Hey everybody, I've been given the opportunity to do more freelance and head back to Tegucigalpa for a few weeks to cover the elections in Honduras. It should be a good experience for me as a reporter and just as an outsider getting to watch this crucial moment in that country's history unfold. It also means I'm headed back into an unending chorus of car horns and smog, but I think Tegucigalpa had actually grown on me by the time it was all said and done in October. Hotel Granada, Room 5, here I come again.
My bus leaves at 10:30 am Tuesday morning, and by all estimates it should take me 10 hours to get to Tegucigalpa (which means "Silver Hill" in the former native tongue.)
Adventure!
Monday, November 16, 2009
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Fridays with Vindell
Bamaragua note: I have never read the book that I just referenced in the title of this blog entry. I have considered it though.
My conversation teacher Karen has been bringing in a radio journalist friend named Pedro Vindell to speak with me the last two Fridays. Pedro is in his 60s, can speak at a rate that's almost painful for a non-Nicaraguan to try and keep up with, and unlike most journalists wears his colors on his sleeve. When I met him his small eyes greeted me from under the shade of a baseball cap bearing the image of Che Guevara, and he wore a T-shirt with the image of Sandino, the symbolic torch of a revolution that would be waged under his name 40 years after his death. Vindell was a student of Marxism well before the Sandinista revolution, he even went to Russia to study it, and took up arms alongside the Sandinistas early in the 1970s. He was captured by the Somoza dictatorship on two occasions and faced months of torture in prisons, including the ole electrodes to the genitals trick, before he was sent into house arrest. Some fellow revolutionaries helped him sneak out though, and soon enough he was back in the mountains near Esteli fighting against the dictatorship. When the war was over he became a founding member of El Nuevo Diario, a left-leaning national newspaper that still competes with the equally popular and more right-leaning La Prensa. He also worked for the official Sandinista newspaper La Barricada, which Salman Rushdie once fairly described as "the worst newspaper I've ever read."
Before I continue I think I should lay down my take on the revolution here, which ended July 19, 1979 when Somoza fled, taking all the reserves in the Central Bank with him, and the Sandinistas marched into Managua to take the capital without a fight. It led to years of counter-revolution by guerrillas openly funded by the U.S. government and former President Ronald Reagan, who was hands down the most malicious president Latin America as a whole ever had to deal with. Of all the horrible acts committed by the dictators this region has suffered through, a number of them propped up by the U.S. government, the things Ronald Reagan personally saw done to Latin America throughout the 1980s ranks right up there with the slimiest of them all. Cheers to the great Republican hero.
The Contras never seemed to have much direction. Their philosophy was sort of a "Hey let's burn ferries and power plants, let's put land mines in the middle of ports and highways, specifically target and terrorize rural communities, and if they fear us enough, fuck, maybe we could make ourselves president!" They were trained in Honduras, and funded by the U.S. They had such little support around Nicaragua that the Sandinista government adopted a policy of distributing AK-47s to families throughout the country no matter what their political persuasion was. That's how confident they were in their widespread support, and the policy paid off. But the war destroyed Nicaragua's economy, left thousands more dead, and created a tired populace that knew if it voted the Sandinistas out and elected a candidate openly backed by the U.S., there would finally be peace, and that's just what happened in 1990. The Sandinistas were never what they were painted to be by the media or the politicians in the U.S. They weren't radical communists, they were socialists, and even that's a loose usage of the term. But there was too much hysteria over the idea of "another Cuba" after a tired and abused people overthrew a very real dictator, and Henry Kissinger and Reagan and Bush and the CIA and the whole gang of cowboys saw to it that Nicaragua would "do as we say," which is what the U.S. ambassador literally told some top Nicaraguan officials one time.
The newest twist, and tragedy, in Nicaragua's story is that Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista revolutionary leader re-elected president after almost 20 years of Liberal Party rule, is using more and more underhanded tactics to preserve his power. He had a Sandinista supreme court remove the ban on consecutive re-elections, used fraud to steal numerous municipal elections for this party in 2008, and has a paid army of small-time thugs who break opposition protests. Anyone who travels the highways in Nicaragua also notices a strange trend, that every light post or bridge is colored red and black, the colors of the Sandinistas. There's less and less space between the interests of one party and the power of a "unified" government. The revolution that rooted out the beast is itself growing claws and salivating.
