Nicaragua

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Flag of Nicaragua
Nicaragua's Coat of Arms

Nicaragua, officially the Republic of Nicaragua, is the largest country in the Central American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the northwest, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest. Managua is the country's capital and largest city and is also the third-largest city in Central America, behind Tegucigalpa and Guatemala City. The multi-ethnic population of six million includes people of indigenous, European, African, and Asian heritage. The main language is Spanish. Indigenous tribes on the Mosquito Coast speak their own languages and English.

Quotes[edit]

Mr. Denis Ronaldo Moncada Colindres, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Nicaragua, statement at the United Nations, General Assembly, 1 October 2018 in New York[edit]

(Full text online)

  • I bring a message of peace from the people of Nicaragua and from President and Commander Daniel Ortega and Vice-President Rosario Murillo. Since the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development three years ago, we have continued to witness a world in crisis, the result of unbridled capitalism, interference in the affairs of others and the violation of international law and the sovereignty of our peoples through the use of force, as well as attempts at coups d’état and destabilization efforts that threaten our prospects for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals set out in the 2030 Agenda.
  • Nicaragua has resisted attempts at regime change. Our country has once again prevailed and achieved peace, fraternal coexistence and a gradual return to normal daily life.
  • The attempted coup d’état that we overcame in Nicaragua was the result of such interventionism, and its legacy has entailed grave consequences for us, including economic damage, death, destruction and terrorism disguised as peaceful protest, characterized by the savage killing of citizens and policemen, the setting on fire of public and private property, assaults, rights violations, extortion, torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.
  • The Government and the people of Nicaragua are staunch defenders of the principles of independence and sovereignty, as enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations. We therefore demand that an end be put to all interventionist policies, which violate international law, including interventionist activities in Nicaragua and brotherly nations of the Americas and the world.
  • Today, we are once again facing the threat of the United States, which seeks to halt the social, economic and cultural development of our people. We condemn such interventionism, which is manifested in the introduction of a law in the United States Congress requiring international financial institutions to refuse to issue loans to Nicaragua.
  • For Nicaragua, contributing to international peace is synonymous with achieving general and complete nuclear disarmament. We have therefore signed and ratified the recent Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and call on countries to ratify that historic Treaty...
  • Nicaragua condemns the criminal blockade against the sisterly Republic of Cuba and all of the associated extraterritorial measures and ramifications. Nicaragua rejects all coercive economic measures that seek to bend the will and spirit of freedom and sovereignty of peoples and Governments
  • Our sisterly Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the Bolivarian People and the legitimate Government of President Nicolás Maduro Moros can count on our unconditional solidarity. We have condemned the assassination attempt against President Nicolás Maduro Moros and the threat of military intervention against the Bolivarian people and Republic of Venezuela.
  • Nicaragua advocates for the two State solution, that is, the State of Israel and the State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital, within the 1967 borders, living in peace and harmony.
  • We reiterate our complete solidarity with the Government and the people of Syria in their struggle against international terrorism and in defence of their sovereignty and territorial integrity.
  • Humankind continues to seek peace. Seventy three years after its founding, the Organization has not yet managed to fully meet the goals set out with regard to peace. Given such a regrettable state of affairs, the call for reinventing the United Nations...
  • We need urgent action to combat climate change... those primarily responsible for the largest volume of the emissions, destruction, degradation and imbalances in nature must recognize the losses and damages suffered by the rest of us and help with the recovery of Mother Earth and the peoples of the world...
  • In conclusion, we stress our commitment to continuing to fight for peace — a priority for the world and our people — and to ensuring that conflicts arising in various parts of the world can be overcome through dialogue and negotiations and that, above all, peoples and countries can be free of fear from the use or threat of the use of force, a threat that the great Powers seek to impose on States that are small in population... but...great in terms of their values and history.

Quotes about[edit]

