A C-130 Hercules aircraft from the Republic of Korea Air Force sits on the flight line at Rosecrans Air National Guard Base, St. Joseph, Missouri, May 12, 2022. C-130s from the ROKAF, Little Rock Air Force Base, and Dyess AFB were attending the Advanced Airlift Tactics Training Center’s Advanced Tactics Aircrew Course / credit: Michael Crane / U.S. Air National Guard
Editor’s Note: This analysis originally appeared in People’s Dispatch.
Between August 22 and September 1, the United States and South Korea concluded their largest joint military drills in the Korean Peninsula since 2017, under the name ‘Ulchi Freedom Shield’. Over the last four years, the scope of the annual exercises had been scaled back, first because of U.S. President Donald Trump’s attempts at diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and later because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
With these drills, however, the United States and South Korea seem to be attempting to send a clear message to both North Korea and China of their united military posture in the region, and come at a time when the U.S. encirclement of China continues rapidly.
The military relationship between the United States and South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), has a long history, stretching back at least as far as the Korean War. The United States has maintained a force of at least tens of thousands of troops in South Korea since prior to the Korean War, and, while South Korean forces are otherwise independent, at times of war they are subordinated to the command of a U.S. general as part of the ROK/U.S. Combined Forces Command. About 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea, making it the country with the third-highest number of U.S. troops outside of the United States.
While the recent exercises have been conducted against a nameless enemy, it is not hard to see towards whom their message is aimed. The site of the exercises is only 32 kilometers from the border and De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea. Live-fire tank and troop maneuvers have been practiced as the United States and the ROK engage in simulations and seek to increase interoperability of their deployments and technologies. War-gamed attempts to seize “weapons of mass destruction” and mount a defense of Seoul suggest that they are preparations for potential conflict with North Korea.
Trump’s attempts to seek a diplomatic end to the North Korean nuclear program were unsuccessful, as have been U.S. economic sanctions and blockades. These exercises must be seen as a continuing show of force towards the same chief end. As part of his campaign and even more recently, new South Korean Premier Yoon Suk-yeol has touted his willingness to engage in “decapitation strikes” against the North Korean leadership, as part of a broader turn towards support for, and from, U.S. interests in the region.
He has also more recently offered a bouquet of economic enticements for North Korea to abandon its nuclear program, an offer that was rejected out of hand by Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, who pointed out that it was merely the restatement of a similar offer that had been made and dismissed in the past. The North sees its nuclear arsenal as non-negotiable and the key to its global legitimacy, and is no doubt also aware of what has happened to other countries, such as Libya and Iran, that have agreed to put holds on their military nuclear capabilities at the behest of the United States. With U.S. bases and troops having been positioned so close to its border for almost its entire existence as a country, it is easy to understand why North Korea does not see a reduction in its military capabilities as a particularly pressing or, indeed, sensible priority.
The resumption of these joint military exercises has also been viewed with alarm by China, which, like North Korea, has repeatedly pointed to U.S. attempts to set up a NATO-like organization in Asia. As tensions in the region reached unprecedented levels recently following U.S. politician Nancy Pelosi’s provocative visit to Taiwan, it seems the U.S. military presence in the region is only likely to increase in the near future.
South Korea and the United States also recently participated in trilateral military exercises with Japan near Hawai’i, signaling what might be a new low in hostilities that trace their roots to the Japanese occupation of Korea, which only ended in 1945, when the administration of South Korea was handed over briefly to the United States. This too has been noted with concern by China, and suggests that the United States is coordinating its allies in the region as it attempts to extend its global hegemony ever-further eastward.
The list of countries targeted by the U.S. military includes the vast majority of the nations on Earth, including almost every single county in Latin America and the Caribbean and most of the African continent.
From the beginning of 1991 to the beginning of 2004, the U.S. military launched 100 interventions, according to CRS.
That number grew to 200 military interventions between 1991 and 2018.
The report shows that, since the end of the first cold war in 1991, at the moment of U.S. unipolar hegemony, the number of Washington’s military interventions abroad substantially increased.
Of the total 469 documented foreign military interventions, the Congressional Research Service noted that the U.S. government only formally declared war 11 times, in just five separate wars.
The data exclude the independence war been U.S. settlers and the British empire, any military deployments between 1776 and 1798, and the U.S. Civil War.
