Doctors say details on strategy are lacking – a lack of clarity that has characterized the authoritarian leader’s pandemic response
The first person in Nicaragua to receive a coronavirus vaccine was Marco Antonio Aráuz, 62, who was given a dose of the Russian Sputnik V treatment at Managua’s Blue Cross hospital.
Related: Nicaragua leaders face backlash after forming space agency amid human rights crisis
Continue reading...BBC reporter Will Grant has produced an excellent look at the group of strongmen who came from left field
If there was ever a surreal start to a trip to Cuba, it was the one that coincided with the news Fidel Castro had died. That was what I woke up to on 26 November 2016, hours before my husband and I were due to fly to Havana. A day later, we found ourselves in what seemed like an endless queue under a blazing autumn sun, waiting to enter Castro’s memorial at the Jose Martí monument in the Plaza de la Revolución.
Related: Sisters in Hate review: tough but vital read on the rise of racist America
Continue reading...The country should not be held up as a shining example in its response to the pandemic, writes Dr Hilary Francis, who points to the failure to provide accurate data and firing of health workers
John Perry (Letters, 31 December) suggests that we should learn from the Nicaraguan government’s management of Covid. He doesn’t mention that 700 Nicaraguan health professionals wrote an open letter begging the government to acknowledge the extent of the crisis, or that at least 10 health workers have been fired for criticising the government response. In the absence of accurate government data, an independent citizen observatory has been established, which attempts to keep track of the rate of infection. They estimate 11,935 cases in the period to 23 December, nearly double the official number.
On 21 December, Nicaragua’s national assembly passed a law that gives President Daniel Ortega the right to unilaterally declare that citizens are “traitors to the homeland” and ban them from running for office. The new legislation ensures that elections, scheduled for November 2021, will not be free and fair. There are no lessons to be learned from Ortega’s policies, but Nicaragua’s descent into dictatorship demands much closer attention.
Dr Hilary Francis
Northumbria University
In Chichigalpa, kidney failure accounts for half of all male deaths over the last decade. Could industry changes be the key to saving lives?
For decades, a mystery epidemic has plagued young male labourers toiling in Nicaragua’s sugar cane plantations. The men start their work fit and strong, but after repeated harvests chopping cane under the tropical sun, they begin to suffer from nausea, back pain and exhaustion, get such severe muscle weakness that they can no longer earn a living, then end up dying of kidney failure, despite many being only in their 20s and 30s.
In Chichigalpa, the centre of Nicaragua’s sugar cane industry, the mysterious illness accounts for half of all male deaths over the last decade. Just outside this “town of city and rum”, as it is known, one rural community has earned itself the moniker “La Isla de Viudas” – the Island of Widows.
Continue reading...Second devastating hurricane in two weeks lashes fragile nation and leaves villages submerged
Nery Benitez was working shifts as a baggage handler at San Pedro Sula’s airport when it got flooded by Hurricane Eta. This week it was inundated again as Hurricane Iota struck.
“I had gone seven months without work and three days after I got called back this flooding happened,” the 50-year-old said. “We have family and children. How are we going to feed them?”
Continue reading...Hurricane Iota has made landfall on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast, threatening catastrophic damage. Huge waves crashed into the Colombian island of San Andrés as the storm churned through the region, lashing Nicaragua with winds of up to 155mph (250kmh).
The latest storm hit just two weeks after Hurricane Eta, which caused havoc across the same parts of Central America. The presidents of Honduras and Guatemala have called on wealthier countries to help deal with the cost of the climate crisis
• This video was amended on 17 November 2020 to remove unrelated footage that had been mistakenly included in a report by the Associated Press
Storm may bring dangerous winds, storm surge and as much as 30in of rain to Nicaragua and Honduras
Tropical Storm Iota was brewing in the Caribbean early on Saturday, threatening a second tropical strike for Nicaragua and Honduras, countries recently ransacked by Eta, a category 4 hurricane.
Related: Devastating 2020 Atlantic hurricane season breaks all records
Continue reading...Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala worst affected with scores dead and more than 200,000 people evacuated from their homes
Central America is braced for further storms this weekend as the region reels from the devastation caused by Hurricane Eta, the Red Cross has warned.
Forecasters believe a weather front forming in the Caribbean has a 90% chance of becoming a cyclone, making it the 30th named Atlantic storm of 2020 in a record-breaking hurricane season, shattering the previous worst year of 28 storms in 2005.
Continue reading...Storm Eta has unleashed torrential rain, causing catastrophic landslides and flooding in Central America. Dozens of people have been killed and more than 300,000 displaced after raging torrents tore through cities.
