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NICARAGUA:
A Month of Free Fun and Games for Poor
Children
By José Adán Silva
MANAGUA (IPS) - More than one million
poor children in Nicaragua will enjoy a
massive Christmas celebration this month,
complete with recreational activities and
presents, organised by the government of
President Daniel Ortega. But the opposition
is criticising the project as populist and
eccentric.
First Lady Rosario Murillo, who heads the
presidency's Communication and Citizenship
Council, announced the launch of a fun fair
and amusement park Nov. 27 in the Plaza de
la Fe, on the west side of Managua.
The project was officially named "Navidad
Solidaria (Christmas Solidarity) 2009," and
run to Jan. 3, 2010.
An ice skating rink, amusement rides, dodgem
cars, carousels, electric trains, bounce
platforms and physical activity areas have
been installed in the park.
Stages have been set up for artistic dance
performances, and clowns, puppeteers, circus
acts and other children's entertainers have
been hired.
In this extraordinary setting, thousands of
children can be seen running around among
mechanical rides - and real war equipment.
The Nicaraguan army was invited to
participate and is displaying, in the same
plaza, aircraft, motorboats, helicopters,
combat tanks and anti-aircraft artillery,
alongside antique engines belonging to the
Nicaraguan Fire Department.
The First Lady announced there would be
competitions, tracks for athletics training,
and an area of stalls selling traditional
sweetmeats and local crafts.
According to estimates by the president's
office, 59,200 children are expected to
flock to the ice skating rink alone, the
star attraction in this tropical Central
American country where it is a complete
novelty.
And the rides for teenagers and young people
will draw approximately 245,500 users.
Children's rides are expected to attract
230,500 girls and boys, and another 120,000
will use other electric games. About 193,000
children will play on the bounce platforms,
and the circus tents will gather an audience
of about 81,500 children.
In total, the government estimates that
one-and-a-half million children and
teenagers from all over the country will
visit the fun fair.
The government has rented 200 school buses
to transport children from different parts
of the country to Managua.
The Nicaraguan government has also paid
thousands of artisans to make 100,000
papier-maché piñatas filled with sweets.
These will be strung up and broken by a
blindfolded child with a stick, scattering
the goodies for a free-for-all grab, in the
days before Christmas.
Three hundred thousand toys and thousands of
food vouchers for poor families will be
distributed on Christmas day.
Constitutionally, Nicaragua is a secular
state, but that did not prevent Murillo from
instructing all public institutions to build
altars in the streets to venerate the Virgin
Mary, who has an important feast day on Dec.
8.
She also ordered the staff of the state
Programa Amor (Love), which aims to
reintegrate street kids into families and
society, to round up 12,700 children to take
to the fun fair.
This task will involve 150 children's
workers from Programa Amor and 1,340 youth
workers from the Nicaraguan Institute for
Youth.
Local governments, public employees and
members of the governing party, the leftwing
Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN),
are also playing a role in the Navidad
Solidaria project.
Murillo told the government-aligned media
that the amusement park and the month-long
Navidad Solidaria project "are expensive,
but are not being paid for by those who
plundered Nicaragua, nor by the corrupt,"
who go about criticising a project that
benefits the people.
She was reacting to opposition critics who
view the renting of ice skating rinks as
eccentric and out of place, and the
distribution of food vouchers to poor
families in the public squares as populism.
Edmundo Jarquín, a former presidential
candidate for the dissident Sandinista
Renewal Movement, said the government's
Christmas gesture makes "a mockery of the
poor."
"The people want jobs and wages, dignity,
not crumbs of charity," Jarquín told IPS.
"In such a poor country, people will go, and
rightly so, to collect and enjoy these
crumbs that the ruling family, like Nero,
tosses from its balcony of power," he said.
But in Jarquín's view, "in their heart of
hearts, people would prefer to have a job
and a salary so they can acquire as a right
what Ortega is giving as a handout."
Forty-seven percent of Nicaragua's 5.7
million people are living on less than two
dollars a day, according to United Nations
statistics.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)
indicates that between 2009 and 2010, 38
percent of children under five in Nicaragua
will be undernourished, compared to 27
percent in 2006.
Official Education Ministry figures show
that between 500,000 and 700,000 children
and teenagers drop out of the educational
system every year because of poverty.
Members of the rightwing opposition
Constitutionalist Liberal Party, like
lawmaker Wilfredo Navarro, voiced their
criticism of the government's action in
parliament and demanded to know where the
funding came from.
The opposition estimates that spending on
the Navidad Solidaria 2009 project will be
at least 6.5 million dollars.
Liberal congresswoman María Eugenia Sequeira
said "it is a waste to spend public money on
an amusement park when there are 11,000
schools without a roof."
President Ortega took up cudgels in the
controversy, saying "Those who criticise
people coming to enjoy themselves for free,
those who have said this is like a circus, a
show, should be ashamed: it is a circus, but
for making people happy. Criticising that is
shameful, but above all it is a sin," Ortega
said.
Meanwhile, children and their families are
enjoying themselves at the park.
Norman Centeno, the father of two boys aged
five and eight, told IPS that he does not
support the government, but he came to the
park to enjoy its free services "because I
would never be able to afford it myself."
"It's a positive gesture on the part of the
government. No other government has ever
done this before, and I think that to
criticise it is really disgraceful," said
Rosibel Arauz, the single mother of three
girls, who travelled from the eastern
province of Granada to visit the ice skating
rink. |
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