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| Essay Archive | September 14, 2002 |
NICARAGUA'S FIGHT AGAINST STATE CORRUPTION
Can an honest president and brave judge turn the tide of 500 years?
Nicaragua waits anxiously. The entire country is buzzing. In Nicaragua political issues are debated by all, opinions and interest high. Voter turnout at elections (where voting is not mandatory) is above 90%. As political experts, Nicaraguans sense today is historic. Can Nicaragua pronounce guilty and convict it very own political leaders? Do the courts have the bravery? All of Nicaragua's cameras are turned on the now famous judge, Juana Mendez, as she enters the courthouse. Countrywide, Nicaragua is armed to the teeth with radios and televisions. They impatiently await her pronouncement. Judge Juana's job is to decide if the evidence provided to her by the state of Nicaragua, proves that Nicaragua's executive branch from 1997-2001 is guilty of money laundering, fraud and a long list of corruption charges.
Judge Juana Mendez sits down in front of the TV cameras in an elegant black dress with pearl earrings dangling beneath her newly styled hair. She has arrived to the pronouncement over four hours late. Right on time in Nicaragua. Nicaraguans, who prefer to joke rather than fret or show nerves, tease that Judge Juana was tied up at the beauty salon. In the most informal (and very Nicaraguan) fashion, she has brought along her little six year-old boy to sit next to her for the proceedings. He tugs on her shoulder impatiently as she reads her verdicts. The ex-President of Nicaragua, Arnoldo Alemán - guilty, ex-government ministers and vice-ministers - guilty, family members of the above - guilty. Hundreds of millions of dollars stolen from the poorest Spanish speaking country in the world, laundered by shadow companies and stashed in foreign accounts or used to buy up huge tracts of Nicaraguan land.
The judge Juana Mendez is nervous. She has been on television for weeks now, but in her hand is a verdict like no other in the history of Nicaragua. The weight of 500 years of history sits squarely on her shoulders. Her son hugs her happily, knocking into the numerous TV and radio microphones and then finally falls bored, as his mother Juana Mendez reads her written indictment, her voice cracking while her hands shake softly. A list of corrupt ex-leaders from the Liberal Party, some like Arnoldo Alemán and his daughter still entrenched in the Nicaraguan parliament, are being exposed by their very same Liberal Party, currently in power. Unreal, the prosecutor is not just the state of Nicaragua, but Alemán's own political party, actions unprecedented in Nicaragua and perhaps all the Americas. Nicaragua has truly changed, gone to war with its history.
On September 12, 1502 a violent storm was raging in Nicaragua's Caribbean. Christopher Columbus was desperate for shelter. By stubborn will and faith he managed to guide his four worm-eaten ships into the natural bay that today is Nicaragua's Cabo Gracias a Dios (Cape Thank God). Columbus sat alone in his quarters listening to the thundering rain outside and he crossed himself quietly. He had found protection at outlet of Nicaragua's mighty Coco River. The aging navigator christened it Cabo Gracias a Dios, for the refuge it had offered his old ships from the torment. Columbus was on his final voyage, sailing the eastern seaboard of Central America looking for a water passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He sailed right past what he was looking for, the San Juan River, and his last hope at redemption in the eyes of the Spanish Crown. Europe had made its first contact with Nicaragua, 500 years ago.
22 years later Granada and Leon were founded and 297 years of colonial rule would follow. Nicaragua's first Spanish governor, Pedrarias Dávila was theatrically cruel, a dictator who used his position to enrich himself and his friends. Pedrarias Dávila's enemies ended their lives with the loss of their heads. Nicaragua's wealth was for the taking and power the only tool to reap its benefit. Land was confiscated from the indigenous Nicaraguans, and when their supply of gold was exhausted they were enslaved, branded and sent to Peru to work in the mines. The new rulers of Nicaragua established large ranches and controlled the government, who guaranteed their safety and businesses. Three centuries of colonial rule helped to institutionalize corruption, it became not the exception, but the norm, an expression of distant, ineffective controls and local necessities.
On September 15, 1821 independence from Spain was declared. With independence from European rule, the new owners of Nicaragua fought over the size of their piece of the pie. The power vacuum sent armies from the Conservative Party of Granada and Liberal Party of Leon to battle over the ruling classes' interests. Who had control of the government took land and money, business enforced by physical dominance. The thirty years of squabbling between the elite of Leon and Granada even led the Liberal Party to invite a foreign invasion by a North American mercenary army. It was the temporary dominance of those same occupying forces of William Walker that momentarily united all Nicaraguans and even armies from other Central American republics in cooperation.
