Representatives of thirteen Latin American countries are participating in the 13th summit of Indigenous Parliament of America (PIA), taking place in Managua, Nicaragua. The main goal of the three-day meeting is to tackle food security issues, climate change and land possession and to revise the progress of legal protection of the rights of the Indigenous people in different countries. The forum includes representatives from Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, México, Nicaragua, Panamá, Paraguay, Perú and Venezuela.

The PIA president, Hugo Carrillo, pointed out that: “The majority of indigenous people on this continent are not represented in political systems, that’s why the topics and needs of the indigenous are not discussed in the parliaments, so this is one of our challenges.” The indigenous leader noted some developments in legislative matters in Perú, Ecuador and Bolivia, but said more recognition is still needed.

“Representation of the Indigenous people in America is insufficient,” stated Brookly Rivera, the Nicaraguan deputy, and added: “The political presence of the indigenous should occur in some other way, not through traditional selection process by which other political parties are elected.” Rivera was determined: “These mechanisms don’t care for the reality and necessities of ethnic groups.”

The claims come as members of the Tupinambás indigenous group in Brazil, which is not represented in this summit, occupied a luxury hotel in the state of Bahía, in the northeast of the country. They stated that they’ve started the protest in the hotel Fazenda da Lagoa because it is situated in the territory that belonged to their ancestors. With this action they aim to push the government to accelerate the process of demarcation of their lands in the region, which is one of the most popular with tourists in Brazil. Fourteen hotel bungalows, which normally cost US$500 per night, were empty after the protesters occupied them. The Brazilian Environmental Agency has temporarily closed the property, because of different reports about the possible destruction of vegetation in the area.

Meanwhile, the Nicaraguan state also has a task pending. After a sentence was delivered by the Inter-American Court for Human Rights, Nicaragua is required to reform the Electoral Law, so that it would allow indigenous people to choose their own political representatives based on their own traditions and customs.

Indigenous groups in Nicaragua, who mainly live in the Caribbean coast, are still facing a lot of limitations when it comes to basic services and infrastructure, despite the programmes promoted by the government.

There were 85 women killed in Nicaragua in 2012 as a result of gender violence, according to The Network of Women Against Violence (RMCV).

Although the National Police only registered 76 cases for the year, Luz Marina Torres, of the RMCV, said the organisation’s National Observatory had documented the additional cases, which included four Nicaraguan women killed in Costa Rica.

Upon releasing the figures, the RMCV in Nicaragua demanded that the government ends impunity and fully enforces the law on violence against women, which was sanctioned last June. The RMCV claims that the state commission set up to tackle the problem has not yet communicated with women’s groups, despite them playing a major role in the creation and implementation of the law.

To demonstrate the ongoing lack of protection for women, Torres highlighted the cases of 13 of the victims, in which women had filed complaints against their partners for abuse with the police before they were murdered.

The RMCV also pointed to impunity in the justice system, noting that only four suspects were convicted, while 29 are still fugitives. The organisation also demanded that the necessary funds to enforce the law are assigned, criticising the government for not including them in the 2013 budget.

The RMCV report came out the day before an event, One Billion Rising, was staged in 203 countries as part of a global campaign to stop violence against women.

Story courtesy of Agencia Pulsar.

Nicaragua’s most famous revolutionary, Augusto Sandino, said that “sovereignty is not discussed, it’s defended with guns in hand.” This was also once the view of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), the left-wing political party currently in charge of the country; but discussion is exactly what Nicaragua is seeking to settle a current dispute with Colombia.

A ruling last month by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – which resides in The Hague, Netherlands – granted Nicaragua almost 100,000 square kilometres of maritime territory in Caribbean waters that were previously under the control of Colombia.

The dispute has been a long time in the making. Back in 2001, the Nicaraguan government brought the case to the ICJ, alleging that shipping vessels from their country were being harassed by the Colombian navy in a part of the Caribbean claimed by both countries.

In 1928 the ‘Esguerra-Bárcenas Treaty’ gave Colombia the Archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina; however Nicaragua argues that it did not establish maritime borders. According to the Central American nation, since that date Colombia has been intruding more and more on Nicaraguan waters and has almost halved its territory.

The Sandinistas of Nicaragua have argued for the past three decades that the entire treaty should be void because it was signed when the country was under military intervention and pen was put to paper due to of US pressure.

