Photo Essay: India’s Lockdown Happened Two Years Ago, But the Poor Still Suffer

For the first time in Khandya’s life as a working ox, five veterinary doctors visited him more than 30 times in one week at Pandurang Khondre’s cattle shed.

It all started in mid-2022 when Khondre saw traces of an infection on the right leg of Khandya, his strongest ox. “Khandya” is derived from the name of a local deity named “Khandoba.”

“The ox had worked without any trouble for the entire day,” the farmer recounted. “However, I saw a few red-colored nodes when I returned the next morning.” Khondre immediately called a private vet. When the doctor showed up an hour later at Khondre’s cattle shed in the Jambhali village of western India’s Maharashtra state, he suspected Khandya must have been infected with Lumpy skin disease. That began the first of eight weeks of veterinary visits for Khandya and other cattle on the farm.

Lumpy, or LSD, is a contagious viral disease that affects cattle. Certain species of blood-feeding insects, like flies, ticks and mosquitoes, transmit it. Symptoms include skin nodules, severe loss of appetite, fever, nasal discharge, watery eyes, drop in milk production, and swelling of limbs and genitalia.

In 2022, Lumpy became an epidemic in India, affecting 2.9 million cattle (1.51 percent) across 23 states. From 2022 until the first week of this month, India reported 184,447 cattle deaths. No reports in the public domain have yet to sum up economic losses for the whole country. However, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization’s 2020 risk assessment report mentions Lumpy caused $1.45 billion in direct losses of livestock and production in south, east and southeast Asia. The report added, “These losses may be higher, due to the severe trade implications for infected countries.”

As of this month, 84.19 million Indian cattle have been vaccinated against Lumpy. If going by the latest livestock census released in 2019, that would mean 43 percent of cattle.

With the lives of India’s poor having been complicated by climate change impacts and livestock diseases, many have been forced to flee their homes in search of another source of income and take on loans for living expenses, as this reporter documented in a previous article for Toward Freedom.

A Tearful Ox

Lumpy’s impact is so severe that Khandya went from eating 50 kilograms of cattle feed daily to finding it difficult to swallow five kilograms. Khondre, who is in his early 50s, and his wife, Malan, in her late 40s, spent over 16 hours a day looking after the ox as he struggled with the disease.

“He wouldn’t eat anything. When asked what happened, he always responded with tears,” says Khondre.

Khandya is among the 34,711 cattle in Maharashtra who have succumbed to Lumpy, for which goat pox vaccine is being administered. While India has developed an indigenous vaccine, it has yet to be made available for commercial production.

Then, in the final 72 hours of Khandya’s life in October, the situation took a bad turn.

“He had become so stiff that whenever we touched him, it felt like we were touching wood,” Malan said. “The nodes often returned despite the regular treatment.”

The Khondres spent over 60,000 Indian Rupees ($724) over three months on the treatment.

“The Government doctors wouldn’t show up. There were times we waited for an entire day,” Khondre said.

A Dearth of Vets In a Country of Cattle

Public vet and livestock supervisor Raosaheb Salunkhe, working in the Danoli village of Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district, has helped save several cattle.

“During the peak of the outbreak, we were attending to as many as 80 cases daily,” Salunkhe said. “Many farmers spent a lot of money on private vets and consulted us much later, when the disease became severe.”

For the 302.79 million bovine population (as per the 2019 livestock census), India has 73,129 registered public veterinary practitioners and just 54 recognized veterinary colleges. That means 1 vet is available to care for every 4,140 cattle.

Of Khondre’s five cattle, another affected ox survived the disease. However, Khondre said the ox wasn’t the same after recovering. “After an hour’s work, he felt dizzy and kept losing balance.” Eventually, he sold the ox and bought a new one by paying another $181.

Khondre is now worried about his last stable income source drying up.

“Whenever the oxen worked in the fields, I got 800-1000 rupees ($10-12) daily. Now, with just one ox, I have to rent another, and even earning 400 rupees ($4.8) daily has become difficult.”

Buying another ox will cost him $1,000, which remains out of bounds with Khondre having taken a hit over recent years. Climate change events, such as incessant rainfall, heat waves and repeat flooding, have caused financial losses.

‘Everything Was Gone In a Few Hours’

About 30 kilometers from Jambhali village, Vitthal Kumbhar and his family recounted their own trouble with Lumpy. Of their five cattle, a 10-year-old indigenous cow and a bull calf were infected in November in their village of Bhendavade.

