Nicaragua News Service Published by the Nicaragua Network Education Fund Volume 6, no. 45 November 2-8, 1998 by Jeff Shriver 1. Avalanche in Posoltega Kills Thousands. 2.. Nicaragua Picks Up Pieces From Hurricane Damage. 3. Nicaragua Asks For Debt Relief . 4. Relief Effort Criticized as Politicized, Incoherent 5. News Briefs 1. Avalanche in Posoltega kills Thousands First a loud noise was heard. The few survivors in Posoltega later said that they thought it was a passing airplane. Soon after, an avalanche fell from Cerro Casitas and buried five communities below. Bodies were left intact under a sea of mud. Surviving family members and the Nicaraguan Army began to unearth corpses for days after the tragedy, which left an estimated 1,500-2,000 dead and another 2,500 disappeared. The Casitas avalanche represents one of the ugliest and most brutal tragedies in Nicaragua due to the damages of Hurricane Mitch. The tragedy had a tremendous psychological impact on the country as gruesome images of corpses and strewn body parts dominated the papers for most of the week. President Aleman responded by calling for three days of national mourning. Hundreds of people were left trapped alive in the rubble as the government made delayed emergency efforts to evacuate the people. Survivors have gone back to the site around their old community where they begin searching underneath the rubble for their loved ones. One man who lives in Managua with family in Posoltega arrived to look for his mother. He found her and cremated her. "May God forgive me," he said. "But I would rather do this than have the animals devour my mother's body." Manuel, a barefoot 12-year old boy, looked for his family for three days. "I want to see them," he said. "But the mud has not allowed me to get to the spot where our house was." Due to the high level of decomposing bodies in Posoltega, this region runs a high risk of an epidemic of diseases such as typhoid, colera, or hepatitis. Many people in the surrounding refugee camps in the Chinandega region are suffering from fever, diarrhea, conjunctivitis, respiratory problems, and a few cases of colera have been reported. The Government has indicated its desire to make Posoltega a national cemetery. (La Tribuna, Nuevo Dario, La Prensa) 2. Nicaragua Picks Up Pieces From Hurricane Damage Nicaragua continued to reel this week as it tried to pick up the pieces from damages exacted by Hurricane Mitch. Nicaraguan President Aleman reported on national and foreign television the daunting statistical updates of the affected: 3,800 deaths, 1 million affected, and nearly US $1 billion in damages to infrastructure, energy sources, agriculture losses and housing. Upon being asked how long Nicaragua would take to recover from the tragedy, the president responded, "With optimistic calculations, one to two years." Discoveries of towns hardest hit by the hurricane continued to dominate headlines. The villages of Wiwili and Quilali were especially hard hit. Four hundred houses were wiped out in Wiwili due to landslides from Cerro La Vigia. The Rio Coco swept away 685 houses in Quilali. (La Tribuna) Meanwhile, as if Nicaragua were incapable of bearing more natural disasters, small earthquakes rocked the region of Chinandega, and the Volcano "Cerro Negro" spouted lava from its crater at different points during the week. Communities around the volcano were immediately evacuated from the viscinity. As the week went on, however, the activity lessened and Cerro Negro ceased to be a threat to the surrounding population. Members of the diplomatic community visited Leon this week. Martin Stabile, member of the delegation and representative in Nicaragua for the InterAmerican Development Bank, evaluated damages. "Peasant families depend on two fundamental things: their crops and their livestock. Both were swept away by the currents, and they are starting from zero. They don't have food, housing nor clothing. This is worrisome," he said. The delegation concluded that the last planting of the season will not be possible due to the current humidity of the soil. The result will be a lack of food and hunger. With the dry season coming, the next crop will not be ready until July of 1999. (El Nuevo Diario, La Prensa) 3. Nicaraguan Government Seeks Debt Relief in Light of Hurricane Damages The cancellation of the debt and the inclusion of Nicaragua in the Initiative of Highly Indebted Countries (HIPC), are the principle petitions of President Aleman to the international community. This request comes at the moment Hurricane Mitch has caused so much human and material damage in the country. The president of the Central Bank, Noel Ramirez, affirmed that the principle objective of the Government is that Nicaragua win a full condemnation of its debt in the shortest term possible and within the mechanisms of the HIPC Initiative. According to Ramirez, this means that the ESAF (structural adjustment program) will need to continue to be implemented as scheduled. The only difference is that Nicaragua will be asking the international finance organizations to reduce the timeline of Nicaragua's eligibility for the HIPC Initiative. Nicaragua is currently scheduled to enter the plan at the end of 1999. Representatives from both the International Monetary Fund and the InterAmerican Development Bank will send representatives to Nicaragua in the next couple of weeks to review damages and possible repercussions in macro-economic policy in light of hurricane damages. Ramirez added that Nicaragua will sustain a fiscal deficit of around US $80 million, US$10 million more than what was foreseen before the disaster. He also affirmed that Nicaragua's commercial deficit will increase to the decrease in exports this year. The debt cancellation initiative has the full