NICARAGUA
SAFETY
Is Nicaragua's Negative Image Justified?
Nicaragua: the home
of poetry and spectacular geography or the home of
war and dangerous crime? How is it that the simple
word Nicaragua conjures up visions of violence and
suffering for the foreigner before a visit and memories
of beautiful culture and nature on the airplane ride
home? Why does Nicaragua suffer such a negative image?
Is it justified?
While
guiding visitors to Nicaragua over the last 8 years
customers
have related
to me that before departure from their home country,
at least 95% of the ones from North America, and more
than 70% from Europe were shown serious concern by
family and/or friends about safety issues for a visit
to Nicaragua. The polar opposite of Nicaragua in the
international traveler’s mindset is our southern
neighbor Costa Rica. According to a recent independent
study, of all North American travelers who were interested
in visiting Central America, 91% of them said that
Costa Rica was the place they would “really like
to go to”or “like to go to”. Of the
same travelers when asked to describe Nicaragua, 47%
said “unstable”and another 20% said “dangerous”,
while only 13% said “friendly”.
Therefore
Costa Rica inevitably serves as the yardstick for
which
Nicaragua’s
realities are measured. The comparisons are too convenient,
neighboring countries, with opposite images. Costa
Rica has done a marvelous job with image management,
while Nicaragua has done an equally horrible job. None
the less, any serious comparison between much-maligned
Nicaragua and oft-praised Costa Rica must use reality
(not image) as its scale.
Nicaragua
is poor. 40 years ago Nicaragua’s wealth was
greater than Taiwan and 25 years ago it was superior
to Costa
Rica.
However, societal freedom and strong economies have
not traditionally been great dance partners in Latin
America. In the 20th century Nicaragua lived 45 years
of a Somoza family dictatorship in Nicaragua that was
very good for international business and trade and
very bad for liberty and democracy. In the end freedom
triumphed, with the popular overthrow of Somoza, thanks
to the revolution of 1978-79, lead by the FSLN and
fought by a diverse cross-section of Nicaraguan society.
The cost was high on both a human and economical level.
Despite the war being
won by broad-based coalition, after the victory, another
dictatorship, the FSLN (or Sandinistas) quickly consolidated
power and personal freedoms suffered once again. When
the reality set in that real democracy was not achieved
by the popular victory against Somoza, some of the
heroes of the revolution returned to the mountains
to fight once again, this time against the new Sandinista
Government.
Three
years later, when the US began to finance the rebels
and
installed
ex-Somoza National Guard leaders to direct them, they
became know as the “Contras”, their border
insurgency as the “Contra War”. Unlike
the revolution against Somoza, the anti-Sandinista
guerilla war was fought in limited areas of the country,
but the world-wide controversy that surrounded its
funding buried Nicaragua’s international reputation
in infamy.
Meanwhile
the lethal combination of a US economic embargo,
Sandinista
economic
policies and spending to combat the Contras destroyed
Nicaragua’s economy. A peace pact was finally
signed and in 1990 the Sandinistas lost in general
elections and they democratically handed over power
to Violeta Chamorro. Many of the former rebels from
both sides of the 1980’s conflict fence became
wealthy and/or successful businessmen. Economic interests
of the Sandinista leaders and aggressive disarmament
policy gradually solidified peace in Nicaragua, which
was fully in place by the end of 1995. Poverty, however,
remained well entrenched.
For
comparison, UNICEF’s
2001 gross national income per capita figures are revealing.
They list the USA at $34,870 per capita as the world’s
second highest standard. Costa Rica is one of the wealthier
countries per capita in Latin America at US$3,950,
while Nicaragua rates a measly US$420 per capita. World
statistics generally list Nicaragua as the 2nd poorest
country in the hemisphere behind Haiti. Much of the
problem revolves around Nicaragua’s external
debt. Foreign debt stands at US$6.5 billion, a mere
pittance for many countries, but a giant ball and chain
for Nicaragua, who’s annual GDP is only US$2
billion. In 2004 Nicaragua appears very close to being
pardoned of 75% of this external debt by the IMF, which
would relieve Nicaragua of its unenviable current status
as proportionally the most indebted country on the
planet.
