Joint Nicaragua Network/Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign (UK) delegation May 22-June 2, 2004: Alternatives Bring Hope to Nicaragua

By Chuck Kaufman

In the isolated community of Jiñocuao, near the Honduran border in Chinandega, eleven families have "biodigesters" converting cow manure into methane gas. Six liters of manure a day provides for each family's cooking needs and completely eliminates the need for cooking with wood – a major source of deforestation in Nicaragua and many other countries. Needless to say, the other families in the community want a biodigester as well. Other cooperatives in the community make bread, furniture, and clothing for the larger community and the region, and in doing so provide much-needed hope.

El Regadío, a mountain community near Estelí which is organized into several cooperatives, has collectively built an impressive gravity-flow irrigation system that has greatly increased its crop yields. They have purchased two motorized corn grinders which save as much as two hours a day for most of the women in the community. They administer a revolving micro-credit system that has allowed many families to achieve financial survival and independence. Concerned about water privatization, they vow that their water will not be taken from them as their electricity was several years ago. (El Regadío's electrification was the result of support from Quest for Peace. After the national electric company was privatized, the poles and lines installed by Quest became the property of the private Spanish electric company.)

Near Matagalpa, La Pita coffee cooperative is staying afloat through fair trade coffee and expansion of their organic, shade grown coffee bushes. Also near Matagalpa in the municipality of Yucul, over 200 unemployed coffee worker families are raising corn and beans on borrowed plots or their own land so that they are not starving like the thousands of others left behind by the drop in world coffee prices.

In Managua, a worker-owned sewing cooperative is successfully competing with the Free Trade Zone sweatshops for the US t-shirt market. Within walking distance, another cooperative makes clay filters from local materials to purify water. Across town, the Center for Rural and Social Research and Development (CIPRES) model farm has trained 5,000 farm families to provide all their family's needs on as little as 1-1/2 acres through intensive organic agriculture integrated with animal husbandry including cows, pigs, chickens, rabbits, iguana and tilapia fish. Project Fenix is training people to build and use solar ovens and has a variety of fascinating photovoltaic electrification projects, including one to provide light in latrines from simple LED bulbs.

Bicycle-driven well pumps, gourd carving by a women's mutual-support group in the informal sector, and a computer project based on the free Linux operating system (challenging Microsoft's grip on the internet) were among the community-based alternative development projects visited by a joint Nicaragua Network/Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign (UK) delegation May 22-June 2, 2004.

Part of the Nicaragua Network's "Beyond the Washington Consensus" campaign, the delegation searched out projects that allow communities to survive under the depredations of "free" trade and neoliberal economics – projects that might allow them to thrive in a more equitable macroeconomic system. Increasingly, the countries of Latin America are rejecting neoliberalism and moving beyond what they call the "Washington Consensus" to chart an economic course that serves their needs rather than the nearly religious dictums of the high priests of neoliberalism. Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina are no longer blindly accepting US hegemony. And, of course, Cuba never did. Nongovernmental movements in Mexico, Bolivia, and the Caribbean are also rejecting the neoliberal system as the fraud that it is.

Award-winning videographer Robin Lloyd of Green Mountain Videos joined the delegation and will produce a video focusing on the communit- based alternatives; the first hopeful video that has come out of Nicaragua in years. The Nicaragua Network is seeking production and distribution funds. The video will be translated into Spanish, French, and Portuguese and distributed to civil society and communities throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Members of the delegation are committed to writing about specific projects they visited, toward the production of a study guide with myriad photographs and supplemental material to accompany the video.

The struggle to make another world possible is being fought on many fronts: in the mountains and the free trade zones of Nicaragua, within civil society and even the halls of some governments, and within the belly of the beast itself, Washington, DC. Nicaragua, the hemisphere's second poorest country, but one with a population that knows it can organize itself, is the perfect location to demonstrate that there are sustainable alternative development models.

One of the contributions that we in the North can make to this struggle is to recognize that we have much greater access to information than do communities in the Global South. Distributing this important video to communities in Latin America and the Caribbean who may see hope for themselves in it, is one simple task that most of us can carry out.

The video will be available for distribution in September or October. Placement of pre-distribution orders now will enable us to demonstrate the demand for such an important tool and to raise enough money to distribute it in Latin America and the Caribbean to communities who can most benefit from it. Of course, it will also be a useful public education and fundraising tool for your own community.

Orders are being taken now for the video ($15 incl. shipping) or the video plus study guide ($25 incl. shipping). For $50, we will send you the video and study guide plus ensure that a translated copy of the video and study guide is delivered to an organization or community in Latin America or the Caribbean. Sister City groups may want to take advantage of this offer to deliver this important resource to their sister community or parish. Send check or money order to: Nicaragua Network, 1247 E St., SE, Washington, DC 20003 and write "Alternatives Video" on the memo line. Send us your email so we can keep you informed about the release date.