Honduras model cities plan ruled illegal

I've written about Honduras' model city plan several times, most recently here.

The idea, championed by the government, was to create new, privately owned cities from scratch. The owners would make their own laws and set up their own schools and police forces and courts. It would be like a do-over for the country, separate states within Honduras. The tacit admission was that Honduras couldn't fix its problems.

But the Supreme Court of Honduras ruled this week that the model cities law was unconstitutional, in part because it violated sovereignty by creating a country within a country. 

The idea is, for now, apparently dead.

The politicians complained about the decision. They argue that new, secure cities would result in investment and jobs.

As I've written, model cities have great risks. Owners are naturally going to make laws in the interests of big investors, not citizens, and basic principles of democracy and accountability are at risk.

But after nine months in Honduras, I was a lot more open to the idea than I would have been a year ago. As Bob Dylan wrote, when you ain't got nothing, you've got nothing to lose.

One of the big problems is that a country trying the idea out of desperation likely lacks the skills and mechanism to provide proper oversight.

The first city was to be developed with no track record. A promised international oversight commission to ensure all was legitimate and rights were protected was never put in place.

Given the way the project was proceeding, the court decision was probably good for Honduras.

The distinct allure of abandoning democracy in Honduran cities

Three months ago, when I was new in Honduras, I probably would have dismissed the 'charter cities' idea pitched in a column in today's Globe and Mail as undemocratic and dangerous.
Now I'm not sure the Honduran government's decision to give them a try here is wrong.
The concept is a free-market elitist's dream.  Set aside a large parcel of land, big enough for a city with several million inhabitants. Make it, at least figuratively, a walled city separate from the norms and conventions and justice system and laws of the host country.
Suspend democracy and give power to appointed experts who would set up new rules and enforcement systems. (Some basic rights and guarantees would be preserved.)
The common model would see foreign governments, and private companies, help with administration - maybe providing judges or a police force.
The concept is that the cities, by providing stability and safety and shunning corruption, would attract foreign investment. There would be jobs. And people would choose to move to them. The Globe column pitches the idea as creating a little Canada in the middle of Honduras, which is in itself attractive. Equally, it could be described as setting up a little China in the middle of the country, with the state's experts making all the rules.
The idea tends to be embraced by free-market enthusiasts, who counter the undemocratic aspects by noting people can vote with their feet by moving away from the city if they don't like it.
That's not really democracy, nor is it really true. Desperately poor people - and more than 40 per cent of Hondurans live in extreme poverty - grab at any opportunity. Survival takes priority over exercising or demanding democratic rights. Some 700,000 Hondurans are living illegally in the U.S., and every day people try a dangerous journey to a better life, risking robbery, murder and starvation along the way. In the first three months of this year, the U.S. has sent 8,200 people back. (The economy would be devastated if Hondurans didn't head to the U.S. They send about $2.7 billion back to their families here - about 19 per cent of the country's GDP. (Those quick with numbers will note that the entire economic output of this country of 8.3 million people is less than British Columbia spends on health care.))
So claiming that they will leave a charter city if the masters abuse them is just false. (There is a useful post on the perils of model cities here; advocates make their case in this report.)
Democracy is messy and inefficient. But who would the appointed directors of the charter city serve - the citizens, or the companies, largely foreign, whose investment is essential to the city's success?
It's not just a theoretical discussion here. Last year, the Honduran Congress voted to allow Regions Especial de Desarrollo, or REDs. The law clears the way for charter cities.
But all that said, I can't reject the idea out of hand. It is really tough to see a way forward, one that would ease the suffering and give hope to Hondurans, who consider crime, corruption, poverty and bad government the norm, and an inevitability.
Maybe model cities - for all the risks - would offer an alternative that would at least suggest possibilities for the people of this country.
As Bob Dylan said, when you ain't got nothing, you've got nothing to lose.

Honduras' mysterious private-city plan

So who’s behind the mystery Canadian company ready to put up big money to build a private city in Honduras?

