 Welcome to what TF is going on in Latin America and the Caribbean. CodePink's weekly YouTube program of hot news out of the region. In partnership with friends of Latin America, Massachusetts Peace Action, and Task Force on the Americas, we broadcast every Wednesday at 4.30 p.m., 7.30 p.m. Eastern Time on CodePink YouTube Live. Today's episode is titled Food Sovereignty, Nicaragua's No Hunger Program. The crisis in Ukraine has created conditions for loss of farming production and global food distribution. Already there exists a shortage of fertilizer and an increase in energy costs that will affect production, transportation and distribution. Today's the second of an informal series of conversations we will have about the importance of food sovereignty and how different countries, organizations, and institutions are attempting to guarantee the right to food. Our guest today are Nicaragua's Minister of Finance, Ivana Costa, who will be familiar to you from a previous episode of WTF. Today we will also be talking with the Minister of Family Economy, Husta Pérez. They'll be talking to us about the economy of Nicaragua. Thank you and welcome to our program today. Good afternoon, Terry. It's a pleasure to be connected to you today from Managua, Nicaragua. It's a pleasure to be here and we have Minister of the Family Economy, Husta Pérez, who is involved in small scale and cooperative production from these small peasant production. Thank you to most of the people who are engaged in the Nicaraguan economy today. So here is Minister Husta Pérez. Thank you so much. This is going to be a very timely conversation full of important information. I wonder whether we should start hearing from both of you or whether one of you would like to speak first telling us about the programs that the Sandinista government historically implemented, or perhaps we should start with what you have worked on in particular with regard to food production. And also speak specifically about the global situation, particularly as regards problems stemming from the crisis in Ukraine, which certainly does mean that fertilizers are less available globally and the rapidly increasing cost of fuels. We know that this affects production costs and food production and distribution. Thank you. I think that that's a very good and timely question to talk about food sovereignty and the impact that this will have on distribution, particularly amongst the poorest population of countries. In addition, it is also important to analyze the impact that external shocks are having on countries that import petroleum products, fertilizers, and raw materials for production. For Nicaragua, clearly, we don't just view this problem in terms of the crisis in Europe or the Ukraine conflict. The issue of food sovereignty is an endemic one. It is one that certainly we were aware of around 1800, but particularly during the Somoza dictatorship of the 20th century, the Somoza dictatorship abandoned the countryside and farming and had terms of trade that were against farmers. We could say that it was an anti-peasant production policy. And how does this affect the terms of trade and how this affects production? More than half of the population were peasants at that time. And they, just as today, were producing the most important items in Nicaragua, which was part of our culture, in exchange for the beef, pork, rice, and beads production. They just covered about eight basic products. So the people who produced these basic food stuffs could only get basic things, such as salt, kerosene, radio, and flashlight batteries, a little bit of soap, and some medicine. These are the items that they would need to trade or buy. That was the situation in the countryside in Nicaragua prior to the revolution. So they just used their machetes to produce. So we have to remember that that has nothing to do with the war in Ukraine. This was the situation in a countryside that was in extreme poverty. And we were then 1990, 1992, there was about 100% poverty in the countryside. And widespread poverty in the country was at about 80%. Now, measures of poverty was at those levels around 1992, but production transformed the model of serving peasant farmers. First of all, those who produced should be given lands. It's incredible for us to be able to think that somebody could produce food without having land. Now land and the means of production are in peasant hands and in the hands of their cooperatives. We should also remember that the largest exporters, there were basically three products, coffee, sugar, and cotton. This was in the hands of large producers or farm workers. But coffee, the one that since the 1870s had been exported, it's in the hands of about 40,000 producers. And 90% of these were small peasants with less than five months on as of land. That's what existed prior to the revolution. And that is where in 1979, we made a major effort to bring education to these people. What was the first thing that was done to educate the population so that people could really bring about change? The first thing was to teach people how to learn. The literacy crusade of 1980. And this transformed the lives of many Nicaraguan citizens. About 80% of people did not know how to read and write, but it also transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people from urban young people who went into the countryside and met the people who economically and socially sustained their country. These young people did not understand how food got produced where and how people who produced this food lived. It's very important to understand how the people who grow food live. You can't have public policies and production policies after turning your back to the people who make the greatest efforts