Media fuels economic war on Nicaragua with false conflict beef story
JOHN PERRY·DECEMBER 10, 2020
MEDIA from The Grayzone
NICARAGUA
Liberal media outlets are aiding a US economic war on Nicaraguas Sandinista
government, calling for a boycott of conflict beef based on deeply flawed
opposition accusations.
By John Perry / Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)
Reports by Reveal News and PBS NewsHour have called for a boycott of
conflict beef from Nicaragua. The Center for Investigative Reportings
website Reveal claims to be fair and comprehensive, and PBS says it is
trusted, but their misleading and inaccurate reports could have drastic
consequences for Nicaragua, at a time when the country is already struggling
to deal with US sanctions, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the aftermath of two
damaging hurricanes.
Their argument is that cattle farmers who produce the beef that is exported
have in many cases illegally settled territory in the rainforest that
belongs to Indigenous communities, and that the government does little to
resolve the violent conflict that results.
There are some 40,000 Indigenous families in Nicaragua, and nearly a third
of its territory is legally owned and administered by 300 Indigenous
communities. Reveal and PBS focus on Bosawás, the largest tropical
rainforest reserve in Central America, which has seven territories belonging
to Mayangna and Miskitu Indigenous groups, whose land claims have been
recognized by the government. (Since 2006, the governing party in Nicaragua
has been the socialist Sandinista Front, a longstanding target of US
hostility.)
For decades, non-Indigenous (or mestizo) settlers have entered these areas,
some buying land from Indigenous communities, even though it cannot
legally be sold, and others simply taking it. A history of legal,
quasi-legal, and illegal land occupation, along with intermixing of mestizo
families with Indigenous people, have produced a multifaceted, volatile
situation, which occasionally causes violent disputes.
A local NGO, called CEJUDHCAN, in February 2020 counted 40 deaths of
Indigenous people over five years connected to land disputes, with further
mestizo deaths uncounted.
The remoteness of the area provides ample scope for reports of violence to
be distorted for political purposes. For example, in January, Reuters
reported an attack on the Mayangna community of Alal by 80 men, leading to
six deaths, 10 people being kidnapped, and houses being destroyed.
Reveal Nicaragua conflict beef
Along with local opposition media, The Guardian and BBC repeated the story,
apparently based on just two phone calls from people claiming that the
state is doing nothing. Yet Nicaraguan police investigated quickly, finding
12 houses burned down and two people injured, but no one dead or
disappeared.
Mayangna leaders condemned the false reports. Two days later in
Wakuruskasna, seven miles from Alal, police found and identified four murder
victims. They described a criminal gang responsible for both incidents,
capturing one alleged member.
Reveal News journalist Nathan Halverson misrepresents a different incident.
In February, a young girl bathing in a river in Santa Clara was reportedly
hit by a bullet. Halverson repeats the uncorroborated claim that settlers
were sending a message to the local Indigenous community: Leave.
Halverson dismisses the polices conclusion that the injury was caused by
another child shooting off a gun a version corroborated by Lejan Mora,
president of Santa Claras Indigenous government, who knows the family.
Community leaders told Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) that the
family had been bribed to lie about the attack.
Halverson claims the homicide rate in the area soared so high
that it
would rank among the most dangerous places in the world. Lottie Cunningham
Wren, who runs CEJUDHCAN, tells Halverson that the roughly 40 deaths in five
years amount to ethnocide in which the Indigenous people will disappear
an improbable outcome, given that there are 180,000 Miskitu and 30,000
Mayangna people.
Misrepresenting Indigenous land disputes
To those unfamiliar with Nicaragua, news items about Indigenous groups
conjure images of uncontacted tribes in the Amazon. Reveal/PBS calls the
area pristine jungle. Yet these communities have good roads, access to
schools, health posts, local municipal services, and government agricultural
and technical support.
Romanticized views of forest dwellers create one level of
oversimplification. Another, in a region deeply divided between supporters
and opponents of Nicaraguas government, is to report unquestioningly the
views of one side, and to suggest ostensibly obvious solutions to land
conflicts. Doing so overlooks many obstacles and incorrectly alleges
government neglect, ignoring the many advances being made alongside the
problems that remain.
All these faults are found in the research behind the Reveal/PBS stories: a
report by the Oakland Institute, a California-based progressive think tank
that compares the situation of Nicaraguan Indigenous communities with the
peoples and forests in the Brazilian Amazon.
The reports author, Anuradha Mittal, has spoken to many Miskitu people
aligned with an opposition party, Yatama, but evidently to few if any people
from other communities whether mestizos, Mayangna, Afro-descendants, or
the many Miskitu who support the government. Glossing over this political
bias, she claims to speak for the Indigenous peoples courageous struggle
against government indifference.
Mittal recognizes that Nicaraguas widely applauded Law 445 established
Indigenous land rights, but she argues that despite subsequent land titling,
the government has failed Indigenous people by not taking the final,
crucial step of the land claims process known as saneamiento sanitation
which in her interpretation requires clearing the Indigenous territories
of non-Indigenous settlers. But saneamiento is much more complex than this,
as explained below.
Nor does Mittal acknowledge the role of corrupt Yatama leaders who failed to
advance saneamiento despite controlling the regional government for almost a
decade until 2014, while themselves selling land illegally.
Geographer Nora Sylvander, who has studied the issue since 2012, argues that
saneamiento could easily create more problems than it solves, and may
exacerbate the conflict and violence rather than curb it. For example,
what happens to long-established settlers who have bought their land: Do
they get replacement land, and if so where? What happens if settlers resist
removal with violence would the government risk lives to carry it out?
Guillermo Rodriguez of the Center for Justice and International Law,
responding to the Oakland Institute report, said, Its a really complex
situation. In some places, 90% of the current inhabitants are colonos
[settlers].
Many Indigenous leaders argue that saneamiento is actually working, but
could do so more quickly with increased resources and closer political
coordination by Indigenous territorial administrations with other levels of
government. Both Rose Cunningham, the mayor of Waspam, and the Miskitu
leader Lejan Mora described the process to us, in which longer-established
settlers may be allowed to stay with community agreement while others, often
newcomers, are expelled.
In fact, Nicaragua is one of many Latin American countries struggling to
develop a viable process of saneamiento, in a Caribbean region which is
among the countrys poorest, and where the government assigns limited
resources to providing better hospitals, schools, and roads.
PBS Nicaragua conflict beef
Erasing Nicaraguas supply chain oversight
The crux of the Reveal/PBS pieces is to link the land conflicts in Bosawás,
and the alleged failure of government to tackle them, with the production of
meat for export. Reveals piece is headed Conflict Beef, and both it and
PBS use pictures of US supermarket meat displays. Both quote Mittal as
saying: The supply chain of beef from Nicaragua is anything but clean.
This is untrue. The government body responsible for the integrity of the
supply chain is IPSA (the Spanish acronym for the Institute for Agricultural
Protection and Health). On November 9, IPSAs director explained to us that
they believe their cattle registration and traceability system, approved by
the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, is as rigorous as any in Latin
America.
Through it, IPSA monitors the location and movement of all registered cattle
and only these cattle can enter the supply chain for the export market.
Registration of farms and tagging of animals is done by authorized agents,
not by producers, and cattle can only be moved, sold, and slaughtered if
they have the correct documentation.
None of the 125,253 registered farms are in the strictly protected areas
(nuclei) of national reserves. One of the largest exporting companies
produced a promotional video in November to explain the safeguards it has in
place.
All this is ignored by both Nathan Halverson and Anuradha Mittal. The
Oakland Institute report laments the absence of a nationally coordinated
traceability system for cattle, while Halverson cites an unnamed US
Department of Agriculture official saying that there is no recognized
system to trace beef within Nicaragua, meaning importers cannot ensure that
their beef wasnt raised on stolen Indigenous land.
Yet the USDA audits IPSA every two years, and only IPSA-registered cattle
are accepted by the six processing plants certified as meeting USDA
requirements. None of these are near the borders of Indigenous lands, as
Halverson claims.
Halverson adds that the European Union doesnt allow beef imports from
Nicaragua, seemingly unaware that the EU already has a pilot project with
IPSA to ensure the scheme meets its (higher) requirements.
Of the 705,320 cattle registered by IPSA since 2011, just 11 percent are in
the North Atlantic Region, where the Bosawás reserve is located. The region
has 13,348 registered farms, but none are in the reserves nucleus, and
hardly any are in municipalities where land conflicts occur. Waspam, for
example, has only 98, and none of them is in southern Tasba Raya, where
violence flared in 2015.
