Sanctions against Nicaragua attack the BRICS economic territory

Latin America affairs’ topic for  the central America sates and their struggle with the United State and global geopolitics.

Second article by Journalist Bruno Beaklini

Source: the middle east monitor

In April 2018, in Nicaragua, protests against Social Security reform broke out, the application of a neoliberal measure called “Social Security Reform” In terms of economic policy, the measure would be a right turn, coming from a continuist government.

As stated in a previous text, Daniel Ortega was elected in 2007 and has since been re-elected since then.

Now he is trying another term – through him or the first lady, Rosario Murillo – in the November 2021 elections.

The repression that followed the real uprising of Nicaraguan civil society was impressive.

Thousands of people took to the streets in the country, with a majority of underemployed youth or ex-Sandinistas who were deeply disappointed with what had become “ortheguism”.

Nothing justifies what happened in Nicaragua and deserves all the criticisms and alternatives by the left, up to the epic of Augusto Cesar Sandino and Carlos Fonseca.

There were more than three months of protests and at least 320 people murdered by state forces.

So much repression and barbarism, just in the land that served as an example and that consolidated the second victorious revolution in Latin America after the Cold War.

If we keep an eye on the chronology, the protests took place from April to July 2018.

The so-called Nica Act (NICA – Nicaragua’s Investment and Conditionality Act) started to go through the US House of Representatives in May 2017, formulated by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Despite using her spouse’s name, Ileana was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1952, belonging to the family of the notorious “gusano” Enrique Ros.

This gentleman, a broadcaster who defends the embargo and economic blockade against Cuba, left the island in 1959 when the former parliamentarian, the author of the economic sanctions against Nicaragua, was just seven years old.

It is a continuation of the policy of the United States in trying to maintain its almost absolute hegemony in the Caribbean-Antilles system.

Introduced in May 2017, the law aimed to halt the growth of the Nicaraguan economy – which grew 4.9% that year.

The absurd legal text, with the same imperial pretensions of the era of the Banana Wars (see in full in English here: it implies: “The law aims to condition the loans that the Nicaraguan government asks international financial institutions for approval by the United States“).

The “logic”, the former parliamentary Gusana drafted a legal text aimed at imposing sanctions on a sovereign country.

A year later, in the usual selectivity, Washington, then under the Trump administration, chooses an enemy that suppresses protests in his country.

Two weights and two measures.

With organized crime taking over entire structures in Honduras, a fact tried and proven by the US federal justice system, these crimes passed by the financial speculator who captured the imagination of the Republican electorate.

Joe Biden defeated the businessman who collected six fraudulent bankruptcies in November 2020, and so far has not eased imperial blocking measures against Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

This is because in view of the “new cold war”, these three countries have a tendency to become the economic territory of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).

This condition is due to the weight of China as the largest trading partner of almost all countries in Latin America.

But it also occurs due to the stupid American imperial policy, which forces any sovereign country on our continent to seek outlets that go far beyond dependent and subordinate foreign policy.

If any nation-state does not want to be a world pariah (as Bolsonaro’s chancellor, Ernesto Araújo, dreams come true) will need to seek commercial partnerships and strategic arrangements not conditioned by the Fourth Fleet and the U.S. Southern Command.

The Nicaraguan Pacific and the new arrangement

One of the permanent challenges for the projection of imperial power in the United States is the possibility – very remote indeed – of building a new interoceanic channel in Nicaragua.

The first attempt was abandoned due to the bankruptcy of the Chinese company that would have the construction contract and the rights to explore the channel economically.

If carried out, this work could compromise the fresh water source of Lake Cocibolca and dislodge approximately 120 thousand peasants and native populations from their lands. Environmental costs are too high and investment is too high, but given the excellence and speed of Chinese structural engineering, Managua is always an asset in the face of American pressure.

Another more feasible possibility is Nicaragua’s greater participation in multilateral or bilateral agreements with the BRICS countries, with special attention to the three powers: China, Russia and India.

As a legacy of the Cold War, the Ortega government still has ties with Russia and could combine arms purchases and weapons systems with Venezuela, a country that has renewed part of its fighter aviation and defense systems with Russian partners.

Cuba has been a longstanding arms client since the Soviet period and, thus, could develop a consortium of mutual benefits, similar to what happened in neighboring Honduras, under the government of José Manuel Zelaya Rosales (January 2006 to June 2009) and Operation Miracle.

During this period, Hondurans with cataracts and other vision disorders were operated on by Cuban doctors based in Venezuela, whose transportation was subsidized by the government of Caracas.

Similar operations are part of Cuban foreign policy, always contributing its abundant human resources and expertise in the medical-hospital and chemical-pharmaceutical fields.

Along with China, Nicaragua would have full conditions to compromise all of its agricultural production and also to carry out targeted purchases with technology transfer.

In a consortium with Cuba and Venezuela, it is fully feasible to increase participation, directly or indirectly, in trade agreements in the Caribbean.

A “detail” is missing.

In 1990, during the government of the oligarch Violeta Chamorro, the president elected by the UNO party broke off relations with Mainland China and established a rapprochement with Taiwan.

Relations advanced and, in January 2008, involved a Free Trade Agreement with the Taipei government.

Since 2007, with the arrival of Ortega-Murillo to power and the promulgation of NICA-ACT, Managua has been increasing the presence of Chinese capitals in the country (through intermediaries), as well as expanding the possibility that Beijing would suspend surcharges for Nicaraguan products.

In Central America, Panama, Costa Rica and El Salvador have diplomatic relations with China and, as a result, broke with Taiwan.

An example of how the triangulation with Cuba and Venezuela could operate in the expansion of the economic territory of the BRICS is in the plastic sector.

Nicaragua is a country with a scarcity of industrial production, both basic and manufacturing with high added value.

In Central America, industrial production comes with Guatemala (28.4%), Panama (24.8%) and Costa Rica (23.1%), El Salvador (10.1%), Honduras (9.3% ) and Nicaragua (4.7%).

The base industry, in the petrochemical industry – for example – could support the country’s permanent demand for plastic.

All sovereign integration is beneficial for Latin America and, in the case of manufacturing and nationalization of technology, even more relevant.

Nicaraguan industrial growth is urgent, as is the end of US sanctions against the sovereign country.