It is important to stress that all of these numbers are conservative estimates, because they do not include U.S. special operations, covert actions, or domestic deployments.
The CRS report clarified:
The list does not include covert actions or numerous occurrences in which U.S. forces have been stationed abroad since World War II in occupation forces or for participation in mutual security organizations, base agreements, or routine military assistance or training operations.
The report likewise excludes the deployment of the U.S. military forces against Indigenous peoples, when they were systematically ethnically cleansed in the violent process of westward settler-colonial expansion.
CRS acknowledged that it left out the “continual use of U.S. military units in the exploration, settlement, and pacification of the western part of the United States.”
“The U.S. has undertaken over 500 international military interventions since 1776, with nearly 60 percent undertaken between 1950 and 2017,” the project wrote. “What’s more, over one-third of these missions occurred after 1999.”
The Military Intervention Project added: “With the end of the Cold War era, we would expect the U.S. to decrease its military interventions abroad, assuming lower threats and interests at stake. But these patterns reveal the opposite—the U.S. has increased its military involvements abroad.”
Editor’s Note: The following is the writer’s analysis and was originally published byCovertAction Magazine.
Over the past few months, U.S. lawmakers, the Afghan government, and the international community have called on Washington to stop strangling the Afghan economy as its people continue to suffer from a U.S.-created humanitarian crisis. On December 22, the Biden administration effectively rejected those calls, opting instead for half-measures that will do little to counter the effects of stringent economic sanctions imposed on the Taliban or to improve the material well-being of the Afghan people.
Sanctions in Context
Contrary to the narrative of U.S. politicians and journalists, the August withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan did not mark the end of the United States’ so-called “forever war” but rather a shift in U.S. policy—from direct military intervention and occupation to one based on economic sanctions and indirect political subversion. Although the tactics changed, the goal is the same: The accumulation of wealth and power through class warfare against the Afghan people.
Just days after Kabul fell to the Taliban on August 15, Washington took measures to turn off the flow of funds to the new government and paralyze the Afghan banking system. The Treasury Department quickly issued a freeze order on nearly $9.5 billion of the Afghan Central Bank’s assets held in U.S. financial institutions, including the New York Federal Reserve Bank.
Although the Taliban was entitled to receive more than $460 million from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in currency reserves known as Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, the U.S. directed the IMF to block those funds as well.
President Biden has also ensured that $1.3 billion of Afghan funds held in international accounts remain frozen, including funds denominated in euros and British pounds and those held by the Swiss-based Bank for International Sanctions.
Notably, these punitive measures are in addition to the pre-existing economic sanctions that the U.S. has imposed on the Taliban, which began in 1999 under President Bill Clinton and which President George W. Bush ramped up following the 9/11 attack as part of the U.S.’s newly created counterterrorism sanctions program, known as the Specially Designated Global Terrorist list. The Obama and Trump administrations followed suit by imposing over 100 and 23 sanction orders, respectively, against Taliban-related targets.
Despite purported exemptions for humanitarian aid, the lack of clarity under U.S. law deters financial institutions from processing such transactions out of fear of violating U.S. sanctions—which not only freeze all assets associated with the Taliban; they subject any individual or entity that conducts a transaction involving the Taliban to criminal liability. The ubiquity of U.S. dollars and financial institutions in international commerce provides the U.S. with virtually globaljurisdiction.
Children in Afghanistan in 2020 / credit: UNICEF Afghanistan/Omid Fazel
Horrific Consequences of Sanctions
Decades of U.S. occupation and war have left Afghanistan a poor country dependent on external sources to fund public spending. No longer able to rely on brute military and political force to protect the interests of Western capital in Afghanistan, U.S. strategists understand that seizing the central bank’s money and cutting all international aid gives Washington powerful leverage against the Taliban, all while inflicting maximum pain on the Afghan people, who continue to be relegated to “starving pawns in big power games.”
The horrific and totally foreseeable consequences of these sanctions have, so far, been well documented by international humanitarian organizations, even if they are reluctant to depict the United States as culpable.
On October 25, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Program published a report urging humanitarian assistance, warning that Afghanistan is on a “countdown to catastrophe.” According to the report, more than 50% of Afghans will face “crisis” or “emergency” levels of acute food insecurity, including over 3 million children under the age of five.
