraguan poet,
Raudales, at age 68, entered Nicaragua
loss of political rights after organizing
the most famous Central American
from Honduras with fellow Sandino
the boycott of Somoza's 1974 elections.
poet, and the best Spanish American
General Heriberto Reyes and less than
Continued his internationally known
modernist poet. Born on January 18,
40 men, beginning a guerrilla campaign
newspaper crusade against Somoza un-
1867, in Metapa, Matagalpa. Died on
in the Nueva Segovia mountains. Called
til assassinated on January 10, 1978.
February 6. 1916, in Leon. His "Ode to
Chamorro's death led to massive
Theodore Roosevelt" is a classic of cul-
protests and a 3-week national strike
tural nationalism.
ESTRADA, Gen. Francisco.
Liberal general. Executed in 1934 with
Sandino and General Umanzor. A Sand-
inista army BLI is named after him.
86
The
HARPER
DICTIONARY
of
MODERN
THOUGHT
ALAN BULLOCK,
OLIVER STALLYBRASS,
& STEPHEN TROMBLEY
NEW AND REVISED EDITION
NGC
NGC, see under NEW GENERAL CATA-
smoothness with which the operation was
LOGUE OF NEBULAE AND CLUSTERS OF
carried out and the absence of any resist-
STARS.
ance suggested that this was a pretext with
little substance. Amongst the 150-200 esti-
NGU, see NON-GONOCOCCAL URETHRITIS.
mated to have been killed were a number
(such as Gregor Strasser and General von
NIC, see under NEWLY INDUSTRIALIZING
Schleicher) who had no connection with
COUNTRIES.
the SA but were victims of earlier feuds.
The events were the turning-point of the
Nicaragua. Central American Republic
Nazi regime: they opened the way to
with an economy based on primary export
Hitler's succession to Hindenburg with
crops, mainly coffee, cotton and sugar.
the approval of the Army. At the same
Subject to repeated invasions by the U.S.
time Hitler's assumption of personal re-
in the first quarter of the 20th century,
sponsibility for the executions, carried out
Nicaragua was occupied by U.S. marines
without any pretence of a trial, made clear
from 1927-1934. Washington withdrew its
the ruthless character of the regime, and
troops under Franklin D. Roosevelt's
the role played by the SS laid the founda-
Good Neighbor Policy, but left behind a
tion for their supremacy among its instru-
surrogate force in the Nicaraguan Na-
ments of power.
A.L.C.B.
tional Guard, which supported 45 years of
Bibl: M. Gallo, The Night of the Long
dictatorship by the Somoza family (1934-
Knives (New York, 1972; London,
1979). Somocismo was characterized by
1973).
extreme centralization of power, corrup-
tion and wide-scale HUMAN RIGHTS
abuses. Anastasio Somoza Debayle was
nihilism. An attitude or viewpoint denying
all traditional values and even moral
overthrown in July 1979 by a popular
uprising led by the Sandinista National
truths. The word was invented by Tur-
Liberation Front (FSLN), after a pro-
genev in his novel Fathers and Sons (1861)
longed civil war which claimed over
to describe that part of the radical Russian
50,000 lives. (See SANDINISTA; CONTRAS;
intelligentsia (see RADICALISM; INTELLEC
REAGAN DOCTRINE.)
TUALS) which, disillusioned with the slow
N.M.
Bibl: G. Black, Triumph of the People
pace of reform (see REFORMISM), aban-
(London, 1981).
doned the LIBERAL faith of their prede-
cessors and embraced the belief that the
NIEO, see under NEW INTERNATIONAL
destruction of existing conditions in
ECONOMIC ORDER.
Russia justified the use of any means. The
chief ideologist of revolutionary UTILI.
Night of the Long Knives. The dramatic
TARIANISM in politics, ETHICS, and AES-
events of the weekend of 29 June-2 July
THETICS was D.I. Pisarev (1840-68), who
1934 in Germany when, on the orders of
was portrayed as Bazarov in Turgenev's
Hitler, Ernst Roehm and the leadership of
novel and who proudly accepted the new
the brown-shirted SA were liquidated.
label. Many members of subsequent gener-
The SA Stormtroopers had been an indis-
ations of the Russian intelligentsia
pensable element in the NAZIS' rise to
adopted nihilistic postures, from P.G.
power but had become a major embarrass-
Zaichnevsky, who summoned his contem-
ment in Hitler's relations with the Ger-
poraries 'to the axe', to Sergei Nechaev,
man Army, which were the key to his
author of a Revolutionary Catechism,
succeeding the dying Hindenburg as Head
who was portrayed as the unscrupulous
of State and Commander-in-Chief as well
Peter Verkhovensky in the novel by Dos
as Chancellor. Goering and Himmler
toyevsky variously translated as The
(whose black-shirted SS carried out the
Devils or The Possessed. The term has
executions) were the moving spirits in or-
subsequently been applied to various rade
ganizing the killings. Hitler was appar-
ical movements outside Russia: the NAZI
ently convinced by the argument that the
victory in Germany in the 1930s was de
SA leaders were plotting a second and
scribed as a 'REVOLUTION of nihilism'.