This has caused some important revolutionary leaders to part ways with Ortega and found a separate Sandinista party, but not Vindell. He speaks of Ortega with the same look of sugary sweet admiration a child may have for his mother. But at least he doesn't completely sugarcoat his reaction to the administration's slow move towards dictatorship. Those small-time Sandinista thugs who attacked me in front of the U.S. embassy would say Ortega not facing term limits means "the people can now decide who they think is best to run the country." Vindell's reaction to the decision, when I asked him about it, was, "I love it. It means we'll be in power for at least 40 more years."
I try to talk to him more about journalism because I can tell he gets uncomfortable after a while of questioning him on how he could support the government's outlandish acts, but I can't help it. I've been mesmerized by the political situation here ever since I was stared down by that mob of thugs masquerading as genuine protesters, the fire of immunity from the Sandinista police forces flickering in their eyes in front of this lone gringo, whose ambassador dared say that he was "troubled" by the supreme court's decision on reelections. I could almost hear the embers bursting. Those people didn't have the first clue, Vindell is well-educated on what's happening, and it takes a very strange if not equally dangerous attribute to go along happily with what you know is a subversion of everything your revolution once stood for. Or maybe winning the war on paper took enough of his soul and body to not complain anymore afterwards.
I stepped out onto the second floor balcony of my Spanish school last Friday to take a break after we'd wrapped up our talk. A breeze picked up and my sweaty forehead thanked it. Then I saw Vindell pass by under me on his dusty bike, peddling slowly, waving at an old friend or two also strolling gently by the horses and carriages in Granada's central park. He looked completely at peace, more with the air of a cow chewing grass in the shade than a man in denial that his country is slowly unraveling once again.
My conversation teacher Karen has been bringing in a radio journalist friend named Pedro Vindell to speak with me the last two Fridays. Pedro is in his 60s, can speak at a rate that's almost painful for a non-Nicaraguan to try and keep up with, and unlike most journalists wears his colors on his sleeve. When I met him his small eyes greeted me from under the shade of a baseball cap bearing the image of Che Guevara, and he wore a T-shirt with the image of Sandino, the symbolic torch of a revolution that would be waged under his name 40 years after his death. Vindell was a student of Marxism well before the Sandinista revolution, he even went to Russia to study it, and took up arms alongside the Sandinistas early in the 1970s. He was captured by the Somoza dictatorship on two occasions and faced months of torture in prisons, including the ole electrodes to the genitals trick, before he was sent into house arrest. Some fellow revolutionaries helped him sneak out though, and soon enough he was back in the mountains near Esteli fighting against the dictatorship. When the war was over he became a founding member of El Nuevo Diario, a left-leaning national newspaper that still competes with the equally popular and more right-leaning La Prensa. He also worked for the official Sandinista newspaper La Barricada, which Salman Rushdie once fairly described as "the worst newspaper I've ever read."
Before I continue I think I should lay down my take on the revolution here, which ended July 19, 1979 when Somoza fled, taking all the reserves in the Central Bank with him, and the Sandinistas marched into Managua to take the capital without a fight. It led to years of counter-revolution by guerrillas openly funded by the U.S. government and former President Ronald Reagan, who was hands down the most malicious president Latin America as a whole ever had to deal with. Of all the horrible acts committed by the dictators this region has suffered through, a number of them propped up by the U.S. government, the things Ronald Reagan personally saw done to Latin America throughout the 1980s ranks right up there with the slimiest of them all. Cheers to the great Republican hero.