On November 22, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) published a report warning that Afghanistan’s financial and bank payment systems are “in disarray” and on the verge of collapse. The UNDP report, citing the IMF, predicts the Afghan economy could contract by 30% for 2021-2022.
On December 6, the International Crisis Group issued a more scathing report, warning that the “hunger and destitution” caused by “economic strangulation,” imposed by the West in response to the Taliban takeover, could “kill more Afghans than all the bombs and bullets of the past two decades.”
In other words, U.S. policy of intentionally starving the Afghan people through economic sanctions on Afghanistan is going as planned. As manypredicted, blocking funds from the Taliban and curtailing foreign aid and assistance would lead to a rapid financial meltdown and exacerbate the ongoing famine plaguing Afghanistan.
U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad (left) meets on November 21, 2020, with a Taliban delegation in Doha, Qatar / credit: U.S. State Department
U.S. Retaliates for Taliban’s Military Success
Despite the Taliban’s success in forcing the U.S. government to the negotiating table in Doha and then ousting the U.S. military from Afghanistan, or rather, because of that success, Washington has made it clear that it has no plans to respect Afghanistan’s sovereignty. Indeed, the Biden administration’s response to pleas that the asset freeze be lifted demonstrates the hypocrisy and callousness of U.S. foreign policy.
On November 17, as reported by Tolo News, Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi, Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, sent a letter to the U.S. Congress calling for the return of Afghan assets, correctly noting that “the fundamental challenge of our people is financial security, and the roots of this concern lead back to the freezing of assets of our people by the American government.”
The U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan, Thomas West, rejected the Taliban’s request in a series of revealing tweets. West’s remarks effectively admitted that the dire situation pre-dates the Taliban takeover and confirmed that the United States was preventing “critical” international aid from reaching Afghanistan as retribution for the Taliban’s military success, while recognizing that Afghanistan’s “economy [is] enormously dependent on aid, including for basic services.”
Further, in a fashion typical of bourgeois idealism, which values words and appearances over substance and material reality, West condescendingly lectured the Taliban that “[l]egitmacy and support must be earned” and confirmed that the United States would consider lifting the murderous sanctions if the Taliban only learned to “respect the rights of minorities, women and girls.”
The irony of Washington’s position of respecting humanitarian rights by denying humanitarian aid was not lost on Muttaqi, who, in response to West’s tweets, questioned the tortured logic: “The U.S. froze our assets and then told us that it will provide us humanitarian aid. What does it mean?” Muttaqi reiterated the demand to release Afghanistan’s assets: “The assets should be freed immediately. The Americans don’t have any military front with us now. What is the reason for freezing the assets? The assets don’t belong to the Mujahideen (Islamic Emirate) but to the people of Afghanistan.”
In tacit acknowledgment that the state needs legitimacy to stabilize its rule, the U.S.-driven humanitarian crisis has prompted members of Congress to ask the Biden administration to reconsider certain aspects of its sanctions policy in light of the dire warnings issued by the UNDP and World Food Program.
On December 15, a bipartisan group of 39 lawmakers wrote a letter to the State and Treasury departments calling on the Biden administration to “allow international financial institutions to inject the necessary economic capital into Afghanistan while avoiding the transfer of money to the Taliban-led government” and designate a “private Afghan or third-country bank” as a central bank. The lawmakers also recommended, among other things, the release of the $9.5 billion of Afghan assets—but only if sent “to an appropriate United Nations agency” and only if used “to pay teacher salaries and provide meals to children in schools, so long as girls can continue to attend.”
On December 20, a group of 46 lawmakers led by House progressives wrote a similar letter to President Biden, explicitly linking the “U.S. confiscation of $9.4 billion” of Afghan assets to “contributing to soaring inflation” and “plunging the country…deeper into economic and humanitarian crisis.” Although the House progressives struck a harsher tone, they made the same requests as the December 19 letter, urging President Biden to allow Afghanistan’s central bank to access its reserves, consistent with proposals by “[c]urrent and former Afghan central bank officials appointed by the U.S.-supported government” and supported by “private sector associations such as the Afghan Chamber of Commerce and Investment and the Afghanistan Banks Association.”
This congressional pushback, tepid as it is, also reflects an inherent tension in the U.S. use of sanctions: While economic warfare is a necessary tool of U.S. foreign policy, sanctions are not always good for business in the short term. Afghanistan had been a source of wealth for the imperialist bourgeoise for the past two decades, and now certain sectors of the capitalist class apparently want back in.