In 2007 the ICJ preliminarily ruled that the archipelago was Colombian territory, which quieted the calls for the Treaty to be void; however the ruling did not resolve the dispute over maritime borders.

That decision came last month, on 19th November, when the Court voted in favour of Nicaragua.

The response from Colombia was dismissive and aggressive. President Juan Manuel Santos stated: “Colombia emphatically rejects the ruling by the Court”.

Comments from Nicaragua on the ruling were celebratory. During a parade to commemorate the decision attended by leading political figures and leaders from the last two decades, President Daniel Ortega thanked the ICJ and put pressure on the Colombian government to accept the new maritime boundaries.

“I am certain that Colombia will recognise the ruling by the International Court of Justice, because there is no other way forward; there is only one path and that’s to comply with the ruling and respect Nicaragua’s historic right,” he said.

But direct dialogue between the two leaders was not forthcoming until 1st December, when both met for a 20-minute meeting during the inauguration of the new Mexican president.

Ortega commented after the meeting: “The two parties are totally discarding the use of force.”

He went on to give further assurances of peace, stating that Nicaraguan and Columbian vessels were in “permanent communication” and that his government would continue to respect the established fishing rights of those living on the Colombian archipelago, including the rights of the indigenous islanders.

His Colombian counterpart was also quick to dismiss the possibility of violence. “No one wants bellicose actions”, Santos said. But warned that he would continue to “defend, with total conviction, the rights of the islanders and all our compatriots.”

Could Shots be Fired?

Whilst there is the possibility for military conflict, especially as some Colombian navy vessels have failed to leave Nicaragua’s new territory; it appears that many of the comments from the Colombian government are nothing more than knee-jerk reactions and nationalistic rhetoric. But if violence did break out, it would not be an even fight.

According to an article that appeared in the Nicaraguan daily La Prensa, Nicaragua has a defence budget of US$67 million, as compared to the US$14 billion Colombia spends annually. Furthermore, the South American nation has a navy of 34,964 personnel; Nicaragua has just 800.

Or to put it another way; Colombia’s annual defence expenditure is greater than Nicaragua’s whole GDP.

Indeed, this disparity led one Colombian columnist for El Tiempo to write: “If Colombia doesn’t want to remove its warships from the zone, Nicaragua will not be able to force them out.”

But days after the ICJ ruling was made, the Nicaraguan National Assembly passed a motion to allow the armed forces of the United States, Russia, and Cuba to enter their new maritime territory for six months in order to participate in joint activities against drug trafficking.

Furthermore, reactions from the US were acquiescent, a positive sign for Nicaragua since Colombia is a key ally of the US in Latin America. Phyllis Powers, the US Ambassador to Nicaragua, said, “Really, this is an issue between Nicaragua and Colombia and my government is confident that they will resolve it between them.”

Meanwhile, senior White House national security advisor for the Western Hemisphere, Ricardo Zuñiga, echoed the view of Powers: “The ruling and the dispute are bilateral issues between Colombia and Nicaragua on which we do not take a position.”

Pan-American Pains

Even if violence does not break out, the dispute will still have rattled Latin America.

In response to the ruling by the ICJ, Colombia’s president announced that his country is pulling out of the Bogotá Pact, which was signed by most American nations in 1948 with the intention of settling disputes peacefully by bringing cases to international institutions (such as placing jurisdiction within the ICJ).

According to Santos, “The borders between nations cannot be in the hands of a court of law. They must be drawn by agreement between the countries involved.”

However, Secretary General of the Organisation of American States (OAS), Jose Miguel Insulza, views the decision to leave the Pact as troubling for the Pan-American system. “What I have always tried to achieve is that the great part of the Latin American and Caribbean nations and also those of North America subscribe to and ratify the treaties of the OAS, and for that reason an exit is always prejudicial; certainly there is always damage,” he said.

Indeed, several Latin American countries have come out and expressed their disapproval of Colombia’s response. The presidents of both Peru and Chile have been vocal in the stance that the ICJ’s ruling must be followed.

This dispute could have a further destabilising effect on the region since many Latin American nations have their own cases currently being presided over by the ICJ. Should other countries leave the Bogotá Pact if the court rules against them, then this could greatly endanger future conflict resolution mechanisms.