The Contras never seemed to have much direction. Their philosophy was sort of a "Hey let's burn ferries and power plants, let's put land mines in the middle of ports and highways, specifically target and terrorize rural communities, and if they fear us enough, fuck, maybe we could make ourselves president!" They were trained in Honduras, and funded by the U.S. They had such little support around Nicaragua that the Sandinista government adopted a policy of distributing AK-47s to families throughout the country no matter what their political persuasion was. That's how confident they were in their widespread support, and the policy paid off. But the war destroyed Nicaragua's economy, left thousands more dead, and created a tired populace that knew if it voted the Sandinistas out and elected a candidate openly backed by the U.S., there would finally be peace, and that's just what happened in 1990. The Sandinistas were never what they were painted to be by the media or the politicians in the U.S. They weren't radical communists, they were socialists, and even that's a loose usage of the term. But there was too much hysteria over the idea of "another Cuba" after a tired and abused people overthrew a very real dictator, and Henry Kissinger and Reagan and Bush and the CIA and the whole gang of cowboys saw to it that Nicaragua would "do as we say," which is what the U.S. ambassador literally told some top Nicaraguan officials one time.
The newest twist, and tragedy, in Nicaragua's story is that Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista revolutionary leader re-elected president after almost 20 years of Liberal Party rule, is using more and more underhanded tactics to preserve his power. He had a Sandinista supreme court remove the ban on consecutive re-elections, used fraud to steal numerous municipal elections for this party in 2008, and has a paid army of small-time thugs who break opposition protests. Anyone who travels the highways in Nicaragua also notices a strange trend, that every light post or bridge is colored red and black, the colors of the Sandinistas. There's less and less space between the interests of one party and the power of a "unified" government. The revolution that rooted out the beast is itself growing claws and salivating.
This has caused some important revolutionary leaders to part ways with Ortega and found a separate Sandinista party, but not Vindell. He speaks of Ortega with the same look of sugary sweet admiration a child may have for his mother. But at least he doesn't completely sugarcoat his reaction to the administration's slow move towards dictatorship. Those small-time Sandinista thugs who attacked me in front of the U.S. embassy would say Ortega not facing term limits means "the people can now decide who they think is best to run the country." Vindell's reaction to the decision, when I asked him about it, was, "I love it. It means we'll be in power for at least 40 more years."
I try to talk to him more about journalism because I can tell he gets uncomfortable after a while of questioning him on how he could support the government's outlandish acts, but I can't help it. I've been mesmerized by the political situation here ever since I was stared down by that mob of thugs masquerading as genuine protesters, the fire of immunity from the Sandinista police forces flickering in their eyes in front of this lone gringo, whose ambassador dared say that he was "troubled" by the supreme court's decision on reelections. I could almost hear the embers bursting. Those people didn't have the first clue, Vindell is well-educated on what's happening, and it takes a very strange if not equally dangerous attribute to go along happily with what you know is a subversion of everything your revolution once stood for. Or maybe winning the war on paper took enough of his soul and body to not complain anymore afterwards.
I stepped out onto the second floor balcony of my Spanish school last Friday to take a break after we'd wrapped up our talk. A breeze picked up and my sweaty forehead thanked it. Then I saw Vindell pass by under me on his dusty bike, peddling slowly, waving at an old friend or two also strolling gently by the horses and carriages in Granada's central park. He looked completely at peace, more with the air of a cow chewing grass in the shade than a man in denial that his country is slowly unraveling once again.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Pierre Sendero: Waltzing
The moon shone through the clouds like a dying candle dripping wax over Granada's potholed streets. Beneath it a song of ex-patriots, international students, others with a dime to waste wailed on and on about their respective consequences in a drunken tune the privileged couldn't hear. And in the shadows stood the whores and the crackheads providing backup, snapping their fingers, blowing kisses, whispering, hissing. An audience of colonial architecture wiped the tears and the sweat from its face in helpless silence. And there I was, Pierre Sendero, out of cigarettes, out of patience, out of words, wishing something would end this charade and put all of us out of our misery.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Gettin' busy
Since I've "reached my destination," whatever that means, I'm going to drop the datelines on these blog entries unless I'm making a post from outside Granada.
This post brought to you by exhaustion, frustration and anxiety. The breakfast of champions.