“Within a day, the swelling spread to all the legs,” 70-year-old Kumbhar described, “and at the same time, she was diagnosed with pneumonia.”

It took over two months for both animals to recover.

Jitendra Kurundwade, assistant commissioner of Kolhapur’s Animal Husbandry Department, explained how the district handled the contagious disease.

“There were cases where we were treating the same cattle for almost a month.”

Given the rapid movement of the virus, almost 31,000 cattle in 54 villages of Shirol block were at risk of being infected. (In India, several villages form a block. Jambhali village is part of Shirol block.)

“So, we decentralized the vaccination process,” Kurundwade said, “and vaccinated all of them in a week, which otherwise would have taken at least six months.”

Their efforts were successful, as Kurundwade shared that around 4,500 cows (14 percent) were infected and 150 succumbed. The death rate came to 0.48 percent of all cows and 3.33 percent of infected cows.

A Virus and Climate Change Wreak Havoc

When the cow first showed Lumpy symptoms, Kumbhar called a private doctor from a nearby village. The vet visited once and suggested seeking treatment from the public hospital, as private hospital care is pricey. Kumbhar’s son, Ganesh, 32, transported each of the four public doctors on his bike from the veterinary hospitals on a daily basis. Collectively, they provided more than 90 injections in a month.

Before Lumpy, the cow produced daily at least six liters of milk, which they served to the bull calf. Now, they are forced to buy milk from the market or use milk from other cattle, which eats up a source of their income.

Farmers reported affected cattle took at least four months to recover. A decline in milk production and in cattle strength affected farm operations.

However, India remains the highest milk producer, contributing 23 percent to global milk production. The country produced 210 million tons of milk in 2020-21.

The dairy sector employs 80 million rural households in India, with the majority being marginal landowning farmers and the landless. For millions of farmers, dairy remains the only source of income, as climate change continues to destroy crops. For instance, in just October, Kumbhar’s 1.5-acre field was among the 2.8 million hectares (6.91 million acres) destroyed during heavy rains in Maharashtra.

In 2021, floods devastated crops on 7.79 million hectares (19.24 acres) of farmland in India, affecting 38.56 million people and killing 64,880 cattle. Further, from January 1 to September 30, 2022, climate disasters continued to wreak havoc in India, with extreme weather events on 241 out of 273 days.

Kumbhar survived the 2019 and 2021 floods, 2022 heat waves, and erratic rainfall only because of cattle milk. However, his cow barely produces milk after Lumpy, and debt is mounting fast.

His wife, Sarasvati, in her mid-60s, put things in perspective by recalling the recent disasters in their village, Bhendavade, in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district. In October, hailstorms devastated the sugarcane she cultivated on 1.5 acres.

“Everything was gone in a few hours.”

Of the 100 tons she was expecting to cut that would have been worth $3,625, she only harvested 32 tons. “I wasn’t even able to recover the cost of production.” But that wasn’t the first time. In 2019, her family harvested just 30 tons of sugarcane. Then, in 2021, severe floods left them with 10 tons to cut. “Never in my life have I reported such low production,” Kumbhar said. “Despite using chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the production isn’t increasing.”

Similarly, Khondre, too, recently harvested 21 tons of sugarcane on three-fourths of an acre, compared to at least 45 tons.

“It takes about 15 months for the sugarcane to grow completely. The only thing we got from this was more debt.”

Mounting Debt and Losing a ‘Family Member’

Recurring climate disasters have led to mounting debts, forcing Indian farmers to cut back on fodder (animal feed). A 40-kilogram sack of maize cattle feed costs at least $17 and lasts less than a week. “If we can’t sell the cattle milk and face repeated losses in the field, how will we buy this fodder?” Kumbhar asked. Nowadays, most of the time, he skips fodder, which affects milk production.

Last year, they took out a crop loan of $1,208 and will have to take on another loan this year. With 30 tons of sugarcane, he just managed to get $1,087. In normal climatic conditions, it would have fetched him at least $3,624. “In 15 months, I couldn’t earn a single rupee. Rather, I am making a loss,” Kumbhar said.

“Just an agriculture loan is not enough now. We’ll also have to take loans from friends and private moneylenders,” said his daughter-in-law, Poonam, 28. Her husband, Ganesh, could not go to work for two months as an operator at a grinding machine in a nearby factory.