One
could rightfully imagine that a decade of war and
the resulting poverty
would create a miserable population, desperate and
depressed, turning to crime, with waves of social unrest
triggering subsequent government repression. If only
Nicaragua was not the country where “lead floats
and cork sinks”as the popular saying goes, this
might be true. However in Nicaragua things are not
as the world would likely expect or imagine them to
be.
One
quick measure of any populace’s happiness is suicide rates. Surely
such an impoverished and war-weary people might be
inclined to pull the plug, throw in the towel. Suicide
rates according to the World Heath Organization in
Nicaragua are 6.9 per 100,000. However, wealthy southern
neighbor Costa Rica’s rate is higher, at 11.8
per 100,000. Both pale in comparison with the really
wealthy countries like the USA at 21.7, Australia at
26.3 or France at 35.5, not to mention Switzerland
at 36.5 or Japan at 50.6 per 100,000.
So money does not necessarily
buy happiness, but it should keep crime down. Crime
statistics are a shaky business, the more efficiently
a country reports their crimes the further they slide
down in the safety rankings, but it does prove useful
as a reference point. According to Interpol in 2001,
crime rate per 100,000 was 9,927 for England, 7,736
for Germany, 4,161 for the USA and 1,750 for Nicaragua.
Could Nicaragua be home to less than half the crime
in England or Germany?
Murder
rates are a popular measure for a country’s level of violent
crime and are more reliable than most, as murders rarely
go unreported. The world’s homicide rate is currently
estimated at 8.86 per 100,000. Latin America is quite
a bit rougher, with an average of 22.9 murders per
100,000 in the region. Most neighbor countries of Nicaragua
in Central America are on the upper end of the world’s
scale, exactly where the world might expect Nicaragua
would be located. Countries like El Salvador at 117
per 100,000, Guatemala at 45 per 100,000 and Honduras
at 41 per 100,000. In North America, the US murder
rate is 7.1 per 100,000, yet its famously violent cities
weigh in at 14.8 per 100,000 for Los Angeles, 21.9
for Chicago, 31.7 for Atlanta, with Washington, D.C.
at 41.8 and New Orleans at 43.3. Little Costa Rica,
the “oasis of peace”, is at 7.2, the same
as the US and significantly safer than most other Central
American republics. What about Nicaragua? Nicaragua
suffers only 3.4 per 100,000, making it the least violent
country in Central America and one of the safest in
all the hemisphere.
Nicaragua
safer than Costa Rica? How is that possible? Could
it be
that
Nicaragua is safe because it is actually a police state
that has come down hard on the population, locked everyone
up? Incarceration rates suggest otherwise. The USA
leads the world in prison inmates with a staggering
682 per 100,000 in jail. Canada has 123 per 100,000,
Scotland 119 and Germany 96, while Nicaragua has only
57 per 100,000 imprisoned. How about on a regional
level: comparing Nicaragua vs. Central America in total
inmates? Honduras has 9,816 inmates under key, El Salvador
9,378, Guatemala 7,834, Costa Rica 5,542 and Nicaragua
at 3,913. How does one explain that Costa Rica has
a higher murder rate and more people in prison than
bad-boy Nicaragua? Especially considering that Costa
Rica is home to 1.2 million less people than Nicaragua?
Perhaps it is Nicaragua’s police? Do they have
menacing, heavily armed forces that guard the country
with intimidating 24 hour patrols? Police officers
per thousand statistics rate Italy at 5.3 police per
thousand, Spain at 4.7, Germany at 4.4, El Salvador
at 2.6, Costa Rica with 2.5 and Nicaragua with 1.2
police per thousand. Nicaragua has less than half the
police density of Costa Rica. What those numbers don’t
show is that Nicaragua’s small police force is
also largely unarmed. In fact more than half of Nicaraguan
police do not carry firearms at all.
