"The laws are malleable. Caught drunk driving out of a nightclub in the capital Managua with a beer in your hand? Pay the security guard $1. Caught by the police on the highway with no driving license? Pay the cop $4. It’s as simple as that. The problem is that this malleability stretches through all strata of society and often leads to corruption."
I live in Nicaragua. While this is strictly speaking corruption, it is a very democratic form of corruption. In the US corruption is a sport mainly enjoyed by the rich.
I like the term malleable as it describes it much better than the black and white world of corrupt or not.
Here in Nicaragua it is part of what makes the country work and prices are at a level that most people can be part of it.
Living police salaries are luxuries for rich countries. Nicaraguan police are pretty honest and effective, just look at our crime rates that are well below the region.
If they charge someone an "on the spot" negotiable fine it is something most people accept as long as it's not outrageous. Is it ideal? No. But it's probably better than most other alternatives for a country at this level of economic development.
"While this is strictly speaking corruption, it is a very democratic form of corruption."
If the police are for sale, then they are for sale to the highest bidder. If the prices seem reasonable to you, it's only because your aren't being outbid by someone significantly wealthier.
"just look at our crime rates that are well below the region."
Crime is lower. The few gangs that are here don't really spread outside their barrios like they do in just about every other country in Central America.
You say: "If the prices seem reasonable to you, it's only because your aren't being outbid by someone significantly wealthier."
Thats not what Nicaragua is like. It's not the wild west. It's a pretty quiet traditional country with a fair amount of trust. Again compared to other countries in the region, not with say Denmark or Sweden.
There was recently a police killing of an innocent family in a botched drug raid. It became a really big deal and the police, president bowed over to try to make things better. Not that that excuses things, but it's a hell of a lot better than what happens in the US.
It is very difficult to view normal life in the second poorest country in the western hemisphere with the moral compass or glasses of middle-class US. Things are very different here.
>It is very difficult to view normal life in the second poorest country in the western hemisphere with the moral compass or glasses of middle-class US. Things are very different here.
Perhaps. But tolerance of "low-level" corruption is one of those things which causes Nigaragua to be the second-poorest country in the western hemisphere. The values of the middle-class US are a big part part of what made the US the richest country in the western hemisphere.
There are many things that keeps Nicaragua poor, this is hardly the most important one. Similar low level corruption is found all over Latin America except for perhaps Chile. It disappears once countries have been middle class for a while.
How does one square "Nicaraguan police are pretty honest" with "they regularly pocket cash bribes to not enforce the laws, because living police salaries are luxuries for rich countries"?
It doesn't seem like a terrible system in practice, but it sure doesn't seem remotely "honest".
It is said often that the police in many cities in the US are mainly focused on revenue generation. Whether this is true or not I don't know. But if it is, it is no more honest than when a police officer earning $250/m asks $4 for an on the spot fine instead of the $20 and half a day lost trying to pay it officially.
What is your take on the canal? Its pretty clear that the Panama canal provides a lot of economic value for Panama (from tourism to transit fees). Do you think the country as a whole sees it as a good thing? bad thing? just another thing?
If they succeed in building it, it will no doubt have a strong economic effect on the country.
Right now there is a lot of tourist investment in the same area that the he mentions in the article. An ecological disaster could hurt the growth in that area, but it might open up the whole Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, which is very difficult to get to now.
Most educated people here are doubtful about the success of it. The majority of the country is not very well educated and buy most of the Sandinista propaganda about the canal. The main exception are poor farmers in the affected areas who have been demonstrating against it.
Nicaraguans are normally very open to foreigners, but even I've heard many mostly poor people worried by the headlines of 10,000 Chinese workers being needed.
I've heard from people from countries like this where someone involved in say a vehicular manslaughter incident/DWI, can make the incident "go away" with a bit of money. I don't mean going thru courts or civil judgements, I mean, simply making the case go away altogether.
If you ever get the chance, checkout the canal museum in Casco Viejo in Panama City - it has tons of the original surveys conducted that have alternate sites for the canal.
Here's what I wrote after my visit [1]
The number one attraction in town is obviously The Canal and before visiting I make a stop at the museum in Casco Viejo which is amazing considering the tiny $2USD admission price. My engineering background means I’m fascinated by the surveying work that was undertaken before construction began. One map in particular shows proposed routes through Tehuantepec in Mexico, through lake Nicaragua, through a couple of different places in Panama and finally one using a river mostly in modern-day Colombia. The decision didn’t actually come down to the “shortest” distance to dig as you might think, but primarily on how the mountain range through Central America would be dealt with. The final location chosen meant it was possible to create a huge in-land lake and use locks to elevate the ships 28 meters to that level.
One French guy proposed digging deep enough to eliminate the need for locks, though it was decided this would be too great a task.
The museum is so good I went back two days in a row.
"One French guy proposed digging deep enough to eliminate the need for locks, though it was decided this would be too great a task."
I think you have misinterpreted the history. De Lesseps proposed a sea-level canal, and got his way. The French attempt at doing that lost a huge amount of money.
> Eight years, 200 million dollars, and more than ten thousand lost lives later, de Lesseps accepted reality and switched to de Lépinay’s stair-step plan. Lock-works and gates were ordered from Gustave Eiffel. Sadly, the canal enterprise was too far gone and could not be rescued, resulting in the largest financial collapse of the nineteenth century.
The official money man behind the project Wang Jing lost a huge chunk of his fortune after the Chinese stock crash. The Nicaraguan government says it won't affect the project. But most people I talk to down here think the success of the project as being more doubtful than ever now.
There are so many conspiracy theories about the project. One of them is that it's secretly being funded by the Chinese government with Wang Jing only being a front. This doesn't make much sense to me as the Chinese government is already pretty well invested in the Panama Canal operation, but who knows.
That canal has been the dreams of explorers and governments over and over since Pizarro. I think the US at one point had interest developing a canal but work in Panama was seen as easier of the two isthmuses.
I think this will be a double edged sword for the locals. It has the potential to pull the country from the bottom of the barrel and catapult it into a relatively richer country, like Panama, if the government does not squander its money --given their history, the odds seem stacked against them.
On the other hand, this would be major disruption of "indigenous" lives with the big mighty foreigners coming in (in this case the imperialists, no longer gringos or Euros, but Chinese. But, that's probably not the biggest concern (mega projects are often multinational) I think the biggest issue is disruption of the local flora and fauna specially introduction of seawater as well as stowaway species into their lakes and streams. However, given their poverty, I can hardly find fault with trying for prosperity whichever way they can get it.
Interesting to see that MacAfee's travel guide[1] would be pretty relevant for anyone going down there.
Out of curiosity, for anyone who knows the history: how did southern central America manage to wind up split into a bunch of tiny countries? There's no obvious geographic, linguistic or cultural reason that I can see.
My guess is they formed along the lines of Spanish and Portuguese governorships. Keep in mind the smallest states in the western hemi are in the Caribbean.
No, that is corruption.