The concept’s appeal is clear. The “charter cities” being promoted by the Honduran government are as close as you could come to setting up your own country, with your own rules.

The cities would mostly have their own laws and taxes and police forces. They might, for example, contract with Canada to provide policing. They would set up their own schools and health systems. 

There would be an appointed governor and, at some point, an elected council to approve the laws recommended by the governor and city investors. But, during the startup particularly, the investors will decide on policing and schools and taxes and most everything else, limited only by basic constitutional rules. (The private city law is here.)

I wrote about Honduras’ interest in the idea a few months ago. The plan has now, apparently, moved into the action phase. The government has announced three sites, and signed a letter of intent with an unknown U.S. company - MGK Group - to start development on a city, most likely on the Caribbean coast.

But MGK, while saying it’s a consortium, hasn’t said much about who is in the group. It’s putting up $15 million to start on infrastructure, and hopes businesses will quickly move into the city. That’s not enough money to do much.

Press reports also say a major Canadian investor will soon be revealed.

The whole idea has been pitched by libertarian and technocratic theorists who see it as a way for countries like Honduras to start fresh. Cities would work better, they argue, if smart people made the rules starting from scratch. For a country like Honduras, where most institutions work badly or not at all, it’s an appealing pitch.

Once safe, secure cities with working systems were established, proponents say, businesses and Hondurans would move to them, the economy would improve and everyone would be better off.

As I noted in a previous post, it’s the kind of idea I would have dismissed out of hand before I lived here. I’m not so sure anymore.

But now that the first proposal, sketchy as it is, is out there, the problems and becoming more evident and the debate more intense.

One obvious problem is that countries that need model cities are much less likely to be able to manage and control the process.

The government’s legislation calls for an independent Transparency Commission to oversee the development process, particularly until the cities are large enough to have elections. 

The commission would appoint the governors - though the country’s president gets to name the first one. It would approve or disapprove the governor’s decisions, oversee the appointment of judges and generally make sure things didn’t spin out of control.

The government signed a memorandum of understanding last year that established the first Transparency Commission, an attempt to reduce concerns about oversight. It was to be headed by economist Paul Romer, an advocate of the cities, well-respected as a good, independent choice.

But Romer and the group have, politely, backed away. Their positions were never made official, and they weren’t consulted on the agreement with MKG or any aspect of the plans for the first city.

A key safeguard has already broken down.

The private-city law is also already facing constitutional challenges, mainly arguing it undermines Honduran sovereignty. It’s become a political issue as the country moves through it’s 16-month-long election campaign. 

And there are almost certain to be disputes over ownership of whatever land is chosen for the city. MKG says it won’t rely on land grants from the government, so presumably will buy land or work with existing owners. But land title is murky in Honduras, and clashes are frequent, and often violent.

The vision was for shiny new cities in Honduras - a “little Canada” in the middle of the country, a proponent suggested in a Globe and Mail column, a place where people would live and work happily and the economy would thrive.

The reality, at the moment, looks a lot more like another factory zone, offering low or no taxes and few rules.

If the project moves forward at all.

Gildan, maquillas, model cities and simplistic responses to complex problems

It’s amazing how simple the problems of Honduras seem to some people a few thousand kilometres away.

A handful of slogans, some recycled rhetoric and unsupported claims, and presto, a theory.

A fine example has been the blind libertarian enthusiasm for a plan to create “model cities” in Honduras, effectively independent fiefdoms, run, at least initially, by the investors.

Another was offered in a recent Internet opinion piece on Canadian textile company Gildan’s manufacturing centres in Honduras.

The 20,000 employees, the piece said, “are basically slaves, and their status will likely remain unchanged, or get worse.”

“With a growing number of U.S. military bases of occupation, and the murderous dictatorship of Juan Orlando Hernandez solidified, profits are basically guaranteed for transnational sweatshops in what is essentially a state-sanctioned Slaver's paradise,” the writer maintains.

It’s a good example of a failure to look seriously and critically at a challenging issue.