A Pyrrhic Victory?

But this dispute is not just about sovereignty and nationalistic chest-beating.

Thanks to the ICJ ruling, Nicaragua has seen its exclusive economic zone in the Caribbean double in size. This means that it will be able to extend its fishing activities further afield. There is also rumored to be sizeable, untapped oil reserves in the new territory.

However, the victory for Nicaragua might turn out to be pyrrhic, since with more power comes more responsibility.

Even with the assistance of international navies, Nicaragua is now in charge of Caribbean waters used to traffic drugs northwards from South America. This changing of the guard might see traffickers rubbing their hands with glee as responsibility has passed from Latin America’s largest navy to one of its smallest.

Roberto Cajina, an expert on Nicaraguan defence, said: “Our victory in The Hague was a bitter fruit because Nicaragua does not have the capacity to guarantee permanent security of its newly acquired maritime zone.”

Indeed, the decision could see Nicaragua forced into the escalating the ‘drug war’ that plagues other Central American nations, but which it has remained relatively distant from. Nicaraguan officials have boasted about their country being a ‘firewall’ in this problem.

But now it will have to go on the offensive instead of the defensive, and considerably change its military planning, that according to Cajina lacks “strategy” and “vision”. He draws attention to the recent decision by the government to spend US$244 million of a limited budget on a satellite from China and Russian-made assault vehicles that can only patrol rivers, not seas.

Most commentators expect Colombia to calm down in the coming weeks and seek a proper resolution to the dispute. Nicaragua will also be hoping for a speedy resolution, especially a peaceful one to remove the Colombian vessels that are still in the country’s lost territory.

Nicaragua has sent its first navy ships and aeroplanes to the new territories that border with Colombia in the San Andrés archipelago. President Daniel Ortega announced it after an international court of justice had made the decision to extend Nicaragua’s maritime sovereignty eastward in the Caribbean, which places two long disputed Colombian islands in the San Andrés archipelago within Nicaraguan territory.

Meanwhile, Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos confirmed yesterday that he may withdraw his country from the Bogotá Pact, because he disagrees with the results in the territorial dispute with Nicaragua .

Ortega announced that after having given six days to Colombia to come to terms with the decision, he was “obliged ethically and morally” to send his troops to announce Nicaraguan presence in the area. He also added that authorities have initiated contacts with the Colombian government to make sure the country to abides the ICJ’s decision.

Today a Nicaraguan military delegation will represent the country at a meeting in the US, where they will discuss topics such as drug trafficking in the Caribbean borders and review several agreements following the territorial handover.

Meanwhile, the inhabitants of the San Andrés and Providencia islands are concerned that the territorial change may have legal implications in the fishing industry. Ortega ensures that Nicaraguan authorities are coordinating the legal process with their colleagues in Colombia, who previously allowed for fishing in the area. “Now the permission to practice fishing, both recreational and industrial, in this sea area will be given by Nicaragua,” affirms Ortega.

The Colombian government called the recent decisions of ICJ “inconsistent and wrong” and as a result might withdraw its membership from the Bogotá Pact, also known as the American Treaty on Pacific Settlement. The pact was signed in 1948 by independent countries within the Americas and serves as one of the treaties that carries out the will of the International Court of Justice.

The dispute between Colombia and Nicaragua began in 2001, when Nicaragua demanded legal ownership of the islands. Its request was partially rejected in 2007 and finally satisfied a week ago, on 19 November.

President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia rejected the International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision that ruled part of the waters around San Andrés islands belong to Nicaragua.

On Monday Santos said he “emphatically rejected” the decision and claimed the ICJ “committed serious mistakes that have affected us [Colombia] negatively, among these mistakes, omissions, excesses and inconsistencies.”

Yesterday Santos took another official step against the decision by declaring  a state of economic emergency in the San Andrés islands.

“This is the moment to be together, as we have said on so many occasions, with the will to go forward. The inhabitants of these islands can be sure that the government is on their side and will be working to give them the future we all want,” Santos announced in a press conference held on the islands.

The ICJ’s decision rules that a large part of the island’s maritime territory is Nicaragua’s. The Colombian government has perceived this as a threat for Colombian fishermen. The ruling states that meridian 82 is now Nicaraguan territory, although until yesterday the Colombian government had not given the order to move the military ships stationed in the area. On the contrary, the government has called for their ships to make protecting Colombian fishermen a priority.

