PrairiePundit

 AP: ... Nicaragua’s poisonous mix of economic decline and repression has led to about half of the country’s population of 6.2 million saying they want to leave their homeland, according to a new study, and 23% saying they had contemplated the possibility deeply enough to consider themselves “very prepared” to emigrate. “A large proportion of them have already taken concrete steps to try to get out,” said Elizabeth Zechmeister, the director of the AmericasBarometer study “The Pulse of Democracy in the Americas.” The study, which was released on Wednesday, shows that the number of Nicaraguans wanting to leave rose from 35% five years ago to almost half today, and that about 32% of people in 26 Latin American countries surveyed say they want to migrate. ... Nicaragua is a poorly run country whose people are unable to achieve freedom and prosperity. 

Miami Herald: The Trump administration is considering imposing sanctions on companies from third countries that facilitate the shipment of Venezuelan oil to Cuba, a senior administration official told the Miami Herald. “The interim president of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, recognized by the U.S. and Europe, where most of these companies are from, has asked us to stop these shipments and we are considering everything to be supportive,” the official said. The Venezuelan National Assembly, controlled by the opposition, agreed to suspend the shipment of crude oil to Cuba as part of a state of emergency decree approved on Monday to respond to the chaos caused by a major electrical blackout. Guaidó published on Twitter a chart estimating that the Nicolás Maduro regime sends 47,000 barrels of oil per day to Cuba, the equivalent of about $2.5 million under current world oil prices. The decision “to cut the oil supply to Cuba asserts our independence,” Guaidó wrote on Twitter. “Cuban interfe...

CBS News: The U.S. government on Friday ordered non-emergency government personnel to leave Nicaragua and advised travelers to reconsider going to the country. A State Department travel advisory that was updated Friday said U.S. government personnel in the country must stay in their homes and "avoid unnecessary travel between sundown and sunrise." Nicaragua has been rocked by protests and a violent crackdown by authorities since April, when demonstrations began demanding President Daniel Ortega's exit from office. Ortega's government has likened such demands to an attempted coup. A report last month from a team of independent investigators said at least 212 people have been killed in clashes. Talks aimed at resolving the crisis have repeatedly broken down. U.S. citizen killed in Nicaragua amid violence and social unrest The U.S. State Department says heavily armed, government-controlled paramilitary forces operate in areas of the country including in its capital...

Washington Times: hen Nicaraguan guerrilla leader Daniel Ortega first took power in mid-1979, his admirers included a 17-year-old Caracas high school dropout who celebrated a “newly lit light” in Latin America as he maneuvered his bus around Venezuela’s hilly capital. Nearly four decades down the road, the driver, Nicolas Maduro, clings to power as his country’s embattled president, and it seems to be the increasingly unpopular Mr. Ortega who is taking cues from his Venezuelan counterpart as he tries to hold on to power. It has been a stunning comedown for Mr. Ortega, who led the anti-U.S. Sandinista movement in the Reagan era and seemed so secure in power two years ago that he engineered the election of his wife as vice president in a landslide electoral win. All that has changed since an outbreak of popular discontent in April. It is so severe that some warn of a coup and others fear the country could face another civil war. Faced with nationwide protests — initially over a...

BBC: Amnesty International has accused the Nicaraguan government of colluding with paramilitary groups to suppress weeks of student-led demonstrations against President Daniel Ortega. It said the groups used semi-automatic weapons and co-ordinated their attacks with the security forces. Around 80 people have died so far in the protests. They began in April, triggered by welfare reforms but turned into a rejection of the Ortega government. The photos that explain Nicaragua's crisis Nicaragua reporter killed during Facebook live The Amnesty International (AI) report said the armed groups were often made up of pro-government students and motorcyclists, sometimes identifiable by clothing linking them to the authorities. "These groups appear to be acting with the acquiescence of the state, as is demonstrated firstly by the fact that most of the attacks were committed by private individuals in the presence of or in co-ordination with the security forces," the report said. ...

Resurgent: Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) says that American taxpayer funds are being used to help prop up the Nicaraguan regime of Daniel Ortega. Thousands of Nicaraguans have taken to the streets over the past month to protest the authoritarian government of Ortega, who many believe is attempting to set up a family dictatorship. Describing the current situation, Cruz said last week in a speech to the Heritage Foundation , “At the end of the last month, half a million Nicaraguans took to the street to protest the corrupt Ortega regime – many of them students. These protests were sparked due to proposed changes to their national social security program. The Sandinistas predictably deployed their national police force, and the violence escalated. Dozens were murdered. Hundreds were injured, detained, or missing.” He continued, “The press that tried to cover these crimes has been censored, and reporters have been harassed by agents of the government. Five TV stations have been taken off th...

