Nicaragua News Service August 6-12, 1995 Vol. 3, No. 33 by Coleen Littlejohn Major news stories for the week: 1. Air tragedy strikes Nicaraguans. 2. U.S. assistance "Under Strict Control;" aid will continue. 3. Political parties support vote for Nicaraguans living abroad. 4. Oil leak threatens Managua's water supply. 5. Ministers and vice-ministers challenge constitutional amendments. 6. Floods cause damage in Esteli. 7. Plot thickens around hijacked plane and murdered pilot. 8. A new literacy campaign? __________________________________________________________________________ 1. Air tragedy strikes Nicaraguans. Five days after the tragic August 9th accident of AVIATECA Airlines flight number 901, there is still no accurate official listing of all the victims no of their nationality. Flight 901 originated in Miami with a stop in Guatemala where dozens of other passengers in transit from Mexico, Los Angeles and other cities made their connection to travel on to El Salvador, Managua, and San Jose, Costa Rica. Ten minutes after take off from Guatemala City last Wednesday night, however, Guatemala air traffic control lost contact with the plane which was then reported missing. Hours later the wreckage was found on the side of the Chinchontepec volcano, which is located 40 miles from the San Salvador airport. There were no survivors; 75 passengers and crew members lost their lives. At first the airline reported that only five Nicaraguans were on board the plane. Very soon, however, it was evident that the number was much greater and, according to Nicaraguan press sources, ranges between 14 and 28. Nicaraguan victims include Evaristo Garcia, noted economist who is Director of Planning of the Augusto C. Sandino Foundation (FACS); Eugenio Lacayo, businessman and member of the powerful Lacayo family; Francisco Lacayo, general manager of the OCAL Corporation; and the Director of the Manolo Morales Hospital and her husband and young daughter. Other victims were residents in Nicaragua, including the Brazilian ambassador and his wife, the Danish ambassador and one of his principal embassy officers, and a group of four Spanish missionaries who have worked for years in health programs in El Viejo, Chinandega. The first remains of the victims began to arrive on Saturday night after their families had waited for hours at the Managua Airport. Until the black box of the airplane is located it will not be known exactly what was the cause of the accident. The airline cited the storm conditions in the area of the accident, but others, including pilots who preferred to remain anonymous, referred to the numerous layoffs made by the company in recent months. The layoffs, they say, have contributed to pilot fatigue. Confidence in regional airline service has been severely questioned in the past few days and not only because of the accident. A NICA plane last week was forced to make an emergency landing in Havana and the next day the same flight was forced to return to Managua twenty minutes after takeoff due to mechanical problems. Also last week a LACSA flight blew a tire in the Managua airport. Many are questioning the safety of the Central American airliners because the major regional companies, NICA, LACSA, TACA and AVIATECA, are all presently owned by the same consortium as a result of the privatization processes in the different countries . This means that there is no competition for service and safety among different companies. Ironically, several U.S. experts who were traveling to the region to study the question of regional air security were killed in the AVIATECA crash. Also criticized was the performance of the Nicaraguan government which was efficient in bringing home the bodies of those victims who were from affluent families but only reacted under great pressure from other families to bring home the bodies of their loved ones. (La Prensa, El Nuevo Diario, Barricada, August 11-12) 2. U.S. assistance "Under Strict Control;" aid will continue. In an interview given to the local media, George Carner, USAID representative, and Sandra Torres, Director of the PL-480 Food Program, explained the mechanism used in distribution of the funds generated by the surplus food program from the U.S. to Nicaragua. Food donations are sold via a government agency, ENIPORT, and the funds are used to finance projects in the areas of health, education and agriculture. All these donations, according to the U.S. officials, are "strictly controlled." [Editors note: The PL 480 Food Program has often been accused of lowering prices for the food crops produced by small farmers in Third World countries, sometimes resulting in their economic ruin. Basic grain prices are dangerously low right now for Nicaraguan small farmers. We do not know if PL 480 food has had a role in this.] Apparently the progress that Nicaragua has made in returning property to U.S. citizens, including some ex-Somocistas, has helped ensure that the flow of aid continues, according to Heather Hodges, temporary Charge de Affaires at the U.S. embassy in Managua. The comments were made during the signing of a new aid contract for the amount of $10.3 million dollars of which $4.8 million are part of the PL 480 Food Program, $4.5 million for a project to "strengthen democratic institutions and guarantee fair elections." The rest will be used to finance natural resource programs. Hodges revealed that a total of 272 cases of U.S. citizens reclaiming properties had been resolved "favorably" since the beginning of 1995, a fact that persuaded the U.S. government to continue assisting Nicaragua for one more year. Hodges also stated that the aid given by the U.S. to Nicaragua is followed "very closely by the Congress and the Clinton Administration in order to guarantee that it has a positive impact on the population." According to Minister of Foreign Cooperation Edwin Kruger total assistance from AID between 1990 and 1994 totals $881 million of which $772 has been disbursed. (Barricada, August 11) 3. Political parties support vote for Nicaraguans living abroad. Representatives from the FSLN, the Christian Democratic Party (UDC), the Liberal Constitutionalist Party (PLC) and the Party of the Nicaraguan Resistance (PRN) agreed last week on the principle that Nicaraguans living outside the country at the time of the 