Still, the Biden administration has shown no sign of easing the sanctions. In fact, the Biden administration is considering permanently depriving the Afghan people of the funds needed to combat the current humanitarian crisis, by transferring those funds instead to U.S. plaintiffs with outstanding default judgments against the Taliban. That is what two groups of judgment creditors have argued to U.S. federal judges. (Those cases are captioned Havlish et al. v. Bin-Laden et al., No. 03 Civ. 9848, and Doe v. The Taliban et al., No. 20 Misc. 740, and are pending in the Southern District of New York before Judges Daniels and Failla, respectively.)
Although its formal statement is not due until January 18, the Biden administration seems willing to go along with the plan—the only apparent obstacle is how to seize the Afghan funds without recognizing the Taliban as the legitimate Afghan government. Press Secretary Jen Psaki has twicecited that ongoing litigation as the primary reason for maintaining the asset freeze.
Following its imperial playbook, the U.S. sanctions imposed on Afghanistan are aimed at destabilizing Afghan civil society, making daily life so unbearable that the Afghan people eventually blame the Taliban for their misery, providing the United States and its proxies an opening to enact regime change.
Similar to sanctions imposed on Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Zimbabwe, Eritrea, Nicaragua, and many others, the sanctions on Afghanistan are having their intended effect, which is to deprive the masses of essential goods and services as punishment whenever a government refuses to surrender its nation’s resources and sovereignty to the demands of U.S. and European capital.
Now more than ever, those in the imperial core must demand the end of U.S.-imposed sanctions against the Afghan people and oppressed people all over the world.
Zachary Scott is an attorney, activist, and member of Black Alliance for Peace Solidarity Network and the Sanctions Kill coalition. He can be reached at [email protected].
Many Nicaraguans expressed support for their country’s voting process on November 7 as 2.8 million people cast their votes for as many as 6 national parties / credit: Julie Varughese
This article is the first in a series on Nicaragua’s elections.
Just three days after Sandinista revolutionary Daniel Ortega won his fourth term as Nicaragua’s president with 75.92 percent of the vote, U.S. President Joe Biden signed the RENACER Act.
An acronym for the “Reinforcing Nicaragua’s Adherence to Conditions for Electoral Reform Act of 2021,” RENACER slaps sanctions on Ortega government officials, attempts to restrict multilateral financing to Nicaragua, monitors Nicaragua’s relationship with Russia, punishes the country for alleged human-rights violations and targets reported corruption inside Nicaragua, among other items.
Then on November 12, 25 member states of the Organization of American States’ (OAS) Permanent Council voted in favor of a resolution that criticized the elections as not free and fair and urged further action.
The OAS resolution and fresh U.S. sanctions, as well as social media platforms suspending known Ortega supporters a week before the elections and corporate media outlets inaccurately reporting on Ortega make clear the United States is the primary contradiction in the Nicaraguan people’s struggle for liberation.
A view of Victoriano Potosme’s farm in San José de los Rios in Ticuantepe, Nicaragua. Peasants like Potosme won land ownership when Sandinistas took power in 1979 / credit: Julie Varughese
Social Markers Improve
Ortega, a militant in the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (the Sandinista National Liberation Front, or FSLN for short), was first elected president in 1984. His defeat in 1989 to neoliberal Violeta Chamorro, a scion of the landowning class, kicked off 16 years of neoliberal rule. During that time, Sandinista reforms were rolled back and social outcomes plummetted. That is why the era from 1990 to 2006 is referred to as the Neoliberal Period.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega in 2013 / credit: Fernanda LeMarie/Cancillería del Ecuador
When Ortega was re-elected in 2006, the maternal mortality rate—a key marker of a country’s well-being–was 92.8 deaths per 100,000 live births. By 2020, that number dropped 60 percent to 37.5 deaths per 100,000 live births because of programs that include “maternity homes” to monitor pregnant women close to their due date. Other improvements include a 41 percent decrease in poverty, 100 percent electrification, 100 percent mobile-phone access, 85 percent internet accessibility, as well as a 100 percent increase in the amount of renewable energy the state generates. A free-trade zone employs 120,000 Nicaraguans, who work for foreign companies. Those corporations are required to abide by Nicaragua’s laws as well as respect the environment and workers’ rights. All of this means few people leave the country, but many have arrived from neighboring neoliberal Honduras.