The Organisation of American States (OAS) has called for Colombia to accept the ICJ’s decision.

“Colombia is an advanced country, a civilised country, a  democratic country. It is not in Colombia’s, Nicaragua’s, international justice’s, or humanity’s interest to not respect international norms and judicial decisions” said Ricardo Seintenfus, Nicaragua’s representative at the OAS.

Santos has said that they would consider any legal routes in contesting the decision. However, a magistrate from the Nicaraguan Supreme Justice Court, Rafael Solís Cerda, said that he doubted Bogotá would legally reject the decision.

“I think that with time Santos will accept the decision. This reaction is probably provoked by the impact the decision had on Colombians, but I have no doubts they will accept it”, Solís said.

 

On Monday the International Court of Justice made the decision to extend Nicaragua’s maritime sovereignty eastward in the Caribbean, now placing two long disputed Colombian islands in the San Andrés archipelago on Nicaraguan territory. The islands themselves, however, belong to Colombia.

The new measure completely cancels the 82^nd meridian that marks the maritime boundary between Colombia and Nicaragua.  President of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Peter Tomka, called on both countries’ governments to reach an agreement for sea navigation between Nicaragua and the two Colombian islands.

Nicaragua first asked the world court, the United Nations’ (UN) highest judicial organ, to intervene in 2001, by arguing that Colombia had no legal claim on the islands. The court then partially rejected Nicaragua’s claim in 2007, citing an agreement from 1928 declaring that the two countries had agreed on Colombia’s ownership of the islands. Whilst the Nicaraguan claim on the islands was denied, the issue of maritime sovereignty remained open.

“Tomka coordinated the layout of the new border in solutions that aimed to end a long time dispute in an attempt to make both countries satisfied,” explains ICJ’s press release.

Inhabitants of the San Andrés and Providencia islands will be most affected, as they used to fish in what now are Nicaraguan, explains Bógota-based BBC correspondent Arturo Wallace.

Nicaraguan counsel, Samuel Santos López, says his country is very pleased with ICJ’s decision and they celebrate a successful end to a long conflict.

Nicaragua’s ruling party, the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), has won local elections in 127 districts, out of a total of 153.

The first report from the Nicaraguan Supreme Electoral Council (CSE), indicates that the FSLN obtained a broad majority of the votes in the mayoral elections that were held yesterday throughout the country. With 56.22% of the votes counted, the FSLN has obtained 75.69% of the votes and has won in 127 districts. The main opposition alliance, Partido Liberal Independiente (PLI), secured 16.11% of the vote and has the lead in the remaining 26 districts. The Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC) obtained 6.36% of the votes but has not managed to win any district. Other smaller parties participated in the election but did not manage to obtain more than 1% of the vote.

The FSLN already has mayors in 109 districts, including the capital city of Managua, were mayor Daisy Torres is being re-elected with 83% of the vote.

According to the CSE, 57% of the 3.7m people enrolled cast their votes yesterday. In Nicaragua, enrollment is automatic, but voting is optional for over-16s. No significant incidents were recorded during the election.

The executive director of local observer Institute for Development and Democracy (IPADE), Mauricio Zúñiga, said during a press conference that the low voter turn out is due to “distrust in the electoral system” and the lack of publicity by the different political parties to promote their candidates and proposals. He also pointed out that some FSLN electors were discouraged by the fact that, in 40% of the districts, the candidates had been hand-picked and did not have the support of their bases. Also, the average voter turn out for local elections in Nicaragua is historically low, of around 55%.

The elections were controlled by 26 observers from the Organisation of American States (OAS), over 3,000 university students grouped under the University Electoral Observatory, and representatives from human rights organisations.

Analysts estimate that the result of the local elections will strengthen sandinista president Daniel Ortega, who was re-elected last year for a second, consecutive 5-year term (it is his third term, as he was president between 1985 and 1990).

 

Over the weekend, 300 representatives from farmers’, indigenous peoples’, and rural workers’ rights groups convened in Managua, Nicaragua for the first ever Continental Assembly of the Vía Campesina (“Farmer’s Way”). During the three-day conference, members from throughout Latin America and the Caribbean and even as far as Asia, Africa, and Europe discussed the defence of international farmers’ rights.

