Nicaraguans back in School, Free

[Joanne98]

Nicaraguans back in School, Free

Managua, Jan 29 (Prensa Latina) The 2007 Nicaraguan school year begins Monday amid great expectations over the changes Sandinista authorities plan to make in the teaching system, after 16 years of neoliberal governments.

The first measure the Sandinista government took after assuming power on January 10 was to re-establish the constitutional principle of free education in all public schools.

This step will allow registration of nearly 800,000 children who were out of school because their parents could not afford the payments, which were actually illegal.

Sources from the sector revealed the school year inaugurated today by President Daniel Ortega will welcome at least 1.3 million primary and high school students.

Increasing quality of teaching will be another priority of the education ministry, where experts are elaborating a new school program to be presented to civil society for consultation.

http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID={0F39E819-1466-47A7-9A5E-45E03C5C9AA9}&language=EN

[bdrube]

1. Effing Commies and their insistence on education...

...Repubs prefer ignorance, keeps the cattle nice and docile
on the way to the slaughter.

[Joanne98]

2. And FREE at that!

:)

[arcos]

3. This is great...

I'm not too fond of Ortega but I hope he continues on this path.

[Judi Lynn]

4. And school only for the tiny wealthy minority was exactly fine with the right-wingers here

who paid so much of our taxes without authorization to overthrow the government and hand it over to privatization. God knows so much cheap labor is needed for the plantations there:

Nicaragua 2005, the lacky of the U.S. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Employement and UNICEF (The United Nations Childrens's Fund) approximately 343 thousand children between 5 at 8 years old are working in Nicaragua.

Photos, please see link:
(Slide cursor under photos for information on them)

http://www.thewe.cc/weplanet/news/children/child_labor.htm

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Child labor in Nicaragua:


http://www.donquixote.it/reportage%20ing/natras.htm

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Gold tempts Nicaragua children
December 24, 2004
By Ivan Castro, Reuters

Source of photographs is "The Legacy of Greenstone Resources in Nicaragua" by Anneli Tolvanen, Published by MiningWatch Canada. March, 2003

La India, Nicaragua - In a dim and dangerous tunnel lit only by the flicker of candles, Juan Laguna and four other children toil with rusty pick-axes to loosen chunks of rock they hope will yield at least a little bit of gold.

Laguna then undertakes the arduous process of milling and washing the ore. If it is a good day, it will give him enough gold to sell for about $3 (1.60 pounds). But he is not always lucky.

"Not every day goes well," says Laguna, who is 12 but has the slight build of a child half his age.

Working with hundreds of other youngsters, Laguna has spent five years scratching the walls of tunnels in the La India mining district, more than 100 miles (160 km) west of Nicaragua's capital Managua.

An important gold producer decades ago, La India has for the most part been abandoned because it now yields only low-grade ore, although some foreign and local mining companies continue to explore the area.

Rocks chipped from the walls of old exploration tunnels and from random holes dug by treasure seekers provide the bare hope of a livelihood to local families in this isolated area of Nicaragua, one of the poorest nations in the hemisphere.

Hundreds of people from surrounding communities work a portion of the mining district, where the landscape is pock-marked by century-old mine shafts as well as 30-year-old excavations.

Nearly 400 children work down the shafts and potholes, according to the International Labour Organization and Nicaragua's National Commission for the Eradication of Child Labour.

Child miners suffer malnutrition and dehydration, kidney diseases, gashes and serious accidents in the scorching, gas-filled tunnels.
(snip/...)

http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Action/press516.htm

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Nicaragua's History
Nicaragua's long history of U.S. military intervention has created a legacy of violence and social injustice. In the 1980s, the United States supplied massive aid, arms, and training to the Nicaraguan contras who sought to overthrow the Sandinista government (FSLN). The contras murdered small farmers, teachers, union members, and anyone that they considered associated with the Sandinista government. Over 30,000 people were killed. The war began winding down in the late 1980s as the FSLN and the contra forces reached a peace accord.

The post-Sandinista period in Nicaragua has been fraught with difficulties including continuing U.S. intervention in electoral affairs and endemic corruption at all levels of government. While Nicaragua has implemented important constitutional and institutional reforms, human rights abuses still persist in some areas of the country, particularly in the Atlantic Coast, home to indigenous communities.