and the greatest commitment to production. We are an agro-export country and basically a rural country. I'm talking about 1979. Now that was the experience that led to the conditions to transformations in the countryside looking at sugar. Imagine where a country that was a major sugar producer. But peasants didn't consume sugar themselves. They ate things unsweetened. And they didn't even get to drink good coffee. They just had burnt corn. So it was a country that is very different from what's happening in 2022. The revolution brought about major transformations. Now, I think this was a long introduction but just to understand the country that we inherited of major inequalities and injustices. And we went on the path set forth by the revolution and which was to give high priority to public policies aimed at reducing poverty in order to understand why the public policy against to combat poverty and extreme poverty is so fundamental to the country. You have to understand that about 70% of the population was living in poverty. In the countryside it was over 80%. People who produce beef, pork, rice, beans, platanos, coffee, corn. So that was the reality. We had to transform the model and first ensure that they had enough production to feed themselves. So we're talking about food security and food sovereignty now. This means that you have to, we can import it about 60% of our rice and there was a trend for all of the vegetables and all of our productive capacity was complimented with imports. You may recall the Washington consensus. That infamous consensus was to leave the countryside and make an effort to have free trade zones, particularly in textiles, but to abandon the countryside and that left people very poor. What makes the countryside poor? If you don't have resources or income to buy food, if I'm a peasant and what I produce does not feed me, then I am not gonna have enough money to buy it at the supermarket. It's a very simple equation. It's much easier for people to produce food and sell their surplus than to not produce food and try to find a job in urban areas, which did not exist in the 1990 when the Washington consensus rained. They were called the poor people at selling things at the street lights. That's what we saw in Nicaragua between 1990 and 2006. Poverty wasn't just hidden, but was rather expressed essentially in the urban spaces on the Pacific side in 2007 when we came into office. We wanted to give capital to the countryside. The production bonus moved more than 250,000 production bonuses, which is the famous program of giving people a spragnant sow, hens and other things to produce, to begin the production, a renewed production process that would allow families to have food to eat and surplus for other Nicaraguans families, but particularly by trying to have better markets because it's no use to have producers if there's no market. They might produce and that might seem like a curse because if the prices are too low in the local market. So we had to provide capital to small producers in the countryside with the production bonus and to finance the urban and semi-urban areas with the zero hunger program and try to have better markets. We had a very big import program through the Petro Paribe process. We imported a lot and transferred this to the poor sector. So the production bonus and zero usury were the basic programs that targeted the large majorities of our society, but we came to realize that it wasn't enough to provide capital. If we wanted to have a major transformation in the countryside, we also had to bring progress to the countryside, energy, health and education and transport without all of these things, we couldn't make sure that there weren't losses in the dairy sector. For example, if you have perishable goods, if you can't sell it or refrigerate it, it's a big loss to peasant producers. So therefore by bringing more public investment and economic and production related investment, these programs would not have worked, but also the president organized and instructed this ministry to be in charge, to be systematically in charge of small scale production and major programs have been developed. We have the MAFCA, we strengthen the technical cooperation training program and we need to have public spending, but also bring science technology to these sectors of production. This is what has enabled us to take a major leap forward because virtually about 90% of the country's food needs are met here. Ambassador Campbell will remind us whether we have a program to produce shrimp and also our daily rice and beans, our gallo pinto, our plantains and the Nicaragua and the Catamal. All of this is produced with national or domestic corn and pork production. So this has a major impact when you look at the figures in terms of reducing poverty from 48.3 to 24.9. That's a significant impact. But I was also saying in 2000 to 2002 that hunger perpetuates poverty and causes people to lose their potential. And it slows down the progress of society but poverty causes endemic hunger. We had to fight that the fight against poverty is also a matter of attacking the endemic hunger of those families that are still living in extreme poverty, extreme poverty in the country as about 6.8 or 6.9% which for Central America is pretty good but it's really bad because that means about 350,000 people. 