There are legitimate concerns about working conditions and the barriers to effective union representation at Gildan and other employers in Hondura’s maquilla sector, where tax-free status and other incentives have lured foreign workers.

There is also recognition that the 130,000 jobs are desperately needed and that labour standards and pay both good by Hondurans standards.

The minimum wage for maquilla workers is about $270 a month. That’s not rich, but by comparison, agriculture workers are paid $120 to $180 a month, and work six days a week.

And Gildan employees actually get the minimum wage. Between 70 and 85 per cent of Honduran workers don’t receive the legislated minimum wages. Many, including public sector workers, frequently don’t get paid at all. It’s common for employers to say sorry, not enough money this week.

The article paints a grim and unsupported picture of working conditions, too.

“By age 25, chronic work injuries, coupled with poor medical treatment, often prevent workers from performing their fast-paced tasks,” it reports. “Worse still, once a worker leaves Gildan, she is likely to have irreversible health problems which preclude her from finding alternate employment. Some women need crutches to walk; others can't hold their babies or do housework.”

It would be helpful to let readers know what “often” means in the first sentence, and what the source is for the information. (Hopefully not 'someone from Honduras told me.') 

And is there evidence to show that workers who leave Gildan are all “likely” to be permanently disabled, as the Internet piece claims? 

Workplace improvements are needed. Last year, CODEMUH, a leading women’s rights groups, filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights because the Honduran government had failed to respond to health and safety issues, citing the cases of 47 women who had received disabling injuries. But there is zero evidence that all workers are “likely” to end up disabled.

I haven’t toured the Gildan plants. Those who have suggest that some improvements could be made and piecework incentives can lead to a focus on production over workplace safety. 

But that, on balance, they are not bad workplaces.

The article also states categorically “Unions are not allowed, collective bargaining is not allowed and human rights are not a concern.”

That’s false. The Gildan operations are unionized and there is bargaining. There are serious problems, including documented examples of intimidation and efforts to thwart union activities by managers. Throughout Honduras, exercising labour rights is an enormous challenge, sometimes met with violence. Those points all needed to be made.

But there have also been tripartite negotiations between the three largest national labour confederations, government and industry on wages and other issues for the entire maquilla sector and there are unions.

Maquillas aren’t an unmixed blessing.

The companies were lured by big tax breaks, including a 10-year total tax holiday. It’s hard to run a government without tax revenues. (Though tax exemptions here are out-of-control. American fast food franchises, owned by rich Hondurans, got a 10-year tax break because they supposedly encourage tourism. Teachers have, inexplicably, a permanent exemption from paying income taxes.)

And there is always the risk that some other country will come up with a better deal and the industry will collapse.

But the issues are complex and deserve serious discussion, not hyperbole.

Calling the workers’ “slaves” is inaccurate and insulting. Hondurans make choices about their futures. From a more limited range of options than many - but not all - North Americans enjoy, perhaps, but they are not slaves. 

Calling Juan Orlando a “murderous dictator” is inaccurate. Last month’s elections were flawed, but the consensus of international observers was that the results - at least at the presidential level - were representative. (Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega was one of the first to congratulate Orlando.)

And the “murderous” allegation is silly. There is violence and impunity in Honduras. In a six-month period before the elections, 18 candidates or organizers from Libre, the left-wing opposition party, were murdered. But in the same period, 11 candidates or organizers from Orlando’s party were murdered. But there is no basis to call the incoming president murderous.

Honduras is a mess. The government is virtually broke, inequality is staggering and 74 per cent of the population live in poverty, with 47 per cent in extreme poverty. The murder rate is the highest in the world and almost all institutions - schools, courts, police, government - don’t really function. 

But Hondurans, ultimately, are going to have to create their own solutions, with international help.

Superficial prescriptions from North America and Europe, of all political stripes, are contributing nothing to the discussion and look much like another form of imperialism.

