NICARAGUA - China's Threat to South American Environment

"Mega canal project threatens to uproot Nicaragua’s farmers, imperil wetlands" PBS NewsHour 4/22/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  A Chinese-financed shipping canal in the works to connect Nicaragua’s Pacific Coast to the Caribbean would dwarf Panama’s famous waterway.  But while Nicaraguan officials say the project will create much-needed jobs, human rights advocates and environmental groups are protesting the construction.  Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports on the controversy.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO (NewsHour):  They came by the busload.  They piled into cattle trucks.  They came by horse and mule from miles around for a rally that likely tripled the population of the dusty little town of Los Chiles.

At stake was Nicaragua’s sovereignty, they chanted, sold to the Chinese.  The object of their protest is a shipping canal to be built by a Chinese company.  As described in this video dubbed from Chinese into Spanish for Nicaraguans, it would stretch 170 miles across the country to connect its Pacific coast to the Caribbean and thus the Atlantic.

It’s not a new idea.  The Americans once considered it.  This map from 1870 shows a proposed route for a shipping shortcut between the Earth’s hemispheres.  In the end, the U.S. Congress opted to build in Panama.

Nicaragua’s waterway will dwarf the Panama Canal, three times as long and twice as deep.  Cost estimates range from $50 billion to $100 billion.

BILL WILD, HKND Group:  It is by far the largest earth-moving project ever attempted in the world.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO:  The project’s chief engineer is Bill Wild, an Australian veteran of many big builds, but nothing approaching this one.

BILL WILD:  There will be two large port facilities, one at either end of the project, hydroelectric schemes, and a number of other parts of the project.  So, overall, it’s an incredibly exciting and large and challenging engineering project.

NICARAGUA - Elections and Ortega

"Ahead of Nicaraguan Election, Ortega's Leadership Back in Spotlight" PBS Newshour 11/4/2011

Excerpt

RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): It's election time in Nicaragua. After almost 30 years of democracy, Nicaraguans are still passionate about their politics. Turnouts remain high, upwards of 90 percent.

Daniel Ortega is president of Nicaragua, again, and a familiar face from the final years of the Cold War. He came to power as a leader of the far-left Sandinista Revolution. He was Ronald Reagan's Central American nemesis, fighting off a U.S.-backed army after taking power in 1979.

But after losing a bid for re-election in 1990, it took Ortega 16 years to win back the presidency in 2006. Now he's using all the tools of incumbency to keep the job, even engineering a change in the constitution to allow a run for a third term.

That sparked violent backlash, put down by the president's security forces. Opposition candidates, like Fabio Gadea, have rushed to characterize the constitutional change as Ortega's betrayal of the revolution he led to overthrow Nicaragua's longtime dictator, Anastasio Somoza.

Note to U.S. citizens, 90% election turnout? We should be ashamed about our dismal election turnouts.