Allophile

Red and black make...pink?

A blog with "Nicaragua" in the title can't not mention the recent election down there...
So here are my dos centavos...

Most of you have surely heard at least a little bit in the news about how Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista politician who was leader of Nicaragua back in the '80's, has just been elected president again, almost twenty years later...
"Tio" Sam is not too pleased...

The majority of Nicaraguans who are now of voting age are too young to remember the Sandinista-revolution of the late 70's and early 80's, and then the civil war that raged through a good part of the 80's...(and it's surprising how many Americans don't know what 'Iran-Contra' means--the illegal underground arms-deals of twenty years ago in which the U.S. illegally sold weapons to Iran (!) in order to arm the Contra rebels fighting the Sandinista government.)

Nicaraguans have been desperate for change for decades. The Somoza dictatorship (which ruled for much of the 20th century) didn't help the poor...The Sandinista's experiment in socialism didn't offer lasting help...and the supposedly more open democratic-capitalistic governments of the last couple of decades haven't helped...Most Nicaraguans today live on less than 2$ a day. It is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, after Haiti.

The fact that Ortega could be re-elected after almost two decades out of power, after a bloody civil war and an international blockade that crippled the country--this is all sad testimony to the desperation of ordinary Nicaraguans, who just want something to get done! (It's a pathetic echo of the recent elections in another Latin American country--Peru--in which a former president, also from nearly two decades ago, was elected, despite the fact that his previous administration ended up dragging the country into economic chaos...people are desperately choosing known-but-hopefully-lesser-evils in their elections...and this is the 'best' hope of human government?!)

Now, to get to the reason for the 'colorful' title of this blog:
During the revolutionary years, red and black were the colors of the Sandinista party...
Those years ended up being bloody years. There were promising social improvements at first--within a few years the illiteracy rate in Nicaragua plummeted from almost half of the population to around 10%.! (Alas, it has since climbed upward....) Medical care was free! ...Dignified housing was provided for the poor!..
...and then, at least according to the 'official' story, 'foreign imperialistic intervention', a.k.a. the Reagan administration in Gringolandia, got in the way...tens of thousands of Nicarguans died in the bloody war, blockades made the economy collapse, and it's only recently that most land-mines have been removed from the northern parts of the country.

Red and black became associated with the years of bloodshed and hardship...
So, in more recent years, Ortega decided to have a color make-over:
instead of red and black, PINK would be the new official Sandinista color--soften the image, woo the young...this street-scene from León shows one of the campaign signs.

However, the sign (which says 'love is stronger than hate') is NOT from this year's campaign...it's from years ago, the last time Ortega ran for president...and lost. He was voted out of office originally in 1990, and ever since has endeavored to re-take the 'throne', losing every time...I guess persistence paid off...

Last year, with his party in control of the Nicaraguan legislature, constitutional amendments were put through to make it possible for someone to become president of the country with only 35% of the vote! Incredible, no? ( And people in this country are still in a tizzy over the fact that the current president became president with just under 50 percent...) Since Nicaragua has many parties, in the presidential election there were several candidates...Normally, the top two vote-getters would end up in a run-off...Well, the constitutional amendment made it possible for the top candidate to automatically 'win' without having to go through the run-off procedure if he got at least 35% AND was at least 5% ahead of the nearest opponent...

And that's what happened.
The weeks and months ahead should be interesting, to say the least.

Many Nicaraguans are afraid the U.S. will again try to interfere, perhaps blockading the country economically...The fact that Ortega is a buen amigo of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez doesn't help...

Surprisingly, though--despite the years of foreign intervention in Nicaragua by the U.S., most people there are very friendly to American visitors and residents. (Thousands of Yankee ex-pats now live in the old city of Granada--buying up the old colonial real estate and pricing out the locals, and in the surfing-paradise of San-Juan-del-Sur...)

The revolutionary murals in the city of León are fascinating relic of the past but in no way depict any persistent menace towards Gringo-turistas. For example, the painting surrounding the doorway below:



You can see revolutionary figures triumphantly 'stomping' dictatorship on the left (in the figure of a dog-like Somoza) and imperialist Uncle Sam on the right (depicted as a puppy--perhaps Somoza's lap-dog). The 80's were wild times in Nicaragua...
One can only hope, for the sake of common Nicas, that the first decade of the 21st century will continue to be 'mild' in commparison...

Do societies ever learn from the past?
Or does a change in color-scheme just 'paint things over?'


To conclude, a complete and banal change of subject:
at the end of the last entry, I'd tried to upload a photo from last week's stretch of cold clear weather--the view from our "Sunset view" balcony of a foggy morning...here it is:

(who knew that Renton could seem so scenic? Amazing what a bit of fog can do...)