 Welcome to what the F is going on in Latin America, CodePink's weekly YouTube program of hot news out of Latin America and the Caribbean. We broadcast every Wednesday, 4.30 p.m. Pacific, 7.30 p.m. Eastern on CodePink YouTube. For this episode, I am happy to tell you we're actually broadcasting from the Caribbean. We are, I'm sitting here on Corn Island off the Nicaragua Caribbean coast, and my guest is Erika Takeo. She's coordinator of Friends of the ATC, and she's joining us from Managua, Nicaragua. So we are talking with you from Central America, mainland Nicaragua and Caribbean coastal Nicaragua. So Erika, I'm so pleased you had time to talk with us today. And just for our audience, I'd like everybody to know that Erika and I just finished, principally Erika, I have to say, leading a 10-day delegation here in Nicaragua. It was a Friends of the ATC partnership with Sanctions Kill. We spent 10 days studying the early sanctions regime the U.S. has placed on Nicaragua, sanctions regime, meaning economic warfare against Nicaragua. We started in Managua, we went to the northern Caribbean coast. We've been in homestays, in campesino communities, and so we have a lot to talk with you about today. But first, I'd like Erika to tell us about Friends of the ATC. This is a really significant week for them. It's their 43rd anniversary. So let's talk about the ATC, and then we can talk about our travels and what we saw and learned. So welcome, Erika. Great. Carrie, thank you so much for having me and having me participate in this program on behalf of the ATC and the Friends of the ATC. So, yeah, to give a little bit of introduction, the ATC stands for Associación de Trajoz del Campo, or an English Rural Workers Association. It's an organization that, like you said, is celebrating its 43rd anniversary this week on the 25th, to be exact. And it's an organization that has lived through many moments of Nicaragua's history. It was created in the 1970s to organize farm workers and peasants as part of the different forces that were in the insurrection to overthrow the Somoza dictatorship, which was a family dynasty that basically owned and controlled and repressed Nicaraguan's peoples for almost half of a century, backed by the US government. And so the ATC was founded as part of the unification of a lot of popular sectors in Nicaragua that were done with having a dictatorship and looking for the construction of national sovereignty. Also want to remind the audience that the Sandinista Revolution takes the name of Augusto Cesar Sandino, a man who actually wasn't alive when the Revolution triumphed but was alive in the 1920s, organized a group of guerrilla fighters to kick out one of the many US Marine occupations in Nicaragua and who really had a vision for national sovereignty and for anti-imperialism and unity of Latin American peoples. So the FSLN took up a lot of his ideals and implemented them into their historic program. And the ATC, as an organization specifically to represent rural workers, was a part of that historic process. Then the ATC played a big role in the 1980s in organizing the agrarian reform, which redistributed about half of the country's arable land in the country. So families that had previously for many, many years never had any land now had land to grow food for their families and for their communities. But of course, this first phase of the Sandinista Revolution was heavily affected by the US-financed counter-revolution or what we know as the Contra War, which really, despite the ATC and the Sandinista Revolution's efforts to implement a lot of things, created lots of problems. It was a very violent, bloody war. There were 50,000 deaths. And so there were really amazing things that happened in the 1980s, not just the agrarian reform that the ATC was involved in, but also literacy programs, health brigades, et cetera. But there was also a lot of violence, a lot of blood spilled and a lot of deaths. Then in the 1980s, a couple important things happened in Nicaragua and with the ATC too. The FSLN lost the elections in the 1980s, peacefully handed over power to one neoliberal government and then followed by two more. It's one of the few examples in the world actually where left this movement that has come to power through armed revolution has peacefully passed over power. And the ATC took on a really important character in leading the continuation of the Sandinista Revolution in the countryside, defending the gains of the agrarian reform, especially. And also took on an international character because they joined together with peasant organizations from around the world to form an international movement that's very, very well known today that's called La Via Campesina. It's the movement that coined this concept of food sovereignty or basic of the right of peoples to define, create and defend their own food systems outside of the interests of agribusiness and transnational corporations, which was particularly becoming or coming to the forefront of an issue because with the growth of neoliberalism but also the implementation of more free trade agreements that were making food a commodity rather than a human right. So then the ATC struggled in the neoliberal time period until 2006 when the Sandinista Party came back into executive power under the leadership of President Daniel Rotega. And since then has played a really important role and continued to organize