Despite an internal situation characterized by rampant poverty, weighed down by the living legacy of the civil war and battered by frequent natural disasters, Nicaragua stands out in the geopolitical chessboard of the Latin American region for its political and economic dynamism.
Since the beginning of his second consecutive term (2011), President Daniel Ortega, leader of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), in the framework of a rapprochement with Venezuela, has forged strong ties with Caracas and promoted the membership of the Nicaragua to Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América (Alba), a political and economic project in which Bolivia, Cuba, Honduras, Venezuela and other Central and South American Caribbean republics participate. Venezuela, the major donor of the Dawn, has negotiated a series of bilateral treaties with all member countries of the organization. The agreements with Nicaragua provide for the allocation of economic aid for the construction of a refinery, the supply of new electricity plants and the opening of a social development bank.regional political leadership.
At the same time, Ortega has maintained ties with countries politically distant from the ‘Alba’ project, such as the USA. Since 2006 Nicaragua has participated in the Free Trade Agreement between the Dominican Republic, Central America and the USA (Dr-Cafta). The latter remain the main investor, hold the commercial record for imports and exports and host a large part of Nicaraguan emigrants, who are the most important source of remittances from abroad. Furthermore, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and the European Union signed, in 2012, an association agreement on international free trade.
According to itypeusa, Nicaragua is involved in territorial disputes with Costa Rica: the two countries claim sovereignty, navigation and exploitation rights of the San Juan River, from which the route of the futuristic Nicaragua Canal project financed with Chinese funds could pass. This dispute and the one on the Calero Island dispute are still pending at the United Nations International Court of Justice.
The economy, which grew by 4% in 2015, is closely linked to the primary sector, which represents 20.5% of GDP. Traditional export products are coffee and sugar but, as a result of a policy of wage erosion in favor of competitiveness, textile exports are growing. The industrial sector is expanding, while services account for about half of the GDP. In 2002, the country joined the IMF’s Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility, committing itself to implementing important reforms. However, their slow implementation and rising government spending could jeopardize a new loan from the Washington organization. In view of the 2016 presidential elections, the US could put pressure on multilateral bodies to ask for a further reduction in funds.
Cinema. – With the exception of a few documentaries shot in the 1920s, up to the 1960s cinema in Nicaragua only existed as a distribution. In the few theaters of the big cities, mostly American films are presented, ignoring the films produced by other Latin American states. The dictator A. Somoza, owner of some studios, who held back any impulse to production, wanted to prevent private individuals from questioning his hegemony, both economic and political. Only after the fall of Somoza does a national production begin: cinema becomes one of the privileged means of the Sandinista front for documenting and witnessing the armed struggle. Nicaragua Septiembre 78 is among the most successful documentary filmsby the Chilean O. Cortés and the Frenchman F. Diamond, Nicaragua: los que haran la libertad (1978) by B. Navarro, and also, particularly significant, Despues of the earthquake by L. Portillo, Nicaragua Serrano and L. Pérez, who does not reconstruct episodes of armed struggle but recounts the disastrous earthquake that struck Managua in 1972. In July 1979, when the dictatorship fell, INCINE (Instituto Nicaraguense de Cine) was established, which inherited the equipment owned by Somoza, putting it arrangement of filmmakers; the Institute is also involved in distributing Nicaraguan and Latin American films in the cinemas of the country.
Only for a decade has the cinematography of the Nicaragua – often associated with economic groups of other countries, in particular Cuba and Mexico – seems capable of producing feature films of good narrative and spectacular quality: this is the case of Alsino y el Condor by M. Littin and El señor Presidente of the Cuban MO Gòmez, both shot in 1983; of Walker (1987), director A. Cox; and two films from 1988, Espectro de la guerra by L. Deshòn and Un hombre de una sola nota by F. Pineda.