Issues such as food sovereignty, agrarian reform, education of agricultural workers, and criminalisation of social protests ran at the top of the agenda. The situation of young people and women in rural areas and indigenous communities was a major topic of interest as well as how to accumulate power in the face of large transnational agricultural corporations.

“Our movement,” explained organiser Edgardo García, “is based on its anti-capitalist, anti-neoliberal, and anti-imperialist character, and supports socialism as a shared vision.”

The three-day forum ended yesterday with a ceremony in solidarity with farmers’ and indigenous peoples’ struggles in Honduras and Guatemala at the Che Monument in downtown Managua.

Farmer’s Way was founded in 1994 as a global alliance that resists capitalism and neoliberalism. They have not yet issued a statement regarding the assembly’s conclusions, which could have implications for recent land rights struggles, many of them violent, in Northern Argentina, Honduras, Guatemala, and Brazil.

Story courtesy of Agencia Púlsar, the AMARC-ALC news agency. 

Tomorrow, Venezuelans will have to decide whether they want another six years of president Hugo Chávez, or whether they want something different.

The results of the election will be not only of importance for the people of Venezuela; they are immensely important for the likes of Nicaragua, Cuba, and the rest of the countries attached to the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA).

ALBA is a political and economical alliance spurred by president Chávez, which started operating in 2004, when its first summit was held in Havana, Cuba. Its purpose, according to Chávez, is to achieve “Latin American and Caribbean unity” through a series of trade agreements and common institutional architecture.

The alliance currently has eight member nations, five of which are located north of the Darien Gap, which separates South America from Central America. These are Nicaragua, Cuba, Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Antigua and Barbuda.

Over 75 million people live in ALBA countries, and the regional bloc is very rich in natural resources, such as oil, gas, and minerals. Within ALBA, Venezuela, with its vasts oil reserves and political leadership, plays a crucially important role.

Economic Dependency

According to statistics released this week by the Nicaraguan Central Bank, since 2007 the country has benefitted from more than US$2.2bn of trade with Venezuela.

Exports to the South American country have risen from US$30m in 2007 to US$302m in 2011, making Venezuela the second largest importer of Nicaraguan products after the United States.

Nicaragua also receives lucrative oil loans from Venezuela, buying half of the oil upfront and then paying back the other half through loans. in 2011, Nicaragua made US$557m from oil financing. According to the Central Bank report, 62% of this oil revenue goes to fund social projects and small-business development.

Cuba also relies heavily on its ALBA ally for many of its economic necessities. In return for a part payment scheme for the 100,000 barrels of oil provided by Venezuela each day, Cuba sends more than 40,000 doctors, physicians, teachers, and other experts to assist in Venezuela’s social programmes.

Meanwhile, smaller ALBA members such as Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines all benefit from favourable trade links with Venezuela. For  example, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, which became part of ALBA in 2009, has reaped the rewards of a subsidised credit scheme for oil imports and cheap machinery, used to build the new Argyle International Airport that has allowed for the development of a tourism trade on the islands.

Chávez’s main rival, Henrique Capriles, has given assurances to Latin American leaders that he will not instigate an immediate change to trade dealings if elected president. “Venezuela will not leave any integration process and therefore [Venezuela] will not leave the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of America or the Mercosur common market,” he said to the French newspaper Libération.

However, he warned Cuba that Venezuela “cannot continue giving away our oil”. And to Nicaragua he said: “not a drop of black gold [oil] will leave this country for free”. Indeed, Nicaragua, Cuba, and the rest of the ALBA countries would to see a fall in revenue if favourable oil trade links with Venezuela were to end.

A 2011 report by the Nicaraguan Foundation for Economic and Social Development (Funides), an independent economic think-tank, warned of the “high degree of dependency of the economy in relations with Venezuela.”

It also said that a fall in Venezuelan trade would create a “shock” to the Nicaraguan economy and result in a significant fall in the GDP.

In Cuba, the economist and dissident Oscar Chepe said in an interview with the international press this week, that if Hugo Chávez loses it “may have dramatic consequences for Cuba”.

“With a moribund economy that has become parasitic, if [Cuba] loses the cord that feeds it from Venezuela, it would precipitate a disastrous and unsustainable situation”, he added.