I feel like I've done a lot of everything and a lot of nothing since I've arrived here. I'm behind on my blog writing, my journal writing, my journalistic writing and my PR writing.
PR writing?
Yes. I signed up to volunteer with a local volunteering organization named La Esperanza. Originally I was interested in helping teach English in local schools, but it's in the middle of the semester right now and when I told them I'm a journalist they immediately wanted to use my experience with writing to help publicize them outside of Nicaragua.* So I've gone to a few volunteer meetings and met some very nice people in the last week, but so far I'm still not sure what I'm going to produce for them and how I'll distribute it. I'm excited about it though. It's my first venture into PR writing and maybe if I like it and produce something good I could try to do it for a bigger organization, as long as it doesn't involve working alongside one single PR hack I've ever interviewed in my life ever. There's a few exceptions to that, but I don't have time for shout-outs.
I'm working on a story right now about how cuts to the national budget are making public funding for higher education almost non-existent, prompting students to take to the streets for protests that would make members of Students for a Democratic Society wet their pants. Burning tires, flaming effigies and home-made mortars are a theme in the streets of Managua whenever this time of the year comes around. These kids mean business. My biggest hurdle with this story is getting a single government official on the phone pertinent to this situation to talk to me and give me numbers about this year's budget cuts. You have to call people again and again and again in Nicaragua to get any kind of response. You even have to ask why someone isn't in the office, because a lot of times a secretary will say "So and so isn't here, but give me your number and he'll call you right back" without mentioning that he's not in the office because he's actually out of the country for a month. When you do get someone on the phone, it's like hearing a broken record. Everybody, even the students, have a party line on this issue. If your question reaches beyond what they've memorized, they'll just as soon repeat what they already told you and act like it's good enough for at least 1/2 a point on the quiz I'm giving them.
So who knows when I'll finish thatfucking thing. It's making me more and more testy as my deadline approaches. That and the fact I'm having trouble understanding Nicaraguans more than any other nationality I've met on this trip. They speak fast, there's a lot of slang and they drop a lot of letters randomly in their speech. It can be especially complicated when I'm talking to someone on the phone. For that reason I've signed up for two hours a day of one on one conversation classes here in Granada. My first class was today, we had a pleasant conversation about Granada and I understood my teacher perfectly, but that's because she spoke like a normal person. I told her I need these conversations to go faster and with a lot more street dialect thrown in. We'll see how tomorrow goes. I'll take these classes for at least a week and if I still haven't improved my Nicaraguan Spanish maybe I'll just pay a crackhead on the street to ramble at me for two hours a day (though they already do that for free.) That would do the trick.
So like I said, I'm finding ways to keep myself busy and yet somehow not getting a whole lot done so far. Part of it also is that Granada is just a very calm and attractive (and often scorching hot) place to waste the days away in a hammock under a coconut tree with the fan blowing on you. I haven't had any desire to get out of the city yet, though I do at least want to visit the volcanic island of Ometepe in Lake Nicaragua as well as San Juan del Sur on the Pacific and the more colonial Leon to the north. A trip to Costa Rica to see my old Tico Times editora Meg Yamamoto and amiga superior Gaby Diaz might also be necessary (OK, so I do have time for shout-outs.)
Mitad y mitad es suficiente.
*The asterisk was to let you fine readers know that telling people you're a journalist is a lot like telling someone you're a lawyer or a tax collector. It's something you avoid mentioning at all costs for a variety of reasons.
This post brought to you by exhaustion, frustration and anxiety. The breakfast of champions.
I feel like I've done a lot of everything and a lot of nothing since I've arrived here. I'm behind on my blog writing, my journal writing, my journalistic writing and my PR writing.
PR writing?
