Word: sandinista
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...Guillen, whose own range of facial expressions can seem as cartoonish as those of his caricatures, laughs when he's asked how many times he's drawn President Ortega over the past 25 years. His caricature of the Sandinista leader seldom changes: sullen, paunchy and balding, with a gleam of evil mischief in his eye. Ortega's wife, Rosario Murillo - who wears eccentric clothing, dangly jewelry, and talks about peace and love but has a reputation for being vindictive and Machiavellian - practically draws herself. "I draw her as a female version of Ortega, with less weight and lots more hair...
...everyone is laughing. As Nicaragua becomes increasingly polarized and the Sandinista government intensifies its crackdown on the independent press, cartoonists are suddenly in the firing line. Molina, known for being the more aggressive of the two, says his plume is no more barbed than before, but that the worsening political climate has changed the context of his work. "What has changed is how my role as a cartoonist is understood today, especially from the government's viewpoint," the long-haired cartoonist said. "Whatever I do is automatically called oligarchic, counterrevolutionary, or an instrument of the empire...
...Otero, however, stresses that Nicaragua must first invest massive amounts of money into agricultural credits, transport infrastructure and education, as well as resolve the land disputes left over from the Sandinista confiscations in the 1980s. More basically, he says, Nicaragua needs a plan - something he claims the Ortega government has not articulated, despite its political pomp. Without one, the agricultural expert says, Ortega is just "promising others something he hasn't been able to do at home...
...public health professional from New York who first visited Nicaragua in 1986 and still runs a project here, says Ortega's return has actually made it harder for her group to raise funds in the United States, because people don't want to be in solidarity with the current Sandinista government. She calls her project "humanitarian," and says she doesn't even like to use the word solidarity anymore...
...ended, there are still plenty of sandal-wearing gringo adventurers coming down to Nicaragua, though most now are looking to invest in inexpensive real estate and turn a profit. Of course, the old guard would say that's exactly what it means to be in solidarity with the new Sandinista government...