Managua Photos June-Sept, 2008

 

 

Credit institutions, pawn shops and loan sharks abound in the Capital, offering scandalously high interest rates to desperate people already impoverished by the historic privatization of their communal land ownership rights and the ciclical depressions that result from that fundamental social error. About a third of all Nicaraguan families with mortgageable property or members who work in the formal (lienable) sector are highly indebted, paying more interest than principal in long-term debt service plans. Ironically, but not inexplicably, one of the major complaints of Nicaraguans, just behind "scarcity of land" and "lack of employment opportunities" is "lack of credit." The structural injustice of private property of land values, denies land and sustainable employment thus forcing people to rely on family "remesas" from abroad, or to fall into the credit trap.

 

 


In a country where electricity is one of the major public and private additions to the cost of living, this street lamp, within view of the CEIHG building, has been burning continuously for more than a year! The razor wire, ubiquitous in the Capital, is another example of the vicious circle of poverty caused by the unjust distribution of wealth. How many needed products and services could be provided and purchased in place of all the unnecessary walls, barbed wired, iron gates, and security guards?

 

 


Serious road hazards like this...
... and this are common throughout Nicaragua. Neither the government nor the iron shop in front of this highly trafficked way in the Capital has cared to be responsible for the capping of this perrenially open manhole. Obviously, mismanagement and low priority as a public responsibility, not lack of financial resources, is the cause of this dangerous negligence.

 

 


The distinction between public and private property of land is not well defined in theory nor in practice in Nicaragua. As here, frequently the public way is occupied by private parties at the inconvenience and even risk of other citizens. But parking on public streets, let alone sidewalks, constitutes use of public site value that the government could collect in land value taxes (LVT), temporary public site value user fees, or in this case, public indemnization fines.
Another example of a private interest occupying a public space and creating a public hazard on a highly trafficked corner in front of a hospital in Managua. Did the Municipal Government OK the private commercial use of this corner? If it did, it could also have assessed a temporary public site value user fee for the use of the public space.

 

 


This rural scene is actually in the very center of Managua, the capital of Nicaragua! Private owners of land speculate in its value, and that is the reason that the majority of Nicaraguan's cannot access the most economically viable land for employment and productive investment. While the majority of the best land lies in waste, Nicaraguans must cram themselves into substandard housing, protest in vain for government assistance to subsidize access to "private" land, or emigrate to other countries in search of basic employment opportunities denied them in their own country.

 

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since Oct 2008