Yes. I signed up to volunteer with a local volunteering organization named La Esperanza. Originally I was interested in helping teach English in local schools, but it's in the middle of the semester right now and when I told them I'm a journalist they immediately wanted to use my experience with writing to help publicize them outside of Nicaragua.* So I've gone to a few volunteer meetings and met some very nice people in the last week, but so far I'm still not sure what I'm going to produce for them and how I'll distribute it. I'm excited about it though. It's my first venture into PR writing and maybe if I like it and produce something good I could try to do it for a bigger organization, as long as it doesn't involve working alongside one single PR hack I've ever interviewed in my life ever. There's a few exceptions to that, but I don't have time for shout-outs.
I'm working on a story right now about how cuts to the national budget are making public funding for higher education almost non-existent, prompting students to take to the streets for protests that would make members of Students for a Democratic Society wet their pants. Burning tires, flaming effigies and home-made mortars are a theme in the streets of Managua whenever this time of the year comes around. These kids mean business. My biggest hurdle with this story is getting a single government official on the phone pertinent to this situation to talk to me and give me numbers about this year's budget cuts. You have to call people again and again and again in Nicaragua to get any kind of response. You even have to ask why someone isn't in the office, because a lot of times a secretary will say "So and so isn't here, but give me your number and he'll call you right back" without mentioning that he's not in the office because he's actually out of the country for a month. When you do get someone on the phone, it's like hearing a broken record. Everybody, even the students, have a party line on this issue. If your question reaches beyond what they've memorized, they'll just as soon repeat what they already told you and act like it's good enough for at least 1/2 a point on the quiz I'm giving them.
So who knows when I'll finish that
So like I said, I'm finding ways to keep myself busy and yet somehow not getting a whole lot done so far. Part of it also is that Granada is just a very calm and attractive (and often scorching hot) place to waste the days away in a hammock under a coconut tree with the fan blowing on you. I haven't had any desire to get out of the city yet, though I do at least want to visit the volcanic island of Ometepe in Lake Nicaragua as well as San Juan del Sur on the Pacific and the more colonial Leon to the north. A trip to Costa Rica to see my old Tico Times editora Meg Yamamoto and amiga superior Gaby Diaz might also be necessary (OK, so I do have time for shout-outs.)
Mitad y mitad es suficiente.
*The asterisk was to let you fine readers know that telling people you're a journalist is a lot like telling someone you're a lawyer or a tax collector. It's something you avoid mentioning at all costs for a variety of reasons.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
In Nicaragua, Sandinista mob attacks U.S. Embassy
In reporting this story I was swarmed by a mob of Sandinista youth getting out of my taxi. They grabbed at my arms and my clothes, surrounded me and wouldn't let me walk, and launched a verbal tirade full of friendly phrases like "FUERA YANQUI!" (Get out Yankee!) as others in the crowd fired mortars at the U.S. embassy. When they wouldn't let me through I just engaged them and started trying to interview them, but none of them had the balls to talk on the record and the crowd around me dispersed one by one when I held out my arms with notebook in hand and said "Anyone here want to give me their name?" They just hung their heads. The rest of my time there the protesters sort of stared at me with this confusion as to why this gringo actually wanted to know what they thought and why they hadn't yet beaten me into the ground with their bats and sticks. I got out unscathed, and maybe an hour later the riot police showed up and tear-gassed the whole show.
By Mike Faulk and Tim Rogers
Nica Times Staff
MANAGUA – The streets of Nicaragua's capital once again became an unruly mob scene Thursday as roving bands of masked Sandinista youth, party fanatics and state workers took to the streets to protest what they claim is “U.S. interventionism” in their country's internal political affairs.
A group of several hundred Sandinistas protested aggressively outside the U.S. Embassy, launching mortars at the embassy building and spray painting anti-U.S. and pro-Sandinista graffiti on embassy property. Vandals, many of whom were bussed in for the protest, broke embassy security cameras, exterior lighting and attempted to destroy the signage for U.S. Consular Services.
Nicaraguan police assigned to protect the embassy stood by watching and didn't intervene, even when protesters spray painted the embassy walls next to where they were leaning.
In other parts of the capital, streets were blocked by similar protesters in several points in the city, prompting the United Nations to issue a warning to its employees to avoid affected areas.