On September 14, 1856 the (now rebel) Nicaragua army, with the aid of a platoon of 60 Matagalpa Indians fighting with bow and arrow, won its first battle against the superior armed forces of William Walker. Walker and his army would later be expelled and control in Nicaraguan given back to the Nicaraguans. The Conservative Party took power and much peace and progress followed. Yet soon another swap of dominance at the end of the 19th century, led by a general, this time Liberal, led to a more lasting dictatorship. Nicaragua was modernized in the time of Zelaya's dictatorship, however the canal between two oceans, always a dream for Nicaragua, as it was for Columbus, was awarded to Panama.
The Conservative Party grew tired of Liberal Party rule, so Granada started a rebellion that opened the door for US intervention. In came the US Marines to stop fighting between rival political parties, get rid of Zelaya and assure zero competition for the new canal in Panama. Before leaving for good, the Marines installed a military that was, in theory, without a political party, the new Guardia Nacional. For the first time in recent history, the military would not be a political tool of the Liberals or Conservatives. The country would be united in democracy. It lasted less than three years.
The leader of the Guardia, the first of the General Somoza dictators, took control of Nicaragua and the Liberal Party by force, and the family kept their grip on the country with military might of the Guardia Nacional until it was ripped from their hands in the revolution of 1978-79. During their rule, the Somozas enriched themselves beyond imagination, they made Nicaragua their private hacienda and became one of the richest families in Central America. Nicaragua's original founders would have been proud.
At the end of a difficult, bloody and heroic victory lead by the Sandinistas, Somoza and his Guardia were overthrown, run out of Nicaragua. Despite the fact the battle was fought in a broad coalition, the Sandinistas quickly consolidated political and military power. They proceeded to confiscate private properties and enterprises and made the army their own, a militia for their political agenda, business as usual since 1524.
The contra war followed, armed pressure from opposed Nicaraguans, financed by the USA, who later added the deadly blow of an economic embargo. The combination brought the Sandinista administration and the Nicaraguan economy to complete ruin. In 1990 the Sandinistas lost the presidential elections and despite having full control of the military and police, agreed to hand over power to the elected opposition government of new president Violeta Chamorro. This was new. The first stone of a new democracy had been laid. Then before officially handing over control of the government, the Sandinistas proceeded to divide up confiscated lands amongst loyal party members and drain Nicaragua of state capital. Some things are just too good to change.
Nicaragua, however, finally had a military with out political party rule, the army was Sandinista, but controlled by an elected government who was not of the same political flag. Violeta Chamorro term is considered by most to be Nicaragua's beginning as a true democracy. While Nicaragua's president brilliantly and successfully mended the fences of a country that had been at war for more than a decade, rumors of corruption in her cabinet were plentiful. During the last three months of the Sandinista government and the Violeta Chamorro administration, state assets worth an estimated (conservatively) at US$2 billion dollars were sold off, privatized. Yet, less than 200 million dollars went into state coffers. The other US$1.8 billion dollars remain unaccounted for.
In the 1996 presidential campaign, Liberal Party front-runner Arnoldo Alemán, promised a healthy economy and progress or as he liked to put it "works, not words". The Nicaraguan people faithfully cast their vote for him and another peaceful, democratic change of government followed. Hope ran rampant, again. Slowly the shine wore off the new leader, as his personal wealth grew at a staggering rate. His Vice-President, Enrique Bolaños, watched from the inside, as the world's most indebted country in relation to its GDP was bled into bankruptcy. It has been estimated that in only five years Arnoldo Alemán accumulated half of the wealth the Somoza family had needed nearly 50 years of dictatorship to create.
In 2001, near the end of Arnoldo Alemán's elected term, he named his loyal Vice-President Enrique Bolaños, as the Liberal Party candidate. The 73 year-old, known respectfully and affectionately as Don Enrique, was the new Liberal Party candidate. Don Enrique promised to attack government corruption if elected. Few believed him, but the Nicaraguans decided that he was a better alternative than Sandinista ex-president Daniel Ortega, who lost a third consecutive election. Don Enrique Bolaños won a landslide vote. Don Enrique then proceeded to do what no one expected of him. He fought corruption and hard, without fear or remorse. Amazingly Don Enrique did not just give the green light to his administration to investigate and expose the truth, he demanded it.
Judge Juana Mendez finishes her pronouncement and stands up relieved, smiling sheepishly. Across Nicaragua clenched fists are shaken in victory above radio and television sets and spontaneous shouts of approval echo off Nicaragua's lakes and volcanoes. Nicaragua's hard working population is satisfied, amazed, empowered. Judge Juana looks weary; under heavy police protection she takes her son and leaves the courthouse. Political bravery, law and justice appear to have won; now the nation awaits its enforcement. The fight has just begun, but Nicaragua is a sea of hope.
Copyright © Richard Leonardi