The inequality, poverty, and low living standards that contributed to the 1979 Sandinista Revolution remain largely unresolved. Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries in the Hemisphere, with 67.4 percent of the population living below the poverty level.

Current Issues
A major positive component of recent U.S. assistance has been disaster relief. Following Hurricane Mitch in 1998, the United States gave over $600 million to Central America for emergency aid and reconstruction. Recently, a massive decline in world coffee prices caused hunger and malnutrition to surge among Nicaraguan farm families and the United States provided $37 million in aid.
However, other economic support has been more controversial. The U.S. assists Nicaragua through multilateral lending institutions like the IMF. In a number of cases, the lending process and loan requirements have seriously undermined poverty reduction goals with an increase in fees and penalties faced by poor families for basic services.

The financial burden on poor families in Nicaragua may increase as the privatization of water systems – a program encouraged by the Inter American Development Bank – raises rates or cuts off water subsidies to impoverished rural communities.

Serious questions have also been raised regarding the influence that lending institutions exert over democratic processes and policy decisions in recipient countries. In January 2003, for example, the IMF threatened to cut off Nicaragua's access to loans and assistance unless the Nicaraguan legislature passed a budget that prioritized debt repayment over social spending.

Health Care in Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the poorest country in Latin America and second in the hemisphere only to Haiti. Leading causes of death are highly preventable illnesses: pneumonia, diarrhea, gastroenteritis, and transport accidents.

In 1996, the IMF and World Bank pressured the Nicaraguan government to cut government spending and strengthen its private sector. The government responded by slashing its health care budget, which resulted in the dismissal of 250 clinic doctors. This left the majority of Nicaraguans, two-thirds of whom lives in poverty, without health care.
(snip/...)

http://www.disarm.org/inform/nicaragua/index.html

[roody]

5. k

[Judi Lynn]

6. They've got a lot of catch-up to do, to get the citizens healthy, and safe.

Published on Sunday, December 3, 2000 in the New York Times
Critics Calling U.S. Supplier in Nicaragua a 'Sweatshop'
by Steven Greenhouse

An arm of the Pentagon has come under fire for procuring large quantities of apparel from a Nicaraguan factory that labor rights groups say is a sweatshop and that the United States trade representative has voiced serious concerns about.
Several members of Congress say it is wrong for the Pentagon agency, which runs 1,400 stores at military bases and made $7.3 billion in sales last year, to obtain apparel from the Chentex factory, which a Nicaraguan union has accused of firing more than 150 union supporters.

In an unusually stern letter, The United States trade representative, Charlene Barshefsky, warned the Nicaraguan government in October that the United States might rescind some trade benefits unless it moved to ensure that Chentex complied with labor laws.

Labor rights groups in the United States have mounted an intense campaign against Chentex, a factory with 1,800 workers that is owned by the Nien Hsing Textile Company, after Nicaraguan workers accused the company of illegal firings. Many workers also complain about low pay, monitored bathroom visits, large amounts of mandatory overtime and being screamed at and occasionally hit by managers.

Cynthia A. McKinney, Democrat of Georgia, who sits on the procurement subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, said it was wrong for one federal agency, the Pentagon, to buy large amounts of apparel from Chentex while another, the trade representative's office, had singled out the factory for criticism.
(snip)

Last summer, Representative Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, visited Nicaragua and met mother who worked at Chentex 60 hours a week, while her husband worked at another Nien Hsing factory for 70 hours a week, and yet they lived in a hut with a dirt floor. "The couple had a 3-year-old daughter with discolored tips of her hair, probably from a protein deficiency," he said. "These are people who work 60, 70 hours a week, and their standard of living is just abysmal."
(snip/...)

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/120300-01.htm



Glimpses of that "Presidential bearing" Karen Hughes was bellowing about in the 2000 campaign.

[Judi Lynn]

7. American attempts to control Nicaragua go back a long time, apparently.

William Howard Taft, former governor of the Philippines, followed Roosevelt into the White House. Taft believed in economic expansion, and he introduced a policy called "dollar diplomacy." This policy used diplomacy to advance and protect American businesses in other countries. Taft employed Roosevelt's corollary in Nicaragua and other Latin American countries to protect American investments.
American businesses had been active in Nicaragua since the 1850s. The lush country attracted American fruit growers and mining companies. Others believed that Nicaragua offered the best site for a canal, and they invested in land. Cornelius Vanderbilt started a company that transported passengers between New York and San Francisco via the Nicaraguan jungle. Shortly after Commodore Perry opened Japan, Vanderbilt plotted to take control of Nicaragua.