“Death to the yanquis! Death to the empire!” screamed one Sandinista Youth leader into a microphone outside the U.S. Embassy. Others yelled revolutionary slogans once used against the Somoza dictatorship in the 1970s.
Protesters –many of whom were masked and some wielding sticks, bats or rocks – demanded the ouster of U.S. Ambassador Robert Callahan in response to a speech he gave Oct. 28 to the Nicaraguan-American Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM), in which he reiterated the U.S. government's concerns over the state of democracy in Nicaragua.
In his speech to the business chamber Wednesday afternoon, Callahan questioned the controversial ruling by Sandinista magistrates in the Supreme Court to overturn a constitutional ban on consecutive reelection and clear the way for President Daniel Ortega to run again in 2011 (NT, Oct. 30).
“From our point of view, the Supreme Court acted improperly and with unusual speed, in secret, with the participation judges from only one political movement and without any public debate or discussion,” Callahan said. “We think that an issue of such importance and concern for the future of Nicaragua's democracy deserves due deliberation and analysis.”
The Sandinistas responded furiously.
“That gringo can't tell us what to do,” said Andres Castillo, one of the Sandinista protesters outside the embassy Thursday afternoon.
“Let Nicaragua resolve Nicaragua's problems,” said another protester, Silvia Reyes. “This is the restitution of the rights of the people,” she said of Ortega's re-election, repeating the party line verbatim.
A U.S. Embassy spokesman declined to comment on the violence. But AMCHAM president Roger Arteaga told The Nica Times that the ambassador had called him to tell him what had happened and warn him that AMCHAM might also be targeted for similar vandalism.
AMCHAM responded by sending its staff home for the day and talking with police.
Arteaga, meanwhile, lamented the violence and the increasingly instability of Nicaragua.
“Attacking the U.S. Embassy is not going to resolve the problems of Nicaragua,” he said. “When ideas run out, the only thing left is force. And this government has run out of ideas.”
By Mike Faulk and Tim Rogers
Nica Times Staff
MANAGUA – The streets of Nicaragua's capital once again became an unruly mob scene Thursday as roving bands of masked Sandinista youth, party fanatics and state workers took to the streets to protest what they claim is “U.S. interventionism” in their country's internal political affairs.
A group of several hundred Sandinistas protested aggressively outside the U.S. Embassy, launching mortars at the embassy building and spray painting anti-U.S. and pro-Sandinista graffiti on embassy property. Vandals, many of whom were bussed in for the protest, broke embassy security cameras, exterior lighting and attempted to destroy the signage for U.S. Consular Services.
Nicaraguan police assigned to protect the embassy stood by watching and didn't intervene, even when protesters spray painted the embassy walls next to where they were leaning.
In other parts of the capital, streets were blocked by similar protesters in several points in the city, prompting the United Nations to issue a warning to its employees to avoid affected areas.
“Death to the yanquis! Death to the empire!” screamed one Sandinista Youth leader into a microphone outside the U.S. Embassy. Others yelled revolutionary slogans once used against the Somoza dictatorship in the 1970s.
Protesters –many of whom were masked and some wielding sticks, bats or rocks – demanded the ouster of U.S. Ambassador Robert Callahan in response to a speech he gave Oct. 28 to the Nicaraguan-American Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM), in which he reiterated the U.S. government's concerns over the state of democracy in Nicaragua.
In his speech to the business chamber Wednesday afternoon, Callahan questioned the controversial ruling by Sandinista magistrates in the Supreme Court to overturn a constitutional ban on consecutive reelection and clear the way for President Daniel Ortega to run again in 2011 (NT, Oct. 30).
“From our point of view, the Supreme Court acted improperly and with unusual speed, in secret, with the participation judges from only one political movement and without any public debate or discussion,” Callahan said. “We think that an issue of such importance and concern for the future of Nicaragua's democracy deserves due deliberation and analysis.”
The Sandinistas responded furiously.
“That gringo can't tell us what to do,” said Andres Castillo, one of the Sandinista protesters outside the embassy Thursday afternoon.