Economic Fact Sheet - Nicaragua
(US$ millions unless otherwise indicated)
1987
1988
1989
1990
proj
1.
Socio-Economic Indicators
Population (millions)
3.52
3.6
3.75
3.88
Pop. growth rate
1.3%
1.2%
4.2%
1.8%
Life expectancy (years)
64
64
64
64
Adult literacy
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
2.
Economic Indicators
Nominal GDP (bil. of cordobas)
n/a
18.8
18.3
17.2
Nominal GDP per capita (cordobas)
n/a
5193
4877
4440
Inflation Rate (CPI)
7,907
35,657
1,689
13,500
Real GDP (cordoba) growth rate
(1.0%)
(10.9%)
(2.9%)
(5.7%)
Real GDP growth rate per capita
(2.4%)
(12.1%)
(7.2%)
(7.5%)
Unemployment
n/a
20%
20%
20%
Agriculture as a % of GDP
n/a
22.3%
23.5%
n/a
Government as a % of GDP
n/a
53%
53%
n/aa
Govt. budget deficit/GDP
n/a
25.8%
2.5%
20%
3.
Balance of Payment
US exports to Nicaragua (fob)
0.0
0.0
0.0
n/a
US imports from Nicaragua (cif)
0.0
0.0
0.0
n/a
US-Nicaragua trade balance
0.0
0.0
0.0
n/a
Total merchandise exports (fob)
299.9
235.7
292.1
321.0
Total merchandise imports (cif)
922.6
718.3
632.6.
592.0
Trade Balance
(622.7)
(487.6)
(340.5)
(271)
Current Account Balance
(678)
(483)
(340)
(271)
4.
External Finance
Foreign Exchange Reserves
n/a
(0.1)
(5.1)
n/a
Exchange Rate (cordoba/US$)
70
920
38,150
3,000,000
Total External Debt
n/a
7,220
8,081
10,500
Debt service ratio
n/a
2.2
2.7
3.4
5. Official Foreign Aid
US economic assistance (FY)
-0-
-0-
-0-
336.6
US military assistance (FY)
-0-
-0-
-0-
-0-
Total foreign assistance
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
Research Memorandum
United States Information Agency
Washington, D.C. 20547
Office of Research
USIA
March 27, 1991
LITTLE LOVE LOST FOR SANDINISTAS IN NICARAGUA
This report is one of a series based on a USIA-commissioned survey in Nicaragua
using a representative, nationwide sample of 1200 adults aged 18 and up. Face-to-face
interviews were conducted between January 7 - 13, 1991 by Doxa, a Venezuelan polling
firm which correctly gauged pro-Chamorro opinion prior to the Nicaraguan
presidential elections of February 1990. Companion reports cover other aspects of
Nicaraguan public opinion, including attitudes toward President Chamorro and
Contras, and perceptions of the overall social, economic, and political situation.
KEY FINDINGS:
There is no evidence of renewed public support for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
Close to six-in-ten have an unfavorable opinion of both Daniel Ortega and the
FSLN; other Sandinista leaders and institutions are viewed with even greater
disfavor.
A solid majority (64%) believe the Sandinistas accomplished less than was
expected by the Nicaraguan public during their decade in power.
Sandinista efforts to disrupt government and force "pro-revolutionary"
concessions are opposed by large majorities; half the population is skeptical of
FSLN motives.
Close to six-in-ten believe that the Nicaraguan revolution continues irrespective
of the Sandinista fall from power, yet opinion is mixed as to whether this
furthers the best interests of the people.
Figure 1: Opinion of Ortega Quite Negative
Somewhat favorable
18%
Very favorable
Somewhat unfavorable
19%
18%
39%
DK/NR 6%
Very unfavorable
2
Sandinista Leaders Endorsed Only By Small Minority of Partisans
There is no evidence of any resurgence of popular support for the Sandinistas as
Violeta Chamorro approaches the end of her first year in office. On the contrary and
despite the fact that grave economic and socio-political problems remain, the country
stands firmly behind the President. 1 Indeed, the survey data suggests that former
President Daniel Ortega and the FSLN may have lost a measure of public endorsement
since the elections. 2 Close to six-in-ten Nicaraguans have a negative opinion of Daniel
Ortega (57%), Army chief General Humberto Ortega (58%), and Marxist ideologue
Tomas Borge (62%).³ Only self-identified Sandinistas express a highly positive view of
these key Sandinista leaders, although about half the higher educated have a favorable
opinion of the ex-president (Tables 1A,1B; Figures 1,2).4
the
Figure 2: Ortega Brothers Held in Low Esteem by Majority of Nicaraguans
77
Very Favorable
Somewhat Unfavorable
53
Somewhat Favorable
Very Unfavorable
41
37
36
31
(18)
(35)
(42)
(49)
(57)
(58)
Chamorro
Lacayo
Godoy
D. Ortega
H. Ortega
Ruben
1. Chamorro is endorsed by 77% of the population. See Research Memorandum "Nicaraguan
Support for Chamorro is Solid" for further details.
