How key are Nicaragua and Central America to U.S. policy today?
I think the United States would be very happy if it could erase Nicaragua from the map. Nicaragua is key to Central America integration, lying as it does between Costa Rica and the other Central America countries. There is a total lack of understanding in the United States of what is happening here. It is worse than in Reagan’s time. That’s why the crisis is so serious… Nicaragua is the bridge for free trade with the rest of Latin America. We are also the bridge between the Pacific and the Atlantic, and Japan is now coming to Central America. And we are one of the most important regions of biodiversity in the world… But in the last 30 years we have had more destruction, more deforestation, more erosion than probably in the previous 500 years. I have seen the first satellite pictures of Central America taken in the late 1960s, and the more recent pictures. In the 1970s, Central America was green. Now it is red. The ultimate tragedy is that the indigenous and peasants who preserved f
