From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: Nicaragua: Report from Jalapa
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: PACH
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1992 00:12:46 GMT

/** reg.nicaragua: 138.0 **/
** Topic: Report from Jalapa **
** Written 10:00 pm  Oct 15, 1992 by glmills in cdp:reg.nicaragua **
  Here are a couple of dispatches from the Brendan Shea, full
time development worker, supported by the Boulder, Colorado-
Jalapa, Nicaragua Friendship City Projects.

  Sept. 25,1992- Chusli, Nicaragua- The military situation in
northern Nicaragua has become increasingly tense with the
initiation of Repunte 92, an operation by the Sandinista Popular
Army to put an end to marauding by armed bands of so-called
"recontras" in the northern provinces of Matagalpa, Jinotega,
and Nueva Segovia. Many people in Jalapa believe that moves to
put an end to the murder and pillage of the recontra bands are
long overdue. "It's about time the government decided to stop
this," says Mariana Lopez, a farmer from Chusli, a community
located two miles north of Jalapa where Friendship City Projects
is financing a potable water project. "Those people [the recon-
tras] don't want to go back to work. They just want to keep
stealing and killing, just like they did during the war," adds
Lopez. Other citizens of Chusli have expressed similar opinions.
"If the army doesn't go in and burn their asses, the recontras
will just keep doing what they want, which is to let others grow
the food and then come and take it from them at the point of a
gun," says Mario Umanzor, himself a veteran of the Sandinista
Army and a member of the Water Project Support Commission in
Chusli.
However, the army has made it clear that the objective of Repunte
92 is to put a stop to all armed groups operating in these areas,
whether they are former contras or former members of the Army.
Lieutenant Colenel Pedro Agurcia, a spokesperson for the EPS
told Barricada that the army had orders to disband all armed
groups, "regardless of their political views." There are some
groups of former Army personnel who have been engaging in armed
robbery in these areas, although this activity is not sanctioned
by other "recompa" organizations that had formed to pressure the
government to keep promises made to demobilized contras and army
personnel, such as the Prudencio Serrano Northern Front. "Most
of the recompas have settled down and gone to work," says Carlos
Gomez of Chusli.
Meanwhile, the recontras have supposedly organized into the
"Democratic Front for National Salvation," also known as the
Frente Norte "3-80" which was named for the late Enrique Bermud-
ez, a colenel in Somoza's National Guard and contra commander.
The Sept. 25 edition of the daily newspaper El Nuevo Diario
carried an interview with Ciriaco Palacios Lopez, a.k.a.
"Charrito," the self-proclaimed Chief of the General Staff of 
the FDSN. Mr. Palacios claimed, "Two fighting roosters cannot 
live together in the same cage. The only way to coexist with the
Sandinistas is that they be disarmed." Mr. Palacios went on to
say he would not give up his arms until all Sandinistas were
removed from the army and the police and Minister of the Pres-
idency Antonio Lacayo was fired. He further stated that all
property confiscated by the Sandinista government be returned
to its former owners and that the Toncontin Accord, an agree-
ment signed by the contra commanders in 1990 when they supposed-
ly demobilized.
Mr. Palacios indicated that the Frente Norte "3-80" was composed
of other groups of recontras, including the followers of Nortiel"
and the notorious "Guapote," who has been terrorizing campesinos
in the counties of Quilali, Murra, Jicaro and Wiwili. In the
interview published in El Nuevo Diario, Mr. Palacios said his
gunmen had had antiaircraft weapons such as .50 caliber machine
guns and U.S. made Redeye shoulder fired antiaircraft missiles.
He advised journalists not to travel in military helicopters be-
cause he had given his men orders to shoot them down.
Mr. Palacios' statements that he possessed Redeye missiles has
fueled suspicion that he enjoys the support of the United States
government. The contras supposedly demobilized and disarmed two
years ago, and people are wondering where Charrito would get new
missiles, given that the U.S. government supposedly controls the
movement of these taxpayer-bought weapons. Others believe that
the recontras are getting support from Nicaraguan right wing 
politicians based in Managua. "Virgilio Godoy and Arnoldo Aleman
are giving them money," says Juan Umanzor of Chusli. "The rich
hire them to try and scare people off of land they received under
the agrarian reform. The people organized in cooperatives have
legal title to the land, so legal methods won't work. The terra-
tenientes (landlords) want to force the cooperatives to flee
land that is rightfully theirs," says Pedro Ordonez of Teoteca-
cinte. Others believe that Washington wants to maintain the re-
contras as a fighting force in order to apply some terrorist
muscle to the government of Violeta Chamorro, who has come in
for lots of criticism from politicians in the United States who
are not happy with her policy of reconciling the Nicaraguan
people without first eliminating the Sandinistas. Both vice-
president Virgilio Godoy, who has frequently expressed desires
to liquidate the Sandinistas, and Arnoldo Aleman, who is known
to have been an informer for Somoza's National Guard, have
threatened to destabilize Mrs. Chamorro's government. Mayor
Arnoldo Aleman has made numerous trips to northern Nicaragua
since assuming power in the capital city. In their efforts to
"pressure" the government, the recontras have destroyed cooper-
atives, trucks used as public transport vehicles on unpaved
country roads and warehouses full of freshly harvested coffee
and killed hundreds of campesinos. For many of the the citizens
who live in the countryside of northern Nicaragua, the war has
never ended.