6.9% might sound like that much but 350,000 families living in extreme poverty is bad. So in terms of Central America that's a very small figure. All of the countries around us have higher figures than that in terms of extreme poverty but we are concerned for this 6.9% of our families. We need to reduce this to zero. Hunger and poverty are not just health problems. It's not a disease. It's a problem of the proper application of public policy to rapidly reduce these problems. The biggest drop in poverty in our country's history was between 2007 and 2017. It's very important to be aware of this. This speaks very well of the FSLN's government the government president Daniel Ortega and vice president Rosario Murillo. She has been directly involved this program. She has been following it on a daily basis looking at marketing and trade. There is part of the country's cabinet that is looking at consumption, marketing and above all the fight against poverty. I think I've spoken enough Terry. Now let's let Husta give her presentation. Thank you so much. My greetings to the team and also to Francesco who I know is out there and went to thank you for the opportunity to speak to you about what our good government has been doing side by side with our people and families. The Ministry of Finance gave an excellent presentation and we should acknowledge that without political will from the government it is hard to win the fight against poverty and reduce hunger. This is what commandante Daniel and compañera Rosario's team have been doing. They've laid out a national strategy for food security and food sovereignty. Its basic premise is the allocation of resources a policy of allocating significant resources. Without this you cannot talk about food security without talking about the more than 3000 kilometers of roads that the FSLN government has been able to provide through road building and rehabilitation. You cannot talk about food security without taking into account the entire health model that has been built up through communities, municipalities and on a national level through reference hospitals that ensure proper care. We cannot talk about food security without acknowledging all of the efforts that this government has done to give land titles to people. The land that was redistributed in the 1980s is now being properly titled to Nicaraguan families. In our view, that is extremely important. And also a coverage by the electricity grid is very important. More than 99% of Nicaraguan families have electricity in their home. Drinking water, we have made significant strides in establishing drinking water for families. It's grown by more than 26% thanks to all of these efforts. We also should point out this strategy of food security has included the participation of families themselves. It wasn't all done by the government. The government has proposed policies, programs and projects, but Nicaraguan families have been the ones to put it into practice. In this regard, we created my ministry, the Ministry of Family, Community, Cooperative and Associative Economy as a result of this strategy as is the national system for the production and marketing of products. This is what the state has been encouraging for families. Within the family agriculture program for food security is a flagship program. Ivan mentioned that this has to do with the zero hunger program that we continue to build through other modalities. From 2007 to 2017, thousands of production bonuses worth more than 2 billion portables have been provided to families to provide them capital for production. We have also mapped this out, and you can see there, you can see the small family farming in the hands of Nicaraguan families. And this is where you see these important institutions have more than 125,000 protagonists working in family agriculture above all by promoting some nature and ecology friendly practices that preserve biodiversity. We also have the dry corridor, which is part of Central America. And we also have tropical forest. And we have been working on feeding people and continuing to produce despite variations in climate. We have been stressing this strategy throughout 2022, which has to do with promoting not only food security, which is the production of our basic grains, rice, beans, corn, and vegetables. We're also promoting other crops that can be exported. So we are stressing increased production of coffee, cacao, and beekeeping, and improving beef production, pork production, and sesame, harvest, and other additional crops, such as cardamom and pumpkins, and increasing our capacity to produce starch. We produce a lot of root crops and have made progress with some initiatives that have ensured that our country can provide pitaya and other products for small scale production. We have also been supporting families in the establishment of family gardens. These use small spaces to also allow people to not have to buy these fruits and vegetables that we use in our kitchen, such as tomatoes, onion, peppers, lettuce. So families can produce this in their own backyard gardens. And we're also working on training. Through technical education, we're having an impact. So we also have a national impact of technical schools in the countryside that allow people to have access to specialized courses to increase their yield. We also have something that is very important in terms of all of this when we talk about climate change, is that the recovery and care of our native seeds. Families are involved in establishing seed banks that allow us to continue to produce even in the face of currents. And our Minister of Finance explained to you, we have been working strategically in a way that is consistent with our strategy. We're also promoting fowl production so that we have more poultry available, and that also ensures food security. And we're enhancing the skills of farmers so that we can have artisanal incubators and also make the use of yellow corn and other crops that improve the diet of our cattle so that it has less of an impact on people's food. And so these farm animals do not need commercial products for their feed. And we also see