support of the Nicaraguan Catholic Church and the FSLN. Central American presidents will also give their support to the initiative when they meet on Monday, November 9 to officially request total debt relief for Nicaragua and Honduras. Jimmy Carter, who arrived this week in Nicaragua, also spoke in favor of debt forgiveness for Nicaragua in light of hurricane damages. (La Tribuna, La Prensa) 4. Relief Effort Criticized as Politicized and Incoherent. The exclusion of principle organizations of civil society from participation in the National Emergency Committee in different departments of the country has caused an inadequate and disorderly distribution of aid to victims of Hurricane Mitch, according to recent newspaper reports. The Emergency Committee, according to different sectors of civil society, works in a very disorderly and experimental way. Many sectoral leaders have little or no experience in disaster work, which has caused further delays and more suffering for victims. Cirilo Otero, coordinator for NGO work in the country, said that there is a lack of communication on an internal level of the government as well as with civil society. Otero pointed out that technical and medical assistance is not being coordinated well because there is not a coordination channeling of real information to the government to be used to make decisions. (La Prensa, El Nuevo Diario) In another incident, members of the Nicaraguan Baptist Convention denounced that the Government has placed obstacles to incoming donations entering Nicaragua from evangelical churches in the U.S., Europe and South America. The convention also denounced the exclusive use of catholic bishops and priests to direct activities traditionally managed by the State and civil society without discrimination. Sixto Ulloa, member of the convention, said that the government "has maintained a very hostile treatment to evangelical denominations by not granting them an exoneration of taxes which is legally established for all of its program donations." Ulloa expressed that Nicaragua is the only country in the world in which the donor must pay 15% of the donation to the state, and this has begun to provoke reactions amongst churches in the U.S, Canada and Europe. Ulloa considered "insulting and unprecedented" the decision of the government to appoint Catholic bishops as responsible for aid distribution in communities. (El Nuevo Diario) Evangelical churches have a large infrastructure in the country, with over 7000 churches on a national level. However, there is currently no evangelical representation on the government's National Emergency Committee. Meanwhile, on the Atlantic Coast, Norman Bent of the Moravian Church accused the government of abandoning some 45,000 people seriously affected by the hurricane in the Autonomous Region of the Atlantic Coast. "The attitude of the Government, by not saying anything about damages on the Atlantic Coast, is an expression of racism, or of not wanting to do anything for these regions. The government does not want to take responsibility for the situation on the Coast," Bent added. Aleman, in his trips to affected communities, has often been met by a restless population of needy people hostile to Aleman due to the lack of attention they have been receiving. In the city of Dario, one of the towns hardest hit by the hurricane, a multitude of people awaited his caravan and yelled all types of insults. Aleman, visibly shaken by the occurrence, observed only a minimal amount of the damages and then quickly left the town. Similar occurrences took place in Leon and Chinandega. 5. News Briefs -Nearly US $14 million has been received from the International Community, affirmed David Robleto, Minister of Foreign Relations. In bilateral aid, a total of US$10,225,398 has been received from the following countries and organizations: Germany, Austria, Brazil, Care International, Canada, Cuba, Denmark, Great Britain, United States, Spain, Finland, France, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Holland, China, and Switzerland. US$3.7 million has been received in multilateral aid from agencies such as the UN, the European Union, and the InterAmerican Development Bank. -The U.S. Government approved $70 million in emergency aid to Central American countries affected by Hurricane Mitch. Nicaraguan Ambassador in the U.S., Francisco Aguirre Sacasa, considered the approval of the funds a very positive step, as it shows a level of awareness of the gravity of the crisis affecting Central Americans. Initially only $3 million was approved until press reports began to flood the U.S. with details of damages. -Early in the week, Cuba made a humanitarian gesture to Nicaragua's hurricane victims by offering to send Cuban medical doctors and medicine to Nicaragua. However, President Aleman strangely rebuffed the offer to send doctors. "I will only accept medicines, because here we have a sufficient amount of doctors," he said. Meanwhile, the Cuban-American Foundation, made up of Cuban exiles in Miami, announced that they would soon be sending an unspecified amount of aid to Nicaragua to support the relief effort. The Cuban-American Foundation were primary financiers of Aleman's presidential campaign. Despite the rejection of Cuban doctors, a shipment of Cuban medicines and pesticides were accepted. -The United States and the European Union have reportedly suspended shrimp imports from Nicaragua, which could result in a net loss of earnings of US $100 million annually. Shrimp is the second highest earning export next to coffee. According to the report, U.S. and Europe are concerned about water contamination and the potential spread of disease through the importing of Nicaraguan shrimp in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch.