With unemployment over 50 percent and 70 percent of Nicaraguans living in poverty, a common response to questions about the project was to rub thumb against index and middle fingers to indicate the cash they hoped the project would spread around. Francisco Campbell, member of the Central American Parliament, said training and good jobs were the key to insuring that the project benefits local people. Not only the cheap labor component. We need to not only guarantee jobs in the building of this canal, but also to insure that it means long-term employment for our people over an indefinite period of time. In the isolated spots where the new ports and free trade zones will be built from scratch, nearly everybody survives on subsistence farming and fishing.
Most people are desperate for the jobs and economic development they expect the project to bring.
In the village of El Gigante, site of the proposed Pacific port, some saw new roads as a boon in getting their produce or catch to market. At Monkey Point on the Caribbean, in a region where some 80 percent are unemployed, many welcomed the prospect of more work and better transportation. But most of the English-speaking Creole people and Rama Indians who live there have no title to their land, which they hold in common. Some fear that the mega-project will elbow them aside and pave over their traditional ways of life. Leave the Indians to them place.