that there are farms that produce poultry, beef, and pork. And we also support families with genetic improvement of their livestock. This is replies to goat, beef, and pork production. Our major exports are thanks to a lot of these agricultural improvement. We're about nine in terms of pork production. And also we have a lot of dairy products, including cheeses, that are being exported. There's a lot of demand for this in international markets. We have also developed our developing technical skills for small apiaries that produce good quality honey in our country. And we're supporting the conduction of ponds for small-scale fish production to ensure more varied diets and surpluses for families. And all of this is part of the national strategy. There's also plantain production as a basic food stuff for our families and also with surplus for export. In this way, we have several strategies and actions that are being implemented with an eye to ensuring that families can improve their output capacity and have a larger output of good quality products that are coming out of our countryside. But we're also working on initiatives to have added value with these products. So as a country, we are a little bit different from what they say about us in the international media. We have been working with Nicaraguan families to significantly reduce poverty and hunger. And we have been thinking of and applying new strategies to enable our families to live and enjoy greater well-being so that they can live well. So I'd just like to point out that we have technical packages that allow families to plant a greater variety of crops on their land. And we also have the Healthy Family Garden program that has to do with this small-scale production. We can provide the details about the production bonus for food. And we also are promoting the use of environmentally-friendly, sustainable practices. And these are some areas. We are exporting coffee and cacao. And these are being produced in a way that reduces carbon emissions. And we're also working on renewing the coffee plants by using varieties of coffee that adapt well to climate change. And we're also diversifying this production with other kinds of plants and also with certified plants and developing community seed banks and promoting environmentally-friendly practices not only with bamboo, but also to add value to some of our products. And we also have hydroponic production, genetic improvement, conserving soil and water-covered vegetable production, and also artisanal egg production, and also creative use of plants and livestock using even wildlife. And all of this is out of love for Mother Earth. Also, part of this strategy is the Solidarity Credit. Since 2007, we have had the Zero Usury Program, which helps urban and semi-urban families, as well as some in the countryside, start businesses or add new projects to existing small-family businesses. So we consider this to be part of our Christian Solidarity approach to give a lot of money to strengthen these families' capacity to run their businesses. In summary, what we are highlighting is that if we have good political will and a decision to work with and for the people, this means that you not only have to have political will, but you have to have the allocation of resources to ensure that this strategy can be used by families and they can move towards developing this. What a lot of people talk about, but very few people are actually implementing. So I want to thank you for listening. Thank you so much. This is a very informative and powerful conversation, and it raises many questions and many thoughts in my mind after listening to you. First of all, for our audience, I want to clarify a term that both of you used. You talked about creating and improving connectivity. I assume that you're talking about infrastructure, such as roads, which makes it possible to have more successful and easier and quicker transport of products to market. Could you just clarify that that's where you're talking about? Minister Acosta, yes, when we talk about connectivity, we're talking about the cost of transactions for peasants and small producers. Reducing transaction costs not only facilitates production, but also transport logistics and allows them or the product to reach market more quickly. This is very important for dairy products and vegetables. These products without a good transporting connectivity program, they will have lots of losses. According to a study by the Inter-American Development Bank with produce, 40% of losses are caused in transport. So it's important to have good cold chain and good roads, getting them to market as quickly as possible. So that's terrific. And it's impressive. I can share something with you. I've been in Nicaragua six or seven times since the 1980s. On various trips until 2010. And now I see that you have the best roads in the Americas, even better than some roads in the United States. So I'm wondering whether either of you could talk about, as we're talking about connectivity, getting product to market more efficiently and more quickly. I wonder how this is affecting how the increase in fuel prices is affecting farmers in Nicaragua and how it's affecting their ability to feed the people of Nicaragua. So have the increased fuel prices impacted this? Minister Acosta, these are outside factors caused by bottlenecks with exports and the imposition of sanctions on gas and oil. We are importers of these products. We will feel an impact from the impact of petroleum products, but the government has a program for food security. And this is approached as a central strategy that goes back to the UN proposals that the issue of production, availability, and access is key in order to have a successful