Indeed, Cuba has not been a stranger to losing an ally it has fostered an economic dependency on. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Cuban economy was sent spiralling and a large part of its recovery was due to an alliance with Venezuela. Part of the problem for both Nicaragua and Cuba, is that this ‘dependency’ has weakened trade links with other nations.

Carlos Muñiz, the executive director of Funides, advised the Nicaraguan government that they had to “seek new sources of funding.”

Heeding the warning, Nicaragua has begun to diversify its trade links this year. Last month, the government signed a ‘memorandum of understanding’ with a Chinese telecom giant to fund a project to build an inter-oceanic canal across Nicaragua to rival the Panama Canal. The company has also agreed to invest a considerable sum in Nicaraguan telecommunication infrastructure and internet technology. However, in 2011 the trade with China amounted to a mere $17 million.

The Collapse of Socialism of the 21st Century?

As well as serving as an economic figurehead for the ALBA bloc, Venezuela is also a source of ideological direction.

According to Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega, the upcoming Venezuelan election “is a strategic battle for the Bolivarian revolution and Latin American people”.

Meanwhile the Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, whilst speaking at the United Nations, expressed his country’s solidarity with the Bolivarian and socialist cause of Hugo Chávez’s government.

A loss by Chávez in the elections would see the end of the centrepiece and founder of ‘Socialism of the 21st century’. Whilst this would not necessarily mean an ideological collapse across Latin America, it would slow down the cause.

Indeed, Venezuela currently provides a counterweight to US influence within the continent. If Hugo Chávez is not reelected, countries like Nicaragua and Cuba may find themselves having to move closer to the United States for economic assistance and political support.

The Cuban opposition sees that such a scenario would have dramatic consequences for Cuban history. “Rather than a confrontation between political parties, it could mark a turning point in the history of the [Cuban] nation,” said Oscar Chepe.

Furthermore, the US itself will hold presidential elections next month. These could be just as important for the ALBA countries as the Venezuelan election.

Indeed, Republican candidate Mitt Romney has taken an extremely disapproving stance on the ideological leadership of Nicaragua and Cuba.

Speaking before a US-Cuba Democracy Political Action Committee event in Miami this year, Romney stated: “If I’m fortunate to become the next president of the United States, it is my expectation that Fidel Castro will finally be taken off this planet”.

So over this weekend Central American and Caribbean eyes will be fixed to television screens and ears squeezed up to radios, to await news of the result of the Venezuelan election. Current polls are indicating a lead by Hugo Chávez, but nothing can be presumed and everyone must anxiously wait to discover who will be in charge of Venezuela for the next six years.

In Franz Kafka’s novel ‘The Trial’, the protagonist is arrested and put on trial by an unknown authority for a crime that is never revealed. US citizen Jason Puracal must have felt he was living in a Kafkaesque nightmare after spending the past two years in a Nicaraguan prison, not exactly sure what he had been convicted for. After a long fight, Puracal was eventually granted an appeal and on 12th September his sentence was overturned; two days later he was released from prison and returned to the United States.

“It’s hard for me to say what the reason was for my arrest and my illegal incarceration,” Puracal told me during a telephone interview. He has had the past two years to ponder this question every day but still he sounds helpless to come up with an answer. Much of the evidence against him relied on accusations against ten Nicaraguan nationals, with whom Puracal had little to no contact with. “I don’t know why I was linked to the other guys, I don’t know their reason for inventing such lies about me,” he stressed.

Puracal arrived in Nicaragua as part of the Peace Corps in 2004. He married a Nicaraguan citizen and their child was born in the country. But his nightmare began on the 11th November 2010, when policemen raided the offices of his real estate agency in San Juan del Sur, a company he owned with three other US citizens, and he was charged with international drug trafficking, money laundering, and organised crime. His trial would not begin for another nine months and in the meantime he was kept in “sub-human” conditions in a Nicaraguan prison. Eventually, when the trial started, it was closed to the media, his family, and the public, and on 29th of August he was sentenced to 22 years in prison.

