On August 9, laid-off coffee workers rallied in front of the Matagalpa town hall and announced plans to gather forces for a march to the capital. In some rural areas outside León, peasants have set up "hunger commissions" to distribute what food they can collect, with priority to the needs of children, the elderly, and pregnant women. Even before the crisis of the last few months, Nicaragua was one of the poorest countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.  
 
Coffee producers' income plummets
Coffee producers received almost 40 percent less for their beans this winter than a year ago. Tens of thousands of seasonal pickers were denied part or all of their wages at the end of the harvest, and even year-round workers were fired and evicted from the haciendas. Then the drought hit, and food crops of corn, rice, and beans died in the fields.

On the western plain and in highland regions like Matagalpa, peasants lost virtually their entire summer harvest of food crops. "The rains never came," a woman from Matagalpa explained. "They gathered in the sky and then just passed us by."

Ironically, on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, only a little bit over 100 miles to the east, food crops were wiped out by flooding from heavy rains and swollen rivers. In remote Miskito areas like Alamikamba and Prinzapolka, thousands of people are suffering from hunger.

Nicaraguan president Arnoldo Alemán continues to insist, as he has for several weeks, that the problem of hambruna or famine is an "invention" of the opposition Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). At an emergency meeting in El Salvador August 10, Nicaraguan minister of agriculture Genaro Muñoz dismissed as "false accusations" the idea that people were starving in his country. Alemán's only emergency measure has been to offer about $30 an acre in emergency loans for coffee producers to begin the necessary preparations for the coming harvest. The big growers ridiculed his offer at an angry meeting here on August 6. Even this pitiful amount would not be available to the vast majority of coffee producers who work small plots with family labor. Fewer than 2,000 of the country's 40,000 coffee growers are deemed "creditworthy."

Nicaragua is in the middle of a presidential campaign, with a November 4 election that once again pits Daniel Ortega of the FSLN against the Constitutional Liberal Party, which was the party of former dictator Anastacio Somoza. The Liberal candidate, Enrique Bolaños, was Arnoldo Alemán's vice president before resigning to run for office. Pollsters here say the electorate is evenly split right now between the two candidates.

At a "Campaign Debate on the Economy and Poverty" held at the Central American University, neither campaign had much to say about the devastation in the north. Ortega's representative said a new FSLN government would introduce a tax reform in its first 100 days and promised "transparency," a buzz word here for honest government. There was no apparent difference between his speech and the Liberals' promise to "professionalize the public sector."

There are many giant, bright yellow, campaign billboards in the country bearing just the word "Daniel" or sometimes "Daniel" and "presidente." Some slightly smaller FSLN billboards include a political slogan. In one corner, much smaller than the name Daniel, were the words la tierra prometida, "the promised land." In the context of Nicaragua today it seemed like a cruel joke.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home