History Is Going To Record That Gary Webb Got It Right.
By Maxine Waters
THE NIGHT THAT I read Gary Webb s Dark Alliance
series in the
San Jose Mercury News, I was so alarmed that
I literally sat straight up in bed, poring over every word. I reflected on the many meetings I attended throughout South
Central Los Angeles during the 1980s, when I constantly asked, Where are all the drugs coming from? I asked myself
that night whether it was possible for such a vast amount of drugs
to be smuggled into any district under the noses of the community
The stirring strains of “Nicaragua, Nicaraguita” played over the loudspeakers as thousands poured into the Plaza of the Revolution on July 19, 1983. Young people with raised fists and red-and-black bandannas, peasants in crisp white guayaberas and wide-brimmed straw hats, women in military uniforms rifles on their shoulders. They cheered when President Daniel Ortega spoke about the literacy campaign, the free health clinics, the new agricultural cooperatives on land seized from Somoza’s cohort of oligarchs.
The author with Nicaraguan musician Luis Enrique Mejia Godoy at the “Breaking the Blockade of Ideas” event in 1986, held at the Calvin Simmons Auditorium in Oakland in 1986. Photo by Rick Rocamora
The Evolution of Ortega’s Corruption in Nicaragua
A generation of children and teens born after 2007 have grown up under the enormous, omnipresent billboards of the presidential couple.
18 abril, 2021
Every so often, I’m asked about democracy in Nicaragua, before talking about the human rights violations. The latter have been international news since the April 2018 rebellion. To explain how badly we’re doing with democracy, I turn to look at my own family. My sons are ten and twelve years old, and the only president they’ve ever known is Daniel Ortega.
A generation of children and teens born after 2007 have grown up under the enormous, omnipresent billboards of the presidential couple. They’ve lived with the exotic metal trees Vice President Rosario Murillo installed in Managua. They’ve been exposed to endless official propaganda clips of the poor appear thanking “the
by Margaret Flowers / March 15th, 2021
For the next two weeks, I am in Nicaragua on the first delegation organized by the Sanctions Kill coalition and the Friends of the ATC (Asociacion de Trabajadores del Campo – Association of Rural Workers) to study the impact of sanctions imposed by the United States on Nicaragua and learn about the Sandinista Revolution. The ATC is a member of the global movement of peasant workers, Via Campesina, that was born in Nicaragua. The NICA Act, passed by the US Congress in 2018, is the beginning of the US’ economic war on Nicaragua after the US-backed coup attempt against the democratically-elected President Danial Ortega failed earlier that year.