Quixote Blog

After a period of near-silence Washington has begun to deliberate on the meaning of a new Ortega administration. Immediately following the election the State Department voiced its moderate displeasure at the results, but only went so far as to point out that there were ‘irregularities’ in the process. Time passed quietly.

On December 1, 2011, the opening volley was fired when The House Committee on Foreign Affairs heard testimony regarding Nicaragua’s election. The hearing featured mostly right wing advocates who spoke out against Ortega, the Sandinistas, and US policy toward Nicaragua. The tone was set with a title that’s part accusation and part promise: Democracy Held Hostage in Nicaragua: Part I. Aside from what have become standard complaints, the statement calls for immediate US action against Nicaragua, demanding that President Obama, “…keep using aid and development programs such as the Millennium Challenge Corporation to reward democratic progress and punish authoritarian abuses.”  At this point “Part II” has not been scheduled.

On the Senate side Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Bob Mendez (D-NJ) introduced a resolution calling on President Obama to condemn the elections in Nicaragua on December 2. Rubio argued that the situation in Nicaragua had reached a “tipping point” and that the situation “demands a strong reaction from the United States and the mobilization of our allies in defense of the Nicaraguan people’s human rights. I urge the administration to speak out and act with urgency against the assault on democracy and constitutional order taking place in Nicaragua.”

In the last week Rubio elevated pressure on the Obama administration to make a statement condemning the elections in Nicaragua.  Specifically, Rubio offered to make a deal with the administration.  If the administration would make a strong statement against Ortega, Rubio would work to line up votes for Mari Carmen Aponte who is Obama’s nominee for ambassador to El Salvador.  Jim Demitt (R-SC) placed a hold on her nomination last year and Obama used a recess appointment to get around that hold.  But the recess appointment expires on Dec 31.  The committee vote was held on December 12 and without the statement from the administration that he was looking for, Rubio voted against her and as of now her appointment is blocked

These kinds of declarations have consistently been used as justification for heavy-handed and undesired US intervention around the world. With an election year on the way, an opportunity to denounce an old rival of the Re(agan)publican party and a sitting Democratic President is a juicy proposition indeed!

The one moderating statement during the December 1st hearing came from Jennifer McCoy of the Carter Center.  Though critical of the electoral process McCoy argued that the call for sanctions would be counter-productive. First, US sanctions would backfire when the Nicaraguan government called such action imperialism. Second, the United States is not capable of isolating a country on its own (see Cuba and Venezuela). Third, the harm done to the struggling economy would encourage authoritarian action in its wake. Fourth, Nicaragua is far more dependent on Venezuela for aid (“Venezuelan aid now surpasses all US and European aid combined…). The statement continues with a dose of realism (and a hint of paternalism) for those clamoring for action against Nicaragua:

The way forward is to avoid personalizing politics, identifying “friends” and “foes”. It is to engage in pragmatic talks to address the transnational issues of national interest to us all, and that none of us can solve alone – drugs, security, climate change, oil spills, immigration. It is to recognize and appreciate the benefits of living in a relatively stable, democratic and friendly neighborhood. And it is to respect the autonomy and diversity of this maturing continent.

Calls for a rational approach are not, however, being heeded.  Just last week House Foreign Relations chair Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) tried to tie Ortega and other “dictators” in Latin America to a fuzzy plot with Iran and Hezbollah to undermine U.S. interests. In a pattern far too common these days her statement was long on threatening rhetoric and lacking any actual evidence.

It is unclear whether this stirred pot will boil over into official action or if it is mostly bluster ahead of November 2012.  The most troubling calls are those for the Obama administration to declare an interruption of democratic constitutional rule. An official position that would certainly be a gateway to more severe intervention.

The struggle for women’s ordination within the Catholic Church is reaching a new peak today.  Women are being ordained, and male priests are once again willing to speak out in support.  Father Roy Bourgeois is facing dismissal from the Maryknoll order for his support for women’s ordination, and many priests have spoken out in his defense.  The Vatican is not happy with this development, but the time may be coming soon when there will be no turning back. In a homily preached as part of the activities related to the SOA demonstration in November (picture above) ordained priest Janice Sevre-Duszynska made the following observation:

Many people recognize the underlying connections between male-only images of God and a domination/subordination pattern of human relationships that contribute to violence in our world, including violence toward women and children

In 2002 seven women were ordained as priests in a ceremony conducted on the Danube River.  The Quixote Center sponsored a speaking tour with two of the women the following year, and was honored to celebrate a mass at the Center with them.  The movement to ordain women has only accelerated from there.  There are an estimated 70 ordained women priests in the U.S. and 100 worldwide.  An interesting article in the Minnesota Star Tribune today provides some great reflections on the movement and the women who are leading churches in the state and elsewhere.