“Let Nicaragua resolve Nicaragua's problems,” said another protester, Silvia Reyes. “This is the restitution of the rights of the people,” she said of Ortega's re-election, repeating the party line verbatim.
A U.S. Embassy spokesman declined to comment on the violence. But AMCHAM president Roger Arteaga told The Nica Times that the ambassador had called him to tell him what had happened and warn him that AMCHAM might also be targeted for similar vandalism.
AMCHAM responded by sending its staff home for the day and talking with police.
Arteaga, meanwhile, lamented the violence and the increasingly instability of Nicaragua.
“Attacking the U.S. Embassy is not going to resolve the problems of Nicaragua,” he said. “When ideas run out, the only thing left is force. And this government has run out of ideas.”
At Night in Granada
GRANADA, Nicaragua – Monday I sat sweaty and exhausted in the back of a rickety old school bus two and a half months after boarding a Greyhound in Mobile, the sun setting behind me, its rays pouring in through open windows making the entire bus an explosive shade of orange. I closed my eyes, my memories played out the same way those mountains and all the ones before them scrolled past, bumping my way into the Granada city limits, a hundred faces, moments and emotions all behind me as quickly as I encountered them.
Then my feet were on the ground in Granada. That trip ended, another one began.
So this is my third night here, I’ve written one short article (about Honduras, naturally) and in the morning I’m headed to Managua to cover a student protest over budget cuts that will affect education funding. My first two days have been tranquilo, just wandering the city, running errands, getting adjusted. I really like the house I’m staying in here with Blake, which you can see pictures of and other spots I stopped at in Nicaragua over the weekend on my way down from Tegucigalpa here.
How do I properly reflect on the journey here? First of all, it doesn’t feel like one single trip. It’s been two and a half months, seems more like a year and yet feels like it only took a week to blow by. Every new town had new faces, I was hearing new stories and telling my story all over again. I’m not entirely the same person I was when I left, nor am I entirely the same person I was in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras. I’m not trying to quantify this growth in terms of political boundaries, a rose by any other name and all that. Maybe Simon & Garfunkel put it best when they said
I was twenty-one years when I wrote this song
I’m twenty-three now but I won’t be for long
Time hurries on
And the leaves that are green turn to brown
Tonight I’m just caught between beginnings and endings and Spanish tiles. Sometimes it feels like the world only gets less certain the more I familiarize myself with it. The inevitable doesn’t come out from under its shroud at my convenience. Enjoying life is all about detachment from that reality and exercising precision with every other cognition.
Then my feet were on the ground in Granada. That trip ended, another one began.
So this is my third night here, I’ve written one short article (about Honduras, naturally) and in the morning I’m headed to Managua to cover a student protest over budget cuts that will affect education funding. My first two days have been tranquilo, just wandering the city, running errands, getting adjusted. I really like the house I’m staying in here with Blake, which you can see pictures of and other spots I stopped at in Nicaragua over the weekend on my way down from Tegucigalpa here.
How do I properly reflect on the journey here? First of all, it doesn’t feel like one single trip. It’s been two and a half months, seems more like a year and yet feels like it only took a week to blow by. Every new town had new faces, I was hearing new stories and telling my story all over again. I’m not entirely the same person I was when I left, nor am I entirely the same person I was in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras. I’m not trying to quantify this growth in terms of political boundaries, a rose by any other name and all that. Maybe Simon & Garfunkel put it best when they said
I was twenty-one years when I wrote this song
I’m twenty-three now but I won’t be for long
Time hurries on
And the leaves that are green turn to brown
Tonight I’m just caught between beginnings and endings and Spanish tiles. Sometimes it feels like the world only gets less certain the more I familiarize myself with it. The inevitable doesn’t come out from under its shroud at my convenience. Enjoying life is all about detachment from that reality and exercising precision with every other cognition.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Standoff over Zelaya's return continues as negotiations stall
This article appears in the Oct. 21 daily online edition of The Tico Times.
By Mike Faulk
Nica Times Staff
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – Another day, another proposal rejected in the negotiations between representatives of ousted President Manuel Zelaya and interim President Roberto Micheletti.
