Caribbean & Central America - May 2016 (ISSN 1741-4458)

This month the governmental committee for Nicaragua’s US$50bn ‘Gran Canal’ project and the nine communities which make up the indigenous Gobierno Territorial Rama y Kriol (GTR-K) in the South Atlantic Autonomous Region (Raas) signed a deal to lease an extensive portion of land in the region through which the ‘Gran Canal’ would pass. GTR-K members have since come out against the agreement, claiming it was in breach of decision-making protocol. These doubts over the validity of the local consultation process on the project which is to link the country’s Caribbean and Pacific coasts – for which the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) government led by President Daniel Ortega is pushing – follow other recent protests against it.

According to FSLN-aligned media el19digital, the agreement was signed on 3 May after two and a half years’ worth of consultations with the communities and gives China’s Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development Company (HKND) – which was awarded the build-operate contract in June 2013- permission to use the land in an area of 263km². El19digital notes that the Rama-Kriol territory spans an area of 406,849.3 hectares (ha) of land, plus 22 cays and 441,308 (ha) of maritime area while the nine communities involved are: Sumu Kaat; Tiktik Kaanu; Rama Cay; Wiring Cay; Monkey Point; Bang kukuk; Corn River; Indian River; and Graytown.

El19digital cited GTR-K president, Héctor Thomas Macrae, as saying that he signed the agreement in the belief that the Canal “will contribute to the good life of the communities, generating well-being, safeguarding the culture and respecting ancestral traditions”. Meanwhile Telémaco Talavera, the ‘Gran Canal’ committee spokesperson, assured that the culture of indigenous peoples, national laws, international treaties and the United Nations Declaration on Indigenous Peoples would be respected.

Since the announcement of the agreement, however, a group of Rama-Kriol community leaders have come out against it. On 7 May, local investigative media El Confidencial cited Rupert Allen Claire Duncan, Monkey Point leader and a GTR-K member, as saying that not all community leaders saw the contents of the document. He said that of the 18 delegates on the GTR-K directorate, only 11 had signed the deal – a breach of protocol as any decision taken must have the backing of all communities. On 3 May, national daily La Prensa cited Claire as saying that a document had been “signed two weeks ago in which we said that we would not sign anything as long as there was no legal advice and that a prior, free and informed consultation had not taken place so we do not recognise this signature nor this consent”. Becky McCray, coordinator for GTR-K community justice, also told La Prensa that the central government “has divided [the indigenous communities] so they can advance their project, because consent on the part of the communities does not exist”.

More protests

Also indicative of continued opposition to the ‘Gran Canal’ project, on 22 April hundreds of campesinos travelled from Managua and elsewhere to Nueva Guinea municipality in the Raas, to protest against it. Organised by a local civil-society group, Consejo Nacional en Defensa de Nuestra Tierra, Lago y Soberanía (Consejo Nacional), this was the fourth national demonstration against the project – part of more than 60 demonstrations of its kind that have been held throughout the country.

On 18 April, the directorate of the 92-member national assembly rejected an appeal against its week-earlier decision to reject a citizens’ initiative to repeal the June 2013 law (840) granting HKND Group the 50-year build-operate concession. Presented by the Consejo Nacional on 7 April, the citizen’s initiative was backed by 28,600 signatures, well over the requisite 6,000 to submit a citizens’ bill. However, this was rejected by the legislature’s directorate on the grounds that it lacked jurisdiction.

• Foreign cooperation

On 15 April, Nicaragua’s central bank (BCN) released its latest report on official foreign cooperation to Nicaragua which reached US$1.1bn in 2015, down 3.7% on 2014. As a percentage of GDP, foreign cooperation was the third largest source of external funding to Nicaragua after exports of goods and services and family remittances. Of the total US$1.1bn, 54.7% was from multilateral sources and the rest from bilateral funds. The biggest lenders for both private and public sector cooperation in 2015 were Venezuela (US$309.4m) – although this was down from US$619.m in 2014; the Inter-American Development Bank (US$208.3m); the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (US$198.2m); the World Bank (US$58.6m); the Netherlands (US$51.6m); the Inter-American Investment Corporation (US$46.6m); the European Union (US$42.7m); and Germany (US$34.1m).