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Articles on Nicaragua

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A priest and Catholic worshippers pray in front of an image of ‘Sangre de Cristo,’ burned in a fire on July 2020, at the Metropolitan Cathedral in Managua. Oswaldo Rivas/AFP via Getty Images

Nicaragua released imprisoned priests, but repression is unlikely to relent – and the Catholic Church remains a target

When President Daniel Ortega returned to power in 2006, church figures supported him. Violent repression after the 2018 protests has soured the relationship and made clergy targets for intimidation.
Migrants heading north arrive in Panama on Oct. 6, 2023, after walking across the 100-kilometre stretch of treacherous jungle shared by Colombia and Panama known as the Darien Gap. (AP Photo/Arnulfo Franco)

Darien Gap: As migrants take deadly risks for better lives, Canada and the U.S. must do much more

Migrants who cross the treacherous Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia often experience violence and abuse, extortion or detention by migration authorities.
U.S. Border Patrol detains tens of thousands of the families and children who try to cross U.S. borders every year. AP Photo/Julio Cortez

The situation at the US-Mexico border is a crisis – but is it new?

Children and families have been fleeing to the US in rising numbers for nearly a decade. So why is the current situation at the US-Mexico border being viewed as something new?
Protesters cross the Brooklyn Bridge on June 19, 2020 – Juneteenth – in the United States’ third straight week of protest. Pablo Monsalve / VIEWpress via Getty Images

George Floyd protests aren’t just anti-racist – they are anti-authoritarian

Unrest in the US looks familiar to Latin Americans, who are accustomed to resisting undemocratic governments – and to their protest movements being met with violent suppression.
Many of Latin America’s leftist ‘revolutions’ are now in crisis. But the left is resurging in some countries. The Conversation / Photo Claudia Daut/Reuters

The Latin American left isn’t dead yet

Progressives are leading in the presidential elections of Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia, bucking the region’s recent rightward trend. But there are lessons in the failures of leftists past.
A farmer carries firewood during the dry season in Nicaragua, one of the Central American countries affected by a recent drought. Neil Palmer for CIAT/flickr

How climate change is driving emigration from Central America

Poverty and violence are often cited as the reasons people emigrate from Central America, but factors such as drought, exacerbated by climate change, are driving people to leave too.
Riot police at an anti-government march in Managua, Nicaragua, Oct. 14, 2018. Reuters/Oswaldo Rivas

One year after Nicaraguan uprising, Ortega is back in control

A massive protest movement exploded across Nicaragua in April 2018, threatening to topple the country’s authoritarian regime. What happened to Central America’s ‘tropical spring?’
Inmates, members of MS-13 and Barrio 18 gangs, wait upon arrival at the maximum security prison in Zacatecoluca, 65 kilometres east of San Salvador, on August 9, 2017. Marvin RECINOS / AFP

What gangs tell us about the world we live in

Imaginaries of gangs as inherent forms of brutal anarchy promote particular political agendas and obscure the ways gangs can reveal the underlying dynamics of the contexts within which they emerge.
Costa Ricans held a march in solidarity with Nicaraguan refugees on Aug. 25, 2018. An estimated 500,000 Nicaraguans live in Costa Rica, with more arriving daily as crisis in the country deepens. Reuters/Juan Carlos Ulate

Migrant money could be keeping Nicaragua’s uprising alive

Nicaraguan migrants send over US$1 billion home each year. This money has played a changing role in domestic politics – first boosting the Ortega regime and, now, sustaining the uprising against him.

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