farm workers and small farmers in the cooperatives through unions and also agricultural cooperatives and has some very, very active programs in training youth and organizing women. So it's a very long time period, many different phases of history, but it means that there's also a lot to celebrate this week as we celebrate the 43rd anniversary. Thank you so much. It's been really phenomenal the 10 days that we were traveling with you and your compatriots at Friends of the ATC who were the backbone of our delegation logistics and just watching and witnessing how the work is done, particularly in the rural communities. But first, Erika, can you tell our audience FSLN, FLSN is the Liberation Party, Frente Sandinista Liberación Nacional, just so our audience knows what we're referring to. So let's start with why we're here. We had this idea to educate, we had a pretty wild idea actually, to bring a group of people to Nicaragua to study what is going on here regarding U.S. foreign policy, specific foreign policy in the form of economic warfare. And I know a lot of our many people in our audience will are familiar with the 60-year blockade economic war against Cuba, very strong sanctions, economic sanctions against Venezuela, beginning December of 14 and more specifically March of 2015, accelerated in August of 2017. And so we're starting to see the same form of warfare accelerate here in Nicaragua, which is why you and I wanted to bring a group of people here to study this, what this looks like in its early phases. And so we were in Managua for several days. We had several government meetings. We were able to come to a better understanding of Nicaragua's access to foreign loans, restructuring foreign debt, qualifying for loans to respond to COVID-19 and respond to the hurricanes last fall. Those loans are not available to a sanctioned government. So we studied that. We went to two rural communities. Hold on. Is that better? Yeah. So just yeah. Okay. Just a sorry, everyone. We had just a little glitch with our internet connection regarding sound, so you can hear me now. I can hear you now. Okay. So then we also went to two rural communities, one in Esteli and one in, you know, you know, Tega, Esteli, which the principal industry is tobacco, you know, Tega, principal industry is coffee. We then went on to the northern coast of the Caribbean to study the after the results of the hurricane and how the government's responded and also to study the beef cattle issue, which has become controversial in the United States and a conflict beef. And we can tell you that there's very little conflict involved with this beef and this labeling of Nicaraguan beef is basically served to close the U.S. market to Nicaraguan, to this Nicaraguan product, which is also a form of economic warfare. So let's talk, Erica, a little bit about what we saw, I guess probably for our audience. We had some very strong government meetings. But one of the things that I think everyone enjoyed the most, and there were 13 of us on this trip, was going to rural communities. And I mean, we, particularly in Esteli, we got up at sunrise and worked. We planted pita hayas, learned about that as a unique crop. It grows only in Nicaragua, and it is cultivated for export to the United States, actually, the fruit. It's a succulent. There is a short little video that we've done on the propagation of that crop. So why don't you tell us a little bit about the importance of these rural communities as the backbone of the ATC and also how the productive, the private, or I don't want to use private, the individual land ownership, families being able to own their land for cultivation, creates food security. And that also is going to be a buffer against the onslaught of sanctions that we're anticipating against Nicaragua. Yeah, sure. Yeah, well, this is, as the name ATC would suggest, the rural areas is really the heart of where ATC's base is and the ATC's organizing is in rural areas with peasants, small farmers. And the backbone for this is really what I mentioned when I introduced the ATC, the agrarian reform, which provided land to lots of families who previously had never had land. And having the land is the basis for being able to grow food for one's family and for one's community. The ATC takes on a lot of different roles in rural areas, as Terry saw in La Montanita, which is a community just outside of the Department Capitol of Estilee. The ATC has a couple of multi-sectoral unions, as well as farmer cooperatives in the area. And one of the big areas of interest and of organizing that area recently has been what's called agroecology, which is basically a model of agriculture that's an alternative to conventional methods of agriculture that are very focused on lots of chemical use, monoculture, meaning just a couple of different crops rather than diversified systems that are really based upon the legacies of what we call the Green Revolution, which was particularly implemented after World War II as a way to make use of chemicals that had been used in war and now they need to make a market for it, so they decided to use it in the industry of food, which is totally wild and totally crazy and totally inappropriate to defend life of peoples, but also for Mother Earth. So the ATC has been organizing in that community to make basically an agroecological demonstration farm, which Terry participated in one of the workshops that was taking place there, which is basically how to support communities that are in what's called the dry corridor of Nicaragua, an area that's particularly affected by climate change and that will have less and less rain every year as well as more extreme climatic events. When it rains, it'll rain way too much. So how to have farms and farming families that are more resilient. So that includes lots of the implementation of a lot of soil and water conservation practices, diversification of production, integration of animals into the farm. So Terry saw the example of raising pigs, a way of raising pigs called the deep bed model, as well as how to include the whole family in participating in farm work, which I think that Terry also saw very much in the example there. So the ATC accompanies families in this whole process of the countryside. But as you are so importantly mentioning in your question, the base of this, the ATC does this in La Montenita, but they do it in so many other communities in Nicaragua. There was half of the group that was also in a community called La Virgen, which is in the coffee producing region of, you know, Tegan, the northern part of the country, and other parts of the country. And these, all of these different processes and different popular organizations supporting the production of food on land owned by peasant families means that Nicaragua, Nicaraguans consume about 90 percent, about 90 percent of the food that Nicaraguans produce. Sorry, I'm getting in the slum except about 90 percent of the food that Nicaraguans consume is produced by Nicaraguans. And about 80 percent of that is produced by small farmers by peasants. So the agrarian reform families having their own land to grow food is really the basis for food sovereignty, which is really, really key, as you say, as a tool against any kind of imperialist aggression, because oftentimes imperialist aggression will immediately attack a country's food supply. But it's very, very difficult to attack a country's food supply if it's basically a democratized food supply, if it's divided up equally and locally between communities. And the way that that food is distributed is very locally. Nicaraguans don't buy food very much in their supermarkets. They buy it from the local markets, from their neighbors. It doesn't go very far out of the community. The farthest it might go is the department capital. And some of it might go to Managua as well. But it doesn't really go into the supermarket chains or the corporate control change. So that's really, really key when we think about sanctions and imperialist aggressions. And there's already been a couple of examples here in Nicaragua living through that, including the 2018 Tuuk coup attempt in which the opposition tried to put roadblocks, or they did put roadblocks around the country, which stopped the distribution of certain kinds of products, but never stopped the distribution of food. You know, in the United States, for our audience to hear, oh, everybody just shops at their neighbor, they produce their own food, or they just go and shop, you know, with their, with the locally produced food. And in the States, that's a very, you know, what do we call that eating within, you know, no more than 100 mile radius of your, you know, the food's not produced farther than 100 mile radius from your home or the restaurant you choose to frequent. And it's a very, almost a luxury to eat that way in the States. It's expensive. And it's, I think you could even call it an elitist diet in the States. Whereas here in Nicaragua, this is this is how the food is produced on small local farms. This is how people produce their food. This is how they eat. And it's just an amazing thing to witness. I think regarding sanctions, there's two things in having, you mentioned 90% food sovereign. So this means the country is not susceptible to an import to having imported food products blockaded from the country. And also getting off the chemical farming means that there is doesn't one, there's no additional environmental damage to producing the food. But also as we've seen in Venezuela, chemical agriculture by his fertilizers pesticides, some of those countries have been sanctioned, prevented from selling their product to farmers in Venezuela. So again, you have this sovereignty through the whole food chain in Nicaragua, which is fabulous for the people to be producing on this level, but also is a buffer for any sort of economic warfare that we know is already in place and accelerating. So let's talk a little bit also about, let's talk a little bit more about the dry quarter, because we don't talk enough about climate change in the US. And the dry quarter does have some effect on what the US narrative is regarding quote unquote conflict beef. So what is the dry quarter and what's and it's expanding. So let's talk a little bit about that. Yeah. Yeah. So the dry quarter refers to a region that actually spreads throughout the whole Mesoamerican region goes all the way to Panama. That is a that is an area well as the name would say, it's kind of desertifying or drying out with one of the effects of climate change. Nicaragua and Honduras are some of the countries in the whole entire world that are most affected by climate change. And so as I mentioned, when I was talking about the case of La Montenita, basically means that these regions are going to get less and less water. The dry seasons are going to be drier. And the rainy seasons will have longer periods of dryness or drought. And when it rains, it's going to be a whole bunch of rain at once. But the challenge with that means that a lot of the agricultural system requires relies on water to be able to produce food for the country. Nicaragua is pretty well off in the sense that it already has the base of people to grow food for the country. But if there's not water, good distribution of irrigation systems, which most most families don't have access to irrigation systems, which are very, very, very expensive, that puts at a very, very high risk for, you know, for these very extreme climatic events, a good example of that being the two hurricanes that took place last year, hurricanes at the Miota in November of last year. Let me just tell our audience that there is that we did an episode of what the F is going on in Latin America November of 2020, with Dr. Paul Okwis to talk about the Nicaraguan government response to the hurricanes. And we juxtaposed that with the second part of the program with Jorado Torres from Partido Libre in Honduras to show just how the Honduran government privatized neoliberal form of economy was not able, did not respond, and versus the response to the Nicaraguan government. And that you can find on our YouTube channel under videos. And it's worth listening to, to understand the response, how profound it was. And we did witness some of those communities on our trip. Anyway, sorry to interrupt. No, that's, it's absolutely right. I highly recommend that near me too. I think it's an excellent gives a very important comparing to trust between two neighboring countries. And so in terms of the conflict, beef issue, first of all, I want to really recommend that people read an article that was published by John Kerry with support from the tortilla con sal media collective that was put published in fair. Turn this on accuracy and reporting. Yes, thank you, Terry. That provides a whole a really, really important background or outline about this conflict big story that came out a couple of months ago and a number of me at me US media sources was picked up in other countries as well as including the UK and goes myth by myth, basically debunking a lot of the different issues that are being completely manipulated in that piece. One of which is Terry, you're mentioning the topic of the dry corridor. So basically the conflict big issue is basically this accusation that in the time of the pandemic last year, the US needed to import meat more beef. And they started to import more beef from the country of Nicaragua. So Nicaragua is exporting more beef to the US. But the accusation is that that beef is all coming at basically the blood of indigenous slaughter and digit massacre of indigenous peoples as you know, big scale livestock producers take over indigenous land particularly on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, which is where the majority of Nicaragua's indigenous population is. But in relation to climate change in the dry corridor and something that was emphasized by the coordinator of the regional autonomous government of the northern Caribbean coast, Carlos and Aleman said, of course, there's cattle, there's cattle production in the Caribbean coast. You can't lie and say there's no cattle production, but there's a number of decent reasons that for that, including the fact that, you know, the expansion of the agricultural frontiers in part because of the dry corridor along the Pacific coast is making agriculture more and more difficult to practice. On the other hand, he also mentioned that a lot of people are practicing, you know, that have livestock on the Caribbean coast, particularly because of all the advancements thanks to both the national government and these processes of a San Anisapopula revolution that have implemented lots of different social programs, especially the importance of infrastructure and good roads that go into very rural areas, but also some of the best roads in Latin America I will add. Excellent roads here in Nicaragua, excellent roads here in Nicaragua, and also the process of building regional autonomy that's really focused on indigenous and Afro-descendant communities, being able to control their communities, make their own decisions, and that also includes the right to be able to have livestock. So, you know, I think it relates most to climate change, but it also relates to these other really important processes of autonomy on the Caribbean coast, this topic of conflict, beef, as well as another a number of other issues that I don't I don't know if we have time to get into today or not if that's up to you. Well, let's talk a little bit about, let's talk a little bit more about the indigenous communities on the Caribbean in these autonomous regions, because it's a part of the country that I think most of our audience probably is not that familiar with. It's profoundly beautiful. I mean, it is definitely Caribbean versus Mesoamerican Pacific coast. It is fantastically beautiful here, but it is definitely a Caribbean culture, you know, heritage-wise and everything. Let's talk a little bit more about these communities. Also, before we completely leave the conflict beef issue, one of the things we've learned in Bilby is that cattle is a banking system, is a form of banking for the people in the autonomous regions. And can you explain that a little bit for us? Yeah, sure. Because I mean, it's really fascinating that it's used as investment in banking for people. Yeah, well, this is something. And not on large scale, little family, you know, small families. This was something that was explained to us by, again, by the coordinator of the regional government, Carlos Aleman Cunningham, who had a really excellent meeting with us. We talked a lot about a lot of different aspects of the Caribbean coast and this process of constructing on autonomy. But he really emphasized, you know, the importance of communities, especially indigenous communities, that can be very remote, that might not have bank accounts or access to banks or other ways of storing, you know, their funds. But buy up cattle and have cattle, which can sell for a good price. And so if, you know, they need to save something up, they might buy some cattle, have them and whenever they need to, you know, pay some kind of big cost or anything, they can they can sell the cattle. But it's really not, the folks on the Caribbean coast are not, the majority of them are not raising cattle, thinking about, thinking about exportation, it's sorry, export. They're thinking more about, you know, consumption, local consumption in the community, as well as like you said, this new interesting thing that we learned about the, you know, being their own, their own banking system. Now that was fascinating for me to learn that and really important, actually. So when we, when, when our delegation went to Belly, we flew from Managua to Belly and when we arrived at the airport, we had to go through customs and immigration because this is an autonomous region with its own governments, its own management. And let's, let's talk about the structure or how these autonomous regions are structured because this was, we didn't physically leave Nicaragua, but we did enter a new zone and we did go through customs and immigration when we arrived. And when we left. Sure. Yeah, definitely. So, so Nicaragua, for folks who don't know, is in the middle of the Central American Isthmus and it has co-sposed along the Pacific, the Pacific Ocean, and the Caribbean. And it's in part because of that, that the U.S. has always geopolitically been interested in Nicaragua and they actually wanted to build a canal in Nicaragua before they were able to build one in what we call today Panama. And about half of the country, half of the national territory today in Nicaragua is part of what Terry's talking about, this autonomous region. The Caribbean coast divided into two parts, the Northern, the Northern Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region and the Southern Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region. It has its own regional government. And really the base of a lot of these, of the Autonomous Region are the territorial and community governments, which are basically, to take a step back, with the triumph of the San Luis Revolution and the creation of a new constitution, the constitution recognized the importance, basically recognized Nicaragua as a plurinational nation. So there are the CISO peoples, but they're also Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples coming from different pasts and different histories and recognizing that their histories, their languages and their territories need to be respected and also have a legal backing behind them. So one of the processes of the San Luis Revolution, which is also part of the FSLN's 13-point historic program, has been basically how to respect all these different components of the Caribbean coast and Indigenous and Afro-descendant populations. That has included giving land title to hundreds of Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities. So they're most of the Caribbean coast and they're parts of the Pacific Coast too, that are Indigenous or Afro-descendant territory, communally held land title by those peoples, each with their own distinct way of governing with local community governments that make up a territorial government, but each distinct to the different peoples. So we have the Mesquite Indigenous peoples, Mayagna, we have Creole, Garifuna and the CISOS as well on the Caribbean coast. And a lot of this process of constructing autonomy has been respecting local ways of governance and using that base to inform what's happening higher up on the higher levels of government, both in terms of the regional autonomous governance, but also the national government, because it's not like the national government has no presence in the Caribbean coast, it does, but it really respects the autonomy of the regional autonomous government. And the way that it is supporting what's happening in that area is, for example, with the passage of the hurricanes, the national government sent over 500,000 sheets of metal roofing to help report houses, they sent lots of boats. Within 10 days, within 10 days, within 10 days, they sent boats, they sent food, they sent a lot of electricity restored. Exactly, so they played a really big boat example in that in terms of the immediate recovery process, but at the same time, like Terry says, it really feels like a whole different, whole different culture and whole different place in comparison to the Pacific coast. Yeah, it was just fascinating. And as you know, I'm spending a little more time with the Caribbean. So it's just really fascinating