When the Quixote Center was launched in 1976 the first program connected to it was Priests for Equality (PFE).  Quixote Center co-founder Bill Callahan, then a Jesuit priest, launched PFE the previous year as a call to priests to endorse a Charter for Equality.  The Charter was a statement of support for equal rights for women within society and – perhaps more radical for the Church – a call for full equality WITHIN the Catholic Church, including ordination of women. By the late 1970s and early 1980s backlash from the Vatican on issues of church reform and the more radical elements of Vatican II led many priests to choose anonymity in their support for the Charter. Bill’s silence was formally demanded by the Vatican for his support of women’s ordination. He was expelled from the Jesuits in 1993 because he did not keep silent.

Priests for Equality launched its Inclusive Language program in the mid-1980s, providing new translations of liturgical material and eventually a complete new translation of the Bible. These labors of love continue as a popular symbol for equality and inclusiveness in the Church and in the society in which it exists.

16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence: New Law in Nicaragua

Our last post on Nicaragua left open the question of whether the new assembly, with its majority female Sandinista contingent, will provide an opportunity to pass more aggressive legislation in defense of women’s rights.  As it turns out – about the time we were asking the question – the answer, at least a preliminary answer, was being given.  From the Nicaragua News Bulletin:

On Nov. 30 the National Assembly approved, with 68 votes in favor, the Integral Law against Violence toward Women. The law sets criminal penalties for crimes of violence against women and identifies femicide as a crime separate from murder in general, committed by someone with a relationship to the woman. The Chair of the National Assembly Committee on Women, Youth and Children, Maria Dolores Aleman, said that the sanctions against aggressors of that type “represent a consensus that was able to fulfill the expectations of all of us.” She said that the law is a significant advance for the nation in the “identification, prevention, attention, and penalties” to benefit the victims of violence. The law also creates new crimes of domestic violence. The National Assembly leadership recognized the Maria Elena Cuadra Women’s Movement for its initiative and help with consulting the affected sectors of society during the writing of the law. Aleman said the law was necessary because of the growing number of female murders since 2003. In the past year there have been 89 women killed including girls between 3 and 10 years old.

The Maria Elena Cuadra Women’s Movement announced the victory on their website – and also placed it in a regional context where a coalition of women’s organizations is working to make such laws a reality everywhere.

The Maria Elena Cuadra Women’s Movement is one of the many popular organizations that grew out of the divided Sandinista of the 1990s.  The director, Sandra Ramos, is a former leader in the Women’s Division of the Sandinista Workers Central.  During the early 1990s she was among a small group of labor activists that were mobilizing in the newly re-opened free trade zone.  The free trade zone remains primarily a garment manufacturing area that employs a large majority of young women.  Women suffer all of the abuses men suffer, and then some as managers demand sexual favors for employment, fire women when they become pregnant, and sustain a work environment that is particularly unhealthy to women.

Nicaragua’s labor movement had more success than other countries in achieving a modest level of unionization in free trade zones in the late 1990s.  Ramos was an early leader in that effort.  After a number of frustrations, Ramos left the CST to launch an independent organizing effort in the free trade zones in the mid-1990s.  The Women’s Movement focused on popular education around workers’ rights and sought to organize women to demand those rights.  CST was not organizing unions, but helped the concurrent unionization efforts through educational efforts.

The Maria Elena Cuadra Women’s Movement has been at the forefront of several national campaigns on the dignity and rights of workers – Work Yes!  But with Dignity! – and has also organized around other issues of women’s empowerment, such as the recent campaign to pass a new law providing more protections for women.  You can check out their website here.

16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence: Stand up against rape in U.S. detention facilities

On any given day the United States government is detaining over 30,000 people who have not been convicted of a crime, and are being denied all due process rights.  Immigrant detention has been expanding rapidly in recent years.  It is a profitable industry for the private sector: private corporation manage 40% of detainees, and that ratio is growing.  Immigration detention is officially treated as an administrative, not criminal, matter.  As a result of this designation the Department of Justice does not recognize access to an attorney, the right to communicate with family, or any other rights of due process. This accounting method provides a convenient shield from the prying eyes of the public, and reduces detainees to neat ‘packages’ to be warehoused and shipped from the country at the convenience of the agencies involved.