2. February 25, 1990 Presidential election results: Chamorro/UNO, 55%; Ortega/FSLN, 41%.
3. Daniel Ortega's generally unfavorable rating occurs despite the fact that his last "peace
mission" to the Middle East (Jordan and Iraq) took place during fieldwork and shortly before
initiation of the Gulf air war. The trip was covered in all newspapers (very heavily in the
Sandinista press, where editorial concern was professed for his safety). A number of small
FSLN peace rallies were organized during this period. See El Nuevo Diario, 1/14/91, p. 1.
4. For purposes of clarity, this report refers only to two political groups, the self-identified
members of UNO or its coalition parties and the self-identified Sandinistas. (A third group,
those describing themselves with no party affiliation or as "Independents," are included in the
tables.) Only two educational groups, those with no education and incomplete primary school
and those with a completed high-school education or more, are discussed as well. See footnotes
to Tables 1A and 1B for fuller descriptions of these groups.
3
Sandinista Organizations Also Viewed Negatively By Most
Disapproval is equally widespread among the Nicaraguan public for Sandinista
organizations and institutions. A solid majority (58%) have an unfavorable opinion of
the "Frente" FSLN; even more Nicaraguans view the Sandinista Youth organization
and the Sandinista-controlled State Security Directorate (DGSE) with disfavor (65%
and 59%, respectively). Although less widespread, opposition to the Ortega-led army
and to the Sandinista labor union (FNT) is also significant. Again it is the self-
identified Sandinistas who voice widest support for these organizations (Tables 2A, 2B,
Figure 3).
Figure 3: Majority Rejects FSLN, But Most Favor UNO
61
Very Favorable
40
Somewhat Favorable
33
Somewhat Unfavorable
Very Unfavorable
(31)
(52)
(58)
UNO
Contra/RN
FSLN
Majority Are Disappointed With Accomplishments of the Sandinista
Decade
A solid majority of Nicaraguans (64%) believe that the Sandinistas disappointed the
Nicaraguan public by accomplishing less than was expected of them during their decade
in power, a perception echoed by close to half the Sandinista supporters themselves
(46%). Both the lesser educated and higher educated sectors agree in this assessment
(Table 3). Among those Nicaraguans perceiving a Sandinista failure, responsibility for
the lack of accomplishment is placed on the Sandinistas themselves (cited by 43%)
rather than on the United States or the Contra Resistance (13% and 7%, respectively).
It comes as no surprise that FSLN supporters are more than twice as likely to target
the U.S. with responsibility for their failures than are government partisans (23%
versus 9%; Table 4).⁵
5. This was one of the very few survey questions which apparently engendered some concern
among respondents; approximately one-in-five declined to state an opinion.
4
Recent Sandinista "Pro-revolution" Actions Earn Broad Disfavor
A series of controversial Sandinista actions taken, in Daniel Ortega's words, to
"preserve the gains of the revolution" shortly prior to and in the months following
Chamorro's April, 1990 inauguration have done nothing to dispel the widely-held
negative opinion of the FSLN. By close to three-to-one or better, Nicaraguans oppose
the distribution of weapons to civilian supporters (80% against), the use of strikes and
demonstrations to pressure the Chamorro government (72%), the Sandinista
confiscation of government property, equipment, and funds before leaving power (72%),
continued control of the army (68%), and (by two-to-one) the attempt to "govern from
below" (61%). The recently-revealed "facilitation" of anti-aircraft missiles to the
Salvadoran FMLN guerrillas by members of the army is also widely opposed (72%).
Only two policy actions receive the broad approbation of Nicaraguans: the turnover of
power to the elected Chamorro administration (84%) and the enactment of legislation to
protect public sector jobs (54%; Table 5, Figure 4).