Model city to use laws of Texas

Some supporters of a plan to build private cities in Honduras have described it as creating "a little Canada" in the country.
It turns out the backers of the first city to win government approval want to create a "little Texas" on the country's Caribbean coast.
I've written about the model city plan here and here. The notion is that the private cities would be a chance to start from scratch, with the rules made by technocrats and the investors. Instead of fixing Honduras' problems, you create new states within the country with different laws, policing, education and health systems and tax structures. Crime and corruption would be banished. The constitution would apply, but basically the owners would have something close to their own country to run.
That raises obvious concerns. The interests of the owners and investors might best be served in ways that are bad for Hondurans living in the new cities.
But the idea is appealing in a country facing widespread poverty and weak institutions of all kinds. 
The first developer - owner? - is off to bad start. 
MKG Group hasn't offered many details in Honduran news reports or on its website.
But CEO Michael Strong was more forthcoming with FoxNews.com, which presented this report.
 “Once we provide a sound legal system within which to do business, the whole job creation machine – the miracle of capitalism – will get going,” he said.
And the new legal system, separate from laws on the rest of Honduras, would be based on Texas state law, because it has few regulations.
“It will be Texas law with more freedom of contract," Strong told Fox News. "Texas scores well on state economic freedom rankings,” he explained.
Our goal is to be the most economically free entity on Earth,” he said.
Music to libertarians' ears. But does that mean no minimum wage, no employment standards, no health and safety rules?
Strong also said the new city would have no income, sales or capital gains taxes. (Honduras' existing factory zones offer foreign business investors 10 years of no taxes, although income taxes still apply.)
Which raises questions about who will pay for the vision of better health care, education and policing. 
The biggest problem might be where MKG has chosen to share its plans for the new city.
The private city plan is controversial and facing political and legal challenges in Honduras.
Yet the FoxNews.com report is in English and available on the Internet. Few Hondurans speak English, and about 85 per cent don't have Internet access.
The concerns about private cities are, in part, that the owners won't care about the interests of Hondurans, or will at least put the interests of foreign investors first.
MKG's decision to share details with Fox News and an English-speaking audience, before informing Hondurans, will add to those concerns.

If a government can't provide licence plates... Part 2

A little over a year ago, I wrote about the Honduran government’s baffling inability to get licence plates into the hands of drivers.

I saw scads of cars and motorcycles without licence plates, and thought at first that people were just ignoring the law. 

But it turned out the government didn’t actually have the plates, and hadn’t for almost a year. That was a major hassle for drivers, who had to keep going back to the licensing office every month to get temporary permits, a process that took hours. 

And in a country with a big crime problem, some 330,000 vehicles and motorcycles without licence plates was unhelpful. 

The news stories were never clear why the government couldn’t get its act together.

A year later, and the story is back in the papers.

There are still about 200,000 vehicles without plates because the government can’t supply them.

The president mused about having prisoners make licence plates, but then learned the government is too broke to buy the needed equipment. 

It can’t afford to order plates, either, even though drivers’ licence fees should cover the costs (less than $20 to make a pair of plates).

This is new to me. In Canada, governments can borrow what they need. Deficits are debated, but, ultimately, if governments need licence plates or money to pay teachers or buy medical supplies, they just borrow a bit more, at pretty good rates.

Not in Honduras. Teachers plan a one-day strike tomorrow because they say they haven’t been paid. Buses weren’t running in the cities today, because owners say the government hasn’t paid promised subsidies. 

Road repairs have been stalled for a months, because the government can’t pay the contractors’ outstanding bills. It offered the companies a combination of cash and government bonds, but they weren’t keen. 

That’s not surprising. Honduras went to the international bond market this month to raise money. The rating agencies put them deep into junk bond territory. The issue raised $500 million, at 7.5-per-cent interest. (B.C. borrows at less than half that rate per cent.)

The president said the government could have sold more bonds, but he was worried the money would just be wasted. And a commission is to be set up to manage the money, to ensure it isn’t squandared. (Commissions are big here. Anytime a public body fails to perform, the response to seems to be to create a new one to oversee it, instead of just fixing the original governance problem.)