However, Puracal’s family refused to give up the case. Frequent trips to Nicaragua were made and a considerable sum was spent on legal advice and pressure to right this wrong. Puracal’s case also captured the interest of human rights groups around the world. He was supported by a human rights lawyer who had worked with Vaclav Havel, Desmond Tutu, and Aung San Suu Kyi. He also found backing from The David House Agency, a Los Angeles-based international crisis agency, and the California Innocence Project that usually focuses on wrongful convictions within the state. US congressmen wrote to the Vice President of the United States and to Daniel Ortega, the President of Nicaragua.

A ‘Corrupt’ Judicial System?

Puracal’s case brings to light many of the deficiencies in Nicaragua’s judiciary. A survey last year, conducted by Latinobarómetro, found that only two-fifths of Nicaraguans are satisfied with their judicial system. It also found that more than half considered they would receive a favourable sentence if they bribed the judge, particularly in local courts, which are viewed as the one of the most likely public institutions to be corruption-prone.

Another report by Freedom House in the previous year found that only 18% of Nicaraguans polled thought that the functioning of the courts was “fair, impartial and uncorrupted”. This was well below the Latin America and the Caribbean’s regional average of 31%. A study by the same organisation in 2012 concluded: “the judiciary remains dominated by [political parties] FSLN and PLC appointees, and the Supreme Court is a largely politicised body controlled by Sandinista judges. The court system also suffers from corruption, long delays, a large backlog of cases, and a severe shortage of public defenders. Access to justice is especially deficient in rural areas and on the Caribbean coast”.

Worse still, during an 11-year study of corruption in Nicaragua between 1998 and 2009 published by BMC Health Services Research, the researchers found that “users’ experience of corruption in the courts worsened over the study period”. Although it did find an exception in the capital, Managua, between 2006 and 2009.

However, Puracal’s case is exceptional as it shows vividly at every stage, from his arrest to release, a flagrant lack of due process, judicial competence, and a fundamental respect for Nicaraguan law. The police officers who arrested Puracal did so without a warrant and despite finding no evidence. Then he was refused bail and the prosecution postponed the trial numerous times without giving a reason. The judge that handed down the sentence was never entitled to sit in the position. “He was an illegal judge,” Puracal said. According to the Nicaraguan constitution, to serve as a district court judge, one must be an attorney, have practised for at least three years, and have served as a local judge for at least two years. The judge, Kriguer Alberto Narvaez, did not meet these requirements. “It was his first and last trial”, Puracal explained. “He fled to Spain afterwards”.

During the trial important defence witnesses were not allowed to speak, Puracal was denied confidential meetings with his attorney, the judge shifted the burden of proof to the accused, and a main piece of evidence for money laundering relied on a failure by the prosecutors to understand the workings of an escrow account. In prison he was held in “sub-human” conditions and denied an appeal for over a year. When it finally came, the decision exceeded the legal time-limit and once he was acquitted, he was not allowed to leave prison for two days.

The Problem

So what is the problem with the Nicaraguan judiciary, and is it an exception in Central America? Chilean consultant Miguel Peñailillo, who specialises in democratic governance, has been researching corruption in the country for many years and has identified key areas of weakness in the judicial system. In 2009 he conducted a study entitled ‘Diagnosis of Corruption in Nicaragua’.

According to Peñailillo, corruption in Nicaragua has a long history. The successive presidential regimes of Violeta Chamorro (1990-1997), Arnoldo Alemán (1997-2002) and Enrique Bolaños (2002-2007) have all been personally tainted by it. This corruption at the top has trickled down and corroded the standards of various institutions. “The study indicates that one of the worst social effects of corruption going unpunished is that it creates the perception that corruption is more lucrative than honesty,” Peñailillo says.

Another problem is nepotism. “Justice officials do not apply the legal instruments that exist for punishing corruption. Instead they protect members of their own parties who are accused of misdeeds”. Therefore those who are in charge of stamping out corruption are in fact doing the opposite and allowing it to thrive.

Corruption, politicalisation, and nepotism all work to create a deficient judicial system; one based upon power and connections instead of competency and honesty. The lack of prosecution for corruption also corrodes a consistency of professionalism, for whilst some parts of the judicial system remain proficient and incorrupt, it is contaminated by the parts that are not.