Eta, one of the fiercest storms to hit Central America in years, struck Nicaragua as a category 4 hurricane on Tuesday with 150mph (241kph) winds, before weakening as it moved inland and into neighbouring Honduras
Continue reading...Many thousands evacuated as storm moves inland, wrenching roofs off houses, downing trees and severing power lines in Puerto Cabezas
Hurricane Eta, an unusually powerful storm, has slammed into Nicaragua, bringing potentially disastrous flooding to one of the country’s poorest regions.
The heart of the storm begin to move inland on Tuesday, wrenching roofs off houses and causing rivers to overflow. In Puerto Cabezas on the Atlantic coast,trees were torn down and power lines were severed, plunging much of the city into darkness. About 10,000 people were in shelters in the city and an equal number in smaller towns across the region, according to city officials.
Continue reading...System formed in the Caribbean and tied record for most named storms in a single Atlantic hurricane season
Forecasters said they expected the newly-formed Tropical storm Eta to become a hurricane by Monday, shortly after the system formed in the Caribbean and tied the record for most named storms in a single Atlantic hurricane season.
Related: Is climate change making hurricanes worse?
Continue reading...Years of social progress could be reversed by the virus, amid accusations that politicians have been fatally inept
As coronavirus galloped through Latin America in late April, the mayor of Manaus was in despair. “The outlook is dismal,” Arthur Virgílio admitted as gravediggers in the Amazon’s largest city piled coffins into muddy trenches, Brazil’s death toll hit 5,500, and its president, Jair Bolsonaro, responded with a shrug. “It’s obvious this won’t end well.”
Two months later, Virgílio’s nightmare has come true. Brazil’s death toll has risen to more than 60,000 – the second highest in the world after the United States – with some now predicting it could overtake the US, where 130,000 have died, by the end of July.
Continue reading...Nicaragua’s government denies community spread in the country but an independent tally says deaths are 20 times the official figure
Earlier this year, as countries enforced strict social-distancing rules to slow the spread of coronavirus, Nicaragua’s Sandinista rulers organized a string of pro-government rallies and marches under the banner “Love Walk in the Time of Covid-19”.
Among those who joined one of those crowds in Managua was Dr Félix Bravo, a doctor in the country’s public health system, whose loyalty to the Nicaraguan government apparently outweighed the World Health Organization’s warnings against large gatherings.
Continue reading...An independent tally puts coronavirus deaths at nearly 10 times the official figure as bodies are interred quickly and quietly
Shortly after midnight, five ambulances pull up at the German Nicaraguan hospital in Managua – lights flashing, but no sirens wailing.
The gates quickly close behind them, but reopen after less than half an hour, and the convoy heads out again into the dark streets.
Continue reading...Daniel Ortega was last seen on 12 March, and his absence has sparked anger and fear as Central America battles pandemic
He was one of the key leaders of Nicaragua’s revolutionary Sandinista movement that drove the dictatorial Somoza clan from power.
But in the battle against coronavirus, Daniel Ortega has been invisible, sparking wild speculation over whether Nicaragua’s septuagenarian leader is self-isolating, bed-bound in hospital – or might even have died.
Continue reading...Exodus expected to continue from Central American country, amid fears of repeat of state and police repression
More than 100,000 people have fled persecution in Nicaragua, with numbers set to rise, two years after the country was plunged into social and economic crisis, the UN’s refugee agency warned.
Even after a violent crackdown against nationwide anti-government protests in April 2018 had subsided, Nicaraguan students, human rights defenders, journalists and farmers have continued to seek asylum abroad at the rate of 4,000 a month.
Continue reading...In 1983 ministers of the revolutionary Sandinista government lined up on the tarmac to welcome Pope John Paul II on his first visit to Nicaragua. Moments later, TV cameras showed the pontiff wagging a finger at the kneeling Ernesto Cardenal, priest and minister of culture, admonishing him for mixing religion and politics.
But for Cardenal, who has died aged 95, there was no distinction between the two. His beliefs as a Roman Catholic growing up in Central America in the 1940s and 50s led him to seek social justice in a country that had for many years suffered under the dynastic rule of the Somoza family. His faith also meant he could not avoid political responsibility if it was thrust upon him.
Continue reading...Six indigenous people have been killed and other 10 kidnapped after scores of armed men raided an isolated Nicaraguan nature reserve in an attack linked to raging land disputes.
About 80 attackers stormed a Mayangna commune about 500km (310 miles) north of capital Managua, deep in the north-central Bosawás Biosphere Reserve, the second-largest rainforest in the Americas after the Amazon.
Continue reading...Wave of protests and violence against austerity measures and political corruption swept Bolivia, Venezuela, Chile and other Latin American countries
Continue reading...The UN human rights office has called on Nicaragua to end its “persistent repression of dissent”, saying that the recent detention of 16 anti-government protesters accused of arms trafficking appear to be based on “trumped-up charges”.
Nicaraguan police said on Monday that the protesters were also suspected of planning to carry out terrorist attacks in the Central American country, which has been roiled by demonstrations against the administration of President Daniel Ortega since April last year.
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