  • A twenty-year war of terrorism was waged against Cuba. Cuba has probably been the target of more international terrorism than the rest of the world combined and, therefore, in the American ideological system it is regarded as the source of international terrorism, exactly as Orwell would have predicted. And now there’s a war against Nicaragua.
    The impact of all of this has been absolutely horrendous. There’s vast starvation throughout the region while crop lands are devoted to exports to the United States. There’s slave labor, crushing poverty, torture, mass murder, every horror you can think of. In El Salvador alone, from October 1979 (a date to which I’ll return) until December 1981 — approximately two years — about 30,000 people were murdered and about 600,000 refugees created. Those figures have about doubled since. Most of the murders were carried out by U.S.-backed military forces, including so-called death squads. The efficiency of the massacre in El Salvador has recently increased with direct participation of American military forces. American planes based in Honduran and Panamanian sanctuaries, military aircraft, now coordinate bombing raids over El Salvador, which means that the Salvadoran air force can more effectively kill fleeing peasants and destroy villages, and, in fact, the kill rate has gone up corresponding to that.
  • For the past decade, the United States has been quietly assisting opposition groups in Nicaragua, helping them organize resistance to the country’s popular leftist president Daniel Ortega. U.S. officials hope the country’s opposition groups will create a new political movement that can defeat Ortega at the polls or pressure him into stepping down from power. They fear that without their support, Ortega’s opposition will remain weak and divided, making it impossible for anyone to mount a successful political campaign against the Nicaraguan president.
  • During the 1980s, Nicaragua – a tiny country which remains the second poorest in the Hemisphere — inspired many of us, myself included, with its heroic resistance to violent US aggression. Nicaragua has remained a symbol of opposition to US imperialism, and that has galled the powers-that-be in this country – particularly Neo-Cons such as current National Security Adviser John Bolton.
  • We must stand with Nicaragua now, as many of us did before, in opposing continued US hostilities in the form of the NICA Act and interference in Nicaragua’s internal affairs. Nicaragua deserves such solidarity.
  • And let me set the record straight on Nicaragua, a country next to El Salvador. In 1979 when the new government took over in Nicaragua, after a revolution which overthrew the authoritarian rule of Somoza, everyone hoped for the growth of democracy. We in the United States did, too. By January of 1981, our emergency relief and recovery aid to Nicaragua totalled $118 million-more than provided by any other developed country. In fact, in the first 2 years of Sandinista rule, the United States directly or indirectly sent five times more aid to Nicaragua than it had in the 2 years prior to the revolution. Can anyone doubt the generosity and the good faith of the American people? These were hardly the actions of a nation implacably hostile to Nicaragua. Yet, the Government of Nicaragua has treated us as an enemy. It has rejected our repeated peace efforts. It has broken its promises to us, to the Organization of American States and, most important of all, to the people of Nicaragua. No sooner was victory achieved than a small clique ousted others who had been part of the revolution from having any voice in the government. Humberto Ortega, the Minister of Defense, declared Marxism-Leninism would be their guide, and so it is. The Government of Nicaragua has imposed a new dictatorship. It has refused to hold the elections it promised. It has seized control of most media and subjects all media to heavy prior censorship. It denied the bishops and priests of the Roman Catholic Church the right to say Mass on radio during Holy Week. It insulted and mocked the Pope. It has driven the Miskito Indians from their homelands, burning their villages, destroying their crops, and forcing them into involuntary internment camps far from home. It has moved against the private sector and free labor unions. It condoned mob action against Nicaragua's independent human rights commission and drove the director of that commission into exile. In short, after all these acts of repression by the government, is it any wonder that opposition has formed? Contrary to propaganda, the opponents of the Sandinistas are not diehard supporters of the previous Somoza regime. In fact, many are anti-Somoza heroes and fought beside the Sandinistas to bring down the Somoza government. Now they've been denied any part in the new government because they truly wanted democracy for Nicaragua and they still do. Others are Miskito Indians fighting for their homes, their lands, and their lives. The Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua turned out to be just an exchange of one set of autocratic rulers for another, and the people still have no freedom, no democratic rights, and more poverty. Even worse than its predecessor, it is helping Cuba and the Soviets to destabilize our hemisphere.
  • Differing rates of apprehension of Honduran and Nicaraguan migrants at the U.S. southern border are revealing. Capitalist-imbued Honduras specializes in oppression, while optimism is no stranger in a Nicaragua aspiring to socialism....Department of Homeland Security figures show that between 2015 and 2018 the yearly average number of Nicaraguans apprehended at the border was 2292. The comparable figure for Hondurans was 63,741. Recently the number of Nicaraguan migrants has increased; 14,248 presented themselves at the border in 2019 – as did 268,992 Honduran refugees...
    Recent reflections of Carlos Fonseca Terán, the FSLN international secretary, show why hope has persisted in Nicaragua. He points out that, since 2007, poverty, inequality, illiteracy, infant mortality, and murders have dropped precipitously. Citizens’ safety, electrification, renewable energy sources, women in government, healthcare funding, and the minimum wage have increased, markedly. Fonseca adds that the “percentage of GDP produced … under associative, cooperative, family and community ownership went from less than 40% to more than 50%.”

See also[edit]

External links[edit]

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