All
right, the Nicaraguan population is not all crowding
into prisons,
and Nicaragua
has a tiny, lightly armed police force. Therefore Nicaragua
must have a very intimidating military that keeps its
poor population in check, right? After all, Costa Rica
claims to not even have a military and Nicaragua had
a more than 120,000 man army in the 1980’s. Part
of President Violeta Chamorro’s mandate when
she took over Nicaragua’s presidential office
from Daniel Ortega in 1990 was to dismantle the Sandinista
Army. In what was one of the most radical disarmaments
of the 20th century, Nicaragua went from 120,000 armed
men to less than 16,000 soldiers in under 4 years.
Today Nicaragua has the smallest military in Central
America at 14,000 men. According to the International
Institute for Strategic Studies, Nicaragua’s
military is shrinking at a rate that puts it as number
129 out of 132 countries in world rankings for military
growth with a minus -75% growth rate. This compared
with Mexico whose armed forces are growing at a rate
+49%, or the extreme of Colombia at +130%. In fact
Nicaragua ranks behind peaceful Holland in soldiers
per 1,000 people.
In
a regional armed forces spending comparison published
in the
2002 CIA
factbook, Mexico spends US$4 billion on military annually,
while Central American neighbors Guatemala and Costa
Rica spend US$120 million and US$69 million per year
respectively. In contrast, Nicaragua spends only US$26
million annual. The same source cites Nicaragua’s
military spending per person at US$5.18, compared to
Costa Rica’s US$17.99 per person. But wait, you
say, Costa Rica has no army! Indeed, they have a “Civil
Guard”, not a “Military”. Costa Rica’s
armed forces may not have heavy artillery and sport
a user-friendly name, but those who know the country
understand this as nothing more than semantics and
damn good PR. When Costa Rica’s troops were caught
patrolling inside Nicaragua’s territory on the
San Juan River in 1998, their non-existent military
was dressed in battle fatigues with M-16 attack weapons
at the ready, and their camouflage motorboat sported
a mounted-machine gun. Not only does the Costa Rican
Civil Guard receive military training (many trained
abroad in Panama, Israel and the US), but more than
2,500 soldiers have graduated from the infamous “School
of the Americas”, where Costa Rican troops received
specialized training in military intelligence, psychological
warfare, sniper and commando tactics, “irregular
warfare”and special tactics, to name just few.
By insisting that they have no military, Costa Rica
(less than half the size of Nicaragua) keeps their
23,000 strong fighting force registering as big fat
zero on the world image screen, including in comparison
with Nicaragua’s 14,000 poorly equipped soldiers.
Yet
Costa Rica’s
brilliant public relations work goes well beyond their
invisible military and ultra-safe image. Costa Rica
makes great use of their famous love for nature preservation
and their enduring democracy. No one will argue against
the fact that Costa Rican nature park administration
is superb, among the finest in Latin America and that
their promotion of those parks is twice as good. However,
how many would guess that it is Nicaragua that has
the largest expanse of rain forest north of the Amazon
basin? Where are all the travelers dreaming of visiting
Nicaragua’s 84 nature reserves that cover over
21,000 square kilometers, protecting more than 17%
of Nicaragua’s landmass? Giant nature parks in
Nicaragua? Sorry? Wouldn’t that be Costa Rica?
Costa Rica claims 27.27% of its landmass as protected
areas, though 10.27% are national parks, the other
17% is padded with the inclusion of “buffer zones”and
Indian reservations. Total protected landmass in Costa
Rica, including the buffers and Indian lands is 14,500
square kilometers, still 6,500 square kilometers short
of Nicaragua. The management of Nicaragua’s nature
parks leaves a lot to be desired, both in funding and
management, but according to the Convention on International
Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna;
for protection of endangered species, Nicaragua ranks
28th in the world, ahead of Costa Rica, which ranks
49th. What about deforestation? The highest rate in
Latin America belongs to Costa Rica, at 520 square
kilometers annual.