Figure 4: Opposition to FSLN Actions is Widespread
Weapons to Civilians
(80)
16
Very Much in Favor
Strikes, Marches
(72)
24
Somewhat in Favor
Confiscation of Govt Assets
(72)
22
Somewhat Opposed
AA Missiles to FMLN
(72)
13
Very Much Opposed
Control of Army, Security Forces
(68)
25
"Govern from Below"
(61)
32
Turning Power Over to Chamorro
(14)
84
Defense of Public Jobs
(41)
54
And Motives Are Suspect
Moreover, Nicaraguans are skeptical of Sandinista motives in pursuing these actions.
Fully half the general public believes that the FSLN leadership has primarily acted to
politically weaken the Chamorro regime (53%) rather than in defense of the best
interests of the Nicaraguan people (33%). The better educated are more likely to give
the Sandinistas the benefit of the doubt, however (Table 6).
5
Majority Believe That the Nicaraguan Revolution Continues Under
Chamorro, But Endorsement is Tepid
Removal of the Sandinistas from power and broad opposition to the FSLN should not
be considered the end of the Nicaraguan revolution. Although 29 percent of the people
believe that the revolution has ended (most of whom believe this is "good" for the
Nicaraguan people), a majority of all Nicaraguans (58%) think that it continues even
under the Chamorro regime. The higher educated sector of society is even more likely
to perceive an on-going revolution (70%), as are nine-in-ten of the Sandinistas (91%).
However, forty percent of the UNO coalition supporters also believe that the revolution
has not yet ended (Tables 7A,7C).
Among those Nicaraguans who perceive an ongoing revolution, opinion is split as to
whether it benefits or prejudices the people's best interests: Half see benefits to the
continuation (48%), including virtually all Sandinista partisans. However, a
substantial minority believe a continuing revolution is "bad" for the Nicaraguan people,
perhaps indicating the desire to move beyond the structures and processes of the
Sandinista decade (Table 7C).
Prepared by:
Nancy C. Llach (619-5111)
M-47-91
Approved by:
Ronald H. Hinckley, Director of Research
6
HOW THIS POLL WAS TAKEN
This survey of Nicaraguan public opinion was conducted by means of face-to-face
interviews with 1200 adults, aged 18 and older, residing nationwide (except in the
Atlantic Coast areas -- 6% of total population). Fieldwork took place January 7 -13,
1991, with the Office of Research receiving full tables on February 21.
Survey questions were written by the USIA Office of Research and translated by the
contractor, with the analyst's final approval. Sample construction and fieldwork were
performed by DOXA, C.A. of Caracas, Venezuela, one of the few firms to successfully
tap the majority pro-Chamorro support prior to the February, 1990 elections.
Nicaraguan interviewers and supervisors conducted interviewing after extensive
training by the contractor in the presence of the analyst.
The nationálly-representative sampling design combined several probability selection
methods, including stratified, systematic random, and quota selection by age and sex to
ensure distribution according to the demographic profile of the population. Ninety-five
times out of one hundred, results from samples of this design and size will yield results
which differ by no more that approximately 3 percentage points in either direction from
what would have been obtained were it possible to interview every adult in Nicaragua.
The comparison of smaller subgroups will increase the margin of error (for example, the
margin of error for the self-defined Sandinista subgroup is 5 - 7%). In addition to
sampling error, the practical difficulties of conducting a survey of public opinion may
introduce other sources of error into the results.
7
TABLE 1A: OPINION OF VARIOUS POLITICAL LEADERS
Question:
I have a list of names of some political leaders from Nicaragua and other
countries. As I read them, I would like you tell me if you have a very
favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable, or very unfavorable
opinion of each. First of all, [xxxxxx] -- do you have a very favorable
opinion, somewhat favorable opinion, somewhat unfavorable, or very
unfavorable opinion of this person, or don't you know who he is?
Total Public
Politicsᵃ
Favor Unfavor
DK/NR
Gov't
Sand
Ind.