Anyway, back to the licence problem. No money. Prisoners can’t make them. 

So the government is looking at a public-private partnership, hoping to find a company that will take over the whole process in return for the chance to make a profit on licensing cars and drivers.

Those 3P agreements are very big in Honduras right now too. The government has signed a contract to hand over management of the country’s main port for 30 years. 

And I suppose model cities are a way of privatizing government itself.

It’s an appealing concept for Honduras, much more than in North America. Private companies can borrow more cheaply than government for infrastructure, a significant saving on large projects. Government is judged corrupt and incompetent. So the idea of handing responsibility to a third party is appealing.

But there’s an obvious problem.

A government that can’t manage the problem or deliver the service - like licence plates - probably can’t negotiate a good private-public partnership deal either.

Like the auto club, but with shotguns

I've spent a lot of time telling people that Honduras isn't really as dangerous as the news reports make it sound.
Yes, it has the highest murder rate in the world. But a lot of the killings involve disputes between gangs and people in the drug business. They're just as dead, of course, but if you aren't in those worlds, you aren't at risk. (In El Salvador, the two main gangs have reached a truce, and the murder rate has fallen by two-thirds.)
That's not to downplay the impact of crime in the major cities. The gangs are into extortion, and murder is part of the business model. And robbers are casual about killings.
Still, the crime reports are overblown, I've maintained. Copan Ruinas at 1 a.m. is safer than Victoria when the bar crowd hits the street on a Saturday.
But this week I was stopped by a half-page ad in La Prensa. It was for a BCAA-type service, I thought, based on the woman peering beneath the hood of her car, stopped at the roadside.
The company didn't offer roadside repairs.
Instead, it would dispatch two guys on motorcycles, with body armour and shotguns, to guard you. The pictures above tell the story. (Sorry about the poor quality.)
It's a good deal - $2.50 a month, and you can call them 10 times a year. It would certainly help in settling questions of responsibility after a fender bender. (Unless, of course, the other driver also had the service.)
But really, a country is in trouble when people feel it's worth paying for armed response when they run out of gas, rather than a service that would send a tow truck.
There are lots of signs that people have lost confidence in the state. In the big cities, razor wire and electrical fencing tops high walls around houses and armed guards open the doors for you at many restaurants. Go to buy a bag of chips at the corner stores, and you shop through a barred window.
There have been lots of efforts to fix things since we've been here. The government called in the Chilean police for advice on reducing corruption and improving efficiency. There's a new, controversial head of the national police force, who has re-assigned total departments. And there's a plan to investigate all police officers, with lie detector tests and financial audits, to identify problem officers. (Though that will take a long time, and so far 24 of the first 169 officers called for the tests just haven't showed up.)
It is safe in Copan. But when roadside armed response becomes a viable business, things are spinning out of control.

My Tyee column: Skip the Dishes lawsuit signals need for new employment laws

If governments were doing their jobs, a Skip The Dishes food delivery driver wouldn’t have to sue for basic employment rights.

Charleen Pokornik, who started driving for the company in Winnipeg two years ago, says the company is wrongly claiming the drivers are independent contractors, not employees. 

Increasingly, jobs have been changing — and generally for the worse. More part-time work, more people on short-term contracts instead of permanent jobs, and more people scrambling to earn an income through self-employment. 

Skip the Dishes — like Uber and an expanding number of similar app-based businesses — is contributing to an erosion of workers’ rights and ability to bargain the terms of employment. They’ve been good at branding their business model — remember the “sharing economy” enthusiasm? 

But really they’ve found a way to sell a service while avoiding employment laws and taking advantage of people who have few work options.

A decade ago, a restaurant would have employed a delivery driver. The pay would have been low, but at least minimum wage, and overtime pay and other basics would have been guaranteed under employment law. 

Companies like Skip the Dishes dodge all those requirements. Delivery drivers are independent contractors, the companies claim. That means no protection under employment standards legislation or labour codes. As a result, drivers report earning less than minimum wage. (Just Eat CEO Peter Plumb receives a $1.2 million base salary, plus up to $4.2 million in bonus and stock.)

The proposed class action lawsuit would challenge the claim the workers are independent contractors.

It’s hard to predict the outcome. The rules for determining whether someone is an employee or contractor have been in place for decades, and in B.C. were last reviewed 20 years ago. 

“Some of these tests include how much direction and control the worker is subject to, whether the worker operates their own business and has their own clients, whether the worker has a chance of profit or a risk of loss, whether the work they are doing is integral to the business and whether there is an ongoing relationship,” the B.C. government summarizes. 

The summary also notes: “The Act is intended to protect as many workers as possible. When deciding if a worker is an employee or an independent contractor, one of the main questions to ask is ‘whose business is it?’”

And this is clearly Skip the Dishes’ business, not Charleen Pokornik’s.

Skip the Dishes has a 2,600-word courier agreement new drivers must accept, and it’s almost entirely focused on confirming the contractor relationship. It also attempts to bar drivers from organizing. “Any claim you may have must be brought individually… and not as a representative plaintiff or class member, and you will not join such claim… or participate in a class action lawsuit, collective or representative proceeding of any kind.”

“It seems that we need more clarification,” Sean MacDonald, a professor at University of Manitoba’s Asper School of Business, told the CBC. “There’s a lot of curiosity how this will all go down, because it will affect a lot of the players in the gig economy.” 

MacDonald is wrong. We don’t need more clarification. We need governments to change the laws to protect workers in a changing economy.

It’s not surprising that Uber, Lyft, Skip the Dishes and others have seized the opportunity. They have found a way to make money by meeting consumer needs while exploiting weaknesses in labour laws.

The industry argues it offers workers the chance to choose their own hours. Companies tout the independence of workers and argue their model allows people to work around demands of a full-time job or family responsibilities.

But the reality can be different. New York City has just decided to freeze the number of drivers for taxis and app-based ride services and set a minimum wage. That was based in part on a study that found about 60 per cent of app-based drivers were working full-time and 90 per cent were immigrants. About 85 per cent were making less than the proposed wage the city council had set, linked to the state minimum wage.

Across the U.S., a study found Uber drivers were paid about US$9.21 an hour on average after expenses, less than minimum wage in many cities where they operate.

The whole purpose of employment standard laws and labour codes is to level the playing field and balance the power of workers and employers. The rules establish minimum standards, based on social, economic and political consensus. They allow workers to organize to increase their bargaining power. They ensure the most desperate or vulnerable are protected from exploitation.

But in B.C. and across Canada, the rules are badly outdated.

The issue isn’t about whether app-based companies should exist. It’s about ensuring basic workplace rights are not undermined by their business models. Doing that might make them slightly less profitable, but it doesn’t threaten their existence.

And it would mean people like Charleen Pokornik don’t have to take on corporate giants in court to get a fair deal for workers. 

A revolution looks different on the streets you once walked

My latest Tyee column

People are dying on the streets I walked to work in Managua just two years ago. Masaya, a smaller town about an hour away by bus, is a battlefield. The streets of Leon, where we also lived, were filled with improvised barriers as neighbours united to keep out police and government supporters.

This is what revolutions look like, I suppose, but it is still surreal to see all this unfolding in a country that I lived in so recently, and that seemed then to be working. And it’s also surreal that despite some 285 deaths and 10 weeks of fighting, the rest of the world has paid so little attention.

After more than two years living in Honduras — perilously close to a failed state — Nicaragua looked like a model of stability. Institutions — schools, hospitals — worked. The cities weren’t plagued with the urban gangs and narcos that led Honduras to have the world’s highest murder rate when we lived there.

The Sandinista government of Daniel Ortega showed troubling signs of moving toward one-party rule, but a 2015 Cid Gallup poll found 66 per cent of Nicaraguans gave Ortega a positive rating. 