Yet clearly there are cattle in the reserve. Although the Oakland Institute
report fails to mention it, Miskitu people typically have small numbers of
cattle. Many more may be introduced by settlers, either by agreement or
illegally. However, while meat (and milk) from these cattle can be sold
locally, there are multiple barriers to their entering the export market.
In addition to the IPSA system, cattle trucks leaving the reserve have to
comply with municipal administrative requirements, present documents at
permanent army checkpoints, and face random police checks.
A group of cattle farmers interviewed for this article in Siuna, the city
closest to Bosawás, explained in detail how these measures prevent cattle
kept in the reserve from entering the export market, adding that the army
also removes illegal ranchers.
Two leaders of the Mayangna nation interviewed for this article described
how this is done in coordination with Indigenous forest wardens.
While clearly such evictions are only partially effective, it is extremely
difficult to see how the remaining ranchers could evade the army and police
and breach the IPSA system to sell cattle for export. Local producers say
this is impossible, and neither Mittal nor Halverson offer any evidence to
the contrary.
Oakland Institute Nicaragua failed revolution
Anti-Sandinista opposition activists hiding behind flawed research
The source of the Reveal/PBS material the Oakland Institute is openly
hostile to the Nicaraguan government, a fact made obvious by the title of
its report, Nicaraguas Failed Revolution.
As well as including a very biased account of the violence the country
experienced in 2018, the report makes detailed accusations against
Sandinista politicians Myrna Cunningham, Rose Cunningham, and Carlos Alemán
Cunningham, noting that they are from the same (Miskitu) family.
The report also refers positively to the work of CEJUDHCAN without pointing
out that its director, Lottie Cunningham Wren, now aligned with the
US-supported opposition, is part of the same family that the Oakland
Institute report alleges is involved in corrupt land dealings.
Based on her work with Anuradha Mittal, Cunningham Wren is also interviewed
by Halverson for Reveal/PBS. Two senior Mayangna leaders we spoke to, Arisio
Genaro Celso and Eloy Frank Gomez, regard her as simply looking for ways to
attack the government while being out of touch with the Mayangna communitys
needs.
Likewise, Miskitu leader Mora accuses CEJUDHCAN and Cunningham Wren of
blatantly lying about events in the region. Fresly Janes Zamora, Miskitu
president of the Twi Yahbra territory, said she is benefiting from violence
in the area and not seeking solutions.
Another person interviewed by Halverson, Camilo de Castro Belli, is
described as a journalist, but in fact is a fellow at the Aspen Institute, a
neoliberal think tank, a committed supporter of Nicaraguas opposition, and
the son of Gioconda Belli, a prominent opposition figure.
Before this piece was written, both Halverson and Mittal were asked for
proof of the claimed link between conflicts in Bosawás and beef exports to
the US. Although they replied, they offered no proof. A list of suggested
corrections to the Reveal article, invited by its editor, was rejected, as
was the offer of an article in response to Halversons.
Media aiding US regime-change agenda
Other media outlets picked up the damaging Reveal/PBS piece: Environmental
website One Green Planet linked the story to the enormously different scale
of deforestation taking place in the Amazon. KPFA radio in California
devoted two episodes of the show A Rude Awakening to interviews with Mittal,
in which she made generalized attacks on her critics and on the Daniel
Ortega government, again without offering any proof of her claims. Neither
responded to complaints.
By making a completely false link between the land conflicts in Nicaragua
and the growth of its meat exports to the United States, ostensibly
progressive media are fueling the US governments regime-change agenda, just
as they have in relation to Venezuela.
The US pursues this agenda via economic sanctions (renewed by Trump days
after recent hurricanes hit Nicaragua) and blatant financial support for
opposition groups in the run-up to Nicaraguas 2021 elections.
If the calls for a boycott of Nicaraguan beef in the Reveal and PBS reports
were actually heeded, there would be enormous damage to the Nicaraguan
economy and to poor communities in Nicaragua. The livelihoods of no less
than 140,000 producers and 600,000 workers would be at risk.
Once again, knowingly or otherwise, US media outlets are complicit in
attempts by Nicaraguan opposition groups and the US government to undermine
Nicaraguas Sandinista government.
Reveal has a deserved reputation in progressive circles for its work in
exposing immigration abuses, conditions faced by Amazon workers, and other
issues. It should pay much more careful attention to the sources of its
reports on Nicaragua.
