Nicaragua does not renounce the Grand Canal

During the celebration of the 39th anniversary of the Nicaraguan Navy President Daniel Ortega discussed the validity of the Grand Canal Interoceanic project. This was met with approval by the great majority of the population and by the entire Sandinista membership.

“We have not given up on the Canal, on the contrary we have the historic commitment with the Nicaraguan people to make the canal a reality for Nicaragua," said the president after detailing the geopolitical and historical reasons that support the need to build the canal that will enhance the development of Nicaragua and Central America as a whole.

It was a surprising announcement in the sense that the question of the Inter-Oceanic Channel had been out of public debate for some time. Many must have thought that the project was abandoned, although in reality the work to complete the environmental studies never stopped. The truth is that a series of factors, both international and national, forced the rate of progress of the project to slow down for the time being.
 
As President Ortega demonstrated, based on a voluminous feasibility study conducted by the U.S. Navy itself at the request of President Grover Cleveland in the late 19th century, the Canal through Nicaragua has always been considered a realistic and necessary project for world trade. If necessary 130 years ago, today with the rise of Asia and especially China, it is even more so.

"We are not talking about a project that will be damaging, rather it will strengthen global trade and give Nicaragua resources that would allow it to develop and grow and therefore improve the economic conditions of all Nicaraguan families… Since we have not talked about the canal recently one could think the project was abandoned”, explained President Ortega.
 
“Among the international factors that motivated the momentary halt of the project we can mention the Western offensive to maintain the artificial exchange rate of the dollar without support against the advance of China and Russia in the global framework, as well as the global advance of the right, which increased even more with Donald Trump in the presidency of the United States; and in Latin America this resulted in an offensive to destroy the Venezuelan economy and force a ‘regime change’, as well as an offensive against all progressive governments of Our America”, said the president.
 
“At the national level, and not disconnected from the global geopolitical dynamic, the hesitant attitude of our business groups, like COSEP (Big Business council), which on the one hand supported the project with all the investments it promised to bring with it, but at the same time were sensitive to the pressures of the coup-supporting ultra-right and of the United States itself. This made it difficult to build a movement strong enough to assert the will of the vast majority of society, which was and is to build the Canal” added the president.

In reality, at this point everything indicates that many of the business leaders, behind the backs of the businessmen themselves and the Nicaraguan people, were already "in the garlic" of the coup that was being cooked up with abundant external financing.
 
The sad and painful juncture of last year's so-called "soft coup" made clear which sectors of society are interested in the country's development and which are not. The failed "soft coup" also showed which project for the nation has real popular backing.
 
On the one hand, the Sandinista project, of a Nicaragua with a place for all, development, sovereignty and social justice, and on the other, the delinquent project of groups whose common denominator is their dependence on foreigners, their insatiable personal appetites and their lack of moral restraint to satiate them. For the vast majority of Nicaraguans, the choice between these two projects is not particularly difficult. Last year's coup not only manifested their true character but relegated them to political irrelevance. They have been defeated. That's why it's time to turn the page and retake the nation project that the people voted for massively for more than a decade.

Internationally the open secret that the Trump administration is losing the trade war with China (you only have to read the analyses of the US media on the subject to realize it), the prospects of a global economic recession and an unstoppable debt bubble in many countries, coupled with the political fragility of the "turn to the right" in Latin America, illustrated by the defeat of the right-wing president this week in Argentina, revive the multipolar agenda around the world with an Asian continent that will continue to hunger for resources it does not have in its territory.
 
President Daniel Ortega's announcement, beyond the concrete measures taken within the framework of the Grand Canal project (for the time being, the announced adjustments to the environmental study approved 4 years ago) is of great significance inside and outside Nicaragua.
 
At the national level it is the confirmation of the defeat of a toxic coup movement that at the time said they were "environmentalist", "peasant" and "anti-Canal" but that in practice proved to be a series of terrorist cells, cattle rustlers and traffickers manipulating peasants in the areas through which the Canal would pass with the story that they could ask for up to a million dollars per manzana (1.74 acres).

At the regional level, putting the Inter-Oceanic Canal back on the agenda will activate a series of positive economic dynamics in a Latin America hungry for more trade with China and in a political context in which the weakening and near end of the right-wing wave in the region is envisioned.
 
The truth is that politically, Trump has done nothing but alienate others, even falling into contradictions with long-time allies, such as Colombia, who he accused of "doing nothing" to stop drug production. At the grassroots level, it goes without saying: either with his xenophobic and/or racist policies, or with the regimes he supports, Trump has long since won the antipathy of the people. In economic terms, it is becoming increasingly clear that the neoliberal governments supported by Washington do not benefit either from greater investments or from U.S. imports, thus throwing them into the arms of multipolarity.
 
The announcement of the validity of the Great Inter-Oceanic Canal project is a move that gives the Nicaraguan Government the initiative in the political debate inside and outside the country and is a sign that when dealing with the empire one should not act with fear and abandon the Nation project, but serenely, valuing the correlations of forces and continue along the path traced by history and by the people.

In Spanish: https://managuaconamor.blogspot.com/2019/08/nicaragua-no-renuncia-al-gr…