WCCN's Newsletter, Summer 2007, Volume 23, No. 2

The Women’s Empowerment Project (WEP) is WCCN’s longest-running program. For over seventeen years, we have partnered with and supported several Nicaraguan women’s organizations. This support is demonstrated in different ways and at different levels.

In this letter, I would like to express my growing concerns with the latest developments in Nicaragua under the new government of President Daniel Ortega.

In his memoirs of the Nicaraguan Revolution, former Sandinista leader Sergio Ramírez wrote that democracy was the main outcome of the Revolution, despite the fact that it was never its main goal. In fact, there was a time when Daniel Ortega played a very important role on the process of rooting democracy in Nicaragua, especially once he allowed the first peaceful transfer of power in Nicaraguan history from one elected President to another. However, since that time, Ortega has not been a loyal supporter of democracy for the country or of the democratization of the Frente Sandinista. Once Ortega signed a political pact with former President Arnoldo Alemán, he even turned out to be one of the main problems for the consolidation and expansion of Nicaraguan democracy and the democratization of his own party. Now that he is in power, he has been widening the Nicaraguan democracy deficit, which could make that deficit irreversible, by eliminating the minimal characteristics of a democratic society.

On Thursday, April 26, WCCN hosted its Annual Meeting at the United Way Building in Madison where it welcomed three special guests from Nicaragua—Ruben Poveda, Manager of the April 20th Cooperative in Quilalí; Armando Ramirez, Manager of the San Antonio Cooperative in Nueva Guinea; and Imelda Peralta, Manager of the Hand to Hand Cooperative in Waslala. The meeting offered WCCN members the opportunity to hear firsthand accounts the successes, struggles and goals of the cooperatives.

Santiago Zamora and Rosa Martinez are first and sixth-grade teachers in Quilalí, a town nestled in Nicaragua’s mountainous region near the Honduran border. Nicaraguan schoolteachers are the lowest paid in Central America and given Quilali’s remoteness, its teachers are often some of the lowest paid in the country. Earning just over $115 monthly apiece, the couple has learned to be frugal with their earnings so that they can afford to send their five children, ranging in age from 10 to 17, to school.

• A donation of $50 provides a woman working with the Rural Women’s Committee in León with a goat that she can use to help feed her family and raise her income by selling dairy products.

• For $140, you can provide a secondary school scholarship to a student who is active in the Xochilt-Acatl Women’s Center’s Youth Education Program. This pays for uniforms, books, food and transportation. Without this support, families face increased financial hardship, causing many students to abandon their studies.

According to the Movimiento Autónomo de Mujeres, or the Autonomous Women’s Movement (MAM), the new government led by President Daniel Ortega has begun demonstrating a consistent pattern, which displays an undemocratic style of government that could be very dangerous for Nicaragua’s still-fragile democracy. Considering that MAM decided a few years ago to fight for democracy, not only for women but for the whole country, it is very likely to expect an escalation in the levels of confrontation between Ortega’s government and MAM. If Ortega’s undemocratic style of government does not change radically, MAM and other organizations from civil society could become targets for harassment, or even worse, repression and prosecution (legal and illegal), as they increasingly articulate opposition to Ortega’s government.

“It’s a priority of ours to build horizontal relationships with organizations where we can mutually illuminate each other to find viable and sustainable projects,” said Diana Martinez, Executive Director of the Fundación Entre Mujeres (La FEM) at a meeting on WCCN’s June study tour. As noted in a preceding article by Executive Director Carlos Arenas, the relationship which WCCN helped facilitate between La FEM and Madison-based coffee roaster Just Coffee culminated in the purchase of the full coffee harvest of the co-ops with which La FEM works.

WCCN believes that education plays a key role in changing gender roles in society. As a result, WCCN has started a scholarship program for young rural women, initially in the community of La Loma, in the municipality of Malpaisillo, in the department of León. The program is administered by WCCN in collaboration with the Centro de Mujeres Xochilt-Acatl.