(333)
(223)
(617)
(favorable only)
a. Miguel Obando y Bravo
76%
21%
4%
90%
48%
77%
b. Antonio Lacayo
53
35
12
62
44
50
C. George Bush
49
41
11
73
18
45
d. Daniel Ortega
37
57
6
18
86
32
e. Virgilio Godoy
41
49
10
59
18
37
f. Carlos Andres Perez
64
15
21
77
58
57
g. Ronald Reagan
28
60
13
42
9
25
h. Fidel Castro
29
61
10
13
70
24
i. Violeta Chamorro
77
18
5
89
51
79
j. Humberto Ortega
36
58
6
15
81
32
k. Tomas Borge
31
62
8
10
80
25
1. Alfredo Cesar
38
42
20
52
27
32
m. Commandante Ruben
31
42
27
47
14
27
a
For purposes of clarity, the tables and report refer only to three of
Nicaragua's expressed political groupings. "Government" includes all
respondents who identified themselves as members or supporters of either
UNO coalition parties (Conservative (6%), Liberal (7%), Christian Democrat
(3%), or Social Democrat (3%) ) or UNO itself (9%) "Sandinista" refers to
respondents who identified themselves as Sandinistas (18%) Self-described
UNO partisans are likely to have as many males as females (although the
Nicaraguan population is more heavily female, 53%; the Sandinistas are
about 55% male), older, more religious and less educated, but equally as
urban and as likely (or unlikely) to live in "luxurious," "modest, " or
"poor" housing as their Sandinista counterparts. A large plurality (46%)
of respondents did not identify their party preference, prefering instead
to call themselves "Independents" or as having "no affiliation. " (The six
percent of the total population that did not give an answer on the
political affiliation question is also included in this sector.) Analysis
reveals that approximately 70% of this group can be classified in the
Chamorro camp based on their other attitudes, while somewhat less than 20%
hold views similar to those of the Sandinista group. Demographically, the
"Independent/None" group closely mirrors the general population, save for a
tendency to be slightly more female, less educated, and poor. It may be
assumed that those who have identified themselves as having none or an
independent affiliation either do not consider themselves members of a
specific party (party identification is not required at registration), or
have some concern at expressing opposition sentiment held over from the
Sandinista period.
8
TABLE 1B: OPINION OF DANIEL ORTEGA
Question:
I have a list of names of some political leaders from Nicaragua and other
countries. As I read them, I would like you tell me if you have a very
favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable, or very unfavorable
opinion of each. First of all, [xxxxxx] -- do you have a very favorable
opinion, somewhat favorable opinion, somewhat unfavorable, or very
unfavorable opinion of this person, or don't you know who he/she is?
d.
DANIEL ORTEGA
POLITICS
EDUCATIONᵃ
Total
None/sm
Sec. &
Public
Gov't
Sand
Ind.
Prim'y
Above
Sample Size:
(1200)
(333)
(223)
(617)
(417)
(289)
Very favorable
19%
4%
60%
14%
15%
32%
Somewhat favorable
18
14
26
18
16
19
Subtotal favorable
37
18
86
32
31
51
Somewhat
18
21
6
20
20
13
unfavorable
Very unfavorable
39
57
5
41
41
33
Subtotal unfavorable
57
78
11
61
61
46
Don't know/no
6
3
3
8
8
2
response
Total:
100%
99%
100%
101%
100%
99%
a
For simplification, only two educational groups are included in the
tables. "None/some primary" includes those Nicaraguans with no formal or
incompleted primary school education. "Secondary and above" includes
those respondents with completed secondary school or higher education.
The excluded middle group includes those with completed primary and some
high school education; attitudes almost invariably fall between those of
the other two groups. Generally, the higher educated sector is younger
and more predominantly male than its less educated counterpart. It is
sixteen times more likely to live in a "luxuriously" appointed house,
five times more likely to possess an automobile and a refrigerator,
almost twice as likely to own a television (86% of the higher educated
own sets), and half again as likely to live in an urban rather than a
rural area. It may be assumed that opinions of the higher educated
sector reflect relatively closely the opinions of Nicaraguan "elites."
b
Totals may not add to 100% due to rounding.
9
TABLE 2A: OPINIONS OF VARIOUS INSTITUTIONS AND ORGANIZATIONS
Question:
Now I would like to ask your opinion about different institutions and
organizations which are active here in Nicaragua. As I read their names, I
would like you tell me if you have a very favorable, somewhat favorable,
somewhat unfavorable, or very unfavorable opinion of each. First of all,
[xxxxxx] -- do you have a very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat
unfavorable, or very unfavorable opinion of this institution, or don't you
know what it is?
Total Public
Politics
Favor Unfavor
DK/NR
Gov't
Sand
Ind.
(333)
(223)
(617)
(favorable only)
a. United Nations
84%
7%
9%
90%
80%
81%
b. The Army
45
50
4
30
84
42
C. COSEP (Private sector)
46
32
23
62
22
45
d. OAS
79
11
10
88
73
75
e. FNT (Sand. labor)
45
43
13
32
80
40
f. Contra/Resistencia
40
52
8
60
14
39
Nacional
g. Catholic Church
78
17
5
89
62
79
h. Constitution of
72
14
14
82
76
64
the Republic
i. National Police
58
35
7
53
72
55
TABLE 2B: MORE INSTITUTIONS AND ORGANIZATIONS
Question:
Here are some more names -- please tell me whether you have a very
favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable, or very unfavorable
opinion of each of these, or tell me if you don't know what it is.
Total Public
Politics
Favor Unfavor
DK/NR
Gov't
Sand
Ind.
