U.S.-Nicaraguan Ties Flare up
in León
By Alex Leff
LEON, Nicaragua - The Nicaraguan town of
León has declared the U.S. Ambassador Robert
Callahan persona non-grata, The Nica Times
has reported.
The snub comes amid a tit-for-tat dispute
between the U.S. Embassy and León, a
colonial city in the northwestern part of
the country. Nica Times editor Tim Rogers
writes that earlier this week, the embassy
failed to invite León Mayor Manuel Calderón
to the unveiling of the newly constructed
León-Ponoloya Highway, an important project
that was funded by the Millennium Challenge
Corporation (MCC).
That's the same MCC that had cut aid
projects in Nicaragua over suspected
irregularities in the Central American
country's November 2008 municipal elections.
Questions about rigging the vote in favor of
the Sandinistas, which sparked months of
street violence and intimidation, have been
at the heart of a nationwide scandal that
prompted international aid donors to freeze
much needed assistance to the country.
Being declared non-grata might be an
improvement for Callahan, considering the
harassment he has faced. After publicly
calling the municipal elections fraudulent,
protesters chanted "Get out, get out" and
attacked the U.S. Embassy with rocks and
homemade explosives last October.
Mayor Calderón's beef with the United States
goes even further back than that. Calderón
couldn't get a U.S. visa last year because
of his role as an army commander during the
so-called "Red Christmas," a deadly
Sandinista push to relocate indigenous
people in 1981. He is among a handful of
Sandinista army leaders who stand accused by
Nicaragua's Permanent Commission on Human
Rights of torturing and massacring hundreds
of Miskito people suspected of collaborating
with Contras on the Caribbean coast. Their
differences run deeper still if you consider
Callahan's past. Years before he was sworn
in as ambassador to Nicaragua in July 2008,
Callahan served as spokesman and
speechwriter for then-Ambassador to Honduras
John Negroponte at the time of the
U.S.-backed Contra war against the first
Sandinista government.
In Central America, it's surprising how much
can change over time, and paradoxically,
with many of the same actors in play, how
little things actually do change. |
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