The renewed talks all but broke down Monday.
In responding to a bid last week from the Zelaya camp for Congress to decide whether the deposed leader will finish his term of office, Micheletti's negotiators proposed that they decide Zelaya's fate after seeking official opinions from Congress and the Supreme Court. Zelaya's negotiators soundly rejected that offer in fewer than two hours.
“That proposal is insulting,” said Víctor Meza, Zelaya's top negotiator.
Meza said Zelaya's team had no counterproposal and instead demanded the interim government make a better offer than the previous two. Micheletti negotiators had previously offered to let the same Supreme Court that ordered Zelaya's arrest on June 28 decide whether he should return to power.
Meza said both proposals were “offensive.”
“The dialogue isn't broken, but it's being obstructed,” he said.
Before Meza issued his response, Micheletti negotiator Vilma Morales stressed the need to take all the time that's needed in negotiations to reach a solution. She said she opposed Zelaya's attempts to exert pressure and set deadlines for negotiations.
Zelaya temporarily suspended talks in reaction to Micheletti's first proposal before they resumed Monday. On numerous occasions he has set and subsequently pushed back deadlines for an agreement to be reached before his team will pull out of talks.
“Deadlines don't work with dialogue,” Morales said.
Armando Aguilar, another Micheletti negotiator, said Monday's offer is the best compromise between the two original proposals.
“They didn't accept our proposal, we didn't accept theirs,” Aguilar said. “So the third option is to put the decision back under the control of this commission.”
Meza accused Micheletti of using the negotiations as a political instrument to win time as the countdown to the Nov. 29 presidential election continues.
Both commissions say they're in agreement on every issue between them except Zelaya's return to power. Zelaya already said he will give up his campaign for a constitutional assembly to rewrite the 1982 constitution, which critics saw as an attempt to abolish presidential term limits.
“Mr. Zelaya conceded all he could to help dialogue,” Meza said.
By Mike Faulk
Nica Times Staff
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – Another day, another proposal rejected in the negotiations between representatives of ousted President Manuel Zelaya and interim President Roberto Micheletti.
The renewed talks all but broke down Monday.
In responding to a bid last week from the Zelaya camp for Congress to decide whether the deposed leader will finish his term of office, Micheletti's negotiators proposed that they decide Zelaya's fate after seeking official opinions from Congress and the Supreme Court. Zelaya's negotiators soundly rejected that offer in fewer than two hours.
“That proposal is insulting,” said Víctor Meza, Zelaya's top negotiator.
Meza said Zelaya's team had no counterproposal and instead demanded the interim government make a better offer than the previous two. Micheletti negotiators had previously offered to let the same Supreme Court that ordered Zelaya's arrest on June 28 decide whether he should return to power.
Meza said both proposals were “offensive.”
“The dialogue isn't broken, but it's being obstructed,” he said.
Before Meza issued his response, Micheletti negotiator Vilma Morales stressed the need to take all the time that's needed in negotiations to reach a solution. She said she opposed Zelaya's attempts to exert pressure and set deadlines for negotiations.
Zelaya temporarily suspended talks in reaction to Micheletti's first proposal before they resumed Monday. On numerous occasions he has set and subsequently pushed back deadlines for an agreement to be reached before his team will pull out of talks.
“Deadlines don't work with dialogue,” Morales said.
Armando Aguilar, another Micheletti negotiator, said Monday's offer is the best compromise between the two original proposals.
“They didn't accept our proposal, we didn't accept theirs,” Aguilar said. “So the third option is to put the decision back under the control of this commission.”
Meza accused Micheletti of using the negotiations as a political instrument to win time as the countdown to the Nov. 29 presidential election continues.
Both commissions say they're in agreement on every issue between them except Zelaya's return to power. Zelaya already said he will give up his campaign for a constitutional assembly to rewrite the 1982 constitution, which critics saw as an attempt to abolish presidential term limits.
“Mr. Zelaya conceded all he could to help dialogue,” Meza said.
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