(333)
(223)
(617)
(favorable only)
a. The National Assembly
79%
12%
10%
87%
75%
75%
b. UNO
61
31
9
81
21
63
C. Sandinista Youth
27
65
8
12
73
19
d. DGSE (State Security)
29
59
13
21
58
23
e. Cabinet of Ministers
62
25
13
73
48
61
f. Judicial system
65
20
16
74
65
60
g. CTN-A (Inde. labor)
44
30
26
59
38
36
h. FSLN--El Frente
33
58
8
13
81
28
i. Rural Police
43
37
21
59
28
39
j. FMLN (Salv. guerrilla)
22
46
32
10
58
16
10
TABLE 3: OPINION ON SANDINISTA ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Question:
All things considered, do you think that the Sandinistas accomplished
about all that Nicaraguans expected from the revolution, more than they
expected, or less than they expected?
POLITICS
EDUCATION
Total
None/sm
Sec. &
Public
Gov't
Sand
Ind.
Prim'y
Above
Sample Size:
(1200)
(333)
(223)
(617)
(417)
(289)
About all that
10%
3%
28%
8%
8%
13%
expected
More than expected
8
2
18
7
8
8
Less than they
64
78
46
63
60
70
expected
Don't know/no
18
16
7
22
23
9
response
Total:
100%
99%
99%
100%
99%
100%
11
TABLE 4: RESPONSIBILITY FOR LIMITED ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Question: [IF LESS THAN EXPECTED] Who do you think is most responsible for
the fact that the Sandinistas accomplished less than was expected?
POLITICS
EDUCATION
Total
None/sm
Sec. &
Public
Gov't
Sand
Ind.
Prim'y
Above
Sample Size:
(1200)
(333)
(223)
(617)
(417)
(289)
Sandinistas
43%
62%
10%
43%
43%
41%
United States
13
9
23
13
11
16
Contras/RN
7
5
12
6
5
11
Others/Multiple
causes
1
2
1
1
1
2
Not asked
36
21
53
36
39
30
Total:
100%
99%
99%
99%
99%
100%
12
TABLE 5:
OPINION OF SANDINISTA ACTIONS
Question:
Now I have a list of some actions that the Sandinistas have taken since
they lost the elections last February. Please tell me how much you favor or
oppose each of them. For example, are you in favor of or opposed to
retaining possession of some property, equipment, and funds that they had
access to while they were in government? Is that very much [in
favor/opposed] or somewhat [in favor/opposed]?
Total Public
Favor
Oppose
DK/NR
a. Retaining possession of pro-
perty, equipment, and funds
that they had access to while
in government
22%
72%
6%
b. Distributing weapons to some
civilian supporters
16
80
5
C. Turning over power to the
elected Chamorro administration
84
14
3
d. Promoting demonstrations and
strikes in order to influence
Government decisions
24
72
4
e. Retain control of army and
security forces
25
68
7
f. Attempt to "Govern from below"
so that they can "preserve the
gains of the revolution
32
61
7
g. Passing laws so that members
of the bureaucracy can not be
fired
54
41
5
h. Facilitating missiles and other
armaments to the Salvadoran
guerrilla
13
72
14
13
TABLE 6:
OPINION ON SANDINISTA MOTIVES
Question:
Speaking of the Sandinistas, do you think the Sandinista leadership is
acting primarily to defend the best interests of the Nicaraguan people or
primarily because they want to weaken the Chamorro government?
POLITICS
EDUCATION
Total
None/sm
Sec. &
Public
Gov't
Sand
Ind.
Prim'y
Above
Sample Size:
(1200)
(333)
(223)
(617)
(417)
(289)
To defend the
33%
15%
81%
27%
28%
47%
Nicaraguan
people
To weaken Chamorro
53
73
15
55
54
48
Don't know/no
13
11
3
18
19
5
response
Total:
99%
99%
99%
100%
101%
100%
14
TABLE 7A: THE REVOLUTION: DOES IT CONTINUE?
Question: Speaking of the revolution, would you say that the Sandinista revolution is
continuing or has it ended?
POLITICS
EDUCATION
Total
None/sm
Sec. &
Public
Gov't
Sand
Ind.
Prim'y
Above
Sample Size:
(1200)
(333)
(223)
(617)
(417)
(289)
Ended
29%
48%
5%
25%
32%
24%
Continues
58
41
91
58
51
70
Don't know/no
12
11
4
17
17
6
response
Total:
99%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
TABLE 7B: WHEN DID IT END?
Question: [IF SAYS REVOLUTION HAS ENDED] When do you think it ended?
POLITICS
EDUCATION
Total
None/sm
Sec. &
Public
Gov't
Sand
Ind.
