Development & Aid, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean, Population, Poverty & SDGs

NICARAGUA: A Month of Free Fun and Games for Poor Children

José Adán Silva

MANAGUA, Dec 4 2009 (IPS) - More than one million poor children in Nicaragua will enjoy a massive Christmas celebration this month, complete with recreational activities and presents, organised by the government of President Daniel Ortega. But the opposition is criticising the project as populist and eccentric.

First Lady Rosario Murillo, who heads the presidency’s Communication and Citizenship Council, announced the launch of a fun fair and amusement park Nov. 27 in the Plaza de la Fe, on the west side of Managua.

The project was officially named “Navidad Solidaria (Christmas Solidarity) 2009,” and run to Jan. 3, 2010.

An ice skating rink, amusement rides, dodgem cars, carousels, electric trains, bounce platforms and physical activity areas have been installed in the park.

Stages have been set up for artistic dance performances, and clowns, puppeteers, circus acts and other children’s entertainers have been hired.

In this extraordinary setting, thousands of children can be seen running around among mechanical rides – and real war equipment.

The Nicaraguan army was invited to participate and is displaying, in the same plaza, aircraft, motorboats, helicopters, combat tanks and anti-aircraft artillery, alongside antique engines belonging to the Nicaraguan Fire Department.

The First Lady announced there would be competitions, tracks for athletics training, and an area of stalls selling traditional sweetmeats and local crafts.

According to estimates by the president’s office, 59,200 children are expected to flock to the ice skating rink alone, the star attraction in this tropical Central American country where it is a complete novelty.

And the rides for teenagers and young people will draw approximately 245,500 users.

Children’s rides are expected to attract 230,500 girls and boys, and another 120,000 will use other electric games. About 193,000 children will play on the bounce platforms, and the circus tents will gather an audience of about 81,500 children.

In total, the government estimates that one-and-a-half million children and teenagers from all over the country will visit the fun fair.

The government has rented 200 school buses to transport children from different parts of the country to Managua.

The Nicaraguan government has also paid thousands of artisans to make 100,000 papier-maché piñatas filled with sweets. These will be strung up and broken by a blindfolded child with a stick, scattering the goodies for a free-for-all grab, in the days before Christmas.

Three hundred thousand toys and thousands of food vouchers for poor families will be distributed on Christmas day.

Constitutionally, Nicaragua is a secular state, but that did not prevent Murillo from instructing all public institutions to build altars in the streets to venerate the Virgin Mary, who has an important feast day on Dec. 8.

She also ordered the staff of the state Programa Amor (Love), which aims to reintegrate street kids into families and society, to round up 12,700 children to take to the fun fair.

This task will involve 150 children’s workers from Programa Amor and 1,340 youth workers from the Nicaraguan Institute for Youth.

Local governments, public employees and members of the governing party, the leftwing Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), are also playing a role in the Navidad Solidaria project.

Murillo told the government-aligned media that the amusement park and the month-long Navidad Solidaria project “are expensive, but are not being paid for by those who plundered Nicaragua, nor by the corrupt,” who go about criticising a project that benefits the people.

She was reacting to opposition critics who view the renting of ice skating rinks as eccentric and out of place, and the distribution of food vouchers to poor families in the public squares as populism.

Edmundo Jarquín, a former presidential candidate for the dissident Sandinista Renewal Movement, said the government’s Christmas gesture makes “a mockery of the poor.”

“The people want jobs and wages, dignity, not crumbs of charity,” Jarquín told IPS.

“In such a poor country, people will go, and rightly so, to collect and enjoy these crumbs that the ruling family, like Nero, tosses from its balcony of power,” he said.

But in Jarquín’s view, “in their heart of hearts, people would prefer to have a job and a salary so they can acquire as a right what Ortega is giving as a handout.”

Forty-seven percent of Nicaragua’s 5.7 million people are living on less than two dollars a day, according to United Nations statistics.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) indicates that between 2009 and 2010, 38 percent of children under five in Nicaragua will be undernourished, compared to 27 percent in 2006.

Official Education Ministry figures show that between 500,000 and 700,000 children and teenagers drop out of the educational system every year because of poverty.

Members of the rightwing opposition Constitutionalist Liberal Party, like lawmaker Wilfredo Navarro, voiced their criticism of the government’s action in parliament and demanded to know where the funding came from.

The opposition estimates that spending on the Navidad Solidaria 2009 project will be at least 6.5 million dollars.

Liberal congresswoman María Eugenia Sequeira said “it is a waste to spend public money on an amusement park when there are 11,000 schools without a roof.”

President Ortega took up cudgels in the controversy, saying “Those who criticise people coming to enjoy themselves for free, those who have said this is like a circus, a show, should be ashamed: it is a circus, but for making people happy. Criticising that is shameful, but above all it is a sin,” Ortega said.

Meanwhile, children and their families are enjoying themselves at the park.

Norman Centeno, the father of two boys aged five and eight, told IPS that he does not support the government, but he came to the park to enjoy its free services “because I would never be able to afford it myself.”

“It’s a positive gesture on the part of the government. No other government has ever done this before, and I think that to criticise it is really disgraceful,” said Rosibel Arauz, the single mother of three girls, who travelled from the eastern province of Granada to visit the ice skating rink.