The DoJ’s refusal to respect fundamental rights for immigrant detainees has gone so far as to actually block legal processes put into place to protect prisoners against sexual violence (the Prison Rape Elimination Act) from being applied in immigrant detention facilities. From the ACLU:

In 2003 a Republican-controlled Congress unanimously passed PREA to set standards for preventing, detecting and responding to sexual abuse that occurs while individuals are in government custody. Earlier this year the Department of Justice (DOJ) surprisingly proposed regulations that would exclude immigration detainees from PREA coverage, thereby circumventing Congress’s intent to protect all people in government custody from sexual assault.

As part of the 16 Days of Activism we are encouraging people to respond to the ACLU call to action and demand that President Obama and Attorney General Holder extend these legislatively mandated protections to immigrants in detention. This is a step in the direction of the long term objective: an end to the inhumane practices of the US detention system!

You can read more about this case at the ACLU website – and then send a message to Obama and Holder here.

16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence: Nicaragua and the 2011 Elections

Last week we began posting information about organizations working against gender violence, especially in areas that intersect with other core Quixote Center programs.   Today we are looking at the situation of gender violence in Nicaragua through the lens of the recent election.  Daniel Ortega, the leader of the Sandinista party and the winner of the presidential race in the election last month, has been accused of raping his step-daughter repeatedly during much of the 1980s, beginning when she was 11 years old. His reelection has angered many women’s rights activists who fear it is a symbol of official, if not popular, indifference to sexual violence.

Ortega’s step-daughter made the accusations public in 1998. Yet, Ortega has never been formally tried. After claiming immunity from prosecution for nearly 4 years, when the case finally went to court in December 2001 Ortega was able to ensure that it came before a politically friendly judge who tossed the case out on the grounds that the statute of limitations had been exceeded.   His step daughter, Zoilamérica Narváez, then took the case to the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights. The Commission returned it and encouraged the Nicaraguan government to take action.  It has not.

Aside from the individual accusations against Ortega, the Sandinista party has moved in a direction that scholar Karen Kampwirth has identified as anti-feminist, evidenced particularly in the FSLN’s alignment with the Catholic hierarchy. A unanimous FSLN vote in favor of the abolition of “therapeutic” abortions, even when a woman’s life is in  danger, occurred just before the 2006 election.  Kampwirth argues that these trends contributing to Ortega’s election in 2006 were the result of a realignment of the political forces within the party.  She argues that the FSLN vote on the abortion ban can “only be explained through the relationship of four long-term processes: (1) the FSLN’s becoming a less ideological party, advocating reconciliation rather than revolution (2) nearly a decade of pact making with the right (3) the alienation of the feminist movement from the FSLN and divisions within it, and (4) the increasing sophistication of the anti-feminist movement.”

So, even though the FSLN sat a large proportion of women (of the 62 members of the Sandinista deputies elected to the National Assembly, 33 are women, a record – see Nicaragua Network Hotline for more information on election) it is not clear that the FSLN will be a vehicle for advocacy on women’s rights. Rather, concerns about sexual violence and women’s reproductive rights have been marginalized or silenced within the party as the re-election campaigns for Ortega in 2006 and 2011 seem to have taken precedent over any other consideration.  That advocacy for women’s rights and Ortega’s reelection goals might be viewed as contradictory illuminates the political power of the Church and other anti-feminist forces over the party, and the degree to which Ortega is himself personally identified with the issue of sexual violence in particular.

Eva Carroll’s article in the Guardian just prior to the election makes this point:

“To talk about sexual violence in Nicaragua is to talk against Daniel Ortega,” says Juanita Jimenez of the Women’s Autonomous Movement (MAM), an open critic of the government. “This affects the daily life of women and girls, it’s not just a problem for the feminist movement. It is so difficult now to report sexual abuse. There is no proper procedure.”

Sexual abuse of young women and girls in Nicaragua is endemic, but the government has now shut down all funding for prevention and to support victims. Under previous governments, the national police worked with women’s organisations to prevent gender based violence, but now they are encouraged to reunite abuse victims with their families instead of removing them and charging offenders.

Of course, women are still organizing.  Indeed, an important aspect of this history is the evolution of independent feminist organizations distinct from the Sandinista party.  The development of new groups, or “de-aligning” of groups previously affiliated with the party is a process that goes back 20 years to the aftermath of 1990 elections, and in some cases to 1987 and organizing around the constitutional process which contained important clauses on women’s rights.  In the next couple of days we will talk about some of the organizations that have developed along this independent path especially those confronting gender based violence.

Of course, the large number of women in the Sandinista legislative delegation may also lead to a more pro-active legislative agenda in protection of women’s rights.  It is too early to tell what impact the latest election will have on gender relations and efforts to combat sexual violence.