Monica Showalter: Daniel Ortega, the rabid, "freely elected" dictator of Nicaragua, and a guy who's been at it for so long that even the great Ronald Reagan knew about him and loathed him, has been having some problems in the Cuba-style hellhole he created in the name of "social justice." The socialist thug has been siccing his goons to shoot protesters dead in the streets after a few of the youthful ones got the ball rolling with protests against his long, corrupt rule.  Get a load of how bad it was,  according to the BBC : Some students said they had been beaten and tortured by police while in custody.  The claims could not be independently verified. Images on social media showed some, visibly distressed and with their heads shaved, as they were released. At least 25 people are reported to have died in days of violent protests. The unrest started last Wednesday when hundreds of people, mainly pensioners, took to the streets of the capital, Managu...

Washington Post: Russia again plants its flag in Nicaragua, stirring fears in the U.S. Three decades after Nicaragua became the prize in a Cold War battle with Washington, Russia is once again making its presence known in the Central American nation. Over the past two years, it has added muscle to its security partnership there, selling tanks and weapons and sending troops. The Russian surge appears to be part of the Kremlin’s expansionist foreign policy. Nicaragua is pretty much a failed state whose biggest export appears to be refugees trying to escape from the murder and mayhem. The Russians might like to use it as a base for projecting power in this hemisphere but they will also have to deal with the endemic crime and corruption that exist there.  It will be an expensive project for a country that is already burning through its currency reserves as a result of the drop in the price of oil.

Miami Herald: Central American nations have reached a deal to let the first of thousands of stranded Cuban migrants continue their journey north toward the United States next month, officials said Monday. The humanitarian transfer will airlift an unspecified number of Cubans the first week of January from Costa Rica to El Salvador, from where they will continue by bus toward Mexico, Costa Rica's Foreign Ministry said in a statement. The Guatemalan government, which hosted a diplomatic meeting earlier in the day to consider the issue, described it as a "pilot" program and said a work group has been tasked with coordinating logistics. The two governments did not immediately release further details, citing some nations' desire for discretion on what has become a diplomatic flashpoint between Costa Rica and neighboring Nicaragua. The number of Cubans stranded in Costa Rica has reached at least 8,000 since Nicaragua closed its border to them weeks ago. The island...

Fausta: Nicaragua: Cubans storming the border They start their trek from Costa Rico and begin working their way up to the Mexican border.   Hos is that "smart diplomacy working out for Obama?

Bloomberg: China's Building a Huge Canal in Nicaragua, But We Couldn't Find It Not only is there no canal to be found, there is also none of the heavy equipment that would be needed for such a project, much less the steel and concrete.  Nicaragua remains as poor and incompetently governed as always, with its own commies in charge.

Guardian: Nicaraguans struggling to afford meat as the country suffers its worst drought in 32 years should consider raising and eating iguanas, a government expert has suggested. The advice comes amid warnings that Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador could require levels of humanitarian aid not seen since the aftermath of hurricane Mitch 16 years ago, as poor harvests and rapid increases in the prices of staple items threaten a food crisis. “Breeding iguanas brings two benefits,” said Guillermo Membreño, a land management expert. “Not only does it supply dietary protein, it also offers a commercial use for the animals.” Iguanas, he added, contained 24% protein compared with 18% in chicken. Although Nicaragua’s environmental laws forbid the hunting of iguanas between 1 January and 30 April each year, the lizards can be kept for food and even exported under certain circumstances. “Farming iguanas – and not hunting them in forests – is a good way to deal with the food short...

Victor Davis Hanson: No one knows just how many tens of thousands of Central American nationals — most of them desperate, unescorted children and teens — are streaming across America's southern border. Yet this phenomenon offers us a proverbial teachable moment about the paradoxes and hypocrisies of Latin American immigration to the U.S. For all the pop romance in Latin America associated with Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, few Latinos prefer to immigrate to such communist utopias or to socialist spinoffs like Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador or Peru. Instead, hundreds of thousands of poor people continue to risk danger to enter democratic, free-market America, which they've often been taught back home is the source of their misery. They either believe that America's supposedly inadequate social safety net is far better than the one back home, or that its purportedly cruel free market gives them more opportunities than anywhere in Latin America — or both. Mexico strictly enfor...

Miami Herald: A year ago this month, Bolivian President Evo Morales inaugurated the College for Defense of the Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas (ALBA) with a speech in which he called for the expulsion of U.S. intelligence agencies, a new military doctrine based on “asymmetrical war” against “imperialism” and the “abolition” of the U.N. Security Council. He also attacked the press, calling CNN a “tool of capitalism”,   Morales spoke in the presence of Iran’s defense minister, Gen Ahmed Vahidi, who had to be rushed from the ceremony when it was learned that Argentine prosecutors were issuing an international arrest warrant over his alleged role in the 1994 Hezbollah bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.   ALBA is a Venezuelan-led association of anti-U.S. governments which also includes Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and some Caribbean island states dependent on Venezuelan oil subsidies. The fledgling alliance has been given little ...