Farmers Defend Nicaragua
Victoriano Potosme once labored under the orders of “latifundistas,” white plantation owners in Nicaragua.
“We were slaves under them,” he said while standing on his mountaintop farm in San José de los Rios in Ticuantepe, about an hour from the capital of Managua. There, he and his family grow award-winning fruits and have developed an internationally acclaimed organic fertilizer called BIO Buena Vista.
Victoriano Potosme (left), pictured with female relatives, speaks to a group of international visitors about the impact of the Sandinista Revolution on his family’s life as they farm on land seized from white wealthy landowners in San José de los Rios in Ticuantepe, Nicaragua / credit: Julie Varughese
For campesinos like Potosme, the November 7 elections were critical. After the Sandinista Revolution, peasants like Potosme were able to own the land they worked because of reforms that put 235,000 acres into their hands.
“If we go back to the neoliberal period, it would take us back 150 years,” he said a few days before casting his ballot.
The Human Rights Question
Biden released a statement on Election Day, citing the Inter-American Democratic Charter as justification for intervening in Nicaragua’s affairs. That charter was adopted on September 11, 2001, by the Organization of American States (OAS), a multilateral body the United States slapped together in the early 20th century as part of its efforts to control the Western Hemisphere. Per the Monroe Doctrine, the United States considers the rest of the hemisphere its “backyard.” After years of dormancy, that colonial term re-emerged during the Trump administration.
Then after the election, the OAS also chimed in.
“We reject the results of the illegitimate elections in #Nicaragua,” tweeted OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro. “I urge countries of the OAS to respond to this clear violation of the Democratic Charter during its #OASassembly.”
We reject the results of the illegitimate elections in #Nicaragua.
I urge countries of the OAS to respond to this clear violation of the Democratic Charter during its #OASassembly.
The OAS General Assembly held its 51st regular session this past week in Guatemala. The organization could not be reached for comment as of press time.
But numerous commentators have pointed out the hypocrisy of the United States and the OAS using terms like “democracy,” “self-determination” and “rights.”
Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) National Organizer Ajamu Baraka, who has taught U.S. history in universities, recently wrote an analysis in which he said all settler-colonial states like the United States have criminality at their core because they were born out of “systematic, terroristic and genocidal violence against Indigenous populations.” The United States now is the largest empire in recorded human history.
“Democracy and human rights are no more than ideological props to obscure the real interests and intentions of the rulers and to build domestic support for whatever criminal activity the state has embarked on,” Baraka went on to write. (Full disclosure: This reporter coordinates a wing of BAP.)
Killer Sanctions
Ordinary Nicaraguans understand the pain of sanctions.
“They are going to kill all the farmers, who dedicate themselves on a daily basis to life, to building, to working the land,” Jhaniors, a youth organizer in the Managua department, told a journalist who traveled with this reporter on a recent Friends of the ATC delegation. “The sanctions don’t help—they kill.”
Today Biden signed the “RENACER ACT” that sanctions the Nicaragua gov’t. Sanctions kill ppl. Over 40,000 ppl died from sanctions in Venezuela. How is sanctioning Nicaragua going to help the ppl?
Listen to Jhaniors, a youth organizer in Nicaragua speak on how sanctions will hurt: pic.twitter.com/iPU393viuH
Farmer Saul Potosme of Ticuantepe was positive the FSLN party would win the November 7 election / credit: Julie Varughese
Potosme’s son, Saul, said when the U.S.-funded, right-wing attempt at a coup took place in 2018, his family lost out on the opportunity to sell 30,000 to 40,000 pineapples. Participants in the attempted coup had blocked the path for trade to take place unless farmers paid up.
“We had no way of sustaining our families,” Saul said as he handled a bottle of his family’s award-winning organic fertilizer, BIO Buena Vista. “Many farmers here within this community rose up to get rid of the golpistas because we were sick of the coup attempt.”
“Golpistas” means “coupmongers” in Spanish.
The farmers traveled an hour to Managua to confront the coupmongers.
“It was a hard fight,” Saul said. “The reality is farmers are the ones who sustain a nation.”