Prim'y
Above
Sample Size:
(1200)
(333)
(223)
(617)
(417)
(289)
In 1979, with the
1%
0%
0%
1%
1%
1%
fall of Somoza
In 1990, with the
26
45
4
21
28
23
election of
Chamorro
Others
1
1
0
0
1
0
Don't know/no
2
3
0
2
2
0
response
Not asked
71
52
95
75
68
76
Total:
101%
101%
99%
99%
100%
100%
15
TABLE 7C: OPINION ON BENEFIT/HARM OF REVOLUTION'S STATUS
Question:
In your view, is this good or bad for the Nicaraguan people?
[THOSE BELIEVING REVOLUTION HAS ENDED IN TABLE 7A]
POLITICS
Total
Public
Gov't
Sand
Ind.
Sample Size:
(1200)
(333)
(223)
(617)
Good
24%
43%
4%
19%
Bad
2
1
0
2
Don't know/no
3
4
1
4
response
Not asked
71
52
95
75
Total:
100%
100%
100%
100%
[THOSE BELIEVING REVOLUTION CONTINUES IN TABLE 7A]
POLITICS
Total
Public
Gov't
Sand
Ind.
Sample Size:
(1200)
(333)
(223)
(617)
Good
28%
10%
83%
19%
Bad
23
26
4
29
Don't know/no
7
4
4
10
response
Not asked
42
59
9
42
Total:
100%
99%
100%
100%
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
DATE:
4-18-91
FROM THE PRESIDENT
To:
Tony Snow
Last ngith's short toast to
Violeta worked out just right.
The humor was most
appropriate
Please thank whomever
helped on this.
I think if we work in
pertinent humor, light touches,
anecdotes, it really helps
gb
by
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
DATE:
4 17
FROM THE PRESIDENT
To:
Beth/Tony
Csanwe lighten this up a little
some humorous anecdot
is
light touch
If so work that in up front tighten]
up firast opage leave 2nd
as is
w/
THE PRESIDENT HAS SEEN
4-17-91
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
91 APR 12 PM 2:50
April 12, 1991
MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT
THROUGH:
TONY SNOW TS
FROM:
BETH HINCHLIFFE BH
SUBJECT:
PRESIDENT CHAMORRO ARRIVAL STATEMENT
AND STATE DINNER TOAST
I. ARRIVAL STATEMENT
On Wednesday, April 17, at 10 a.m., you will welcome
Nicaraguan President Violeta Chamorro in a ceremony on the South
Lawn.
Your remarks (7 minutes, cards) focus on three major themes.
First: that President Chamorro was elected in the first free,
open election in her country's history. Second: that her
election heralds the triumph of democracy, and is one more step
toward the goal of the world's first fully free hemisphere.
Third: that she is now seen as her country's peacemaker, and the
leader of reconciliation.
Your remarks conclude with a strong reaffirmation of this
country's support and friendship for President Chamorro and
Nicaragua.
II. TOAST
On Wednesday, April 17, at 7:15 p.m., you will attend a
State Dinner in honor of Nicaraguan President Violeta Chamorro.
Attached are your remarks for the dinner toast.
These remarks (3 minutes, cards) salute President Chamorro
for her moral leadership. They focus on her personal vision --
her courage, idealism, and spiritual beliefs. They conclude by
honoring her for her commitment to peace, reconciliation and
liberty.
(Hinchliffe/Blymire)
April 12, 1991 12 p.m.
CHAMARR Draft Two
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: ARRIVAL CEREMONY FOR PRESIDENT CHAMORRO
Wednesday, April 17, 1991 10 a.m.
South Lawn
It gives me great pleasure to welcome to the United States a
woman of courage; a leader of conviction; a person of morality
and vision -- Mrs. Violeta Chamorro, President of Nicaragua.
We stand here at the White House almost a year to the day
after that extraordinary moment when you stood at Managua's
National Stadium to be sworn in as your nation's first freely
elected President.
What a moment that was. In you we saw the exhilarating
victory of democracy -- of that glorious new breeze that in one
amazing year swept out oppression and dictatorship from Prague to
Managua. In you we saw your nation's peacemaker -- the person
who would close the books on 11 years of cruel civil war.
In you we saw the symbol of national reconciliation -- with
the inner strength and resolve to turn the face of your country
toward the path of healing.
In you.we saw what your countrymen saw when they voted in
their first fair, open election -- the person who inspired her
people to believe in the triumphant return of peace and freedom.
On that Inauguration Day we saw Dona Violeta, candidate of
compassion -- become President Chamorro, leader of
reconciliation.
On that day you closed a painful chapter in your nation's
history. And you began to forge a new one. The beautiful land
2
of Ruben Dario had been exhausted by strife. Embittered by
repression. Polarized by government attempts to dominate every
aspect of society. Impoverished by a cynical and mismanaged
regime.
