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<p class=MsoPlainText align=right style='text-align:right;line-height:150%'><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:150%;font-family:
Arial'>Letter 8 / February 27, 2007<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText style='line-height:150%'><i><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%;font-family:Arial;font-style:italic'>Dedicated
especially to Steve </span></font></i><font face=Arial><span style='font-family:
Arial'>[Barber, who teaches government in <st1:State w:st="on">California</st1:State>]<i><span
style='font-style:italic'>, and to Kenton Bird who wants me to bring Nica
newspapers back to <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:State w:st="on">Idaho</st1:State></st1:place></span></i></span></font><i><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:150%;font-family:
Arial;font-style:italic'>.<o:p></o:p></span></font></i></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText style='line-height:150%'><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:150%;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText style='line-height:150%'><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:150%;font-family:Arial'>The dinner to
welcome me, arranged by the <i><span style='font-style:italic'>alcalde</span></i>
[mayor] , included a journalist, Jose Palacios, who took all the photos
previously sent of this event. He knows a little English but not much. Next
Monday I took my illustrated dictionary for him to see, at his office in the <i><span
style='font-style:italic'>alcaldia</span></i> [city hall]. He didn´t seem to
have a newspaper to work for, and since he locates at the mayor´s office, I
assumed that he was really a publicity man for the mayor.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText style='line-height:150%'><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:150%;font-family:Arial'> But it
turns out he does have a newspaper. He reports on this area, VECarmen and
adjoining <i><span style='font-style:italic'>municipios</span></i>, for a
2-year old paper called HOY, which is trying to compete with the established
papers NUEVO DIARIO and LA PRENSA. I´ve seen only one edition of HOY, which is
evidently not sold here, only in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Managua</st1:City></st1:place>.
It was the issue, last Wednesday, in which my photo with Alba, at the <i><span
style='font-style:italic'>cena</span></i> [dinner], appears, with a very short
article, which says that I am here to build <i><span style='font-style:italic'>hermanamiento</span></i>
[brotherhood] between VEC and <st1:City w:st="on">Moscow</st1:City>, <st1:State
w:st="on">ID</st1:State>, and that the sister city organization in <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Moscow</st1:City></st1:place> wants to help with
the schools. Then it says that this relationship began in 1986, which is
right, and then that it was broken in 1990--absolutely wrong--and is being reestablished
now.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText style='line-height:150%'><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:150%;font-family:Arial'> So we
know that it´s not only <st1:City w:st="on">Moscow</st1:City> and <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Lewiston</st1:City></st1:place> papers that can
get things wrong. He never formally interviewed me, and I don´t know where he got
the broken-connection idea--perhaps from my bad Spanish, perhaps from his poor
English. (But I´d have no reason to bring up 1990--that was the year Violeta
Chomorro defeated Daniel Ortega.)<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText style='line-height:150%'><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:150%;font-family:Arial'> HOY is
different from the other two papers. It costs 3 <i><span style='font-style:
italic'>cordobas</span></i> (17 cents) to their 5. It is slightly smaller and
much splashier. It looks like what you find at the checkout counter. No
articles in depth, lots of red borders and color photos. Clearly HOY is
pointing to a different audience: it´s the paper for nonreaders.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText style='line-height:150%'><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:150%;font-family:Arial'> LA
PRENSA and NUEVO DIARIO are pretty impressive. They sensationalize too -- like
the TV stations they are very attentive to explosions at fireworks factories,
car accidents, and murders. A recent front-page headline dealt with a grisly
murder of a lawyer-poet, killed with three different knives -- their sizes
carefully described. Highlighted also was the visibility of the corpse´s
internal organs. Still, these papers do in-depth work, articles, editorials,
special features. I haven´t figured out just where they stand politically, but
both have been very critical, on some days, of the Ortega government, which
seems to be sinning in two particular ways. First, some think it has been
skirting and evading laws and regulations in its effort to get its program
going. Some are outraged at the government´s perceived contempt for law;
others figure that, well, the Sandinistas have been out of power for 16 years
and they´re out of practice, and besides, they are in a hurry and they´ll
settle down. The other problem involves the government´s dismissal of hundreds
of government workers. To critics this is abrasive behavior that violates
Ortega´s campaign slogan of WORK, PEACE, AND RECONCILIATION. Ana and Mario,
however, think this is just how new governments operate, and the people being
dismissed were political appointments to begin with and shouldn´t expect to be
kept on by a new administration. M&A think Ortega is trimming a bloated
bureaucracy. But the papers are full of conspiracy stories about power
struggles within the administration to force out certain officials etc.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText style='line-height:150%'><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:150%;font-family:Arial'> The