policy at the critical moment. The government takes all of this into account. If we're talking about production, that's production and also availability and access in addition to consumption and what is biological use. So we have to look at public policies and make an effort to have some forecasting. Now, where does this come in? We have done an assessment of the recent programs that MEFCA and other programs have participated in in terms of various products and agricultural security to determine the demand for fertilizers in these areas, how much is available in the country for the production and how much this is in storehouses, how much has to come in and what effort does the country need to make in order to bring this to the providers because the supply chain is having problems. How can we make sure that we're not missing specialized feeds and fertilizers and fertilizer compounds? This is not just because the European crisis. Well, the Europeans have caused a slouch of crises in the last 100 years. But we also look at climate change. We might have too much rain or too much drought. And we have to look at what makes sure that we don't have a big gap in production because of these things. So the first thing has to do with the agricultural side. You have to make sure that the supply of fertilizers, the procurement and logistics and having technology bonus programs, this turns out to be like a subsidy for poor people but also for large scale production, ensure availability to ensure not only food security but we should also remember that agro export production is vital. We make sure that sugarcane is properly handled and that coffee is as well. So is our peanuts. And we have to make sure that there is enough food for cattle feed. We have to have good pasture. We have to have good fertilizer in the grasses so that the almost $1 billion or a little bit more than $1 billion of dairy and beef exports. So that's an important part of our economy. But we were very specific and saying, Terry, we're talking about oil and fuel because these are some things that I've never seen in Washington. We know that it's about 505 the gallon in Washington. That's what we hear from the ambassador but in Nicaragua it's been cheaper but now most of our gas pumps are selling it for less than that. It's because of what I said at the beginning. We're making sure that all of the machinery of production has to do with fertilizers, transport, all of the logistics chain and industry and textile industry. All of these first of all have energy at appropriate prices. And furthermore, we're making sure that these external shocks, according to our fiscal policies, can help our economy continue to produce and create jobs and to buffer these negative shocks. For example, those who monitor oil prices, in this case diesel, about 70% of national fuel consumption is in diesel. And last week it had the same price as the previous week because we have current public policies doing this. We're making sure that there is no oil refinery shock that will impact industry, transport, energy or other sectors. And so that's the same as true with fertilizers. I could share some data that is linked to production but is also linked to household consumption. Since 2019, there has been no increase in electricity rates regardless of the external shocks that occurred before the war in Ukraine. It has been going up, but also the pandemic and refining went down and that's also impacted oil prices which were over $100 a barrel, but Nicaragua because of its very effective policies has been able to have renewable energy and we have more and more renewable energy. And we were able to have very positive negotiations between the public and private sector in the country. This means that since 2019, electricity prices have not gone up and that is good news for a country that has been react rating itself in 2021 and continues to go down the path of reactivation and growth in 2022. Remember that for us, oil has become a fundamental input so the cost of transport, energy and to industry and for the processing of products, they are all impacted on this that would make the prices go up and this is true anywhere in the world. But since we are very clear on these impacts, we have had this institutional policy and the instruction handed down from the president of public, we have been ensuring stability with our economy and that's where we are. You can observe that the price at the pump is not going up very quickly and electricity rates have remained very stable and flat and also fertilizers for the first crop in that zone in May, we have some provisions so that if there are any additional impacts, we will have fertilizers on hand, our inventory will be ready beforehand for the country. We're going through all markets and using the private sector to try to get good prices to procure them ahead of time and we're making sure that we don't have supply chain problems in order to keep production going. Now to get back to food security, if we don't do all this with production, you can't have food security. You know, Minister Acosta, we've discussed these issues before specifically unilateral coercive measures that are improperly called sanctions. We've talked about the importance of energy sovereignty through renewable energy. We know that Nicaragua has a lot of renewable energy and also food security. We always talk about this vis-a-vis the sanctions in order to protect itself against the sanctions. This is what Nicaragua has done, but now given the situation in Europe, our audience can see how all of these alternative efforts have been so important to allow Nicaragua to withstand these external shocks. That is to say making a better effort to produce domestic renewable energy and food sovereignty. You have been almost invincible in terms of preserving your national sovereignty, so that Nicaraguan families suffer less. This is really an emblematic case with Nicaragua in the face of sanctions. Now with the crisis in Europe, this is having an impact on the global distribution and cost of energy throughout the world. We see that Nicaragua actually isn't a unique and I would say successful position and is a great example. Yes, thanks to the country's efforts and the leadership of President Ortega. Well, in 2007 he proposed the Human Development Plan. These are a couple of central elements and now we're reaping the benefits of this. The first thing was to ensure a transformation of our energy grid and something else that's not said. First of all, we don't produce much of our own petroleum-based energy and we didn't have enough energy and we said that we really had to move forward with renewable energy because people... We had only 24 hours of electricity every 76 hours and now it's much higher. Then we also look at the Central American grid and we're going to have 85-15 or 85-20 and we also import some renewable energy and that keeps our electricity bills down and it also means that we are not so dependent on oil but at any rate transport is 100% petroleum-based. We only have four electric vehicles so far. We do have a new law to encourage the import of electric vehicles. I think it's going to go into effect in 30 or 40 days and certainly in future years we'll have a larger fleet of electric vehicles which will also free us from vulnerability to oil shocks. When you talk about sanctions and certainly the people of the United States and of Europe are seeing what sanctions mean. I sanction this country and I pay the price for it at the gas pump. That is very bad for the population of their countries but just imagine how bad it is for people who are not in conflict, how bad it might be for other people. Look at the case of Nicaragua. Ours is a country which per capita is most sanctioned. We have just 6.5, 6.7 million population and in terms of per capita sanctions we really have a high number of sanctions. It's extremely high but that is not so relevant when you look at the major efforts of public policies and our country's commitment to focusing the efforts of producers and merchants and people in the transport sector, people who own these companies. They do enjoy good economic conditions in terms of debt. We have the lowest COVID-19 pandemic debt. We in Guatemala have the lower debt rates but we also have the biggest reduction in poverty. So behind debt is a lot of poverty. It is also important to see that our fiscal policies are aligned with this and you can see that this has been appreciated by international organizations. In addition, I don't know whether you're aware of this but I'm going to say it now. During the years of the pandemic the most critical point for the western economies and we are the country that had the most reactivation of our economy, at least of all of the countries in the west or in Latin America. We had some negative growth but now we've had over 8% growth. In Latin America the average is about 4% looking at the impact of the pandemic from 2020 to 2021. So this shows you the tremendous production capacity and the coordination of all the economic system. We are able to be market oriented but also in terms of food security. Another issue, I'm talking about 2021. The problem is to not forget that the biggest pandemic that the people of Nicaragua suffered was the failed coup attempt of 2018 in which they destroyed 7.5% of our GDP but destroyed 27 billion in financial transactions. In other words, money that never came in which had been projected to come in in 2020 and 2021. So that was a very big shock and I think there has been a lack of solidarity from other states and recognition of the country's major effect to maintain peace, security and the fight against poverty under the major banner of economic growth. Recall that in 2006 we were the poorest country in Tierra firme in the Americas and 15 years later we have the best human development indexes of our neighbors and have had the fastest growth and also another very important thing. We are the safest country in all of Central America. Absolutely the safest in Central America. We have 103 municipalities that have had no homicides. That's incredible. And that's only found in some Nordic countries and in the safest countries of Latin America. I think that only two other Latin American countries have better indicators and we're very closely reaching the international average. So this all means that we're on the right path to ensure good living for our population and it's very expensive. We need to make sure that people have good government which affords them not government public policies that provide opportunities. We don't want just more government which is what the neoliberals say. It's not a problem having more government. You need to have a better government but government that's for the great majority of people. That's the issue there. And I believe and I've seen sometimes sometimes we see a light at the end of the tunnel. Some U.S. official was talking about imposing sanctions on another country and that they might be reconsidered and that everything's on the table. I think that maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel there and so perhaps there is something. I think that the political leaders of people that sanction other countries are beginning to see, appreciate the difference in perception and differences in belief. One cannot believe that sanctions will affect all of the population. They know it will affect the entire population just to have an impact on the