But you are the leader who once said: "As a mother, I feel
with great intensity the obligation to teach while governing, and
to govern while forming peaceful hearts." And you have begun to
bring life and dreams back to your people -- in your "mission to
help them, as you call it. Your courageous countrymen are
showing they're ready to dig in and work hard, to reap the
benefits of free government and free enterprise.
Following the course of your slogan: "Yes we can change
things" -- your reforms are realistic. Restoration of democratic
liberties. Religious freedom. Economic reconstruction. Free
market opportunities. Reallocation of military funds to vital
economic and social programs. Reincorporation of former
combatants and refugees.
But your reforms are also visionary: The restoration of
moral values and human dignity. The importance of an inheritance
for your children of reconciliation and respect. And the belief
in the goodness of a people that still turns for guidance to its
patron saint -- "La Purisima."
And your reforms -- your "new sun of justice and freedom"
-- bring hope to the watching world. For with the
democratization of Nicaragua, we are one crucial step closer to
the incredible goal of becoming this world's first fully free
3
hemisphere.
We know that the tasks facing the Nicaraguan people are
difficult. Your economic stabilization plan requires hard
choices. Economic reform after years of mismanagement is never
easy and presents challenges to leadership. But sacrifice in the
short run is vital to achieve long-term growth and development.
And we hope that all elements of Nicaraguan society will work
with you for the good of your country.
The Nicaraguan people do not stand friendless and alone to
face these challenges. We are confident that as you confront
them, all Nicaraguans will enjoy renewed and widely shared
prosperity.
Dona Violeta, I am proud to stand with you -- and our nation
is proud to stand by you. We're offering over $500 million in
aid over your first two years as President. And we've joined
with other developed countries to work with the international
financial institutions to help Nicaragua. Beyond aid, we're
offering opportunities for trade and investment that will benefit
both our countries through the Enterprise for the Americas
Initiative.
Most of all, we're offering something from our hearts to
your proud country -- your blue and white Nicaragua where as your
National Anthem says: "the voice of the cannon no longer roars."
We're offering our respect, our admiration, and our friendship.
As your nation renews itself under your leadership, the
world shares the view of Nicaraguan poet Pablo Antonio Cuadra,
4
who wrote about your late husband Pedro -- tragically
assassinated for the pure passion of his political idealism.
Cuadra said of you: "Pedro's flag could not be in better hands. "
Dona Violeta, Madam President, your nation is fortunate to
have you as a leader. We salute you. God bless you, and your
proud and courageous land.
#
#
#
#
additional
(Hinchliffe/Blymire)
April 12, 1991 1 p.m.
CHAMTOAST Draft Two
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: TOAST FOR PRESIDENT CHAMORRO
April 17, 1991 7:15 p.m.
State Dining Room
It is a distinct privilege for Barbara and me to salute this
evening an extraordinary leader of honor, compassion and courage.
With the greatest admiration we welcome to our nation's home,
Nicaragua's President, Violeta Chamorro.
We honor her as the conciliator who is forging a future of
peace and unity for her beleaguered land. As the elected leader
who ended a bitter civil war, and who replaced a repressive and
undemocratic regime. As the President whom history will acclaim
as the liberator of not only her country's government -- but also
of its spirit.
Her people call her Dona Violeta -- a name of affection and
respect. As I've come to know her, I've understood. For she
personifies the blend of resolve and compassion that inspires a
nation to become the best it can be.
I'll tell you something that impresses me tremendously. Not
only is she working resolutely to bring about tangible reforms to
expand democracy and economic opportunity -- but she has also
embarked on what she terms a quest to restore moral values. What
a powerful goal in this age. The most important goal there is.
Under the courageous and idealistic example of President
Chamorro, Nicaragua is rediscovering the meaning of its coat of
arms -- the beautiful symbol embossed in the center of its flag.
Yes
A triangle for equality. A rainbow for peace. And a shower of
2
light --- for liberty shining throughout the land.
Liberty that's embodied by Violeta Chamorro -- and by her
late husband and inspiration, Pedro Joaquin. He used to own a
boat he named "Santa Libertad" -- St. Liberty. Well, the world
now watches as his widow steers her own "Santa Libertad" -- her
ship of state, bound for a bright horizon that promises freedom,
respect and dignity for every person in her land.
On a shelf in President Chamorro's office is a plaque of a
prayer she tries to live by. A prayer that reminds me of her.
The words are by St. Francis. "Lord, make me an instrument of
Your peace. Where there is hatred, let me SOW love
Where
there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
For
it is in giving that we receive; [and] it is in pardoning that we
are pardoned."
Dona Violeta -- you are an instrument of peace. Through
your goals of reconciliation and liberty, you bring vision to TM
your nation and hope to the world.
To your health, Madam President -- and to that of your proud
and courageous land.
#####
Ye