That was consistent with my conversations with Nicaraguans. People grumbled about a deal to let a Chinese corporation build a rival to the Panama Canal across the country, complained that Ortega’s wife Rosario Murillo — now vice-president — was spending millions of dollars to erect hundreds of five-storey “arboles de vida” around the capital, Klimt-inspired giant metal trees, each with 17,000 lights. Some were alarmed when his government changed the constitution to let him seek a third term. Elections weren’t fair and open.

But despite that, and the second highest poverty rate in the hemisphere, they still spoke fondly of Daniel, as he was always called, the short, stocky leader who spent 24 years fighting against the Somoza dictatorship and the U.S.-backed Contras, seven years in jail, tortured, willing to accept his electoral defeat in 1990. He was on their side, most people said.

Until, in late April, they decided he wasn’t.

That’s part of what makes it surreal. The government’s legitimacy had been questioned — one newspaper always referred to him as the illegally elected president — but largely accepted. Until the mood changed. 

About 285 people have been killed, mainly by police and well-armed pro-government paramilitaries. Protestors have set up tranques — road blocks mostly built out of pavement blocks ripped from the streets — to protect neighbourhoods and slow traffic throughout the country as a way to bring pressure on the government. 

On May 29, Mother’s Day in Nicaragua, several hundred thousand people marched down a main road near our old house, led by mothers whose children had been killed by police and paramilitaries. The sea of blue and white flags was inspiring. The end of the march, when snipers opened fire and 11 people were killed, was horrifying.

The protests were triggered when the Ortega government announced changes to the social security plan on April 20. Pensions would be cut five per cent, and employer and individual contributions would be raised a small amount. 

The changes weren’t big. But they were arbitrary, a reminder of the president’s total power. And they came after mismanagement or corruption had undermined the fund.

Students led the first protests. After five days — and 25 deaths — Ortega scrapped the changes.

But a tipping point had been reached. Protesters had discovered their power, although at a high cost. The dead could not be brought back to life as easily as the social security changes were reversed, and protests continued demanding justice and accountability. 

The Catholic Church, a powerful force, attempted to facilitate a national dialogue between the government and protestors, but talks failed. The leading business organization ended its support for the government.

And the country remained a battleground.

The images and stories have been incomprehensible. Masaya, a cradle of the Sandinista revolution, was a quiet, traditional town about 45 minutes away by bus. We had licuados in the square, admired the church, went to a wild festival where costumed people followed bands through the streets and we were invited into a family’s celebration.

Now the images are of paving stone walls thrown up to resist police and para attacks, young people wielding homemade mortars, bloody bodies and police storming the cathedral. The city declared it was no longer under the authority of the government, and reprisals were swift and violent.

Armed gangs stalk the streets of Managua, a family of six was burned in their home, thousands of people have been injured and scores have disappeared.

There were warning signs when we lived there. The government took control of the courts and the electoral commission, and we learned not to walk past the commission’s office when there were protests, because Sandinista youth might attack.

But I didn’t see this coming.

That might be part of the culture. Nicaraguans talk of the Güegüense effect, a reference to a 16th-century play that mocked the Spanish invaders without directly confronting them. The play is still part of the culture; some political scientists say that the tendency for Nicaraguans to conceal their true feelings in the face of authority also remains strong.

It’s difficult to see a way out. The protesters want justice and accountability for kidnappings and killings, and fair elections next year, two years ahead of schedule. The Ortega government has shown no signs of agreeing to either demand, and blames “delinquents” for the violence.

Meanwhile, the economy has been battered, people are unable to work and the fledgling tourism industry is destroyed. International organizations and other governments offer advice, but little more. (Canada has condemned the killings and repression and urged dialogue.)

Revolutions or uprisings have been abstract for me, perhaps a failure of imagination. Now one is happening on the streets I once walked, in the towns we visited and with people we know. 

It has been a terrible time, and there seems no good way for it to end. People will keep fighting, and dying, or Ortega will establish a family dynasty — like the Somozas who controlled the country for more than four decades before being ousted by Ortega and the Sandinistas in 1979.

It’s an impossible choice, but it’s the one facing Nicaraguans. My heart aches for them.