Peter Brooks: Even as his government back home was sentencing to death an American citizen it outrageously claims is a spy, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad embarked on a five-day visit to four of Latin America’s most anti-American regimes: Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Cuba.   Naturally, Ahmadinejad’s visit started with his pal, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (whose consul general in Miami is reportedly being booted for scheming with Iranian operatives on possible cyberattacks against us).   The “diabolical duo” then will head to Nicaragua, where they’ll attend the inauguration of re-elected President Daniel Ortega, a fan of the Iranian Revolution since his Sandinista days during the Cold War.   Ahmadinejad’s stops in Ecuador and Cuba will serve only to prove that their leaders, Rafael Correa and Raul Castro, have little real interest in improving relations with the United States, but still expect the Obama administration to look the other way a...

Image via Wikipedia Carlos Alberto Montaner: Twenty-first-century socialism in Latin America actually consists of five socialisms, as many as the countries that constitute that caudillo -led, anti-republican, chaotic and authoritarian little world. They unite in anti-Americanism , in the conviction that individuals must be at the service of the State, not the opposite, in their contempt for the market and in the superstition that the caudillo knows exactly what benefits or hurts all citizens, but they're very different. The governments that compose it are Cuba , Venezuela , Bolivia , Ecuador and Nicaragua . ... He goes on to explain what each hopes to get from their socialist fantasy. This will not end well for them. Related articles Chavez Tastes Defeat Over Reforms (time.com)

Image via Wikipedia LA Times: The president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega , has received almost $1 billion in aid from President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela -- sometimes in "suitcases full of cash" sent from Caracas -- a relationship that prompted a U.S. diplomat to dub Ortega a "Chavez Mini-Me," leaked U.S. diplomatic cables show. Ortega, the cables say, also funds his party's political campaigns with money from drug traffickers and once bribed a prominent Nicaraguan boxer to stump for him in public in exchange for not facing sexual assault charges -- which Ortega himself has faced, as alleged by his stepdaughter. The batch of new cables, released by WikiLeaks and published by the Spanish newspaper El Pais and other sites, paint a deeply unflattering portrait of the ex-guerrilla leader, asking at one point of Ortega's foreign-policy ambitions: "Petulant Teen or Axis of Evil Wannabe?" Ortega and first lady Rosario Murillo are described as b...

Independent: Connie was just nine years old when her father first raped her. The abuse continued until she was 14. She told Amnesty International that her father would regularly hit her so much that she was unable to go to school the next day. Why? Chillingly because he wanted her to stay at home so “he could abuse her as much as he wanted”. Throughout those five years Connie felt powerless to say anything, or to speak up. The abuse came to an end when, at 14, Connie became pregnant. At that point the police got involved and visited the house. Shortly after the police left (without taking action), Connie’s father tried to commit suicide and died in hospital shortly afterwards. When Connie’s situation was finally revealed, rather than receiving the care she desperately needed, Connie had to deal with a barrage of criticism from her teachers and her own brothers who blamed her for leaving them without a father. Today Connie is 17 years old and still struggling to rebuild her life...

Image via CrunchBase Benny Avni: Will the Obama administration ever start standing up to the Latin axis of caudillos? Nicaragua invaded Costa Rica last month -- yet the State Department is all but AWOL . State is taking a carefully worded, almost neutral stand in the dispute between Costa Rica -- our ally, and the world's most pacifist country -- and Nicaragua, a key player in Hugo Chavez 's group of Latin strongmen. Last month, Nicaragua sent troops into a jungle area at the mouth of the San Juan River, which has long been determined by mediators to be on Costa Rica's side of the border. The excuse for the invasion: Google Maps recently showed the area as part of Nicaragua. Costa Rica, as its President Laura Chinchilla Miranda noted in a Nov. 3 address to the nation as the dispute begun, is "a peace-loving country -- and this is what distinguishes us the most, among nations in the world." The country has long chosen to have no army and to rely solely ...

Times: The head of the Sandinista Government in Nicaragua protected one of the world’s top drug barons and helped him to establish trafficking routes through the country, a former high-ranking officer has claimed. During the 1980s Daniel Ortega, the revolutionary leader and current President, gave Pablo Escobar, the head of Colombia’s Medellín cartel, access to drug corridors as well as sanctuary and a military guard, according to the allegations. Cuba and Panama, then led by Fidel Castro and Manuel Noriega, are also said to have participated in the deal, with Panama acting as a financial and money-laundering centre and Cuba protecting shipments. The claims have been made by Victor Boitano, a former colonel and member of the Nicaraguan Army’s high command. Speaking to The Times this week Colonel Boitano said: “A mechanism was established here in Managua [the Nicaraguan capital] for the use of soldiers for personal protection of Escobar, for his residence and for the ship...