1996 elections should be able to vote. However, there are disagreements on the actual procedures that should be used to ensure honesty in the voting. Measures allowing citizens living abroad to vote and establishing the voting procedures to be used must be passed by the National Assembly as amendments to the present Electoral Law. Rene Vivas, member of the National Directorate of the FSLN, stated that the guarantees of honesty must be the same for voters inside and outside the country. This would mean the establishment of polling places in the principal cities where eligible Nicaraguans live. This differs from the normal procedure of voting at the Nicaraguan consulates. (Barricada, August 9) 4. Oil leak threatens Managua's water supply. Last week approximately 2,000 gallons of oil leaked out of the pipes of the ESSO refinery located in the extreme western part of the city of Managua. Nicaraguan firefighters were able to take adequate measures to ensure that there was no explosion, an incident which would have caused enormous damage in surrounding residential areas. Local environmental groups, however, are insisting that the refinery is a constant source of contamination and that, in fact, several wells in that area are now contaminated. The refinery is situated very close to Lake Asososca, the principal water supply of the city of Managua. During the Sandinista government, studies were carried out about the feasibility of relocating the refinery to a site outside the city, but the present government has not followed up on these plans. (Barricada, August 7) 5. Ministers and vice-ministers challenge constitutional amendments. Twenty-four high-level government officials, all ministers and vice- ministers of the Chamorro government, have filed an appeal with the Nicaraguan Supreme Court against the President and the National Assembly for having passed and promulgated Law Number 192 which amended the 1987 Constitution and which the appellants consider unconstitutional. Some political analysts, including the former Sandinista ambassador to the U.S., Carlos Tunnerman, consider that the latest challenge to the amendments is part of the strategy of Minister of the Presidency Antonio Lacayo to run for office in 1996 despite restrictions contained in the amendments on the candidacy of close relatives of the current president. Two days after the first appeal was filed, Minister of Foreign Cooperation Edwin Kruger also presented his formal appeal to the Court stating that the amendments block his aspirations to run for the National Assembly. In other political news, Ernesto Leal, Minister of Foreign Relations, is supposedly considering running for the presidency under the banner of the Nicaraguan Democratic Movement (MDN). (La Prensa, August 8) 6. Floods cause damage in Esteli. Forty-three families from three poor neighborhoods in Esteli were evacuated from their homes due to the overflowing of the Esteli river, product of the intense rains that have fallen during this year's rainy season. No lives were lost but many of the homes were destroyed by strong currents and the area's system of potable water was completely destroyed. 7. Plot thickens around hijacked plane and murdered pilot. Instead of clearing up the mystery of the hijacked Cessna belonging to the local La Costena Airlines and the murder of the pilot, whose body was later found in Colombia, the plot is thickening. The missing hijacked plane has been found in the town of Villvicencio, Llanos del Norte in Colombia. Area residents had told local police of the unexpected landing of an airplane which was found as unidentified persons were repainting it. The tail, with the identification number of the plane, had not yet been covered, however, so that the plane could be identified. In Managua, a former high-level Nicaraguan army officer, Jorge Guerrero Gomez, has been detained for questioning because of his association with other suspects in the case and because of the fact that he accepted a check from the airlines for another flight in July that had been previously booked but later canceled. It is thought that the canceled flight might have been the first attempt to hijack a plane to return high level Cali cartel members to Colombia undercover. Guerrero, however, claims that he picked up the check for a friend who did not have proper identification and that the friend is a representative of the EZLN, the Zapatista Army for National Liberation from Mexico, with which Guerrero admits to being an active sympathizer. Some of the local press are making much of Guerrero's presumed involvement because he was formerly the chief of personal security for Daniel Ortega. In another "coincidence," the body of one of the mechanics that worked on the plane was found murdered on the outskirts of Managua, after having been missing for over three days. The entire background of the hijacking and murder are still far from clear. Many think that international drug dealers are trying to convert Nicaragua into one of their main intermediate points for smuggling drugs to the north. Last week, while attention was focused on the question of the hijacked plane and the murdered pilot, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency boat captured a speed boat carrying 1,000 kilos of Colombian cocaine in international waters off the Nicaraguan beach resort of Montelimar. If the boat had entered Nicaraguan waters, Nicaraguan police and army officials were ready to pick it up. (La Prensa, August 8, 11; Barricada August 10) 8. A new literacy campaign? Father Fernando Cardenal, who was the Coordinator of the Nicaragua Literacy Crusade in 1980, stated last week that he was "very worried" about the rising rates of illiteracy in the country. He also stated that there was an urgent need to relaunch the Crusade by means of a special month-long campaign from August 8th to September 8th. The purpose of this campaign would be to sensitize the population to the fact that the illiteracy rate in Nicaragua is now over 35%, which is a 23% increase in the last five years, according to Cardenal. That rate, he said, will continue to increase due to the fact that over 200,000 children who should be in primary school, are not in school. And 45% of those in primary school do not make it past the second grade. (Barricada, August 10)