  Chusli, Sept. 27,1992- On Sept. 26,1992, Minister of the Pres-
idency Antonio Lacayo came to Jalapa to attend the Eighth
Annual Corn Fair. The fair was initiated in 1981 by then
Minister of Culture Ernesto Cardenal as a response to the U.S.
government's cancellation of a shipment of wheat. In a speech
to UNESCO in April, 1982, Cardenal explained that the loss of
the wheat shipment meant "our people would be without bread."
The fair was designed to promote Nicaraguan dishes made from
corn such as "indio viejo" (a stew made of corn meal and lots
of meat), nacatamales (a dish made of corn meal with meat,
tomatoes, potatoes and rice), mantuca (another corn meal and
meat dish), chicha (wine fermented from corn) and cususa, a
distilled corn liquor that tastes vaguely like tequila. There
are contests in which judges award prizes for the best food
and drink, much like state and county fairs in the United
States. The Corn Fair has been held in Jalapa since 1985, when
the contras were no longer able to disrupt production in the
Jalapa valley. Since then it has been the top corn producing
county in Nicaragua. The fair was designed to promote uniquely
Nicaraguan cultural attributes and enable Nicaraguans to deal
with a potential problem of shortages caused by Washington's
unilateral move to restrict the supply of wheat in Nicaragua.
Each farm cooperative in the Jalapa valley traditionally enters
a float in the parade and a candidate for Queen of the fair. The
candidate wears a dress made from kernels of corn, tassels and
husks. The floats are pulled by Soviet-made Belaruz tractors,
the workhorses of the Jalapa valley. (The tractors outlasted the
Soviet Union, and they just keep on rolling.) In past years,
more than forty cooperatives entered floats in the contest. This
year, there were less than fifteen. Traditionally, the Corn Fair
has been a time of excitement and celebration, a time to have
some fun before the harvest begins in earnest and everybody
thinks about getting the crops in to the granaries. This year,
there was precious little excitement or enthusiasm. Municipal
Councillor Armando Matute of Jalapa noted the lack of enthusiasm
for this year's fair. "The only reason I came to town today was
to see if Daniel Ortega was coming. I had heard that he might
show up. I also came to visit my mom," he said. (Daniel Ortega,
the former president of Nicaragua, is quite popular in Jalapa.)
Matute said, "The people who are participating this year are
doing so to maintain the tradition. But this year, the floats
have sponsors. In past years, all the cooperatives had money to
pay for their own floats. They didn't need sponsors." The crowd
that came out to watch the parade of floats that kicks off the
Fair was sparse. All of this is a reflection of the times,
which are hard for all Nicaraguans, but especially hard for grain
farming regions such as Jalapa. Prices for basic grains- corn,
rice and beans- have been extremely low for the past two years.
The government has preferred to import grain using credits ob-
tained from the United States, and this had a ruinous effect in
Jalapa. The few people who did attend the fair this year know
that, and the reception they gave Minister Lacayo was less than
warm.
Minister Lacayo was accompanied by his lovely wife Christiana
Chamorro, publisher of the daily newspaper La Prensa and daugh-
ter of President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, Danilo Lacayo,
the president's press secretary and Minister of Agriculture
Roberto Rondon, among others. The party of dignitaries pulled
up behind the floats before the parade began, and Lacayo and
his lovely wife got out of their Toyota Land Cruisers and walk-
ed along inspecting the floats. They were accompanied by Roger
Ponce, a local Sandinista functionary and farmer. He introduced
me to Antonio Lacayo as a foreign volunteer working in the
valley, and we shook hands cordially.
the difference in appearance between the well-dressed members of
the entourage and the hunmble citizens of Jalapa was striking.
When they began walking toward us, Mike Ukropina, a volunteer
from Chicago who has been working on sustainable agriculture
projects in Teotecacinte told me he thought they were gringos.
