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GLOBALIZATION AND STERILIZATION OF NICARAGUAN AGRICULTURE.

Article Excerpt
The first Foro Nacional Campesina sobre Globalizacion opened in Esteli with a resounding negative critique of the effects of globalization at the local level in Nicaragua. The real-life experience of campesinas is, said Consuelo Alforo, a resident of the rural community of Pueblo Nuevo, that families have been sundered by emigration, and people have gone hungry as a result of government policies shaped by a world economic order in whose making Nicaragua had no part.

Alforo, a member of the foundation Entre Mujeres that sponsored the forum, said that 50 people have left her village this year alone to look for work in Managua, Costa Rica, and El Salvador. Two of her neighbors set out to cross illegally into the US, she said, even after another neighbor, Rosalia Olvias, died in the Arizona desert on a similar quest. Olvias took the risk in hopes of earning enough to pay off a bank lien on her home. "The men leave the community to find work, and the women are left to look after the family, collect firewood, clear the land, and fix the fences. Meanwhile, the men are in another country illegally, so employers take advantage of them," said Alforo.

For these campesinas and the communities they come from, what is at stake is their way of life and even...