for us to study such a wide variety and to learn how diverse and culturally rich Nicaragua is. And now a lot of people, particularly of my generation, when we hear Nicaragua, we so much think of the Sandinista Revolution of the 70s and the Contra War of the 80s and to have worked with you to have brought 13, well, 13 with UNI. So 11 people here to see the diversity of this country and learn so much on the ground that's happening here. It was just really, really a gift, Erica, for you and the ATC to welcome us and put the trip together. I have to say, we really, we learned so much, but it was a very adventurous trip too. So physically adventurous, but also just all the variety of people, places and things that we saw. So for our audience, I just want to let everyone know that this delegation was March 13 through March 23 with a two day, three day, two night add-on to Corn Island. And it was a project of Friends of the ATC in partnership with Sanctions Kill. Both of those organizations have fabulous websites, friends of the atc.org, sanctionskill.org. And just a little bit about Sanctions Kill. Sanctions Kill is a coalition of over 100 international organizations focused on hybrid warfare, US foreign policy, economic policy and warfare in the form of sanctions and other forms of economic weaponry. So we were in Nicaragua to study what the US government is currently doing and we anticipate a more aggressive sanctions regime to be placed on Nicaragua. So Erica, before I let you go, what else should we talk about? What if I left out? We could talk all day and all night about this. But I do think it's really important to mention to folks, this year there are presidential elections in Nicaragua on November 7 and the US government continues to use a wide variety of tactics to prevent the FSLN, which has very wide popular support. The most recent polls say it would probably get about 70% of the vote, presidential vote in November elections. So the US government is taking a wide variety of tactics to prevent the FSLN from taking power and also includes recognizing that because the FSLN has more, so much popular support that it's also thinking about different ways to carry out a coup d'etat. And so that means that the important, that really strengthens the importance of all of our different organizations, the different media that we're connected to, you know, even our friends and family or communities to be alert and pay attention to what's happening in Nicaragua. And really, I think, Terry, you probably agree the importance of people coming to Nicaragua to see with their own eyes what's happening. So I know that we have been talking about, well, Friends of the ETC has had on our calendar for a long time to continue to do delegations this year. There are definitely conditions to do delegations here that Nicaragua has been, of course, not left unharmed by the pandemic, but has been able to address the needs of the pandemic very, very well, thanks to its well-organized public health care system, community-based health care models. And so we really hope that folks will come, both in November for the elections to be alert and observe the elections, but also to celebrate what that's in July for the anniversary of the San Diego Revolution. And as the ETC is an you know, as a rural organization working in the countryside will continue to have a number of other exchanges that are looking particularly at food production and agriculture in the countryside. So we, I think, Terry and I, we both talked a lot about the importance of bringing young folks to Nicaragua and getting them. I will say this recent delegation, nine of the 13, well nine, including you, 10 of the 13 of us, were significantly younger than me. Which was wonderful. It was wonderful. Yeah. It was great. I mean about, I think, half of the folks in our group are younger than me, which I think is really, really important because I think young folks have a lot of really important ideas about solidarity organizing and anti-imperialism and can bring a lot of energy into our solidarity organizing and think about more creative ways to build internationalism between our peoples. And so come to Nicaragua, especially young folks, support young folks in coming here. I think it's so key and through the ETC and friends of the ETC, we feel like one of our key roles is supporting particularly in that area. Wonderful. So watch for a potential delegation in July. Exactly. More to come on that. So, okay Erica, I'll let you go. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for a wonderful 10 days on the ground here at Nicaragua. It was one of the most amazing delegations I've ever had the honor to be part of. And you and your team just did a wonderful, wonderful job hosting us and teaching us so much. And the diversity of the people in the land, it's just so strongly came through. It was just a wonderful, wonderful experience. So I so thank you for that. Thank you so much Teri and thank you for having me on your program. Okay everyone, we'll see you next week. I should mention that before we sign off that every Thursday on WBAI New York City, WPFW Washington D.C., Code Pink Radio airs at 8 a.m. Pacific, 11 a.m. Eastern. So look for us Thursday mornings on those two Pacifica radio stations and every Wednesday evening, 7 30 p.m. on Code Pink YouTube. So thank you Erica. Really wonderful. Thank you. Okay. Bye-bye. Thank you. Bye.