Bo Whitehead, a University of Colorado student who has been
working on the Chusli water project for the past month later told
me, "I could swear that guy [Minister Lacayo] was from Iowa."
While the small crowd in attendance was not hostile or abusive,
their lack of enthusiasm was overwhelming. One of the performers
on the stage, a mariachi singer from La Trinidad called the "Puma
of the Segovias" tried to get the crowd to applaud Lacayo, to no
avail. Very few people clapped. Lacayo's remarks to close the
fair also generated little excitement. Roger Ponce, the local
politico who had escorted him around town, gave a speech in which
he challenged Lacayo to answer for the government's farm credit
policies, which have denied credit to grain farmers while re-
structuring debts for rich cotton farmers amounting to ten
million dollars, the lack of definite recognition of land titles
for farmers in the Jalapa valley and the neglect of the region
on the part of the central government in terms of investment in
infrastructure such as roads. (Ponce also made a crack about
Christiana Chamorro's paper La Prensa, which had reported a
battle in Teotecacinte that never took place. A reporter for
United Press International (UPI) reported a major battle 
between the recontras and the Sandinista Popular Army (EPS) in
Teotecacinte, a community ten miles north of Jalapa where FCP
had financed a potable water project, but no battle ever took
place. La Prensa ran the wire report without trying to confirm
its veracity and reported the same information.) Lacayo failed
to respond to any of these concerns. He promised that the
government would pave the road from Mozonte, a town outside of
Ocotal, the capital of Nueva Segovia and Santa Clara, a town
some 35 kilometers west of Jalapa, but he never mentioned a
timetable for paving the road from Santa Clara to Jalapa. He
didn't even try to explain that oversight. He admonished the
crowd to conserve Jalapa's pine forests so that they could
serve as a resource for generations to come. "The hills are not
for farming. Farming must be done in the valley.," he said. He
cited the work of IRENA (the Institute for Natural Resources and
Environment) in Jalapa, commending them for doing their part to
conserve the forests. He neglected to mention Pie de Monte, the
nongovernmental forestry project in Jalapa that has done much
more to conserve the forests, educate school children and adults
about reforestation and the need for conservation, teach people
who own forested land to use their resources efficiently and
develop alternative sources of firewood than Irena has.
Lacayo talked about how the war had "impoverished" the area and
how "we had achieved low levels of production during that time."
Many people who have lived in Jalapa all their lives beg to
differ. Francisca Perez, a native of Jalapa and grain farmer
told me, "In past years, we prodduced a lot more corn, even with
the war. People had food to give away. Not now." Yessenia Lopez
Perez, a student at the National Engineering University on
vacation in Jalapa, told me, "I grew up here, and in the years
when the war was really bad, people ate three meals a day. Now,
they don't. From 1985 on, the army and the militias protected
this place and the farmers could plant. Now, there is no credit
and no money for production." Others were offended that Lacayo
had used the pronoun "we" in referring to production in past
years because it implied that he was here in those days, working
in the fields, standing guard duty at night, dodging bullets
fired from across the border or serving in the reserves. "He
wasn't here then. Why does he want us to think he had anything
to do with Jalapa during the war?" asked Juan Jiron, a farmer
from Teotecacinte. "He didn't say shit about the problems we
have here," he added. Juan's uncle Rogelio, also a farmer from
Teote, had expressed the hope that the minister might learn
something here. "Maybe when he finds out what we're doing here,
he'll help us." Few people, if any, shared his optimism.
This year's fair was a much more austere event than anyone can
remember. The quality of life in the Jalapa valley has taken a
turn for the worst, and nobody can see any relief in sight.
Minister Lacayo did not speak to the issues that are close to
the hearts of the Jalapenos, such as the government's grain
pricing policies or importing dumped grain from abroad with
credits that only serve to increase the country's foreign debt
and do nothing to encourage food self sufficiency in Nicaragua.
The lack of rapport between the Minister and the campesinos
was apparent from the beginning. "When Daniel Ortega comes to
Jalapa, the place is full of people from the surrounding
communities, because the campesinos here know that he cares
about them," says Yessenia Lopez. "Antonio Lacayo gave us a lot
of double talk. He thinks that the people of Jalapa are stupid
enough to fall for that." however, most people did not seem to
However, most people did not seem to be impressed with Lacayo's
remarks. Some still hope that his visit to Jalapa will compel
him to make some policy decisions that will allow the campesinos
of the region to make a living as they once did. Most, however,
do not expect anything to change.
  Well, that's about all that has been happening here.
                                      Agua o muerte, Brendan
** End of text from cdp:reg.nicaragua **

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