“I spent most of the time with the cattle,” he said.

Similarly, last year, Rohit Koli, Khondre’s neighbor down the road, spent over two months with his infected Holstein Friesian cow. “I couldn’t sleep properly for over 45 days. The vets treated her every day for 25 days. But, still, we lost an important family member,” the Jambhali resident said.

“For the final six days, she ate nothing, after which she passed away,” he recounted. “It will cost at least 110,000 Rupees ($1,329) to buy another Holstein cow, which we can’t afford.”

Koli recalled the cow produced at least 24 liters of milk daily, fetching him over $8. Four of the seven cows he owns were infected, of which three recovered and one died.

“Lumpy is like a corona of animals,” Koli said, referring to the novel coronavirus of 2019 that mainly affected humans. “I’ve never seen so many cattle falling sick and dying.”

Meanwhile, every morning, Khondre, starts his day by looking for Khandya. “He was our family member,” he said, teary-eyed. When the ox died, more than 100 farmers gathered to mourn. “Everyone loved Khandya,” said Khondre, looking at the ox’s photo once again on his daughter-in-law’s smartphone.

“Majha bail (My ox).”

Sanket Jain is an independent journalist based in the Kolhapur district of the western Indian state of Maharashtra. He was a 2019 People’s Archive of Rural India fellow, for which he documented vanishing art forms in the Indian countryside. He has written for Baffler, Progressive Magazine, Counterpunch, Byline Times, The National, Popula, Media Co-op, Indian Express and several other publications.

Kastura Chougule couldn’t sleep despite having worked 15 hours in the field.

“I was exhausted, but something didn’t feel right,” she recollected. It was half past midnight. Small, shriveled and in her early 70s, Chougule managed to muster enough strength to stretch her muscles and quickly walk toward the adjoining tin shanty.

Her son, Vijay, was sitting on the floor, covering his entire forehead with his hands.

“What’s wrong, son? What’s bothering you?” she asked in the vernacular Marathi language.

Vijay, in his mid-30s, didn’t reply, nor was he aware she had entered the room. After she asked multiple times, he replied, “Go to sleep. It’s too late.” It was the last his mother would see him. By nine in the morning, family members wondered why Vijay hadn’t woken up yet. By the time they had rushed to the house, Vijay, a stone cutter from the western Indian state of Maharashtra’s Jambhali village, was found hanging inside his shanty.

Economy Grows, While Poor Left Behind

Vijay was one of 153,052 people who died by suicide in 2020. A year later, this number increased by 7 percent to 164,033 suicides, as per India’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) which releases suicide figures every year. This marked the highest annual count since 1967, the year the NCRB began recording. India also witnessed a 10 percent increase in suicides between 2019 and 2020.

Last month, however, India became the fifth-largest economy, overtaking the United Kingdom. However, a United Nations Development Program (UNDP) report released in the same week found India ranked 132nd out of 191 countries on the Human Development Index. It has slipped to two spots since 2020.

Moreover, for the first time, daily wage laborers comprised more than 25 percent of suicide cases. In 2014, they made up only 12 percent of suicides, which means this portion of the Indian population’s suicides has increased by 113 percent.

Within the first month of India’s nationwide lockdown starting March 2020, 122 million people lost their jobs, estimated the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, a private company. Daily wage laborers and small traders comprised roughly 75 percent. A report found that a year of the lockdown pushed 230 million Indians into poverty. By the end of 2020, 15 million workers were still out of jobs, including Vijay.

‘We Never Imagined Life Would Break Him So Much’

“Ever since the lockdown, he was home most of the time. Moreover, construction work came to a halt in most places, which further affected his work,” says his father, Shrirang, who’s in his early 80s now.

Vijay left behind his sledge hammer, which weighs much more than what Kastura can lift.

“This is my son’s last sign,” she says tearfully. She spends most of the time staring at the ten kilograms (22 pounds) hammer.

“Suicide was the last thing he would contemplate,” she says. “For all of us, he was a support system, and we never imagined life would break him so much.”

What Drove Vijay to Suicide?

A daily wage earner, he earned roughly 300 Indian Rupees ($3.50) for 10 hours of work breaking stones and boulders. He would hoist his hammer at least 4,000 times a day.