How
about contamination? Poor Nicaragua might have bigger
nature reserves than
Costa Rica, but surely it is not as clean, right? According
to the World Resource Institute, measuring pesticide
in kilograms used per hectare of crops, Costa Rica
is the world’s 3rd worst offender, averaging
18,726 kg per hectare. Nicaragua ranks as only the
world’s 111th worst offender, using only 357
kg per hectare. For sewage treatment Nicaragua’s
poorly funded infrastructure can only manage to treat
35% of waste water, though this does not look too bad
in light of relatively wealthy Costa Rica treating
only 5% of their sewage waste.
For
sure Costa Rica’s
democracy deserves to be applauded; they have a marvelous
constitution, model education and heath programs. However,
no Costa Rican would claim their government does not
suffer from corruption. Corruption has also been a
problem historically in Nicaragua, but the country
has made tremendous strides in fighting government
corruption, a virtual institution across Latin America.
Nicaragua’s ex-president, Arnoldo Alemán
has just been sentenced to 20 years in prison for corruption
charges. While accused ex-ministers are in exile to
avoid prosecution (the standard Latin American tactic),
Nicaragua has arrested and convicted their former head
of state, a rare feat in any republic, and unprecedented
in Latin American history. What makes it doubly unique
and surprising is that the attack against Alemán’s
corrupt former administration comes from his very own
political party. Imagine that happening in any other
country in the world. Nicaragua truly is the land of
the sinking cork and floating lead.
The
real bottom line of democracy could be voter participation,
the
population
making its voice heard. In Costa Rica’s last
presidential elections in 2002 they enjoyed a 60.96%
turnout at the poles, not bad, after all voting there
in not compulsory. In Nicaragua the right to vote is
given to every Nicaraguan 16 years and older and voting
is neither compulsory nor convenient. In Nicaragua’s
last presidential elections in 2001 a staggering 93.4%
of registered voters placed their vote, keeping poles
open more than 4 hours after their scheduled closing
time. For non-compulsory voting turnouts, Nicaragua
is at the leading edge of the world. Freedom of the
press is also a reliable barometer of true democracy.
According to a study published in October of 2003 by
Reporters without Frontiers; Costa Rica is judged to
have the freest press in all of Latin America. Yet
Nicaragua is not far behind, listed in third place,
in front of more than 30 other Latin America countries.
It
is apparent, that despite Nicaragua’s checkered past and current
financial woes, its image is dramatically worse than
its reality. A look at annual AIDS incidence rates
in Central America reveal that Hondurans suffer an
average of 142.6 AIDS cases per million, according
to the World Heath Organization. Their survey also
indicates that Belize is not far behind at 129.6 per
million, Panamá is stricken with 77.2 cases
of AIDS per million, El Salvador at 65.9, Costa Rica
at 47 per million. In last place for AIDS density is
Nicaragua, with 2 cases of AIDS per million (two, not
a typing error).
This
endless barrage of statistics, percentages and numbers
gets
very tiresome
and they do nothing to demonstrate the Nicaraguan people’s
interminable sense of humor, warmth and hospitality.
Nor do the statistics highlight Nicaragua’s love
for poetry or their amazing, daily reinvention of the
Spanish language. The percentages do little to reveal
Nicaragua’s unique cultures of dance, music,
and great food. These are all qualities that carry
no numerical value. If in Nicaragua the probable seems
impossible and the impossible extremely likely, it
is thanks to her unique people. No writer can do them
proper justice with a long list of numbers. Some qualities
can only be felt, experienced first hand. Only a visit
to Nicaragua can provide that pleasure.
By Richard Leonardi
http://www.nicaraguaphoto.com |