leading class. That's not very Christian. We're going to punish 6.7 people to be able to punish our political leaders because we have different foreign policy and general policies. So I think that this is something that really argues against in sanctions and you have to look at who they really have an impact on. Sanctions always hurt the poorest people in society. So we will make people poor with sanctions and take away their food security or take away their electricity or force them to buy it at higher market prices. All of this shows that this is a very uncivilized approach to impose sanctions. I'm trying to say this all politely. That's a tactful way to say it. It truly is warfare at the end of the day. It is truly a war. Yes, please go ahead, Minister Usta Pérez. It is important for us to point out that despite all of these sanctions, these unilateral coercive measures, that in addition to terrorism and aggression, since 2021 we have going through a democratic exercise in which the people of Nicaragua have ratified their approval of the model of government that they have, which is being built by the Sandinista Front under the leadership of Comandante Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo. For us, this is an indicator that tremendous effort has been made by our teams and by the country, but our will and our priorities will continue to be the people of Nicaragua and to ensure that we can mitigate these sanctions. We will continue to work to make sure that our families no longer depend on chemical inputs. Instead, we're looking for more environmentally friendly agro-ecological solutions that we can supply ourselves and the government has supported this. And so we continue to offer stability in our electricity bills. And we do this by finding alternative sources of electricity. And now more than 99% of our people have access to this. Our people continue to be the priority. They know this and that is why on November 7th, 2021, the overwhelming majority of the population ratified, in other words, voted in favor of this model, which does not necessarily follow the capitalist model. So we continue to try to make a difference. And here a decision has been made. There is a preference for the majority, a preference for the poor, and there is firm determination to eliminate poverty and inequality. Certainly more sanctions will become as long as some government leaders in other countries fail to understand this. They will impose more sanctions, but our people understand it. There is a preference for peace, stability, and the well-being of Nicaraguan families. It's so true. And thank you very much. I wish to clarify with our audience, when Minister Justa Perez talks about November 7th, she is talking about Election Day when the people of Nicaragua re-elected President Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo. They won by a sizable margin. I was in attendance. I was there as an elections observer. And it's true. I think that our audience has been able to see Code Pink reporting on this. I think that the two of you agree with the fact that since October or November of 2020, with all of the elections that have taken place throughout Latin America and Caribbean since then, with the exception of Ecuador, regional elections in Venezuela, the presidential elections in Honduras, regional elections in Mexico, people have been directly responding to the U.S. intervention. People have been defending their national sovereignty over their national resources, and people have been voting for governments that seek to implement a model that will benefit the majorities in their country. This is particularly true in Nicaragua. But throughout the Americas, I think that the people are choosing this kind of model. We should do so in the United States as well. But what you have done is very profound, what you have done on behalf of your government and in favor of your people. This is an example of what is possible and what can be accomplished when a joint effort is made and the government focuses on people. So it's a two-way streak. You are working together to bring about these successful efforts. You should be very proud of this. And it is a tremendous inspiration. So I thank both of you very much for being with us today. I truly appreciate the time you have devoted to this this afternoon. Are there any final words you would like to share with our audience before we close? I want to thank the audience, Terry and your team for this today. We appreciate your efforts to bring the truth about Nicaragua into many households in many countries that may be listening today. It is relevant to learn about the truth in our country. And we also want to invite you all to come visit our country and to look at how our economy is doing, how social programs are doing and how society is doing. Nicaragua is full of people with open arms and I don't want to miss this opportunity to invite all of you to come. We want you to go into Nicaragua to see with your own eyes what is really happening to see whether what we're saying is true. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. I am very pleased to have been able to talk to you today. I wish to remind our audience that you have been watching what WTF is happening in Latin America and the Caribbean. The weekly YouTube broadcast of Co-Pink, we transmit every Wednesday evening at 7.30 p.m. Eastern time. And we also broadcast at 9.00 Eastern time. And you can also listen to us tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining us again today at 8.30 Eastern time. And you can also listen to us on podcasts. Thank you very much, Minister Acosta and Minister Paris. It's been lovely chatting with you. We'll see you all next week. Thank you for tuning in.