“For 6 to 7 months, he didn’t get enough work, which stressed him tremendously,” said his niece, Manisha, 22. When India lifted its nationwide lockdown after 67 days, Vijay found a few days’ work. “While using a tile cutter machine, he met with an accident and lost one of his fingers,” Manisha said.

This was a major blow as he found it extremely difficult to work now. “The task of breaking boulders using a mere hammer comes with no security, and he ended up permanently injuring one of his fingers a year before,” Shrirang said.

Still, Vijay tried breaking stones but couldn’t work with his previous intensity. Further, local lockdowns brought an end to whatever bare minimum work he got.

To undergo surgery for his fingers, he took out a medical loan of 200,000 Rupees ($2,500). “After this surgery, he wasn’t the same. He rarely spoke,” Manisha said. Two months later, he was diagnosed with severe dengue which permanently broke him.

“A few days before the suicide, he told me, ‘What’s the point of living now?’” Shrirang recounted, adding he tried every possible way to convince Vijay not to give up. “I even told him I would help him start a new business.”

‘A Much Larger Problem’

The World Inequality Report 2022 mentioned the top 10 percent in India hold 57 percent of the national wealth, while the bottom 50 percent merely own 13 percent. “India stands out as a poor and very unequal country, with an affluent elite,” the report remarked.

“The stark inequality talks of a much larger problem,” says Amol Naik, a lawyer who is a member of All India Kisan Sabha, the farmers’ wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). “With the rapid increase in privatization, many public schools, hospitals and other important institutions that serve the poor have been completely destroyed. Moreover, with the rising inflation, the daily wage earners are caught in a tremendous debt cycle, with no support system.”

Further, in 2021, climate change impacts such as floods, heat waves, cyclones, landslides and other disasters have made more than 5 million hectares of land (12.3 million acres) unusable, pushing more people into poverty.

Inadequate Mental Healthcare

In September 2021, Vishal Ugale told his sister that he wanted to rest for a while, so that he could leave for work in the evening. However, he never went to work.

The Ugale family had gathered to celebrate an auspicious occasion at 5:30 p.m.

“We were all dialing Vishal to start the auspicious ceremony, but he wouldn’t take our calls,” recalled his mother, Vimal Ugale. No one knew what exactly had happened.

“A few hours later, it was found that Vishal died by suicide in a public veterinary hospital,” said his sister, Savita Khondre.

A resident of Jambhali village in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district, Vishal tended furnaces in factories and textile mills. “This work often affected him so much that he drank alcohol occasionally to forget his stress,” said Savita. “But since COVID, he started drinking quite frequently.”

Ugale, a farmworker in her early 70s, said she never knew the reason behind his suicide.

“Every few weeks, he would frustratingly say, ‘Why was I born in this household? I don’t want to live anymore,’” she recounted.

Ugale often spent hours talking to Vishal, asking what help he needed. But he wouldn’t say a word.

The Taboo of Mental-Health Care

Vishal became more stressed after COVID induced lockdowns, said Khondre. Jambhali, which has a population of roughly 5,000 people, reported more than seven suicides in 2021, as per official records from the village sub-center. A sub-center is the first point of public healthcare for community members.

“Mostly people talk to us about physical illnesses,” said medical officer Dr. Vasanti Patil, under whose care this village falls. “They never mention mental-health problems because it is still considered a taboo in the villages.”

During the lockdown, she observed deteriorating mental health among several villagers, especially the ones who owed loans. “There are so many cases of rising debt, and with dwindling work during COVID, many people were stressed, which further affected them,” she said.

For a population of 1.3 billion people, India has 9,000 psychiatrists and 1,000 psychologists, as per research published in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry. That comes to 1 mental-health professional for every 130,000 Indians.

“Many villages don’t have adequate mental healthcare facilities, leaving people alone, further pushing them [to] the brink of suicide,” shared Naik, who has organized several protests in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district and also accompanied many protests that marched to Mumbai, the country’s financial capital, to draw attention to the plight of farm workers and daily-wage laborers. “During these protests, almost everyone talks of the rising stress and the rapidly increasing cost of living.”

During the first wave of COVID, India witnessed a large-scale reverse migration, whereby workers returned to villages because they either had lost jobs or had no work. Many daily-wage laborers walked hundreds of miles to reach their villages.