With Vanderbilt's help, a young adventurer named William Walker set out with fifty-seven followers to conquer Nicaragua. A short, freckled man with sharp green eyes, Walker formed an alliance with a group of local rebels and defeated the Nicaraguan forces. He proclaimed himself "commander in chief," and soon thousands of Americans rushed into the country. Many Americans wanted the United States to assume direct control of Nicaragua. The government, however, was afraid to upset the fragile balance between "free" and "slave" territories.

Walker eventually quarreled with Vanderbilt about the transit company, and soon another revolution drove him from power. In 1860 Walker died before a firing squad. American economic involvement in Nicaragua lived on.
(snip)

http://www.smplanet.com/imperialism/teddy.html

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18 months after the Kathie Lee Gifford scandal, sweat shop conditions are worse than ever; top American companies exposed
Weekly News Update on the Americas, 22 November 1997

"They Hit You...They Hit You in the Head...To Make You Work Faster," says Nicaraguan Factory Worker Jolena Rodriguez.

A HARD COPY/National Labor Committee Joint Investigation Airdate - Tuesday, November 11; Wednesday, November 12; and Thursday, November 13 Wal-Mart, K-Mart, and JC Penney exposed in Nicaraguan sweat shop investigation

Workers making these garments are paid a base wage of 15 cents per hour; compared to the base wage of 31 cents per hour Honduran workers were paid in the Kathie Lee Gifford scandal.

Child workers as young as 15, working 13 hour days, seven days a week. "We young people have the capacity to work more and be more efficient for them," says Karla, a worker, "never has anyone been fired for being underaged."

Workers allege verbal, physical and sexual abuse by supervisors. "I refused his offer to have sex...He moved me to another (production) line to see what they could do to me; if they could fire me," says factory worker, Carla Beltran.

Factories surrounded by barbed wire, under armed guard.

Tin and stick shacks, with cardboard walls and dirt floors; housing entire families in a space the size of two cubicles; as many as five people are crammed into one bed.
(snip/...)

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/47/266.html

[roody]

8. k

[Judi Lynn]

9. Daniel Ortega promises access to schooling for all

Daniel Ortega promises access to schooling for all
According to the government, currently 50 percent of the nation’s infrastructures are in a state of degrade, without running water or electric power

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Pledging his aim to guarantee schooling to 400,000 children without access to education, in a nation in which 80 percent of the 5.4-million inhabitants survive on less than 2 dollars a day, President Daniel Ortega opened the 2007 school year in Ciudad Sandino, a few kilometers north-west of Managua.

“There will be no school fees and uniforms will no longer be compulsory”, stated Ortega, in addressing the parents.

“We are lifting the public school sector from the neo-liberal market”, said Education Minister Miguel De Castilla, adding “the order is that no one be excluded for lack of uniforms, based on birth, or due to prohibitive fees”.

According to the government, currently 50 percent of the nation’s infrastructures are in a state of degrade, without running water or electric power, because of policies of “scholastic autonomy” wanted by the three previous administrations.
(snip/...)

http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?idCategory=33&idsub=135&id=7679&t=Daniel+Ortega+promises+access+to+schooling+for+all

[Judi Lynn]

10. Nicaraguan president calls on schools to review policies

UPDATED: 11:00, January 30, 2007
Nicaraguan president calls on schools to review policies

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega opened the 2007 school year on Monday for the nation's 1.3 million children, calling on schools to abandon uniforms and "ornaments" because the children of poor families often go to school without having breakfast.

"The Constitution says that both boys and girls should receive free education," Ortega said, during a tour of the public schools in Managua.

Pupils told Ortega that some of them have the typical gallopinto (red beans and rice) breakfast while others have to make do with only a glass of sugar water.
(snip)

Some 800,000 children every year had no access to schooling in the country for the past 16 years when free-market oriented governments were in power.
(snip/)

http://english.people.com.cn/200701/30/eng20070130_345987.html