After the coup attempt, the Ortega government implemented a program to create alternative ways for Nicaraguan farmers, young people, and women start and sustain businesses.
Nicaraguans on Election Day
In the run-up to Election Day, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken denounced the “sham of an election.” Then major social-media platforms like Facebook and Twitter disappeared the accounts of pro-Sandinista activists a week before the elections.
Voters in the city of Chinandega display their freshly inked thumbs, which indicates they recently cast their ballots / credit: Julie Varughese
Despite the saber-rattling and repression, more than 2.8 million Nicaraguans cast votes in a process that appeared more organized than what this reporter has witnessed in various jurisdictions in the United States. Nicaraguans took between five and 10 minutes to vote, while U.S. voters have had to stand on lines in the sweltering sun for as long as 11 hours, as seen during the 2020 presidential election. While U.S. voters must figure out how to get to the polls between long commutes, jobs and other obligations, Nicaraguans are given the day off. Plus, Nicaraguan college students get a week off to travel to their home departments to vote.
Some people are confused about how many parties/alliances are competing in Nicaragua’s elections today:
There are 7 options in total, but 1 party is regional, only in the Caribbean Coast (which has autonomy)
Support for Ortega’s party, the FSLN, was overwhelming on Election Day, resulting in an almost 76 percent victory, with 65 percent of people voting.
“I voted for Commandante Daniel Ortega for the benefit of the community,” said Raul Navarretto, 64, as he walked out of a voting center in Chinandega, a Sandinista stronghold three hours north of the capital of Managua.
Nineteen-year-old Arlen Rueda, who strolled a toddler out of a voting center, also voted for Ortega, saying she supported the government’s efforts to provide food to its population, among other endeavors.
Armando Casa Y Padilla, 75, would not divulge to this reporter for whom he voted. “Es una secreta.” Yet, he valued the voting process. “Only people can make democracy happen.”
I’m on Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. Garifuna, Creole, Mestizo, Miskito managed polling with all candidates on ballot. Strong support for government in formerly neglected area. Education, transportation, healthcare improvements given as reasons.@Blacks4Peace#Nicaraguapic.twitter.com/0IQGhqVBK0
There is so much propaganda and fake news in the corporate media trying to discredit Nicaragua’s elections. I visited 4 voting centers, and there were a lot of people voting in a very efficient, quick, and transparent process.
Election night, Sandinistas inundate the streets to celebrate the victoria of the FSLN. Here they celebrate as the preliminary results come in. pic.twitter.com/6C3KB6fSgC
While the corporate media spoke of Nicaraguan candidates and journalists being thrown in jail, the only people who were actually detained include “criminals, drug traffickers and golpistas,” according to Fausto Torrez, who handles international relations for the Associación de Trabajadores del Campo (Rural Workers’ Association, or ATC for short), an independent farm workers organization, as well as for the Coordinadora de Latinoamericana Organizaciones del Campo (the Latin American Coordinator of Rural Associations, or CLOC for short). CLOC is made up of 84 rural worker organizations in 18 Latin American countries.
Despite what the Western corporate media has reported, “pre-candidate” is not an official designation in Nicaragua. Those who wish to run for office must do so under the banner of one of six registered national parties, five of which are anti-Sandinista.
Many media outlets are opposed to the Ortega government and yet are allowed to operate. For example, the Chamorro family still operates La Prensa, a newspaper.
“Here, we hear from people who are against the government, but we don’t accept people taking U.S. money for coups,” Torrez said.
The Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation accepted $7 million between 2014 and this year from the U.S. Agency for International Development. Nicaragua has been cracking down on U.S. funded operations that seek to subvert their progress. That includes groups who were involved in the 2018 coup attempt that killed more than 300 Nicaraguans, most of whom were Sandinistas. Plus, this past September, Cristiana Chamorro, the foundation’s founder and daughter of former right-wing president Violeta Chamorro, was arrested for money laundering.
“In other places, they go to college and get drunk in financial paradises,” said ATC Secretary-General Edgar Garcia. “But here, they are in jail.”
This is the first in a series of articles on Nicaragua’s November 7 elections. The second article can be read here.
Julie Varughese is editor of Toward Freedom. She spent a week traveling through Nicaragua as part of a delegation organized by the Associación de Trabajadores del Campo (Rural Workers’ Association, or the ATC for short), an independent farm workers’ organization.