“However, there wasn’t much work in the fields, and many people had no option to earn enough, further stressing them. During this time, the cases of substance abuse increased rapidly,” says community healthcare worker Bharti Kamble.

In her Bolakewadi village of Maharashtra, over half of the villagers migrate to India’s financial capital—Mumbai, working as daily-wage laborers. “All of these factors impacted almost everyone’s mental health.”

Ugale still thinks about what affected her son so much. She has spent several hours talking to Vishal’s friends. But, so far, she hasn’t found anything concrete.

“He left us with many questions, to which we won’t be able to find answers in an entire lifetime.”

If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts or know someone who needs help, please call India’s 24-hour, toll-free national mental-health helpline dubbed “Kiran” at 1 (800) 599-0019 or any of these helplines near you. For the United States, dial 988.

Sanket Jain is an independent journalist based in the Kolhapur district of the western Indian state of Maharashtra. He was a 2019 People’s Archive of Rural India fellow, for which he documented vanishing art forms in the Indian countryside. He has written for Baffler, Progressive Magazine, Counterpunch, Byline Times, The National, Popula, Media Co-op, Indian Express and several other publications.

Nicaragua leapt forward to defend its national self-determination against U.S. global hegemony when it announced earlier this month it had discontinued diplomatic relations with Taiwan and was ready to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

“Nicaragua declares that it recognizes that there is only one single China in the world,” said Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Denis Moncada at the Third Forum between the Communist Party of China and Political Parties of Latin America and the Caribbean. There, the political parties leading the Chinese and Nicaraguan governments—both in the crosshairs of U.S. economic, diplomatic and military aggression—agreed to develop friendly relations. 

This move opens up the small Central American country’s economy to the People’s Republic of China, a country of 1.4 billion people that is rapidly edging toward surpassing the United States and becoming the biggest economy in the world.

Taiwan: Washington’s Beachhead In China

Nicaragua’s move to recognize China is no different than what the United States, Japan and Canada voted in favor of in 1971 at the United Nations General Assembly. Resolution 2758 stipulated the United Nations “expel forthwith the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek” (the leader of the Chinese nationalists, whom the communists struggled against) and change China’s name as a member of the UN Security Council from the “Republic of China” to the “People’s Republic of China.” 

Nicaragua first established relations with Taiwan in the 1990s, after U.S.-backed President Violeta Chamorro took power in 1989 in a surprise defeat for the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN). Taiwan is an island off the Chinese coast that Chinese right-wingers fled to upon the 1949 communist victory.

The United States replied to the move using the language of humanitarian interventionism it has deployed to exploit and destroy countries around the world.

“The Ortega-Murillo regime continues to make self-serving decisions at the expense of the Nicaraguan people, who stand to suffer from the loss of a reliable, democratic partner in Taiwan,” tweeted Brian A. Nichols, assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs at the U.S. State Department. “We encourage the int’l community to continue strengthening its relationships with Taiwan.”

The Ortega-Murillo regime continues to make self-serving decisions at the expense of the Nicaraguan people, who stand to suffer from the loss of a reliable, democratic partner in Taiwan. We encourage the int’l community to continue strengthening its relationships with Taiwan.

— Brian A. Nichols (@WHAAsstSecty) December 10, 2021

Relations between the Biden administration and the Ortega government have recently taken a plunge. First, the United States intervened in Nicaragua’s elections by calling them a “sham” prior to Election Day and despite the presence of “232 international election observers,” said Michael Campbell, Minister Advisor for Foreign Affairs. After the FSLN won the election with 75.92 percent of the votes, U.S. President Joe Biden signed the “Reinforcing Nicaragua’s Adherence to Conditions for Electoral Reform Act of 2021,” also known as the RENACER Act. This law calls for the United States to monitor Nicaragua’s relationship with Russia as well as U.S. sanctions that would disrupt multilateral financing from institutions like the World Bank. Later, the Biden administration banned all Nicaraguan government officials, along with their spouses and children, from entering the United States.

Nicaragua is now the fourth country in the region to recognize China. Panama took the step in 2017, then came El Salvador and the Dominican Republic in 2018, and Honduras, which may make the same move after left-wing presidential candidate Xiomara Castro’s recent victory. 

Recognizing one China comes on the heels of the Nicaraguan government’s decision to withdraw from the Organization of American States (OAS) on November 19.