papers also love to seek cracks in the Sandinista government and especially
between the Top Two Sandinistas, Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo. He has
given her a major government post, prompting outcries of illegality. And when
one of her favorites was sacked, the papers construed a split between husband
and wife. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText style='line-height:150%'><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:150%;font-family:Arial'> Recently
in the NUEVO DIARIO a writer approvingly -- and evidently surprised at himself --
put Ortega in the group of 'soft' radicals, heads of Latin American governments
who are willing to work with the capitalistic system and who are genuinely
trying to strengthen democracy. The same writer detests the 'hard' radicals
like Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, and of course their godfather Castro. Not
long ago La PRENSA had two interesting articles. One reports on a <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Gallup</st1:City></st1:place> poll checking on
Ortega´s first month in office; it found his approval rate was at 61% -- not
bad for a man who got only 38% of the vote. People also approve of Rosario´s influence,
and 54% think Ortega will leave the country in better shape than he found it
(the second time around). Only 12% consider him a hopeless communist. The
other article is about the government´s affirmation that the Holocaust really
happened and it´s important always to remember it. This may seem curious, but “What´s
his Name” the Iranian president visited here the week of Ortega´s
inauguration in January and there were rumors that he was pressuring the government
to deny the Holocaust. And also for some reason Nica´s UN ambassador had
missed a vote concerning the Holocaust. So the government was clarifying where
it stood.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText style='line-height:150%'><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:150%;font-family:Arial'> Mario
offers another perspective on Nica politics. When Ortega instituted a military
draft in the mid-80s, to fight Reagan´s Contras, Mario was drafted -- in 1987
when he was 18. He was never in battle (the fighting was not in this area but
in the north) but was an army cook in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Managua</st1:City></st1:place>,
but he recalls how tough those times were. Inflation was over 1000%, I think
way over that. Food was strictly rationed. This was all the result of the war
and American embargoes and such. Mario is no fan of Reagan, but he does think
the war had one good effect, which was that without it, he believes, <st1:country-region
w:st="on">Nicaragua</st1:country-region> would have taken the route of <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Cuba</st1:country-region></st1:place>
to a totally managed state.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText style='line-height:150%'><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:150%;font-family:Arial'> Nobody
is afraid of that now -- except that 12%. And the newspapers seem a positive
force for stability; so does the political opposition, which sounds like a
loyal and not destructive opposition, so far as I can figure. Nica is supposed
to have one of the freest presses in <st1:place w:st="on">Latin America</st1:place>,
and it looks free enough to me. True, the people here, at least in this rural
area, hardly seem to know that newspapers exist. I may be hearing wrongly, but
it sounds like, at THE store in town that sells newspapers, I am renowned as
THE newspaper customer. But obviously someone else is reading. It is probably
no accident that this particular store is within a block of the mayor´s office,
where HOY´s <i><span style='font-style:italic'>periodista</span></i> also has
his office.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText style='line-height:150%'><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:150%;font-family:Arial'> But now
that I´ve been buying papers, Mario and Ana have been reading them. And Mario,
a few days ago, saw an employment ad in the paper and showed it to nephew
Roberto, just out of college and looking for a job. Roberto got an interview
out of it; no news on the result, but it goes to show that newspapers have
varied uses.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText style='line-height:150%'><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:150%;font-family:Arial'> Recent
news. Some American company has found OIL in an area south of here, on land,
raising the possibility of oil within the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceType
w:st="on">territory</st1:PlaceType> of <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Villa El Carmen</st1:PlaceName></st1:place>.
Drug traffickers, repulsed in their efforts to carve a route for drugs up the
Nica Atlantic coast -- because the locals there proved tougher than the drug lords
-- are now trying to create a route along the Pacific coast, that is, through
here. With all that demand up in the old <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">U. S. of A.</st1:country-region></st1:place>, it´s easy to see why
they care. The concern is the corruption of judges and the police, etc. Evidently
Nica is a lot less corrupt than other nations along the route.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText style='line-height:150%'><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:150%;font-family:Arial'> Enough.
But since power outages forced three writings of parts of this letter, do read
it.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText style='line-height:150%'><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:150%;font-family:Arial'>Dave<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:150%'><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;line-height:150%;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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