With the last set of additions made to The Violence of Development website (December 2021), we included a letter from the Nicaraguan government to the Organisation of American States (OAS) terminating that country’s membership of the Organisation and setting out the reasoning behind the government’s decision.

Under the Directorship of Luis Almagro, the OAS has consistently undermined and reported against those countries in Latin America and the Caribbean which follow a strongly or even slightly socially directed political and economic policy line. The OAS was largely responsible for spreading the lies about the Bolivian election which resulted in a right-wing coup which unseated the democratically elected Evo Morales. It has consistently disseminated untruths and half-truths about the Chavez and Maduro governments in Venezuela; and it has been instrumental in persuading the mainstream western media that the November election in Nicaragua was illegitimate.[1]

Before the Nicaraguan election and before Nicaragua’s withdrawal from the OAS, however, Nicaragua’s Ambassador to the OAS, Luis Alvarado, spoke at the OAS Special Session on the occasion of Indigenous Peoples’ Day. He recalled that Nicaragua is a multi-ethnic and multicultural nation.

“We celebrate the legacy of our Caciques Diriangén and Nicarao and so many other Miskito, Mayangna, Ulwa and Rama leaders, who never surrendered to colonial oppression and whose strength and wisdom inspired national independence, anti-imperialist struggle, the Sandinista Popular Revolution and the autonomy of the peoples of the Caribbean Coast and the construction of a genuine Nicaraguan democracy,” he said. He said that the government of Nicaragua has implemented “important programmes such as the Mother Earth Programme, which has allowed the demarcation and titling of 23 territories of the native and Afro-descendant peoples between 2007 and 2021, incorporating 314 communities that cover a territorial extension of more than 37,859 sq. km., with more than 205,315 inhabitants, 31 per cent of the national territory, more than any other country in our hemisphere. Technical and higher education has been strengthened, which is free through the National Technological Institute (INATEC), the community and intercultural universities, BICU and URACCAN and the Open Online University of Nicaragua (UALN) of the National Council of Universities. In the area of health, the ancestral knowledge and practices of Indigenous peoples have been integrated into the Family and Community Health Model (MOSAFC), which guarantees greater investment in health infrastructure, professional training and comprehensive organisation of the health sector, encouraging participation of all actors (midwives, healers, traditional doctors, brigadistas, nurses, doctors, wise men, etc.) in the intercultural management of health in Indigenous communities.” [Nicaraguan Delegation to the OAS, as reported in Informe Pastrán, 12 August 2021.]

[1]   See ‘Ten Reasons Almagro Has To Go’: https://popularresistance.org/ten-reasons-almagro-has-to-go/