“We have seen what the U.S. and the European Union are capable of doing and have to prepare accordingly,” Campbell said. “But it’s the FSLN government’s job to lead the Nicaraguan people toward development.”

Nicaragua and the Belt and Road Initiative

The third China-CELAC Forum involved approximately 117 political parties and organizations from 30 Latin American and Caribbean countries. CELAC stands for Community of Caribbean and Latin American States. At the forum, they proposed strengthening their relationship and solidarity with China.

“Nicaragua actively supports and is ready to consult on Belt and Road cooperation documents, with a view to signing them as soon as possible,” Moncada said. In 2020, trade agreements between Taiwan and Nicaragua reached $168 million, while trade with China accounted for less than $50 million. A potential trade ceiling exists with the much-smaller Taiwan, with its population of 23 million. 

In addition, the new initiative opens up markets for Nicaragua’s agricultural business. 

“There is a lot of enthusiasm because communication channels have already opened up for the structuring of cooperation projects, commercial exchange and investment projects,” said Fausto Torrez. He leads international relations for the Rural Workers’ Association (Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo [ATC]). 

The FSLN government has a record of working to ensure the rights of farmers, as well as of Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples in the autonomous regions on the Caribbean coast. That includes bringing electricity and paved roads to these once-underdeveloped areas. The Red Nacional Vial, a 24,763-kilometer (15,387-mile) paved road, connects the Pacific Ocean coast with the Caribbean Sea coast. It has been touted as the key to connecting Nicaraguan farmers with international markets. The World Bank also praised the project for uplifting Afro-descendant people. “This region, before the road construction, could only be reached by air during most of the year owing to heavy rains and impassable infrastructure (the rainy season lasts nine months in that region),” a 2020 World Bank report stated.

Nicaragua belongs to the Central American Common Market (CACM), which includes Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The United States is CACM’s largest trade partner, while China is the second-largest. 

“These agreements come in the framework of [defending] food sovereignty,” Torrez said. “Therefore, China arrives with many possibilities to improve the country’s situation.”

As some see it, China is repairing holes U.S. imperialism has left in the region. 

“Latin Americans know only too well what imperialism looks like, in both its colonial and modern forms,” activist Carlos Martinez recently wrote. “They have witnessed CIA-sponsored coups from Guatemala to Chile, from Brazil to the Dominican Republic.” 

The new wave of governments working with China are doing so based on mutual respect. In 2020, $315 billion in agreements between Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and China had been recorded. 

“With projects such as the sea port on the Caribbean, improvements to our airports, roads, irrigation system and energy infrastructure, we will produce more and more efficiently,” Campbell said.

Nicaragua receives the first 200,000 doses of a donation of 1 million doses of Sinopharm vaccines. The batch arrived from China with a Nicaraguan delegation headed by @LaureanoOrtegaM, Minister of Finance Ivan Acosta, and Chinese Foreign Affairs Representative Yu Bo. pic.twitter.com/QF3thXADW5

— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) December 12, 2021

China also has been at the forefront of providing the Global South with aid since the start of the pandemic. For example, between mid-February 2020 and June 2020, China donated $128 million worth of ventilators, test kits, masks, protective suits and many more life-saving items to Latin America and the Caribbean.

“This strengthens Nicaragua’s international relations in all fields,” Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said in his first public statement after the FSLN signed the agreement with the Communist Party of China (CPC). For example, the country’s National Human Development Plan will continue to prioritize poor and vulnerable sections of society, which includes rural producers. Campbell said this new relationship represents an opportunity to diversify exports in a large new market.

Two Revolutions

Ortega made clear the historic significance of acknowledging one China.

“It hurts (the United States) more when it comes to Nicaragua, which is a revolution meeting again with another revolution,” he said. 

Both the FSLN and the CPC are products of national liberation movements against a colonial power. They agreed to develop friendly relations based on “mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, equality, mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence,” stated the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 

Ortega also pointed out the hypocrisy of the United States demonizing countries that establish diplomatic relations with China while the United States continues to trade with China.

Yet, sanctioned and blockaded countries that establish ties with China weaken the U.S. stranglehold.

“Now is the time to improve and strengthen A.L.B.A.,” Torrez said of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, a political, economic and social alliance in defense of independence and self-determination in the Americas.  

Abraham Marquez is a freelance journalist from Inglewood, California. He is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) and a 2021 University of Southern California Annenberg Center for Health Journalism Fellow.