However, it appears that Nicaragua is not unique in Central America. Indeed, a World Bank report in 2011 (‘Crime and Violence in Central America: a Development Challenge’) found that poor judicial institutions were one of the biggest contributors to rising crime levels and the weakening of democracy in the entire region. In fact, Nicaragua can consider itself in a fortunate position as it remains relatively free of the levels of drug-related crime and high murder rates that are inflicted upon its neighbours. “There is a vicious circle in the region where the high crime rates are contributing to weakening the criminal justice system”, the report stated.

Anti-gringo Sentiment?

An elephant in the room that must also be explored is the fact that Puracal is a US citizen. Could this have had any impact on his case? A few years ago Nicaragua saw another trial, imprisonment, and then release of a US citizen. Eric Volz, who also lived in San Juan del Sur, was convicted to 30 years in prison for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend. The evidence against Volz was flimsy; he had several alibis that put him in a distant location at the time of the incident, which text-messaging data corroborated; however the trial judge refused to listen to the defence witnesses and his conviction was in largely due to the evidence given by a man who had been originally arrested for the crime and turned up drunk to the court. After one year in prison the sentence was overturned and Volz returned to the US to write a memoir and become the director of The David House Agency, which assisted in Puracal’s case.

It is Volz’s opinion that his conviction was inspired by “anti-gringo sentiment”. When the acquittal was announced, the Sandinista government’s Chief Prosecutor, Julio Centeno, called his release a “barbarity,” whilst Human Rights Ombudsman Omar Cabezas said that Volz must not be allowed to leave Nicaragua. According to his own memoirs, he had to avoid an angry lynch mob on the way to the airport to return to the US.

But Puracal is not so sure his case was motivated by such a sentiment. “It would be impossible for me to say that it was,” he said. Certainly his case did not entice as much public anger or government rhetoric as the Volz case. Indeed, the government has almost been conspicuous by its absence. He also took the time to thank the many Nicaraguans who supported him with words and deeds. “There were a lot of Nicaraguan communities, in San Juan Sur and in Rivas, and around the country, who sent letters and food items, and who said they were praying for me,” he told me.

However, Puracal became noticeably annoyed when I went on to ask him about the accusation of being given “preferential treatment”, such as being moved to a ‘presidential cell’ that was built for former president Arnoldo Alemán, because he was a US citizen. “I was moved from jail, to jail, to jail. I was put in lockdown for three months in La Modelo. There was no electricity and I was with the worst offenders,” he said. He suffered numerous health problems, all of which were ignored by prison guards; he was robbed, assaulted, and given inadequate food and water.

“They don’t allow foreigners to study, to work, so foreigners get treated a little bit different there,” Puracal went on to say. “There are a lot of other Americans in the system. I would meet them when the embassy would come and visit us and give us books to read”.

According to recent figures released by the US state department, 393 of the 725 US citizens imprisoned abroad are behind Latin American bars. No further information was released regarding numbers per country nor the specifics of the cases, so it is quite impossible to estimate how many people are residing in Nicaraguan prisons due to a wrongful conviction.

It is also a fact – which necessitates a comparable international outcry and journalistic study – that for every US citizen wrongfully imprisoned there is likely to be 100 Nicaraguans who have also faced a corrupt and deficient judicial system. Whilst these individual cases might not make international headlines nor lead to petitions being sent to the UN, each is just as important as Puracal’s fight against his wrongful conviction. Indeed, if the Nicaraguan justice system is to progress and improve, either from above through reform or from below through public pressure, then each and every case of wrongful imprisonment must be brought to national and international attention.

The Next Step

For a man who has gone through all of this, Puracal takes an accommodating view of Nicaragua. “I know the judicial system in Nicaragua is not perfect and the prison system, like any other prison system around the world, is dangerous,” he said. “I still believe in Nicaragua and its people. I fell in love with the country and it will always have a special place in my heart”.

It seems likely that in the coming years he will step foot on Nicaraguan soil once again. He concluded our chat by stating: “I hope that I can return to Nicaragua someday and set up an organisation similar to the Californian Innocence Project that helped my case, to help others that have also been wrongly convicted”.

If this does happen then it will certainly have a positive effect on the Nicaraguan justice system. One of the reasons why Puracal received his day in the appeal court was because of international and national pressure. In a country where the judiciary has become intertwined with politicians and political parties, constant pressure and exposure is needed to ensure wrongful convictions are overturned and judges are held accountable for their actions.